THE FAITHFUL CONSUMER September 05

…connecting faith and the environment

By Sarah Streed

Just days before Katrina ransacked the Gulf Coast, a tornado laid a swath through our town of Stoughton, Wisconsin—flattening houses and cornfields, tossing up 100-year-old oak trees like twigs, driving two-by-fours through silos and cars. This tornado destroyed 80 houses, killed one person, wounded many others, and wreaked millions of dollars worth of damage. No one in my family was hurt and our house was spared, but, in just one example, the family across the street now has the wife’s parents living with them. As her elderly parents crouched in the basement, the tornado struck, the house exploded above them and debris rained down. When they were dug out of the rubble, everything they owned was gone: house, cars, furniture, clothes, dishes, even photos.

These two natural disasters occurring so close together—one literally here at home and one at the center of our national consciousness—brought a thought to me that, surprisingly, I’ve seen echoed across the country.

Consider these statements culled from various sources:

  • A month before Katrina approached New Orleans, MIT hurricane specialist Kerry Emmanuel published a report showing tropical storms have winds 50% more powerful than just a few decades ago.
  • The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that: “Hurricane activity in the Atlantic has been higher than normal in nine of the last 11 years.”
  • Bill McKibbon wrote, “Katrina, a Category 1 storm when it crossed into Florida, roared to full life in the abnormally hot water of the Gulf of Mexico. It then punched its way into Louisiana and Mississippi—the latter a state now governed by Haley Barbour, who in an earlier incarnation as a GOP power broker and energy lobbyist helped persuade President Bush to renege on his promise to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant.”
  • Many have pointed out that New Orleans is especially vulnerable to hurricanes now because of the gradual disappearance of wetlands—a natural buffer between the city and incoming storms—along the Gulf Coast.
  • The Bush administration has steadily repealed laws and statutes that the Clinton administration set for environmental protection. One of these was for wetland protection; in fact, the Bush administration ordered federal agencies to stop protecting 20 million acres of wetlands.
  • Last year, four environmental groups published a report showing that Bush administration policies had allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands.

The preacher (for that’s what he is) at our Methodist church in Stoughton punctuates his sermons with “Amens” and weekly pleads with us “Brothers and Sisters” to listen to God. This last summer, I sat in our pew, open-mouthed, as Rev. Lamarr Gibson laid it on the line. While I can’t remember his exact words, I remember the exact message. The message was that it was time people of faith proclaimed the truth and stopped cowering in the background while certain so-called “religious” people controlled the dialogue, i.e., saying that it’s not important that the poor are multiplying and the earth is warming. Rev. Gibson said that we people of faith needed to stop acquiescing to these travesties by our silence. I was struck. Like Paul of Damascus, I knew from then on I would try to speak my faith loudly and clearly.

And so I speak up in the aftermath of the tornado and hurricane: Stoughton’s tornado and Katrina are signs of global warming, and this warming is caused by human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels. Frequent and severe heat waves, storms of all shapes and sizes, warming oceans, rising sea levels, melting ice caps, droughts in one area and floods in another, retreating glaciers: these signs will continue and—if we don’t change our lifestyles—worsen. We humans can do something to stop it, and, since God commands us to care for creation, if we don’t act to stop it, we are going against God. We have a moral and spiritual obligation to stop global warming.

September’s tip: Do your part to stop global warming—stop driving unnecessarily. We all know when we really don’t need to drive and with the price of gas, it’s even easier to forgo that extra car trip.

Sarah 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.


Back to Faithful Consumer Page