Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue Kicks Off in Northampton, MA
by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg, St. Louis, MO on 03.19.07
We've taken note of numerous efforts by faith communities to address the moral dimensions of environmental challenges. On Friday, March 16th, a group of 131 people representing a diverse array of religious belief -- Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Catholics and Protestants -- joined in an interfaith service in Northampton, Massachusetts to kick off the Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue. Sponsored by Religious Witness for the Earth, the walk is a week-long event that will move across the state, and end in Boston with the celebration of Climate Rescue Day on March 24th. Organizers expect that the Copley Square rally will draw over a thousand people to support the main goal of the Step It Up 2007 event: a commitment by the federal government to an 80% reduction of global warming pollution by 2050.
The walkers that started the march on Friday had their conviction tested as the year's biggest winter storm was moving into the Northeastern United States. Undeterred, the group completed the first leg of the journey, an eight-mile hike from Northampton to Amherst's Grace Church, where parishioners waited with hot soup and cornbread. Over the seven-day period, the march will average thirteen miles a day, and although many participants will join in for only a portion of the walk, twenty-four people have committed to make the entire journey from one side of the state to the other. By the time you read this, the group will have started on one of the walk's longest legs, the sixteen miles between Ware and Spencer (a map of the entire route, along with the Daily Schedule, is available here).
If you're in any of these areas and would like to join the walk, you can register at the locations listed on the Daily Schedule. Those who are farther away, or who just can't bear the cold (this isn't for everyone!) can follow the walkers' progress on the event's blog. Event organizer's describe their efforts as "complementary and synergistic" to Step It Up 2007, and that event's lead organizer, Bill McKibben, has written a letter of support for this week's march.
Religious Witness for the Earth claims that the purpose of the event is "...to call attention to the urgent and ethical need for swift, bold, and comprehensive action to address global warming." Some naysayers (cough, cough, the Drudge Report) will undoubtedly claim that walking in the snow to raise awareness of global warming is ironic. We admire the tenacity of these activists, and wish them well on their walk for the climate! ::Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue via It's Getting Hot in Here and the Boston Globe
The Hexayurt: Efficient Emergency Shelter
|
What Can You Say About a Three Year Old Coffee Grinder that Died?
|
"The walkers that started the march on Friday had their conviction tested as the year's biggest winter storm was moving into the Northeastern United States."
I guess their convictions must have emerged intact, given they remained oblivious to the fact that they were protesting Global Warming in the middle of a giant snow storm.
___________________________________________
Writer's note: Didn't read the rest of the post, did you...;-)
Yes, it snowed unusually heavily for March...that's why we call it Global Climate Change, when we want to accurately describe the human-induced changes in our atmosphere-- sometimes, and in some places, this will lead to later snow storms, or wetter climates, or more extreme storms, or any of a variety of massive, climate-level changes in what we expect from our weather.
Climate Change is a massive, geologic-scale, uncontrolled experiment that humans are conducting on our atmosphere, with no certain results, only fairly good predictions of massive instability and (on scale of human generations) irrevocable change.
Some of it may work in our favor, if you narrowly define it. But things like the melting of the land-bound ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are larely unpredictable, and have results that are potentially catastrophic--especially for those that live within, say 10 or 20 feet of sea level. or those who know someone who does, or someone who doesn't but lives in an area reachable by those who do, who may be displaced by climate change, and who number in the millions... Imagine all of Boston looking for a new home in the next couple of decades. Or New York. Or Miami, Houston, LA...