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Diocesan Environment Network
January 23, 2024
January 23.2024
Ever wondered about our logo? The original photograph of the Semipalmated Sandpiper was taken by Donna Giles @Donna Giles Photography. You may remember her photos from our Hope & Inspiration Art Gallery. The full photograph is stunning in the subtle textures of the light on the water juxtaposed against the bird. The sandpiper is easily recognized by anyone walking a beach and is sadly facing population decreases. It has been identified as a priority for conservation and stewardship. https://wildlife-species.canada.ca/bird-status/oiseau-bird-eng.aspx?sY=2014&sL=e&sM=a&sB=SESA
The font is called Papyrus. Not only is it a unique font, solid yet tenuous like our grasp of climate change, it represents a timelessness, a history of the earth providing a tool for generations, once abundant but now quite rare.
The two elements combined speak to our need to treasure the gifts of creation and commit to our baptismal covenant “To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth”.
January 21, 2024 • 3rd Week in Ordinary Time
“For the present form of this world is passing away.” –1 Corinthians 7:31. It can be frightening to imagine that the extremes of heat and cold, storms, droughts, rising oceans, and wildfires are the new normal, but scientists worldwide agree on this. If the world as we know it is passing away, what new, simpler lifestyles can we embrace as life-giving even though we may have experienced them as inconvenient restrictions previously? Less, or no, air travel? Less-extravagant consumption? Eating lower on the food chain? Wearing more layers and keeping the heat turned down? This week, choose something you previously considered inconvenient and focus on the simplicity, pleasure, and value inherent in it now. © The Pastoral Center / PastoralCenter.com. All rights reserved.
SAVE OUR OLD FORESTS Public Meeting
Date: Sunday, January 28, 2024
Time: 1:30 - 3:30pm
Location: Bridgetown Legion, 20 Jeffrey Street
About: SOOF is hosting a Public Meeting to talk about potential sites in Annapolis County that have been identified for clearcutting and spraying and our ongoing work to protect two wilderness areas on the South Mountain.
Please note that this is not a SOOF Soup Sunday event and there will not be a free lunch served at the Public Meeting.
All of the SOOF active petitions can be found here: https://www.arlingtonforestprotection.ca/soof/petitions
These include petitions for the following counties: Cumberland, Yarmouth, Halifax, Digby, Pictou and Colchester
PWRDF’s Lenten Resource focuses on health and well-being; our own and that of our planet. To subscribe to daily meditiations and other resources: https://pwrdf.org/Lent2024/
The Church of England presents a resource called “Watch and Pray: Wisdom and Hope for Lent and Life. https://www.churchofengland.org/faith-calling/what-we-believe/lent-holy-week-and-easter/watch-and-pray-resources-lent-2024
The United Church has a devotional book for sale called Act/Fast: Spiritual Practices for a Climate in Crisis available here: https://ucrdstore.ca/products/act-fast-spiritual-practices-for-a-climate-in-crisis
DEN will be offering a Lenten series. More details to come soon
With thanks to our Advocacy Editors, Eva Evans and Jesse Hamilton
Stand With Environmental Defenders (globalcitizen.org) Let’s stand with those who stand up for the planet. Environmental defenders contribute significantly to climate action and they hold the powerful entities accountable, yet they are often excluded from key global discussions. They can be tirelessly on the front lines and at great personal risk, yet their voices are missing from global decision making. This petition is urging world leaders to change this in 3 key ways. First, to ensure that climate talks prioritize human rights and climate policies advance environmental justice. Second, to acknowledge the link between the climate crisis and violence towards environmental defenders, along with the need to protect and defend them and their civic freedoms. Third, to include and fully involve environmental defenders in global climate negotiations like COP. Add your name to support this needed change!
