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Globalization and the Environment
This study paper by Dr. Robert L. Stivers focuses on various types of attitudes and perspectives regarding human interaction with the environment. He maintains that environmental degradation has multiple causes, of which globalization might only be one factor. Dr. Stivers offers that globalization is a contributor to the extent that affluent individuals from around the world have yet to curb their spending habits and attitudes with regard its negative impact on nature. -
We Are What We Eat
The 214th General Assembly (2002) Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved the following report titled We Are What We Eat. This report focuses on how people can influence the agriculture revolution with regard to sustainability, stewardship compassion, and community. The final section provides suggestions for activities and studies that congregations can engage in with regard to food production/consumption. -
North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) - Brochure on Christianity and Pollinators
Various Christian groups in the United States (North American Pollinator Protection Campaign) have created this leaflet that discusses the importance of protecting endangered pollinating species in urban areas. The concluding section focuses on actions that congregations, and specifically youth groups can take to assist pollinators. -
Climate Change and the Common Good: A Statement of the Problem and the Demand for Transformative Solutions
The Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences prepared the following statement on climate change. It covers a wide range of associated sustainability issues. Various suggestions for societal interventions are also included within the statement. -
Declaration of Religious Leaders, Political Leaders, Business Leaders, Scientists and Development Practitioners
Business and political leaders, and scientists from around the world have congregated at the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences to address the climate change crisis. The introduction to the declaration is stated below:
"We the undersigned have assembled at the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences to address the challenges of human-induced climate change, extreme poverty, and social marginalization, including human trafficking, in the context of sustainable development. We join together from many faiths and walks of life, reflecting humanity’s shared yearning for peace, happiness, prosperity, justice, and environmental sustainability.
We have considered the overwhelming scientific evidence regarding human-induced climate change, the loss of biodiversity, and the vulnerabilities of the poor to economic,social, and environmental shocks." -
Message by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP 24) (Poland)
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople addressed the United Nations of the Parties (COP 24) in Poland, December 3-14, 2018. He emphasized the collective responsibility among all citizens to alleviate the climate problems. One key point includes the urgency to focus on lighter carbon footprints to preserve the Earth to assist in alleviating poverty and suffering.
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Lenten Call for ‘Carbon Fast’
This circular Lenten Call for ‘Carbon Fast’, addressed to the Bishops of the Churches in South India, was provided on February 8, 2017 in Chennai, India, at the Church of South India Synod Secretariat. The circular emphasizes the desecration of the Earth as sinful. However, the call for a Carbon Fast can be considered one way to repent. -
A Bishops’ Letter about the Climate
Below is a section of the introduction from A Bishops’ Letter about the Climate, which covers a multitude of critical environmental issues, from the 2014 Bishops' conference:
"We have lived with reports and forecasts of climate change since the 1980s. Our climate is the result of the interaction of complex systems and there is often a great distance between cause and effect in terms of both space and time. There are uncertainties and a lack of clarity. However, the knowledge we possess today does not allow us to postpone until tomorrow
what needs to be done now. Our human climate impact must decrease for the sake of the earth, for the sake of the world that God so loves that God gave us Jesus Christ." -
The Hope We Share: A Vision For Copenhagen
The Anglican Communion Environmental Network addressed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Conference Of Parties (COP) Meetings, the Fifteenth Session, held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009. They lament the consequences of environmental human footprints, some of which include the lack of drinkable water in various parts of the world, the increased difficulty to grow crops due to the water shortages, rampant consumerism, and subsidies for fossil fuels. -
Why Lutherans Care for Creation
This article discusses how various concepts of Lutheran theology are woven into ecological messages with regard to God as creator, human interactions, and ways of worship. The following is a section from the introduction of the article, emphasizing human responsibility towards care for the Earth:
"For Christians, care of the Earth is not an 'environmental cause.' Rather, it is central to our holy calling to treasure the Earth and to care for it as our common home, fully integrating creation-care into our love of God and neighbor. Without sacrificing the transformational effects of the 16th-century Reformation, we are called to embrace an eco-reformation that will re-examine and rethink how we read the Bible, how we can expand the scope of our theology, how we can reconfigure our personal vocation and our common ethic, how we worship, how we organize our church life together, and how we understand ourselves as creatures within creation as a whole. This call to continuing reformation is for the whole church, not solely for the committed. Earth care is not an add-on. It is not just for those who happen to be interested in it. It is a call for all Christians to participate in this great work of our time."