By Mary Minette
On Sept. 21, 2014, an estimated 400,000 people gathered in New York City for the People’s Climate March. In that mass of humanity were thousands of people of faith, including me and many other Lutherans, some of whom had traveled across the country (and even across the globe) to join the march.
The faith contingent, one of the largest groups participating in the march, walked alongside a broad array of voices and interests ranging from environmental justice activists to labor union members to parents with their children. The marchers called on global leaders to take climate change seriously and to pledge themselves to action on this critical threat to our children’s future and the future of God’s creation.
The ELCA Advocacy office in Washington, D.C., worked with representatives from the ELCA Metropolitan New York Synod to support ELCA Lutherans attending the march and to spread the word about housing needs, transportation options, and other details for the day of the march. We prioritized this event because our global partnerships give us a unique understanding of the impact that climate change is already having on the food security and livelihoods of vulnerable people and communities around the world.
We know that climate change is already impacting our church’s work to alleviate and eliminate hunger and threatens the future wellbeing of all. We believe that we are called to be stewards of God’s good creation and to care for our neighbors, whoever and wherever they may be. We recognize that we are the first generation to feel the impacts of a changing climate in the form of more extreme weather and rising sea levels, and scientists tell us that we are the last generation with a chance to do something to stop it.
The climate march kicked off a week of events in New York City. The Union Theological Seminary brought together faith leaders from around the world for a conference called “Religions for the Earth” and the World Council of Churches helped convene an interfaith summit of 30 global religious leaders who presented U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon with a statement of their hopes for global action on climate change. Global leaders, including President Obama, are meeting Sept. 23 at the United Nations in a climate summit called by Moon. This summit begins a two-year period of global attention to the issue of climate change. In December, world leaders will convene in Lima, Peru, under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change to discuss a new global agreement on climate change, with the hope that a final agreement will emerge by the group’s meeting in Paris in December 2015.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group of scientists that periodically comes together to report on the latest science on climate change, will release the final part of its Fifth Assessment report in October. Early drafts of the report outline a sobering reality. Unless all countries act very soon and very deliberately to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, some of their worst predictions will become reality: melting ice sheets in the Arctic that will raise sea levels by as much as 23 feet, significant drops in global production of staple grains, extreme weather events such as heat waves and flooding rains.
When I first heard about the climate march, I was skeptical – I struggled with the idea of thousands of people traveling to New York, emitting carbon into the atmosphere, for a single day’s event. But we stand at a critical moment on a critical issue, and my hope is that this march will mark a beginning: one day that begins to turn the tide toward acceptance and action.
In the face of the sobering predictions of scientists and the evidence of our own current experiences with drought and storms and flooding, some may lose hope. Some may continue to deny, saying it will never happen, believing God won’t let it happen. But we are people of faith and hope, and we know that we can change our ways and prepare for this challenging future.
And so we marched, demonstrating God’s love and hope for each of us and for the world. We marched, marked by the cross, saved by grace, out of love for our neighbors and God’s earth.
Mary Minette is director for environmental education and advocacy in the ELCA Washington Office.
