WASHINGTON, DC – This year’s commemoration of Earth Week will include a report card day on Capitol Hill when Church World Service and a coalition of faith based advocates present members of Congress with “ethical report cards” grading them on their handling of the climate emergency during a planned April 24 climate change vigil.
As part of its participation in Earth Week activities organized by Interfaith Moral Action on Climate Change (IMAC), CWS today issued a statement (below) calling on lawmakers to enact legislation that would “dramatically reduce our nation’s carbon footprint, assist vulnerable nations in making the kind of adaptations necessary,” and create a more just and sustainable U.S. economy.
CWS’s involvement in the scheduled Washington, DC, climate change witness is in line with the global humanitarian agency’s mission to “assure people’s most basic needs – for food water, security, peace and the air we breathe – are met. The agency’s ongoing Enough for All campaign promotes just and ecologically sustainable development in vulnerable communities throughout the world and calls for increased international financing for climate change adaptation and increased attention to the permanent dislocation of people because of climate change.
Says Church World Service CEO The Rev. John L. McCullough, “Climate change isn’t just an environmental issue. It’s a justice issue – an issue of fairness to the poorest people in the world – and the world, especially the faith community, cannot turn its back on a manmade phenomenon that threatens the most vulnerable people among us.”
The Tuesday, April 24 event in Washington will include worship, vigils, a noon interfaith procession to the capitol and the handing over of “ethical report cards” to members of Congress, People who cannot be in D.C. on April 24 are urged to take action in their own communities.
Church World Service Statement on Climate Change
April 23, 2012
Almost daily reports of global weather-related tragedies illustrate how global warming is dramatically reshaping life on this planet, particularly for the poorest among us. Climate change represents a moral challenge and opportunity.
The participation of Church World Service in the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate Change is a public effort within our 60-year mission history to assure people’s most basic needs are met – food, water, security, peace and the air we breathe.
It is the poorest people in both industrialized and developing countries who suffer the worst effects of climate change. This is a topic filled with science and statistics. But for Church World Service, those facts and figures translate into living, breathing human beings, including the extremely vulnerable children, women and men who have always been a particular focus of Church World Service assistance and advocacy.
By working together to promote economic, environmental and social justice for all the people who share this earth as a beautiful gift from God, we can affirm that there indeed is Enough For All.
We call upon all members of Congress to put aside partisan differences and address this pressing moral imperative. We urge our lawmakers to enact legislation which will dramatically reduce our nation’s carbon footprint, assist vulnerable nations in making the kind of adaptations necessary, and transition our economy in a direction that is more just and sustainable for all.