Expand religious coalitions on the environment

Participants

Tove Anderson
Clare Butterfield
Thea Hayes
Evonne Marzouk
Sallie McFague
Danielle Meitiv
William Rauckhorst
Frederick Stoss
Lawrence Troster

Objectives

• Tailored to individual traditions. In particular, leaders need to
  generate common understandings based on principles of stewardship, justice, protection of the vulnerable, community, reverence for life, and respect and responsibility for future
  generations. Such communication should be tailored by leaders to individual religious traditions.
• Religious rationale for U.S. to lead. Some religions are much
  more attuned to traditional development agendas, including international development, than they are to scientifically framed issues like climate change. For them, a key ethical point is that the United States must acknowledge its obligation to initiate action on climate change before developing countries can be expected to – this applied in the case of their favorable estimation of the Kyoto Protocol and may apply to future policies under consideration.
• Coordinate, but reflect unique positionings. Continue to seek to
  build on and even create new models like the National Religious Partnership for the Environment that attract and channel resources without tainting the unique positioning of the
  partnering religious groups. Such coalitions must cut out neither conservatives nor progressives.
• Religion and politics.Recognize the way that religion and politics mirror each other in the United States, and be prepared to work together both covertly and overtly on climate change.
• PrayerA call to action should include an emphasis on prayer, and on asking for the strength to act in furtherance of God’s will, but not to absolve human responsibility.
• Dialogue over the Web.Some counsel that traditional dialogues take too long to set up and execute and that modern technologies need to be harnessed to move ahead with greater urgency. Email and the Web could be used, as in www.faithfulamerica.org.

Related Initiatives

• Apollo alliance - The Apollo Alliance provides a message of optimism and hope, framed around rejuvenating our nation’s economy by creating the next generation of American industrial jobs and treating clean energy as an economic and security mandate to rebuild America. America needs to hope again, to dream again, to think big, and to be called to the best of our potential by tapping the optimism and can-do spirit that is embedded in our nation’s history.
• Global Roundtable on Climate Change - Includes business and religious leaders, as well as non-US participants. Its compass does not include media, journalism, entertainment. For three years, it has held a twice-yearly conference of 150 high-level critical stakeholders. Conference presentations can be downloaded from its website in print, video, and Powerpoint formats.
• Global Warming Working Group: Interfaith Centre on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
  The ICCR is a thirty-year-old international coalition of 275 faith-based institutional investors including denominations, religious communities, pension funds, healthcare corporations, foundations and dioceses with combined portfolios worth an estimated $100 billion. ICCR’s Global Warming Working Group’s mission is to educate companies about the environmental and economic threats posed by the emissions of greenhouse gases from their products and operations, and to increase shareholder value by urging companies to proactively address the global warming challenge. This Web site contains links to many resources on actions individuals and companies can take to reduce their climate changing impacts.”
• Interfaith Council for Environmental Stewardship (ICES) - The ICES is a coalition of like-minded individuals and organizations dedicated to demonstrating widespread support for traditional principles of stewardship. Through the Cornwall Declaration campaign, ICES is building a network of religious, academic and community leaders who can offer sound theological, scientific and economic perspectives on these issues. This Web site is home for the “Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship” (also linked below). The site also links to three scholarly monographs entitled “Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition,” which offer unique Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives on climate change, and it provides a lengthy list of links to other theological, scientific, and economic resources on the environment.”