THE FAITHFUL CONSUMER March 06
…connecting faith and the environment
By Sarah Streed
I’ve always liked Palm Sunday. Spring has sprung, the long cold winter is behind, and my family and I are gathered with a crowd of people waving palm branches in the air, singing “King of Kings, Lord of Lords.” But then I picture people in churches all across the country, all waving palms, and a queasy feeling penetrates my spiritual feeling of well-being. It can’t be good to strip all those palm trees in order to satisfy our American urge for being spiritually authentic.
So last year I did some research. As I had feared, more than 300 million palm fronds are harvested each year—usually from the rainforests of Guatemala and Mexico—for worshippers in the U.S. alone. When the fronds are cut off the young wax palms, the trees die or their growth is stunted. In fact, in Columbia, home of the wax palm which grows to towering heights of 225 feet on the Andes Mountains and where Palm Sunday is ardently celebrated, there has been a dramatic thinning of the trees, so much so that the yellow-eared parrot—whose sole habitat is the palm—is endangered.
So I was much relieved when I received an email recently from a fellow WICEC board member about Eco-Palms. Eco-Palms are sustainably harvested in the rainforest. Buying these palms ensures that the local villagers will harvest the appropriate palms rather than the canopy trees vital to bird and rainforest survival. This generates income; when income increases, so does overall community health—all the way from available health care to schools for girls.
Eco-Palms come in two choices: Wide Leafed or Narrow Leafed. Personally, I’m more used to the Narrow-Leafed, with their long, spiky fronds that make such a satisfying swish in the air. But I’m sure there are others who swear by the Wide Leafed, where the fronds are much more … well, wider. The point is: Both are sustainable. The price is $44 for approximately 200 stems, and if you’re in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan or Wisconsin, shipping is $10, making it an affordable as well as sustainable option. See below for information.
On March 2nd, ABC News ran a clip stating that scientists have confirmed for the first time that the Earth is melting at both ends. It has long been predicted that global warming would start to melt the North Pole, but that the massive ice sheet covering the South Pole would grow larger because of the increased snowfall due to more moisture in the air. Wrong. Two new studies have found that Antarctica’s ice sheets are losing far more than the snow is adding. If the ice shelves melt from the top (warm air) as well as from the bottom (warm ocean) this could result in a rapid runaway process called a “collapse” with sea levels rising by 200 feet. James Hansen, director of NASA’s Earth Science Research, said that this disaster could probably be avoided if we dramatically cut our emission outputs within the next decade.
“Based on the history of the Earth, if we can keep the warming less than 2 degrees F, I think we can avoid disastrous ice sheet collapse,” Hansen says. (At least 1 degree F warming is virtually certain because of the carbon that we have already put into the atmosphere.)
In our current times, where last week an ABC newscast confirmed that the North and South Poles are both melting, we, as people of faith, must take the lead in protecting our earth—whether it be by reducing emissions, eating local and sustainable produce, or by using Eco-Palms on Palm Sunday.
March’s tip: See to it that your church orders environmentally sustainable Eco-Palms for this year’s Palm Sunday on April 9th. To order, contact:
Eco-Palms
RaeLynn Jones Loss
1530 Cleveland Ave. N
115 Green Hall
St. Paul, MN 55104Sarah Streed is a board member of the Wisconsin Interfaith Climate & Energy Campaign (WICEC) and runs Write Stuff Works (www.writestuffworks.com ) a writing business. She lives in Stoughton, Wisconsin with her husband and children. Email smstreed@sbcglobal.net
All rights reserved by Sarah Streed.
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