[This week's blog is written by Mark Steiner, Program and Outreach Director for Kentucky Interfaith Power & Light]
We get hunger. We get it because food is primary. It’s a common denominator. Food has deep personal and spiritual connections. It’s utilized in many faith’s rituals and ceremonies. Fact is we humans have been bonding through the planting, harvesting and sharing of food for much of our history.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, food justice, including access to food, sustainable farming and fair trade, have become the focus of an incredible amount of powerful ministry work. Seeing that those in need are fed and that those who are growing and harvesting our food are fairly compensated and treated is a calling many a good person has heard and to which many have responded.
We get hunger. We get issues of basic justice.
For global warming this has not been the case. While, like hunger, global warming is primary, and like the quest for basic justice, global warming is a common denominator, it is not a concept with such obvious personal and spiritual connections. It’s much the opposite. Global warming has been (for the most part) experienced as abstract and overwhelming.
And as a result, we don’t get global warming.
However, as extreme weather (July is now officially the hottest month in the US since record keeping began) continues to negatively impact primary crops like corn and soy beans (resulting in higher food prices and less availability) the connections between changing climate and hunger become more obvious.
If this warming trend (and its impact on food supplies continue) it may, through its connection with the great injustice that is hunger, play a major role in stepping up faith communities engagement in the response to global warming. Our awareness of this link (and others like it) may well help us to see and respond to the deeper moral calling that lies at the heart of the climate crisis.
You can read more about some of these connections by reading Cara Pikes’ blog “Building Climate Values Through Food Security†on the Climate Access website.
http://www.climateaccess.org/blog/building-climate-values-through-food-security
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