Environment

An aerial view shows the oil spill from the sunken fuel tanker MT Princess Empress on the shores of Pola, in Oriental Mindoro province, Philippines, March 8, 2023. REUTERS/Eloisa Lopez

A Filipino priest is touring top European banks to demand they curtail ties with companies behind new fossil fuel projects in a region of his home country that is rich in fish and coral. But he is leaving his meetings with bankers feeling frustrated.

Hannah Bowman 3-03-2023

An image of a baby being held by their parent. Jordan Whitt via Unsplash.

What does it look like to parent children in line with the radical values of restorative justice and communal care in a world of injustice, where safety and community are not equally available to all? As the threats of fascism and climate change make parenting seem dangerous or even unethical to many people, what principles can guide us in the radical risk of making new life?

Even in the midst of our lands groaning for their future restoration (Romans 8:22), the body of Christ dismantles the colonial systems that have privatized God’s creation. For in Christ, land and resources are not meant to be segregated but rather shared through hospitality for the flourishing of local communities, especially for the vulnerable and oppressed among us (1 John 3:17-18). In this way, Christ’s body is a new ecology between all lands, nations, and peoples through a common love for each other.

Andrew J. Wight 7-28-2020

Members of the Pastoral Land Commission (Comissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT), a Catholic land rights organization linked to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil. Photo courtesy of  Comissão Pastoral da Terra, CPT.

More than 200 land and environmental defenders were killed in 2019 according to the report released by Global Witness this week. Colombia topped the country rankings with 64 deaths, while Latin America continued its 8-year run as the worst-hit region, accounting for two-thirds of global deaths.

Jason L. Miller 5-20-2020

Pope Francis leads a private Mass in a side chapel of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican. May 18, 2020. Vatican Media/­Handout via REUTERS 

Catholicism, COVID-19, and caring for our common home. 

Christina Colón 4-21-2020

Photo by Harrison Moore on Unsplash.

It’s the first time that a majority of Protestant pastors have according to a new survey by LifeWay Research.

Kaitlin Curtice 9-17-2019

Photo by melissa mjoen on Unsplash

A few days ago, my son started a science journal to write down questions and answers about why certain things happen in the natural world. His first question was: Why do leaves change color in autumn?

Melody Zhang 8-02-2019

Photo taken by Melody Zhang

Thousands of activists gathered in Detroit to perform mass demonstrations on Tuesday afternoon, just hours before the opening of the second presidential primary debate. The effort, spearheaded by Frontline Detroit, a coalition of organizations made up of members deeply impacted by pollution and environmental racism, produced demands for addressing the pervasive environmental and economic injustices that have plagued Detroiters for decades.

Richard Schiffman 6-03-2019

Illustration by MUTI

This seep of droplets sponged by moss leaked
from a cleft in the rock; the waters in the cleft
rose osmotically from earth:
the aquifers of earth rained down
from cloudburst skies;

Kat Armas 4-26-2019

Via Shutterstock

All of us have witnessed the detrimental effects of mass production and consumption that Brueggemann talks about, not only in the anxiety that fills our daily lives, but in the destruction of the very earth that sustains us. Because of this, we understand that not only tending the earth, but connecting to nature around us can also be a form of resistance, similar to that of rest.

Christina Colón 1-03-2019

The Chesapeake Bay in Md. Shutterstock. 

Stormwater pollution is the fastest growing source of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay watershed—a 64,000 square mile drainage basin that sprawls across parts of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, New York, and Washington, D.C. One of the contributors: religious congregations. 

Charles Skold 11-01-2018

Image by Dominik Martin. 

The new report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just delivered some really bad news: famine, drought, and starvation are potentially coming for millions of people around the globe. What does that mean for American Christians? The answer may partly lie in the Biblical story of Joseph.

In this story, God saves Egypt and the surrounding nations from a severe famine by using Joseph to prepare for the disaster in advance. Reading the IPCC report reminds me of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh's dream: Seven years of famine are coming, and seven years of plenty remain . Like Egypt of old, the world has famine in its future. Like Joseph, we can see it coming.

