United Methodist Women’s national office has made climate justice one of its four social justice priorities. To welcome and support environmental justice advocates like you, we work to provide practical, theologically sound tools to guide and inspire your work. The tools were developed to delve through deep intersectional injustices between gender, racial, economic and climate injustice.
In this introductory webinar participants gain an understanding of the lens that United Methodist Women uses to look at climate justice, along with the environmental justice steps that some communities most affected by injustices are taking to address the concern. The changes in temperatures, from the unusual cold in the American Northeast to the blazing temperatures in the Southwest, to the droughts, fires and floods across the country and around the world, affect some more than others. As we continue to explore this important issue, we want everyone to be aware of the ways policy and law have created a multiplicity of environmental pressures on some “sacrificed” communities. At the same time, those in more environmentally balanced areas — although at times also affected by storms and environmental problems — live on relatively unaffected. Power plants, manufacturing, mining, waste incinerators and waste dumps, railroad lines, seaports, sewage treatment plants and trucking routes magnify the concerns during an extreme weather event for the most economically vulnerable. The factors that cause greenhouse gases (the key contributor to human-caused climate change) can also lead to asthma, cancer, immune system disorders, hormonal imbalances, and ultimately displacement, impoverishment and migration.
This webinar shares stories that help us understand these connections and encourage us to learn more about our own neighborhoods. By framing the concern in our historic Wesleyan desire for creation and social justice, and with a first-hand look at communities' struggles and actions through the broad expanse of work by NAACP Climate Justice Program Director Jacqui Patterson, participants gain a holistic look at our approach to addressing this overwhelming concern in manageable ways!
Speakers:
Jacqui Patterson, Program Director for the Environmental and Climate Justice Initiative of NAACP.
Kathleen Stone, Executive, United Methodist Women Office of Environmental and Economic Justice.
Tools:
United Methodist Book of Discipline
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. God has granted us stewardship of creation. We should meet these stewardship duties through acts of loving care and respect. (Social Principles, ¶ 160)
United Methodist Women calls for sound stewardship of the earth and environmentally friendly lifestyles that preserve creation for the benefit of present and future generations.
Get involved in our environmental work:
"They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.”
Climate Justice Plenary
In the climate justice plenary at National Seminar 2015, we engaged with a simulation experience, learning how the drivers of climate change affect economically vulnerable communities and what is being done in those communities.
Jacqui Patterson, Environmental and Climate Justice Director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) led this plenary, drawing on her expertise and experience working with persons of color across the country and around the world. She has recently gathered a set of indicators that help to understand what needs to be in place to support a community or family's resiliency. Download this resource from naacp.org:
Equity in Building Resilience in Adaptation Planning.