Support a Canadian environmental justice law - David Suzuki FoundationEnvironmental racism occurs when environmental policies or practices result in disproportionate negative impacts on racialized individuals, groups, or communities. Canadian environmental law and policy has a chance to address the gaps with clear legislative requirements and accountability mechanisms. Bill C-226 is the National Strategy on Environmental Racism and Environmental Justice Act. It would require the minister of environment and climate change to examine the links between racialization, socio-economic status, and environmental risk, and to consult on and develop Canada’s first national strategy on environmental racism and environmental justice. The House of Commons passed Bill C-226 and sent it to the Senate last Spring. This petition is calling on the Senate to prioritize and pass this bill as soon as possible in 2024. https://davidsuzuki.org/action/support-a-canadian-environmental-justice-law/
Leadnow Petition for a Wealth Tax in Canada It’s no secret that the rich are getting richer – and a recent report from Oxfam shows that we are on track to have our first trillionaire within the decade. As billionaires rake in profits, wealth inequality in Canada is increasing at record speed. Between inflation, stagnating wages and the increase in the cost-of-living, seniors and younger families are feeling it the most and having to rely on credit cards and taking on debt just to get by. https://act.leadnow.ca/wealth-tax-ETT/?utm_source=leadnow&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=blast2024-01-20Will you call on Justin Trudeau, Finance Minister reeland, and cabinet ministers to pass a wealth tax now?
The Save Windermere campaign is not-for-profit operating in England and working to end sewage pollution in the beautiful Windermere catchment of the Lake District National Park. Windermere is England’s largest lake and the catchment is home to rare and protected species like Arctic charr, Atlantic salmon, brook, river and sea lamprey, European river otter, European eels, and freshwater pearl mussels. Since 2020, over 18,000 hours of untreated sewage has been dumped in the catchment, with up to 13 million litres of ‘treated’ sewage permitted to be discharged each day! The sewage kills the wildlife, adds phosphates and creates algal blooms, and destroys freshwater environments. This petition is taking on the profit-driven water industry and the failed government regulations. Join in to lend a hand to people fighting for their environment and lake across the pond.
The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) made the smart decision to end subsidies for building gas pipelines to new residential developments. Within days, the Ford government announced that it’s going to overrule the OEBand protect the massive subsidies –$250 million per year – handed to Enbridge Gas. This is a bizarre decision that only serves the interests of Enbridge Gas, while costing every gas customer in Ontario money (existing customers are the source of the money Enbridge receives). The government’s claim that ending these subsidies will raise housing costs and slow home building are not true. Not spending time and money on extending gas lines will, if anything,speed up home construction, and super-efficient electric heat pumps and induction stoves willlowerhomeowners’ energy bills. Who is the Premier protecting when he steps in to overrule an independent tribunal tasked with protecting consumers from utility gouging?
Electoral Reform
Most of us believe that our Canadian electoral system of "First Past the Post" is not fair, not democratic. Many Canadians are concerned with the health of Canada’s democracy, including voter distrust and disengagement, low voter turnout, and the polarization of politics.A Leger poll conducted in September 2020 showed that 80% of Canadians support the idea of striking a non-partisan, independent citizens’ assembly on electoral reform.National Citizens' Assemblies have been used successfully in Canada and other countries before. Two private members bills have been introduced to Parliament (Motion M- 76 and Motion M-86) asking for a National Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. This is coming up for a vote in Parliament soon. Please think about calling your MP to urge him/her to vote FOR this. If you can do more, sign up for the training session put on by Fair Vote Canada this week so you can urge other people to make calls. Information to sign up is here. You can also check to see if your MP has said they're in favour. (My MP was not on the list so I will be phoning him!)
With thanks to Claudia Zinck
Dead Zones in oceans
I look at the ocean and see the ebb and flow of tides; I see the waves crashing and I wonder, how can there be any dead zones?
The naturalist in me thinks maybe these dead zones are in places where the water isn’t getting oxygenated. Maybe the Sargasso Sea, full of seaweed that it would stop sail ships, places like that may be called dead zones? Nope. That spot is fine. Seaweed needs oxygen to grow and it sure is growing.
