Blogs

"Sustainable! Food, Environment, and Economics" Spirituality and Activism Conference is fast approaching! On March 28th and 29th, this exciting event will take place at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church. Among the speakers will be UT Professor Robert Jensen and York University Professor Justin Podur. Texas Interfaith Power & Light will be giving a workshop on the faith community's involvement in the environmental movement. If you are interested in attending, please see the information below:

There have been many reports floating about telling about mercury in CFLs. We are here to set the record straight and ensure that you know the right and wrong ways to dispose of your eco-friendly light bulbs.

Is it true that CFLs contain mercury? Why and how much?
CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing – an average of 5 milligrams (roughly equivalent to the tip of a ball-point pen). Mercury is an essential, irreplaceable element in CFLs and is what allows the bulb to be an efficient light source. By comparison, older home thermometers contain 500 milligrams of mercury and many manual thermostats contain up to 3000 milligrams. It would take between 100 and 600 CFLs to equal those amounts.

"Bright Ideas" ShopIPL Energy Efficient Congregational Fundraising Packet

Bright Ideas! fundraisers
are a great chance for your faith community to save on energy costs and be
better stewards of God’s creation. The sale can raise funds for your projects
or help pay for energy efficient upgrades to your house of worship.

The documents below can help get you started!

Information Sheet

Focus the Nation,
a national initiative to educate about and involve people with the fight
against climate change, is coming up January 30 – 31, 2008.

Click here for more
information on how you can involve your congregation. To find out if any churches or universities
in your area are participating, go to this
website.

Methodist churches unite to buy green energy

180 North Texas UMCs will boost windmill-driven power

We're used to everything being bigger in Texas, but today TXIPL salutes our colleagues at Illinois IPL and the faith communities they work with for winning our friendly competition to see which state could generate the most sales on ShopIPL during our first six months of operation. Illinois IPL and their parent organization Faith in Place generated double TXIPL's sales on IPL's energy efficiency webstore, and they celebrated today by donating 500 CFLs to a congregational outreach ministry to be distributed to low-income seniors.

TXIPL members, don't let this early upset discourage you! Visit ShopIPL.org in 2008 for great deals on energy efficient products that will help reduce air pollution and global warming and reduce your electric bills.

Here's Illinois IPL's press release:

In a joint letter to U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D - Calif), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, four major religious coalitions, representing millions of Americans, welcomed the work of lawmakers to highlight the urgency of global warming and take immediate action to address it. The National Council of Churches, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Association of Evangelicals and Jewish Council For Public Affairs/ Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), emphasized some of the bill's key provisions regarding international security and climate change adaptation strategies. The letter describes the bill as "a significant step" toward protecting the "voiceless and the vulnerable."
Read the full text of the letter below:
December 3, 2007

The Honorable Barbara Boxer
Chairman
Environment and Public Works Committee
United States Senate

The first global warming bill taken up by Congress in more than 20 years passed out of committee yesterday with a vote of 11 to eight. Bill authors John Warner (R-VA) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) staved off attempts by opponents to weaken the historic legislation during a committee mark up session Wednesday. More than 150 amendments were offered in an effort to protect both the environment and the economy.

The city of Austin is undertaking some far-reaching energy efficiency goals for new home construction. Here is an except from the Austin-American Statesman:

By 2015, Austin plans to tighten its building codes so new homes will use 65 percent less electricity and gas than those under construction today. "I haven't seen any other city ... with such a long-term vision as this. It's aggressive, but it looks very doable," said Aleisha Khan, executive director of the Building Codes Assistance Project, part of
the Washington-based Alliance to Save Energy...

The objective of Austin's plan is to make homes "zero-energy capable": energy efficient enough that it is cost-effective to install solar panels or other on-site electricity generation such as wind turbines. Without the energy efficiency improvements, the benefit of on-site generation is lost through leaky ducts and windows.

What social workers--and we must count environmentalists among such--find difficult to understand is that the trashing of the land is always preceded by a trashing of the soul. Pollution and despoilation are always political, ethical, before they ever become environmental. No one trashes, willfully wastes, or purposively neglects to clean up the immediate world of house and yard and field--no one accepts with dread fatality the present disorder--unless there has already been a prior disordering of the spirit.

--from "On Not Cleaning Up Battle Creek: Environmental Action and the Culture of Despair" by Gerald L. Smith