MUNCIE -- Lutherans, Presbyterians, Muslims and members of other congregations are mobilizing to address global warming, which organizers of today's Earth Day event on the National Mall call one of the world's most pressing environmental issues.
The worshipers have formed a Delaware County Chapter of Hoosier Interfaith Power and Light, a faith response to climate change. Members of the Jewish, Baptist, Buddhist, Catholic, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Methodist and the Baha'i faith also are involved in the local chapter.
The group is promoting energy efficiency during a time -- according to the Purdue Climate Research Center -- of growing scientific certainty but decreasing public belief in climate science.
That's the part of responding to climate change that Jennifer Rice-Snow, a member of High Street United Methodist Church and founder of the local chapter, dislikes.
"Politics makes it a lot harder to do things," she said. Some people "are seeing me as introducing politics into the church when I want to talk about it. I'm being a Democrat."
According to the Hoosier Environmental Council, it's especially difficult to fight climate change in Indiana.
Congressman Mike Pence, who is running for governor, is an outspoken critic of the science of global warming. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management "has virtually eliminated any mention of global warming/climate change from their communications," the council says. And the state Legislature supports "all kind of carbon-burning technologies, from coal to coal bed methane to waste-to-energy facilities."
"We recognize skepticism of climate science by some policy makers," Otto Doering, director of Purdue's climate research center, says in the center's latest annual report. "In contrast, looking across the multiple disciplines and fields of engagement of Purdue's colleges and departments, we see acceptance of climate change as a fact of life by much of the food security community, the biological and engineering communities, and those involved in dealing with resilience to extreme events."
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Purdue has more than 60 faculty associated with the center across various disciplines.
"There have been climate changes in geologic history, but the scale of the change, how fast we can see glaciers moving, that's not the way it works naturally," said Rice-Snow, who is married to a geology professor. "It's not something you should be able to see with the naked eye, shifting glaciers in a person's lifetime."
She cites commandments in the Bible and other religions calling for people of faith to care for all of God's children, and to protect and restore God's creation, which the faith group believes is threatened by global warming.
For example, Rice-Snow referred to Psalm 24:1: "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it."
According to the center at Purdue, should greenhouse gases emitted from factories, motor vehicles and power plants continue to increase, Indiana faces a number of potential impacts.
They include hotter and drier summers, warmer and wetter winters, more severe thunderstorms, more flooding, increased risk of multi-year droughts, increased pest and diseases in corn and soybean crops, less cold-related health stress on people but more heat-related health stress, threats to endangered species and more air stagnation resulting in increased air pollution.
"I think people who are profiting from the way things are now are making climate change seem like a controversy," Rice-Snow said. "But we have so many reasons to work on this issue aside from carbon levels. Jesus talks a lot about not loving money, having a more spiritual life and being less focused on what we have."
So how are local congregations going to respond to global warming?
"Our national (Interfaith Power and Light) group is focused on energy efficiency as a main goal," Rice-Snow said. "Renewable energy is wonderful for the long range, but reducing energy use can happen pretty quickly and is more cost effective in reducing our carbon footprint."
So, for example, the local group hopes to convince faith communities to join the "Task of the Month" program to cut household energy use. Those monthly tasks include washing clothes in cold water, air drying clothes in summer, turning up the air conditioning thermostat, installing low-flow showerheads and faucet aerators, and cutting "phantom electricity" consumed by appliances or devices when they are not actively being used or are in the "off" mode.
At the group's next meeting, it will hear a presentation from Energizing Indiana, a coalition of large electric utilities that provides energy home energy audits, low-income weatherization, a residential lighting program, an energy efficiency schools program and a commercial-industrial program.
In 2009, the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission instructed the utilities to create "demand-side management" (DSMA) programs to help customers save energy. Because of non-existent or inconsistent DSM program offerings, the commission ordered the utilities to move forward with those programs.
Contact reporter Seth Slabaugh at 213-5834.
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