Category: 2023
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Climate and Money: A Guide to Fossil Fuel Divestment & Reinvestment
Created by Friend Jennie Ratcliffe and members of the Earthcare Witness Committee of Durham (NC) Friends Meeting. This guide provides resources on the what and why of divestment, which banks or funds to divest from, how to go about divesting, and how to reinvest in a more livable whole earth…
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Earth Awareness, Earth Activism
This is an excerpt from QEW’s Earthcare for Friends: A Study Guide for Individuals and Faith Communities. You can find this curriculum, as well as our Earthcare for children curriculum for your First Day or Sunday School at QuakerEarthcare.org/Resources. Written by Bill Cahalan and Ruah Swennerfelt…
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Young Friends for a Fossil-Free Future
All photos by Sebastian DiMino With the local temperatures soaring to 96 degrees during the Friends General Conference Gathering and the global average temperatures breaking records, Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) gathered an intergenerational group of Friends from across the country in an action against JP Morgan Chase and Vanguard.
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Cold-Climate Horticulture and a Freed Bee
Photo by Kathy Barnhart A Year as a Quaker Voluntary Service Fellow By Elsa Hoover I just finished as a Quaker Voluntary Service Fellow in Minneapolis Through QVS, I worked at the Minnesota State Horticultural Society, aka “The Hort”. To say I did not know what I was getting…
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The 2023 Farm Bill: Advocate for a Just and Faithful Bill
Every five years, Congress takes up a massive piece of legislation called the Farm Bill. Right now, the 2023 Farm Bill has an expected budget of $1.5 trillion, which determines how food is grown, what food is grown, and who can afford it. The bill wields immense power in shaping…
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A Living Economy for a Livable Earth
By Pamela Haines Most of us are intimidated by economics, made to feel too ignorant to understand, question, or challenge its system. But, just as we do with peace, we can step boldly into that arena with our faith and values intact, daring to imagine a living economy for a…
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The Sacred Depths of Nature
Both Ancient and Modern Traditions Are Held Together by Mary Coelho We are invited to continually seek to discern the ways in which we are alienated, often without conscious awareness, from the sacred nature of the natural world. Considering two unexpected sources helps us become more aware of our…
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Smarter Planet or Wiser Earth?
New Quaker Institute for the Future (QIF) Book on Human Ecology and Artificial Intelligence Current breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI) need to be evaluated holistically as part of serious, systematic threats to our human ecology. These threats are intimately related to the economic, political, military, technological, and ethical flaws…
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Looking Past the Great Dying to the Next Great Living
by Allen McGrew. Six months before I joined Quaker Earthcare Witness Steering Committee, I was stricken by a nasty infection that got into my blood and precipitated a near-fatal cascade of platelet death, septic shock, that plunged my blood pressure to 35/50, overwhelmed my kidneys, and induced a heart attack…
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Conscientious Objection, Conscientious Protection
by Jennie M. Ratcliffe. There are multiple interconnections between conscientious objection to militarism and what we can call the conscientious protection of all life on Earth. Conscientious objection, both to war-making and to militarism that seeks to maintain and assert our so-called national security or “interests,” has long been advocated…
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ChatGPT: AI Writes 600 Words on Human Survival
by ChatGPT. We asked ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, to “give us a 600 word article that answers this question: will humans survive the climate crisis?” This is what it wrote: The climate crisis, also known as global warming, is one of the most pressing issues facing humanity today. The…
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Moving Money Publicly to Move Vanguard
by Eileen Flanagan. In response to right-wing pressure, Vanguard, one of the world’s biggest investors in fossil fuels-, announced in December 2022 that it was backing away from one its few public climate commitments, the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. This was disappointing for Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT), which…
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Flipping the Narrative to Earth Regeneration
by Sheree Cammer. On a train trip back east last year, my cousin and his wife introduced me to the Wild Winds Buffalo Preserve in Fremont, Indiana. Bill “Three Paws” Elias drove our tour in a pickup truck. I had the best seat: front seat passenger. The herd was placidly…
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Ode to a Coast Live Oak
by Carl Grant. Bark of alligator skin, moss laden Your strong, contorted arms spread wide What faith you have in dropping Your children to the earth Where brother squirrel buries some To grow up down the road And of others makes a feast. Bark…
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What We’re Reading (And Listening To)
We asked our QEW network about their favorite books, podcasts, and media from 2022. Here’s what they said. Multiple Friends recommended The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh about abusing nature’s bounty and colonization, and also Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm by Isabella Tree. Pamela shared, “I loved Healing Grounds:…
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New Jersey Meetings Organize To Stop Export of LNG From Gibbstown
by Ruth Darlington. When Priscilla Adams and Maria Esche learned about the plans of New Fortress Energy to export Pennsylvania fracked gas from a terminal in Gibbstown, NJ, they took notice, and then they took action. It all started when organizers at Food & Water Watch (FWW) asked Medford Friends…
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How to Host a Climate Potluck
by Pamela Haines. As I was pondering how to release more energy for addressing climate and environmental justice issues in our Quaker meeting, I had the idea of setting up an informal gathering where we could hear what others were doing and support each other to take a next step.
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Holding Space for Ecological Grief
by Hayley Hathaway. In fall 2022, QEW launched its first 10-week course on ecological grief. The course came after organizing two popular online workshops on the topic: over 200 Friends registered from across North America. At these workshops, Friends shared about feeling alone with their emotions of dread, fear, and…
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Waking Up
by Nan Fawcett. Imagine a future where we are all heard, where we all listen to each other, not only to our human siblings but to everything, the large and small inhabitants of our home planet, listening to everyone’s voice. Imagine a life where we are…
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Taking Collective Action with Third Act
by Kathy Barnhart. At the beginning of each Meeting for Business at Strawberry Creek Meeting in Berkeley, California, a committee responds to one of the Advices and Queries in our Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice. Last month our Communications Committee responded to the advices and queries on “Harmony with…
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The UN’s COP27 : Where Are We Now?
by Shelley Tanenbaum. After 27 United Nations Climate Conferences, and even earlier conferences and agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Rio Earth Summit (1992), why are we so far behind in dealing with climate (and biodiversity and desertification)? That is the question that hovered over Quaker Earthcare…
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