Dead zones are mainly found in coastal areas. Fish can’t survive because of low oxygen levels.
Why is the oxygen low?
Remember last year when we talked about polluting the oceans. We started with a coffee cup being thrown out a car window. That cup landed in a ditch that had a stream that met up with a river that flowed into the ocean. We learned about machines that are catching pollution as it comes down the rivers before it hits the oceans and become Garbage Patches.
This time it isn’t a coffee cup or something we can see. It is the runoff from factories or worse still agricultural settings. I mean BIG farms using chemical fertilizer that include nitrogen and phosphorous.
Now humans can jump in that runoff water, swim, play around all we want, and it doesn’t really affect us as we don’t get our oxygen from that water. These high levels of polluted runoff reduce the oxygen in the water. Those fish that can, move away to deeper water and more oxygen. Those that can’t move away, die off.
So how can we fix a dead zone? If we can reduce the amount of nutrients going into the ocean, we reduce dead zones. Seldom is there a case where the nutrients were reduced enough to make a large impact.
An exception to that rule is in the 1990s when the Black Sea rebounded quickly after the Soviet Union collapsed. There was a reduction in the fertilizer runoff from Russia and the Ukraine. In the Chesapeake Bay in the USA, nutrient reduction strategies are improving the coastal waters.
Dead zones mainly grow in summer as there is more rain washing the nutrients into the streams, rivers and into the oceans.
The one oddity is that big fish such as shark and tuna that normally like deeper water tend to come into shallow waters during dead zones. This gives false stock counts for tuna and make humans wonder why sharks are coming closer to shore.
So how can the backyard gardener help? The more we use compost or add seaweed to our gardens and the less we use chemical fertilizer, the smaller the dead zones will grow.
Best Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibWmS_WJRxI
Gardens
Another week and you will hear all about Solar Powered Drip Irrigation. Such interesting stuff. Wait for it!
Till then, start prepping for another type of drip irrigation. The picture shows my collection of drip irrigation bottles. Buy your drip nozzles either from an online Asian shop for cheap ones or Lee Valley carries a stronger orange variety.
Most of you may not have to worry about getting bottles. I do. We just don’t use that many plastic bottles anymore. I save every plastic bottle we get, like the one from cranberry ginger ale at Christmas.
Drip Irrigation Idea
Craft
Grandma is down with a nasty flu, so I didn’t get the craft even started, that I had planned for this week. I will include the address for the best tutorial for this craft.
I love to reuse tin cans. They are sturdy. They can be adapted to so many things. Better still they are free. By using them you are re-using, re-cycling and re-purposing. Aren’t you the green crafter! This week we are using ribbon and whatever else you can think to create to make pencil cups for desks. This would be a great thing for youth to make and then take to a nursing home as a gift when they visit.
Something to eat.
Winter is a great time for movie nights. What better snack than popcorn to go with that movie? For those that like a shake on top of their popcorn, we make this cheese and dill shake. Those that like it take a separate bowl and shake on the topping. Those that like it plain are left with the rest.
Dilly Parmesan Popcorn DIp
1 cup Parmesan Cheese
1.5 tbsp. of dill weed.
1 tsp. garlic salt
Mix it up and put it in an old spice container to shake on your popcorn.
PRAY WITH US
God of justice and compassion,
We cry out to you for the people of Gaza, particularly for the children. We pray for an unequivocal ceasefire and the resumption of aid and food deliveries.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
We give thanks for the release of hostages and continue to pray for those still in captivity. We pray that those released may find healing and the restoration of hope in the months ahead. We pray for the unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
We continue to pray for a safe and prosperous tomorrow for Palestinians and Israelis, a future of equal rights for all and an end to the occupation.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
We lift Embrace’s partners and their staff before you. We ask that they remain safe and know your peace and protection.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
We pray for ourselves, that we may resist hatred, stand for justice, and open ourselves to be channels of your peace.
We ask all of this in Jesus’ name.
Amen.