Christina Colón 10-31-2018
Photo by Sebastian Grochowicz on Unsplash

Photo by Sebastian Grochowicz on Unsplash

More than 100 faith groups sent a letter to President Trump on Tuesday denouncing the administration's rollbacks of environmental regulations.

“At the outset of this current administration, faith communities outlined to the Administration our shared principles of stewardship, sustainability, justice, and dialogue, as well as environmental policy recommendations that adhered to these principles,” the letter read. “Unfortunately, these principles and policy recommendations have not been heeded.”

 

Neddy Astudillo 10-16-2018
Photo by Thomas Hafeneth on Unsplash

Photo by Thomas Hafeneth on Unsplash

A new United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ) paints a dire future for life on earth. Even if nations are able to fulfill commitments made during the 2016 Paris Agreement, the report asserts that the world is still headed in the direction of warming by 3 degrees Celsius or more - a temperature increase that would drive worsening food shortages, wild fires, heatwaves, coastal flooding, and poverty.

August Rick 10-11-2018

Shutterstock 

Though traditionally revered in Cambodia’s majority-Buddhist society, monks today are not immune to the government’s crackdown on civil society actors. But where efforts at civic organization meet rebuke, Cambodia has seen the rise of one act of conservation — the holy ordination of trees — which originally emerged in Thailand and has risen in practice under the auspices of the Buddhist faith.

Gerald L. Durley 10-09-2018
Photo by Francisco Moreno on Unsplash

Photo by Francisco Moreno on Unsplash

As a civil rights activist from the civil rights movement of the ‘60s, I continue to believe that everyone has constitutional rights. Thousands of Americans are being denied their civil and human rights because insensitive or politically manipulated legislators are creating policies that are destroying the environment. When profits, rather than the well-being of human and environmental life, determine the survival of the planet, it is a civil rights issue.

Ed Spivey Jr. 9-21-2018

THIS IS A tough time to be an American human. We wake up each morning jittery and anxious, wondering what new outrage will cause us to reflexively fling our arms across our faces in a pointless attempt at self-defense. We are in harm’s way, the nation is in jeopardy, and the axe-throwing club on my street looks like it’s closing down.

You might not think this is a problem, but then you probably never threw an axe across a room and stuck it in a wooden bullseye, and then said, with shameless pride, “Yes, oh YES, I’m BAD!” Once you’ve thrown an axe, throwing darts in a bar just seems so unsatisfying. (Note: Axe throwing is not usually done in venues that serve alcohol, for obvious reasons.)

But few customers are showing up these days, and the hours are irregular. It’s just another casualty of an America so debilitated by the state of our politics that we don’t even want to get out of bed, much less pick up an axe. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, but an axe-throwing high only lasts so long. Eventually you start remembering why you wanted to throw sharp objects in the first place:

  • The EPA is again permitting coal companies to flush ash into West Virginia streams. (Game fish now come pre-blackened.)
  • The economy is on a sugar high that will inevitably end with a crash, followed by the government’s heroic response to stimulate markets by passing more tax breaks for the rich. (It’s called “Tinkle Down Economics,” how prosperity gets passed on to the deserving, who should never look up during these troubled times.)
Christina Colón 9-07-2018

Organized by a number of local and national partners, the Freedom to Breathe tour bus is a “vehicle for social change” and moving art installation. The bus has been on the road since Aug. 25, capturing the stories of climate leaders and organizers in impacted communities across the United States and sharing them out under the hashtag #FreedomToBreathe.

Christina Colón 8-22-2018
Shutterstock

The Trump administration’s proposed replacement, known as the Affordable Clean Energy proposal or “ACE,” would grant individual states more flexibility in how to regulate and reduce emissions. According to the EPA Fact Sheet, it would also “promote investments to make coal plants cleaner, modern, and more efficient.”

Beth Norcross 10-27-2017

WHILE OPENING a star-studded concert for victims of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, musician Stevie Wonder remarked: “Anyone who believes that there’s no such thing as global warming must be blind.”

These two major hurricanes had just ravaged Texas, Florida, and much of the Caribbean. While scientists are cautious about ascribing causation to any individual storm, they do not hesitate to say that warming waters and altered weather patterns due to climate change will cause many more such destructive events in the future.

As we watched the horrific scenes on our television screens, one thing was clear—the most vulnerable suffer the most.