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Home  / News & Publications /  Michigan Catholic News / 2009 /  Be a part of the Catholic response to Earth Day resolutions

by Sr. Janet Schaeffler special to The Michigan Catholic
Published April 17, 2009

April 22 will see the celebration of Earth Day, as it does every year. It is not a religious observance, but could it be? Should it be?

• The first passage in Scripture is the creation of the world.

• In 2001 in "God Made Man the Steward of Creation," Pope John Paul II affirmed the need for ecological conversion: "We must therefore encourage and support the ecological conversion which in recent decades has made humanity more sensitive to the catastrophe to which it is heading. Man is no longer the Creator's steward, but an autonomous despot who is finally beginning to understand that he must stop at the edge of the abyss."

• In 2002 Pope John Paul II issued, with Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, a joint declaration on the environment titled "We Are Still Betraying the Mandate God Has Given Us."

• Our U.S. bishops have challenged: "We … call for a civil dialogue and prudent and constructive action to protect God's precious gift of the Earth's atmosphere with a sense of genuine solidarity and justice for all God's children."

• Recently Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed: "Today the great gift of God's Creation is exposed to serious dangers and lifestyles can degrade it. Environmental pollution is making particularly unsustainable the lives of the poor of the world … We must pledge ourselves to take care of the creation and to share its resources in solidarity."

A new initiative

This year on Earth Day the Catholic Coalition on Climate Change will launch an initiative encouraging United States Catholics to pray and reflect on the duty to care for creation and care for the poor and vulnerable. The Catholic Coalition was launched in 2006 to help the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic community address these issues. Numerous partnering organizations are working in collaboration; the coalition is funded with generous assistance from the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. A Climate Covenant and a St. Francis Pledge to Protect Creation and the Poor will be unveiled on April 22.

Practical things to do

Bookstores, magazines and the Internet today are filled with articles such as "50 Simple Things to do to care for the Earth." We make New Year's resolutions, Lenten resolutions … as Christians, should Earth Day be a time we make at least one new resolution to care for God's creation in our everyday life? Some possibilities for persons and parishes:

• Disconnect appliances. About 75 percent of the energy consumed by home appliances occurs while they're turned off but still plugged in. Unplug everything in your home that doesn't need to be connected full-time, or plug cords in to surge protectors, which can be flipped on as needed.

• Shut down. The average computer left on all day uses nearly 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year, producing more than a ton of carbon emissions. So turn off your computer any time you're not on it and eliminate the screen saver function, which uses more energy than the sleep mode.

• Use compact fluorescent bulbs. They use four times less energy than incandescent ones. If every American family substituted five CFL bulbs for incandescent, it would be equivalent to taking eight million cars off the road for a year. Michigan Interfaith Power & Light can help you organize a lighting fundraiser for your parish.

• A mug of your own. Every year Americans throw away 25 billion polystyrene cups and 25 billion individual water bottles, most of which end up in landfills. Buy a reusable to-go mug and a bottle you can refill with filtered tap water. Bring your own (to a coffee shop, to the parish meeting) and you cut down on Styrofoam.

• Quit using bottled water. It is not safer to drink than tap water. Recent testing showed that 10 major bottled brands of water contained a mixture of 38 different pollutants, including fertilizer, bacteria, Tylenol, and industrial chemicals. Approximately 1.5 million gallons of oil a year are used to make plastic water bottles. Transporting these bottles adds thousands of more gallons of oil, all of which significantly adds to greenhouse gas emissions. Bottles are made from recyclable plastic but 90 percent of them end up in parks and fields, along roadways, or in landfills (where it takes thousands of years to break down). Bottled water is 1,000 times more out-of-pocket costly than tap water per gallon: tap water averages $.0015; filtered $ .13; bottled $1.27. Bottled water is part of the larger issue of privatization, the move to make water a commodity rather than recognizing it as a right. Multinational corporations are purchasing water rights and selling the bottled water back to those who originally held rights to the water.

• Start a fashion. Make cloth bags a passion. Plastic doesn't biodegrade. Each year Americans "throw away" more than 100 billion bags. Less than 1 percent of plastic bags worldwide are recycled, only 0.6 percent in the U.S. (plasticbagrecycling.org)

• Stop junk mail. Every year 100 million trees are chopped down for junk mail sent to American homes. Contact the direct marketing association DMAchoice.org to remove your name from mailing lists of their members.

• This past February the Adult Faith Formation Association of the archdiocese presented Caring for God's Creation: Strategies for Persons and Parishes. Resources and one of the PowerPoint presentations from the day are available at "Caring for God's Creation" under Ministry Resources.

Upcoming film and video

• Narrated by James Earl Jones, the adventure film "Earth" follows three animal families on their journey across the planet. Arriving in theaters on Earth Day 2009, it is the first motion picture released under the new label Disneynature.

• National Geographic Films' "Arctic Tale" tracks a baby polar bear and a baby walrus who struggle to survive as the ice of the North Pole melts.

Sr. Janet Schaeffler, OP, is the archdiocesan associate director for adult faith formation for the Office for Faith Formation/Catechetics.