Many Sundays at Emmanuel we say a prayer that God will guide us in caring for His creation and using the earth’s resources wisely for the common good. This past year, I’ve longed to connect with other members of Emmanuel to bring this prayer into group practice. I’m grateful to Deacon Gary for directing me to the national Episcopal Church website, where I discovered some exciting Creation Care initiatives that I would like to share, in hopes of participating in them with fellow Emmanuel members.
Most exciting and impressive, was the Episcopal Church’s new Carbon Tracker website, which I’ve been testing out in my own household. The site allows each church member to enter information about their driving, flying, and household energy use (even channeling that information from your PG&E account!) to calculate your carbon dioxide emissions and see how your footprint compares with the average in our region, the nation, and other countries, with a goal of getting each household’s impact down to 2 tons of emissions per year. What I learned about my own household’s emissions impact was surprising! Though we use little electricity, we drive a lot. Full disclosure, our household pollution impact was higher than the regional average.
The Church’s Carbon Tracker site is designed to be used within a congregation community, which I think is where it gets really exciting. After you calculate your current impact, you can commit to actions, each ranked from easy to challenging, and ranging from starting a home compost pile to replacing your water heater with an energy efficient model. I was surprised by how informative the website’s “actions” pages are, offering well researched tips on everything from using LED lights to using your clothes dryer efficiently.
Surprised by the results of calculating my family’s emissions, I then found the national church’s Creation Care Pledge at https://episcopalchurch.org/creation-care/pledge. The pledge is meant to be used with the Carbon Tracker tool during Lent—a season of reflection to discern the difference between our wants and our true needs, and to commit to fasts.
I love this idea of Creation Care fasts, and I’ve been thoroughly impressed by the national church’s carbon tracking tool.Lent begins this year on Feb. 26th. If any member of Emmanuel would like to take the national Creation Care pledge with me and use the Carbon Tracker for Lent, I would love to connect with you. My email is Rachel.howard@gmail.com, and I attend coffee hour after the 10:30 service. Hope to Meet you!
- Submitted by Rachel Howard (Approved for The Messenger)~
