BeFriending Creation
Dear Friends, this news release was prepared by the Sustainability: Faith & Action committee at the QEW annual meeting at Ghost Ranch. You can either submit it to your local newspaper as is or use it as a guideline for your letter to the editor to your local newspaper. —Noel Pavlovic, S:F&A Clerk
NEWS RELEASE, Quaker Earthcare Witness, October 16, 2006
This month the population of the United States is passing 300-million. To put this statistic in perspective, we passed 200 million in 1967, and we are projected to pass 400 million around mid-century. Each year we add approximately three million persons to the country, of whom about half are immigrants and about half are an excess of about 1.5 million more births than deaths.
Most problems we humans are currently facing would be more manageable if we were fewer in number. Moreover, we Americans consume natural resources and generate waste at a rate greatly exceeding that of many other countries.
For example, an average American needs 24 acres for his/her support, while an average Ethiopian requires one acre <www.ecofoot.net>. Those of us who hold the care of the earth as a spiritual concern find this milestone a call to reflection and prayer, as well as a call to find ways to respond. In awareness of this reality, couples who are considering having a baby would do well to think about alternatives such as adoption as an Earth-friendly choice.
Lowering the number of births in this way and via contraception would slow the rate of U.S. and world population growth, thereby relieving pressure on fragile ecosystems. For those thinking to enlarge their families, choosing adoption rather than bringing another person onto the planet would be a truly creative way to observe this demographic crossing.
For more information about adopting a child and/or population concerns visit the QEW website at <www.QuakerEarthcare.org> and click on publications and then pamphlets.
QEW gatherings go 'carbon-neutral' with NativeEnergy
For as long as QEW has existed, we have agonized over the seeming irony that our travel to each gathering carries a significant environmental pricetag. While most of us have faith that the long-term benefits of nurturing our spiritual relationship to the earth will justify that cost, we have always looked for ways to reduce our corporate ecological footprint. (The QEW office is already off-grid solar powered.)
At the spring 2005 QEW Steering Committee meeting in Chicago, we agreed to make individual donations to an outfit that plants a certain number of CO2-absorbing trees to match the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to that gathering. But many participants found the travel-mileage calculations cumbersome and said it didn't feel much like a corporate witness.
So at this years's spring meeting, we agreed to start purchasing direct carbon offsets, in the form of Green-e certified Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) from a Charlotte, Vermont-based organization called NativeEnergy as a better way to mitigate the contributions of our gatherings to harmful climate change. The $300 worth of offsets that we purchased to cover our calculated CO2 emissions from this year's Annual Meeting & Gathering at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, averaged out to only about $6 per person.
The money will be used as start-up funding for wind farms or farmer-owned methane digesters that deliver renewable energy to regional power grids. For example, a 30-megawatt complex on Redbud Sioux land in South Dakota is helping a Native American tribe develop a sustainable economy based on its core cultural values. Carbon offset-supported methane projects also help family farms compete with agribusiness giants.
NativeEnergy offers "greentags" for a variety of situations: Some organizations are focusing on emissions from special events, while others are covering their year-around CO2 footprints. Many traveling musicians and film/television productions are using this system to become "carbon-neutral."
To learn more, go to <www.nativeenergy.com>.
