Climate Change

This month on Do Justice we are working to unlearn the Doctrine of Discovery together through our series "In 1492, Indigenous peoples discovered Columbus". Welcome to the series! To see other posts in the series and make sure you don't miss a post, visit this page.

I had escaped from the concrete jungle one August summer day to be connected with the land once again. Every summer, it is my tradition to harvest medicines for ceremonial and spiritual practices. Being Cree, two of those medicines are sage and sweetgrass. With every medicine I took from the land, I would place tobacco down & offer my prayers. With every prayer, I acknowledged Creator’s masterpiece all around me. With every acknowledgement, I was reminded that I am a mere strand in this web of life. There I was, in the thick of this web of life, in the midst of creation, on the prairies

I love to eat food, and the food I eat is intimately connected to the lives, the environments, and the well-being of people all around the world.

As an international development practitioner with World Renew, I work with staff who live in countries that are impacted by these extreme weather events. Time and time again I hear that it is climate change that is causing their communities many hardships.

“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications:
environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods;
it represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”

~ Pope Francis

As we approach the one-year anniversary of the historic Paris Agreement, the Canadian government is set to announce a national Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change.

This framework will determine how we, as a nation, respond to the climate crisis.

Three years ago, I retired from several decades of work in the corporate world. I became a bit circumspect, weighing my achievements and accomplishments against the goals, dreams and intentions I had had for my life. (Thank God for Grace!) I also started to think about what I wanted to focus on in the remaining years of my life. Pretty standard fare for a man of my age in my situation, I think.

August has arrived! If you’re a church leader, you may be looking for a curriculum for your small group, adult study classes, or youth group.

In the words of Pastor Christy Knetsch, whose congregation in Grand Rapids has recently used several of these curricula,

“The Christian Reformed Church is committed to equipping congregations. I am so glad that we have been able to utilize these resources so that we can ensure that not only the head, but heart and hands are empowered to promote justice in the square inches where God gives us influence.”  

Unless you’ve been on a media fast for the last 6 months, chances are you have heard something about the Paris climate talks.You may have thought that the adoption of the Paris Agreement last year by all attending 196 nations of the world was the finish line; that the work of reaching a global consensus on climate change and a shared path forward had been accomplished. Well, yes and no...

From 2006 – 2010, the country of Syria suffered the most severe drought ever recorded. Climatologists maintain that this drought was exacerbated by climate change: crops and animals died, and an estimated 1.5 million Syrian farmers were displaced. Food insecurity, economic depression, and social instability contributed sparks to the explosion of chaos now infecting the entire Middle East.

“Climate change is affecting us all, and is especially impacting our Indigenous brothers and sisters here in North America and in most of the global south.”

These were just some of the challenging words spoke by Dr. Katharine Hayhoe spoke in her recent address at Tyndale University College and A Rocha Canada’s A Climate for Change event.