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.

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.

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

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.