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First Week after Pentecost
Diocesan Environment Network
May 28, 2024
Welcome to the Enews
In this issue:
World Environment Day on June 5th
explore the Lichen Camp on the Friends of Goldsmith Lake FB page
5 chances left to enjoy a guided Bird Walk
Spotlight on the Forest Industry - link to article by Joan Baxter
Growing Forests investment opportunity
5 Petitions from our intrepid Advocacy Editors
Grandma talks trash and other great stuff
World Environment Day is on June 5th. See the links below for stories from around the world and some wonderful liturgy ideas. From the website linked below the theme this year is:
#GenerationRestoration
“We cannot turn back time, but we can grow forests, revive water sources, and bring back soils. We are the generation that can make peace with land.”
Closer to home, check out what the Friends of Goldsmith Lake Wilderness Area are doing:
They are on Day 87 of their encampment protecting this area from a proposed clearcut. Kudos to these environment warriors.
Want an idea on how to celebrate World Environment Day?
Educate yourself about the propaganda being spread by industrial forestry industry associations like the Forest Products Association of Canada, and Forest Nova Scotia. An excellent article by Joan Baxter is enlightening.
If you would like an alternative to the commercial forest industry and are seeking a way to invest in sustainable forestry, this link may interest you:
From the FB page: Join Bird Friendly Halifax for the Second annual Bird Week! This year, birding walks will take place in 11 districts across HRM. Get a chance to meet your local councillor and learn about birds in your neighbourhood.
May 29th, 9:30am - 11:00am, Frog Pond Trail, Sir Sandford Fleming Park: https://forms.gle/acswBygHjuDMivnD6
May 29th, 9:30am - 11:30am, Shubie Park: https://forms.gle/STZL1iEBZSCU2Q757
May 31st, 6:00pm - 8:00pm, Jerry Lawrence Provincial Park: https://forms.gle/fmpnhW9B413Br9wH7
May 31st, 9:30am - 11:30am, Gaetz Brook Greenway Eastern Trailhead: https://forms.gle/CzPFgiRyYJiNZ8NTA
May 31st, 9:30am - 11:30am, Bissett Lake Park: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScKthkfaIYqQo9wYETjGwciaFRd_rJoTQjT_Ph0cZy3NtgAsA/viewform
Tomorrow - Find us on our Google Meet video call link at:
https://meet.google.com/ond-mwti-zjg
From our Diocese:
GROWING GREEN BURIALS
When it comes to funerals, there's a budding interest in Natural Burials. People are passionate about caring for creation and protecting the environment. Parishes are getting green too.
Our recent GUIDING LIGHT funeral ministry training session with Louisa Horne, explored Green Burials and some of the implications for congregations. Parish ministers can assist people in making their funeral arrangements and mourners who seek Natural Burials.
WATCH this VIDEO: https://youtu.be/KcKPDfU_SHw
With thanks to Eva Evans & Jesse Hamilton
In two weeks, executives from the largest fossil fuel companies in Canada – Enbridge, Imperial, Cenovus and Shell – will testify before the House of Commons’ Environment Committee to answer for their failure to rein in climate-wrecking carbon emissions. That’s a massive deal – especially for an industry that has poured millions of dollars into protecting themselves from scrutiny. The danger is that Conservative MPs on the Environment Committee who have already tried to block the proceedings from taking place, will no doubt come to the defence of their Big Oil buddies. We need the members of the Environment Committee to ask hard-hitting questions that will force fossil fuel executives to answer for their climate crimes. Will you sign the petition calling on our elected representatives to finally step up to the plate and hold fossil fuel executives to account?
ReconAfrica is a Canadian oil and gas company threatening human rights, Indigenous rights under UNDRIP, ripping through a protected region, and pushing wildlife closer to extinction. The Okavango Delta is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and massive wetland home to dozens of globally threatened birds and endangered black rhinos and African wild dogs. It provides crucial habitat for our world’s largest remaining population of wild cheetahs and the largest remaining populations of endangered African elephants. It also provides the livelihood and survival for more than a million people. The Kavango Basin is larger than Belgium and cradles the Okavango Delta’s vulnerable watershed. It is known that any pollution entering the water here would impact the Delta. ReconAfrica believes they own this area with a 90% stake in the Kavango Basin development and the Nambian government holding 10%. The industrialization from building hundreds of wells, pipelines, and pumping stations that are all linked by access roads would inevitably cause habitat fragmentation. This would devastate Africa's last elephant populations, along with all the life that relies on this region being intact. Join the global call to stand against this travesty by telling Namibia’s Minister of Environment to save the Okavango Delta!
Represent your commitment in giving up single-use plastics through this pledge. In Canada, nearly 90% of single-use plastics end up in landfills, incinerators, lakes, parks and oceans. The further harms from microplastics continue to surface. These tiny pieces of plastic devastate wildlife and marine health while making their way through the food web and into our bodies. This pledge is about agreeing to adopt one of the following plastic-free actions: to refuse, reuse, replace, revitalize, reclaim, rethink, opt, pick up, aspire, or support. Help show that a life without single-use plastics is possible and that we can work towards limiting our plastic consumption and adopting plastic-free lifestyles.
