Here is our IPL message for Earth Day.

When I was still a stay-at-home mom in San Francisco, a ruptured tank spilled 400,000 gallons of crude oil into the Suisun Bay, not far from my home. The news was filled with photos of blackened water and oil-covered birds. But I never heard anything about this from the pulpit, even though our baptismal vows called us to renounce any harm that came to Creation.

Sitting in the pews, I knew something was out of sync. If no one else was going to talk about environmental stewardship in the church, I would have to become the voice I wanted to hear.

This Earth Day, it’s more important than ever that people of faith not only talk about protecting Creation, but put their faith into action.

Through IPL’s Paris Pledge, 65 congregations and more than 11,000 individuals have pledged to do just that by becoming carbon neutral by 2050. But we still need to raise $10,000 by Earth Day – April 22 – in order to reach hundreds more congregations and thousands of individuals who will commit to preventing millions of pounds of carbon pollution. This will make a significant impact in our efforts to fight against global warming.

Forty-five years ago, 20 million Americans celebrated the first Earth Day and voiced a call to protect and preserve Creation. We had witnessed a flaming Cuyahoga River and birth defects in children and animals from exposure to toxic chemicals such as DDT. Sides of buildings and human lungs were blackened from soot that comes from coal and steel plants.

Carbon pollution is harder to see, but its consequences are just as deadly. In California, the same place I first felt the call to protect Creation, drought is causing crops to wither on the vine. Elsewhere in the world, floods destroy homes and threaten lives and livelihoods. The World Health Organization estimates that climate change causes 150,000 deaths each year.

But just as Earth Day activists turned the tide on toxic exposure, we can hold off the worst impacts of global warming. Our faith voices and our actions demonstrate that people can come together and care for Creation and its most vulnerable.

When we act together, we can inspire action and protect Creation from the ravages of global warming. Thank you for helping us to continue our shared work.

Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, President, Interfaith Power & Light

“Gas industry remarks demand response from faith community”

The executive director of the West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association said recently that it is not God’s will that West Virginians be farmers. Instead, he said, it is God’s will that the natural gas industry extract all it can out of the Marcellus shale.

Corky DeMarco shared his thoughts on March 24 at Bridgeport High School at the last of several public scoping meetings being held by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to consider the environmental impact of the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Citizens have until April 28 to send their comments to the commission regarding the environmental impact of the proposed pipeline.

DeMarco’s exact words were, “God didn’t want us to be farmers, or this place would look like Kansas. God put us here in these mountains that are 450 million years old with the best coal in the world and the most natural gas in the world. And we have a responsibility, and I think companies like Dominion and others have seized on the opportunities that these mountains have provided and will continue to do this.”

This is a commonly misappropriated reference to the “dominion” scripture in Genesis: “Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth.” (1:28b, New American Bible)

DeMarco’s remarks are insulting to people of faith who take seriously the stewardship of creation. They also reveal a startling level of ignorance regarding farming; he clearly does not understand the true value of land.

DeMarco has sounded an alarm to all those who hold a proper perspective of creation care. The fossil fuel industry believes it has dominion over private property, and indeed the entire planet.

Those who share his view are dead wrong. Virtually every faith tradition on earth holds that the planet and its ecosystems which support life are sacred. The Social Principles of the United Methodist Church state, “All creation is the Lord’s, and we are responsible for the ways in which we use and abuse it. Water, air, soil, minerals, energy resources, plants, animal life, and space are to be valued and conserved because they are God’s creation and not solely because they are useful to human beings.”

Also, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “Man’s dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come.”

The faith community must respond to these views. We can, at the conference being held in Charleston on April 20 and 21 at the St. John’s XXIII Pastoral Center.