Finishing up…

In our third class, Byron reviewed all the energy-saving changes that have been made throughout the church building. The changes were motivated by the desire to save money on gas and electricity, but they also make a huge difference in our collective carbon footprint.  Over recent years they include the use of compact fluorescent bulbs wherever the fixtures will accommodate them, LED exit lights, and zoned heating with accurate time controls so that we are only heating areas that are in use.

At the last class we reconsidered the carbon effects of eating meat, and looked at the difference among beef, pork, and chicken. An in the February 2009 issue of Scientific American shows that pound for pound producing beef contributes 13 times more greenhouse gases than chicken.

The Presbyterian Church USA has taken the lead in working on issues of environmental policy. The most  recent General Assembly adopted an energy policy.  Work like this comes out of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy.

Admitting that we cannot have much impact at planetary level as individuals, we talked about strategies for change in our wider community.  Letters to our public officials in support of policy changes is one such strategy.  Some web sites to get you started on this are:

Church World Service

The Union of Concerned Scientists

Presbyterians for Earth Care

Cool Lifestyle Changes

This Sunday morning was the second session of our four week series on reducing our carbon footprint in order to contribute less to global climate change. The rest of the group was upbeat but I found myself discouraged by the difficulty of making small life style changes. It seems as though we’ve already made all the lifestyle changes that were easy for us, like recycling, composting, not letting the water run while we rinse dishes, and driving efficiently. From the several activities suggested in this section of the workbook, we found two new ones that are doable at our house: washing clothes in cold water in our new frontloading washer and rearranging things so that we can turn off all electronics, when they are not in use, with power strips. Those actions will lose us 1300 pounds of CO2 a year. That’s 3700 pounds still to go, for the goal of losing 5000 pounds, so I hope we do better next week. One of our big sources of CO2 emissions occurs in our frequent four-hour drives in the Prius to visit our three year old grand-daughter Elizabeth. We’re not likely to change our ways for a while. I found myself envying our guest Nazeli because in Armenia extended families typically live together. That’s lots more efficient. Ann suggested that we might make the tour of solar homes in Buffalo next Saturday, October 3, and linked us to information about the schedule: http://www4.bfn.org/wnysea/ See you all in the chapel next Sunday – Byron is going to tell us about what the church has done to save on gas and electricity consumption. Pat

A Houseguest from Armenia

This weekend we are hosting one of this year’s  International Peacemakers of the PCUSA, Dr. Nazeli Vardaniyan.  The International Peacemakers are one of the national level programs funded by the Peacemaking Offering that will be received next Sunday on World Communion Day.

Nazeli  is an environmental attorney who teaches at the law school in Armenia.  She is speaking at various places in the Presbytery of Western New York, but tomorrow morning will simply be attending church with us at North Church, so she will also be sitting in on the climate change class. As we look at our household’s carbon footprint it is striking to compare the average American’s carbon dioxide emissions are more than 10 times  those of an average Armenian.  Indeed  Nazeli’s flight from Yerevan to Buffalo emitted more CO2 than the average Armenian does in one year!

Because Nazeli also does criminal law, including one high profile international case with human rights implications, we traded family stories about refugees from dissolution of the USSR and the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict of the 1990s. North Presbyterian Church resettled a family of Armenians with Journey’s End at that time.

Nazeli is founder and director of the non government organization Armenian Forests. This is what brings her to this year’s International Peacemakers program, which has a focus on water. The massive deforestation of Armenia has led to soil erosion and the loss of water sources.

Coal in my stocking

At the first session of the climate change class I was surprised to find that many in the group remembered growing up with coal fired furnaces at home. One even lived in a manse with a coal fired furnace that exploded, sending them all to live in a hotel for a week, a memorable experience for a pastor’s kid.

We walked through the process of calculating our household’s carbon footprint. This is easily done on line at the website of the workbook we are using in class. The workbook is called “Low Carbon Diet: A 30 Day Program to Lose 5000 Pounds.”

My contribution to the class was to share a printout of our family’s carbon footprint. I won’t ask anyone else to do that. WAY TOO EMBARRASSING!!!  I’m still blushing. We turned out, despite our environmental savvy as an environmental anthropologist married to a civil engineer, to be right at the American  national average. That’s double the emissions of Germans and triple those of Swedes.

We hope many more people will join us next Sunday morning, September 27, as we get into the guts of the program:  What small(ish) practical steps can we take to change our personal lifestyle habits in order to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions?   In the October sessions we’ll move on to the bigger picture.

Thinking about our faith—at North Presbyterian, Williamsville, NY

I just filled a plastic sandwich bag with coal, to pass around in the chapel tomorrow as we begin our adult education program on climate change.   I plan to show a segment on mountain top removal coal mining from the video Kilowatt Ours.  The video says that the average household burns 5 tons of coal in producing electricity and shows it as a pile dumped in the front yard.

I wondered if there might be people in the class who haven’t even held a lump of coal. So I thought I’d pass it around at the beginning , when we introduce ourselves. 

Mary and I joked about her teaching the class on grace in the library and me the one on coal in the chapel—how will people decide which adult education track to follow? Grace or coal?

Filling the baggie, I smudged my fingers with carbon.  The smudges evoked a lot of memories—

• Hearing family stories about Grandpa mining coal in Pennsylvania in the 1880s and 1890s when he first came from Poland. One night he got beaten up for protesting working conditions and was brought home in a wheelbarrow near death.
• Putting a shovel-full of coal in our furnace when I was a child living on a farm in Michigan. We used it on the coldest nights, but mostly heated with wood.
• Sensing the smudge of ashes on my forehead on Ash Wednesday.

Pat Townsend, member of the adult education committee