The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is a 303-mile-long natural gas pipeline that runs through West Virginia and Virginia. It threatens to further devastate communities, drinking water, and sensitive ecosystems along its path if it becomes fully operational. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that pipeline construction could continue. Vanguard is the world’s second-largest asset manager. They are deeply involved in this pipeline through shareholdings and bond holdings to the tune of nearly $20 billion! We can tell Vanguard this is a bad investment that sets back the clean energy transition. Add your name to ask them to prioritize the rights of Indigenous people, communities, and environmental rights by stopping their investing in the owner companies of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Brazilians are asking for worldwide help to encourage President Lula to do the right thing. If we don't act now, the very heart of the Amazon will start bleeding oil into its waters, impacting the richest biome on Earth and throwing off the balance of the climate in the whole world. Magda Chambriard just took office as the head of Petrobras, Brazil’s biggest oil exploration company – and Magda’s first priority? Explore oil in the mouth of the Amazon River! She is now even pushing for President Lula to intervene and make the environment agency allow it. (The Brazilian national institute of environmental protection, already examined the project and ruled it out.) Lula cares deeply about his image - both at home and abroad, and protecting the Amazon has long been a key priority for Brazilians. We can win this fight – if he feels enough of us around the world are watching. The impact on the Amazon ecosystem would just be too damaging.
With thanks to Claudia Zinck
River Trash
Each spring I show River Clean up devices used elsewhere in the world. This year it is Mr. Trash. (Baltimore, MD)
When someone throws that water bottle out a car window, it does not stop in a nearby ditch.
That bottle usually, makes its way from stream to river to ocean. Eighty per cent of ocean trash comes from rivers. It can start with that water bottle out a window.
The City of Baltimore has four main rivers running into its harbour.
Back in 2008, John Kellett made the first waterwheel trash collector. It was discovered it was too small so in 2014 he fine-tuned a set of larger machines, Mr. Trash Wheel, as part of Baltimore’s Healthy Waterfront Plan
Mr. Trash Wheel (and his four cousins) are constructed with two pontoon barges, each holding a water wheel, and with a conveyor belt in the middle.
The current in the river usually turns the water wheels that pull the trash up the conveyor belt to collection bins. When the stream isn’t strong enough, solar panels power a pump that pours water onto the wheels to make them turn.
The trash is collected in long floating containers that get replaced as each one is filled.
Mr. Trash has removed over a million pounds of trash from Baltimore Harbour in 2023 alone.
I wonder if their price, estimated at three to four hundred thousand, would not be a good investment for Halifax. It would help clean the harbour but also provide a tourist attraction.
Sending a few links about this invention.
Gardening
It’s that time to start putting seeds in the ground. Grandma likes everything labelled till the plants are large enough to recognize.
I do realize that I am using plastic. I agree that plastic is a problem. Since Grandma was a kid and plastic started to be common, she was taught by her Momma to “use it at least twice before throwing it out”.
I save the plastic tops from margarine, cottage cheese or other small containers. I attach a giant toothpick or skewer from a dollar store to make my plant markers.
The markers survive more than one season. The permanent marker writing may fade, but many sticks and plastic have been reused for three years.
Cleaning
Still learning new cleaning tricks this week.
If you have window blinds, use an old sock to wipe each slat.
The easiest way to clean overhead fan blades is with a pillowcase pulled over each blade. Wipe the blade as you pull back, so all dust falls into the pillowcase.
K-cup Patio Lights
Do you use K-cups but hate the idea of all those cups going into the trash? This is a simple and cute addition to your balcony or yard for the summer
You clean the K-cups and place them over a sting of mini light for a party atmosphere. My neighbour was willing to save me several dozen K-cups this winter that I painted different colours. These would be perfect around a tent or camper canopy.
The entire tutorial can be found at
Water Bombs
We did this activity at a kid’s birthday party a few years back. It was a hot and humid day.
Fill balloons with water and string them on your clothesline or make a lower line. Taking turns, give the kids a plastic bat to break the balloons and get soaked.
Pick up all plastic pieces immediately and dispose of them as they are a danger to animals as well as humans.
Energy Bites
This is too simple, but they love it.
Cut a banana into thick slices.
Cover each slice with peanut butter.
Add sprinkles or chocolate chips.
Set out on a plate and they disappear.
Reverence For God's Creation
God of love,
we praise you for the magnificence of creation.
We marvel at both its grandeur
and the intricacies of its smallest microscopic life forms.
As we reflect on the creation, help us to take in its true significance.
This is your work in which you have invested deeply of yourself.
It is the costly outpouring of your creativity.
So, we ask you to instill in us a proper reverence for all that you have made - a genuine respect for all environments and all creatures.
Lord, we are in awe of the formidable power of nature,
but, in these times, may we also come to comprehend its complex fragility.
Amen.
- Reverend Prebendary Mark Geldard