This week, Christ Church is hosting a group from New England Climate Summer. (NECS is a program for college students to take a summer to work for advocacy on environmental issues. It's linked to the 350.org movement, founded by Bill McKibben, which teaches that in order to have a stable planet at the optimum level of air quality for human existence, that we can have no more than 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide (ppm) in the atmosphere. Currently we are at 390ppm--there's a long distance to go.

The decision to support the NECS group came at the last minute; a general request had gone out months ago. I considered it for a moment, and figured someone else would help. College students? Staying here for a week? Too risky! But then, a few days before they were set to roll into town, I got a call from the group's team leader. The place where they had intended to stay had been forced to cancel. Could we help? I called Jonathan and Cindy and talked it over with them (and considered what the insurance company would say) and we decided to go ahead with it. There are people in every day this week, as it happens, so they won't be alone in the building for long.

Observing the "someone else will help" attitude in myself got me thinking about how we tend to be as a society on environmental issues. Too hard, too risky, someone else will figure it out. I recently watched the movie "No Impact Man" about a family in New York City who tries to live with as little environmental impact as possible for a year. The project was sort of panned in the media--it was more the dad's desire than the mom's, though she went along and talked guiltily in the film about enjoying the iced water she could get at work. Their two year old mostly just noticed that she had cloth diapers, now, and that they didn't watch TV anymore. No electricity, no toilet paper, no car.

The major critique was that it was a stunt; a short term, "look at me" kind of project that wouldn't actually change things. Colin Beaven, the "No Impact Man" of the title, granted that it was. What I was so struck by, though, was that he said that he felt like liberals (which he labels himself as) always look for the Big Solution--get government to fix it. Conservatives think government is the problem-and that individuals need to take charge. So the "No Impact" program was, in a way, a conservative project-to take personal responsibility as far as it could go. I found this interpretation kind of intriguing.

It's so overwhelming to even contemplate the level of change in our lifestyle that it will take to address what our environment needs. Our book for our summer reading group, God has a Dream, by Desmond Tutu, talks about how discouraging it can be to think about social change and justice work. We think that because we can't do it all ourselves, all at once, it's not worth it. Nelson Mandela was in prison for 27 years--27 years!--and even that time, Tutu says, was not wasted. Apartheid ended in God's time. As the oil spill in the Gulf goes on 85 days, it's hard to be patient.

Maybe patience isn't what's called for, exactly, but maybe faith is. Not patience for the solution to come, but faith that your work is helping to bring it about. Everything happens in God's time--a real solution to climate change is happening in God's time, too. As God's fellow workers, though, in this vineyard of our earth, we do have some work ahead of us.

Blessings,
Sara+


To see some real numbers on how much small, personal changes actually DO make a difference (and how you might actually be happier having made them), visit Colin Beaven's blog: here.
The Climate Cyclists
The Science of 350 ppm