Local environmental organization Brazos Environmental Action Network (BEAN) will be launching the Sierra Club Cool Cities campaign in College Station in October to urge the City of College Station to cut local greenhouse gas emissions. A Cool Cities ( http://coolcities.us) informational workshop, open to all concerned residents of the Brazos Valley, will be held on the following date/time:

Sierra Club "Cool Cities" Workshop

With Ann Drumm, Dallas Cool Cities Campaign Coordinator

Saturday, October 13th, 2007

9am to 12pm

J. Ringer Library

1818 Harvey Mitchell Pkwy

College Station , Texas

We are all so excited about the great article in last week's Wall Street Journal on evangelicals and the environment that focused attention on the Christian Life Commission and CLC Policy Director Suzii Paynter.

At Texas Impact, we've had several calls and emails from folks commenting especially on the article's thoughtful treatment of the issue of the sovereignty of God.  

Split Over Global Warming Widens Among Evangelicals

Texas Christians Cite Conflicting Scripture; Staying ‘On Mission’

By ANDREW HIGGINS

I posted this same article on the Texas Impact website but wanted to make sure eveyone sees it so I'm posting it here, too.

Our friend the Reverend Steve Brown of Virginia Interfaith Power & Light forwarded me an op-ed by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ross Gelbspan, who is the retired editor of the Boston Globe and an international expert and voice for change on global warming and energy. Ross is a great friend to Texas and Texas Impact who has travelled down here several times to speak to religious and secular audiences on global warming challenges and solutions. His website is http://www.heatisonline.org/

Ross's op-ed is absolutely required reading for faith communities for a number of reasons, the most important of which is the context for hope Ross continues to operate in. As language about global warming from the scientific community gets scarier, we will need different ways of thinking about the future to keep us from shutting down and giving up. Ross Gelbspan's perspective is one that helps me stay grounded in hope for the long term as opposed to grasping for optimism in the short term.

Climate change may destabilize democracies

By Ross Gelbspan

This op-ed first appeared in the Lowell, Massachusett, Sun.

While senators and representatives diddle over the beginnings of authentic climate change legislation, it is depressingly clear that even our best-intentioned leaders don’t really get it.

Bill McKibben's book The Comforting Whirlwind has been a great resource for a lot of folks in the past few years in understanding the connection between faith and the environment through the lens of the whirlwind narrative in the Book of Job. You can get the book through various online outlets including Quakerbooks and Amazon.

McKibben also delivered a sermon, "The Comforting Whirlwind: God and the Environmental Crisis" at the First Religious Society, Unitarian-Universalist,
in Carlisle, Massachusetts. You can read that sermon HERE

    If you want to know where the real environmental activism is taking place, you don’t have to look far. Local governments, frustrated by a federal administration that is woefully inactive on the issue of climate change, are tackling global warming from the ground up. Texas cities are taking matters into their own hands with aggressive local legislation that attacks everything from air pollution to waste management. How are they able to do this? It’s simple: the citizens expect no less. As Abraham Lincoln once stated in his famed Gettysburg Address, our governments are “of the people, by the people, for the people”, and only through the people will government take action and change.

The Cool Cities Information and Training Session last Saturday, August 4th was a wonderful success. The group of fifteen or so attendees was energetic and diverse. Many faiths and backgrounds were represented including Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, residents of Killeen, Cedar Park, Westlake, Georgetown, college students from Southwestern and the leader of a local Sierra Club group in a Georgetown highschool.

Dr. Andy Fowler, Texas Impact board representative from the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church; Sue Sidney, President of the Southwest Texas Conference United Methodist Women; and Cynthia Crawford of the Catholic Diocese of Austin discuss the religious community's response to the Cool Cities Campaign.

A recent study by the World Health Organization erases any lingering doubt that threats to the environment are direct threats to human health. According to the report, children are far more susceptible than adults to the impacts of environmental hazards. Scientific experts from 18 countries, say four million children under age five die each year because of polluted air and water and exposure to various kinds of chemicals. The report illustrates how poor, malnourished children are the most at risk and and that poor countries are the least able to take steps to prevent environmental health hazards.

We've all noticed the errant July weather we've been having (since when does it flood in central Texas in July??). But what you may not know is that bizarre weather has become a world-wide problem.

Just today I checked the headlines and saw three references to weather-gone-wacky:

China Rain Storms Claim 650 Lives

Floods, Fires Ravage South Africa

Hurrican Boost "Due To Warm Sea" 

Wondering which presidential candidate has the best global warming policy plan? Compare and contrast candidates' positions with this easy chart from the League of Conservation Voters.

Texas Interfaith Power and Light and Austin Area Interreligious Ministries (AAIM) are proud to announce the Kill-a-watt Interfaith Mini Challenge!

The Kill-a-watt Challenge, sponsored by the Austin Chronicle and Austin Energy, is a city-wide contest to encourage families, neighborhoods, businesses, and congregations to reduce their electric usage at this time of year when electric demand is especially high. Austin Energy customers can win recognition for cutting their electric consumption either in absolute numbers, or as a percentage of what they used in this same time-period last year.

Texas IPL and AAIM have convinced the contest sponsors to create a special category in the contest for congregations.