Indianapolis, PB and MDGs

MDGs will be the focus of a visit by The Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori to the Diocese of Indianapolis, June 15-17. According to the Diocesan web site this will be an unique initiative with the Presding Bishop guiding a discussion and developing action on the Millennium Development Goal Eliminating Extreme Poverty. On Saturday a day long event open to the public will feature the Presiding Bishop and sessions to develop action plans to address poverty, regionally and globally.

Read it all Here

Religious leaders unite to address global warming

From Episcopal News Service
Uniting through a common concern for creation, Muslim, Christian and Jewish religious leaders announced May 21 a pact to fight global warming in a statement delivered to the White House and Congress.

"An Interfaith Declaration on the Moral Responsibility of the U.S. Government to Address Global Warming" comes on the heels of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change's most recent report that makes clear the serious risks of delay.

The religious leaders, including Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, declare acceptance of the scientific evidence for global warming and pledge mutual support in addressing this severe challenge.

Recognizing the human contribution to global warming, the statement's signers call for legislators to enact mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and to make a healthy and healthful environment a priority.

"Our Earth is in great peril," the declaration says. "We cannot risk the consequences of inaction. Recognizing that human beings are largely responsible for creating this problem we stand together as brothers and sisters dedicated to finding solutions."

A pdf of the declaration is available here.

Read the whole story here.

Presiding Bishop's Reflections on Poverty and Climate Change

From Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle. (Finder's kudos to Ann Fontaine!)

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Before I became a priest, I was a professor of oceanography. One of
the things I learned was that oceanographers couldn't just study
squid or fish in isolation. We had to study interconnected systems.
We had to understand not only the animals' environment, such as the
water, but its chemistry and circulation, the atmosphere above the
ocean and the geology below it. And that, I believe, is how we must
understand our world: We must see everything, and everyone, as
interconnected and intended by God to live in relationship.

Two of the most significant crises facing our world -- climate change
and deadly poverty -- offer an example of such interconnectedness. By
understanding how the two crises, and the people they affect, are
connected, we can begin to understand how humanity can triumph over
both. Extreme poverty -- that is, poverty that kills -- afflicts more
than a billion of God's people around the world. Nearly 30,000 of
these people will die today. That's 1 every 3 seconds. The factors
that propel this kind of deadly poverty include hunger, diseases like
AIDS and malaria, conflict, lack of access to education and basic
inequality. Climate change threatens to make the picture even more
deadly. As temperature changes increase the frequency and intensity
of severe-weather events around the world, poor countries -- which
often lack infrastructural needs like storm walls and water-storage
facilities -- will divert previous resources away from fighting
poverty in order to respond to disaster. Warmer climates will also
increase the spread of diseases like malaria and tax the ability of
poor countries to respond adequately. Perhaps most severely, changed
rain patterns will increase the prevalence of drought in places like
Africa, where only 4 percent of cropped land is irrigated, leaving
populations without food and hamstrung in their ability to trade
internationally to generate income.

Conversely, just as climate change will exacerbate poverty, poverty
also is hastening climate change. Most poor people around the world
lack access to a reliable-energy sou\rce, an imbalance that must be
addressed in any attempt to lift a community out of poverty.
Unfortunately, financial necessity often forces the choice of energy
sources such as oil and coal that threaten to expand significantly
the world's greenhouse emissions and thus accelerate the effects of
climate change. This cycle -- poverty that begets climate change, and
vice versa -- threatens the future of all people, rich and poor
alike, and of all things in the world that God so loves.

Read it all here.