Texas Impact staff visited Washington DC this week to attend the national gathering of the Interfaith Power and Light network. Texas Impact is the Texas affiliate of Interfaith Power and Light, whose mission is to educate, inform, and empower people of faith on the issue of climate change.
During our visit we visited two denominational offices working on climate change: the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) and the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society. Personnel from each of these offices attended COP28 in Dubai this year and it was great to reconnect and see how they have taken the work of climate change we discussed on the international scale and made it practical at the federal level.
The ELCA has worked to secure input from a broad coalition of their membership on the provisions under consideration in the next iteration of the Farm Bill. Christine Moffett, Program Director for Environment and Energy Policy at the ELCA, directed that effort and found broad support for climate friendly agricultural practices in the next Farm Bill. Through her work she found that many existing measures in the Farm Bill could be reconfigured to support and encourage climate-friendly practices, with little additional money required.
We talked to Interim General Secretary John Hill and Director of Grassroots Organizing Rev. Laura Kigweba at the General Board of Church and Society. That agency is celebrating the recent passage of the Revised Social Principles at the Postponed 2020 General Conference, which took place last month in Charlotte. Among other things, the Revised Social Principles refined and reinforced the denomination’s commitment to climate justice, placing humans as co-members of creation, rather than outside of creation, and emphasizing our mutual dependence on and responsibility for caring for creation, including by working to reduce or eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels and taking other steps to mitigate climate change.
Also with GBCS we talked about Texas Impact Initiatives like the EcoFaith Dialogues and the importance of elevating the stories of people around the world who observe the impacts of climate change through their work. Several of the people who have taken part in the EcoFaith Dialogues are part of the UMC Global Missions Fellows program and are doing great work to alleviate the impacts of climate change alongside the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.
Congress is currently in the process of appropriations for the FY2025 budget, so this visit was an opportune time to talk about climate finance.
Climate finance is the mechanism by which developed countries like the US provide financial support to developing countries as they adapt to climate change impacts and work to mitigate their own fossil fuel emissions. Climate finance serves to address two realities. First, it addresses the injustice that the countries who have done the least to cause climate change are now bearing the most significant impacts of climate change. Second, it addresses the reality that to meet our target of avoiding the worst climate change impacts, it will take the whole world working together to mitigate carbon emissions. And developing countries need financial support to do that.
There are two big mechanisms for climate finance. First, the Green Climate Fund, which supports both adaptation and mitigation, which has been around for some time (the last time the US contributed to the GCF was in 2017). Second is the Loss and Damage Fund, which was established at COP28 in Dubai last fall. The US delegation and current administration have pledged a contribution of $3B to the Green Climate Fund and $17.5M to Loss and Damage, but it is up to Congress to appropriate the funds through the appropriations process. During our visit to DC we talked about the importance of the US following through on robust contributions to climate finance because of our leadership in the global community.
As a global leader in international affairs and development, the US has a responsibility to demonstrate leadership in the area of climate change action by following through on generous commitments to climate finance.
As time allowed, we also talked to legislative staff about other climate priorities. For example, people of faith support the EPA’s new methane regulations, which limit methane emissions from some types of oil and gas operations, and resist any attempts to change or weaken the provision using the Congressional Review Act.
We talked about the way climate change is a primary driver of many other justice issues of concern to the United States. The biggest of those concerns is migration, which is causally linked to climate change by things like landscape change, drought, loss of livelihood, and loss of safety and resources due to increased incidence of natural disasters.
We reminded legislative staff that most migrants leave their countries of origin not out of preference, but out of a lack of better options. Addressing climate change as a root cause of migration would benefit both the United States and potential migrants, who with proper support would be more likely to remain in their countries of origin.
It was heartening to hear from legislative staff who are supportive of climate change mitigation that there is some bipartisan support for climate mitigation objectives. An example of that is the Abandoned Wells, Remediation, Research and Development Act, which recently passed the badly divided US House of Representatives with a strong bipartisan majority.
In the eco-theology session I heard from a panel of interfaith leaders talk about the way they approach talking about climate to a faith-based audience. Panelist Marqus Cole from Georgia Interfaith Power and Light shared insights about the importance of learning the language and values of any community with whom you work. Marqus described interfaith work on climate as the intersection of scripture, storytelling, science, and social action, and talked about the importance of considering each of those approaches when crafting your message.
Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb finds value in the practice of Sabbath as a framework for creation care. Sabbath allows us time to take stock of what is most important so that we can take those things into the future while leaving other things in the past.
As always, it was good to be in the company of other people of faith leading their people in the work of advocating for climate change action. The main theme rising to the top of all of the conversations I had during our visit was that climate action is critical and a fundamental part of all contemporary justice issues and that the response of the faith community must be specific, organized, disciplined, and clear.
In a challenging legislative and electoral season, it is more important than ever for people of faith to keep reminding their lawmakers about climate justice priorities, even if your representative or senator is not one who typically seems supportive of climate mitigation policy. With increasing evidence of climate change happening around us every day, these conversations are happening at all levels of government, even if we do not see it from the outside.