Climate Convert Sightings and Stories
We're excited to share these photos with you of people who are standing up as Climate Converts, telling the Senate and the president that we have a moral responsibility to pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. Take a photo of yourself or your group wearing the Climate Convert pins and send it to photos@interfaithpowerandlight.org. Be sure and include your name and location in the subject line.
You can also send us your story.
 Kevin Costner and Sally Bingham, July 2010 |
 New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu with Sally Bingham, July 2010 |
Stories
Tell your story.
I have committed to spending the next year in deep meditation for Pensacola, my former home and the current people and animals of the Gulf of Mexico region. I hope you will join me in prayer that our leaders will lead us out of this mess. It is the least I can do and I hope it will ease some of the pain I feel in my heart. –Vivian Fulk, NC
I have known about the "greenhouse effect" since college in 1977. I wanted to fight it by becoming a solar power engineer. By 1981, the solar collectors were gone from the White House roof and my dream was taken away by what I believe are selfish and short-sighted people. I am back to fight for the dream of local, clean, renewable, energy once again. This time, the dark fossil fuel forces will not take my dream of a sustainable future for my children and theirs away: not over my dead body! –Vincent Pawlowski, AZ
I visited my son in Fairbanks, AK this past February. It was 20 degrees (f) above zero most days(normally its 25 - 40 degrees below zero) while back at home, we were having record breaking cold and snow all over the East Coast. The wacky weather is "global". I guess that's why they call it "Global Climate Change" –Bill Thwing, PA
1.44Kw GRID -TIE SOLAR ARRAY PV system...solar hot water system (since 1975)..vegetable gardener compost system ..just to mention a few items. –Guy D'Angelo, NY
Response to President Obama's Oval Office address: Dear and respected Mr. President, or as we say in Spanish, "Querido y estimado Señor Presidente", I awaited and listened to your message tonight (6/15/10) about the status quid est in the Gulf Coast. It is not good or pleasant or even easily accepted news. Our Mother Earth has been raped and is hemorrhaging because we had a longer probe that we inserted into areas we had neither right nor preparation to disturb. This is true rape. Our Mother Earth is hemorrhaging. There is no honest hope of closure or healing or achievement unless we recognize and acknowledge the violation and disregard for our home, Gaia, that we have and continue to mutually initiate and/or allow for our human survival and progress. You closed your address from the Oval Office tonight by invoking God and his blessing. I join my voice with yours in this request. But I think that you and I and all of our fellow citizens and all of the global corporate interests will not be at peace until together we all acknowledge that we have raped our Mother Earth and we have yet to repent. Prayer may be the beginning and unifying response, but prayer without action is vocal at most and trite as usual. We are raping Mother Earth. Mother Nature is not pleased. We were offered days. We were blessed with bettering times. We imagined an "American dream". And today, the best legacy we can proffer is paper profit, not very real and not very lasting. I saw you looked tired, and rightly so, Sir. Your administration has been burdened, challenged and taunted. This is not the United States I learned about and yearned for when I started school (Catholic parochial) in the early 1950's. I remember seeing seeing Adlai Stevenson campaign, hearing a Farewell Address from President Eisenhower, listening to the McCarthy hearings and Bishop Sheen's chalk board talks, watching the introduction of Richard Nixon onto the national scene, and many other events and happenings that affected and influenced our national life. I cannot even begin to imagine the responsibilities of the elected office you choose to ask for and have accepted. I have some sense of the challenges that your family faces as they sustain, strengthen and support you. Mr. President, you have my full and sincere support. You are in my heart and in my prayers always. "Give 'em hell, Harry" was a while-ago slogan just a bit down the road in Missouri. How does "Burnish them, Barrack" sound as a polishing wind from Chicago today sound? Corny, probably; but honest. Your fellow citizen, Rolando, SFO. –Rolando Rodriguez, OR
I am not a recent "convert," but I will wear this pin in hopes it will bring me opportunities to speak out - gently and lovingly. This comes at a good time for me: in my meditation group at Duke Hospital yesterday (June 17) our focus was the shared hurt of the Gulf disaster as part of the hurts we all have and the importance of remembering we all also have joy and we need to stay aware of the space around us that can hold our hurts and joys. My awareness of the need to cherish and nurture our beautiful planet has become stonger and stronger over the 65 years I have enjoyed its beauty and gifts. When I am most tempted just to weep over the damage being done to it, I try to breathe in its gifts gratefully and intentionally, then go foth and share them with others. May Mother Earth — and we her children — be safe, and loved, and at peace. –Bebe Harris, NC
My people — here in Oklahoma — have understood that human activity impacts climate for some time. The Dust Bowl was largely created by human activity and its duration was clearly associated with farming patterns. –Mark Christian, OK
By working wisely together, we can reduce our impact on the climate while improving the quality of life for everybody. –Dewaine Nelson, IL
Thirty years ago, as a young graduate student majoring in marine fisheries biology, we were warned in lecture after lecture about key species extension, resource depletion, developmental toxins, loss of ecosystems and climate change. Sadly, today those warnings are now a reality. We no longer have thirty years to wait. We need to act now; transform old habits into the creation of a new sustainable lifestyle leaving a better world and renewable resources for the next generation. –Frank Edmands, OH
As a practicing shaman I take my responsibility very seriously to be a caretaker for the earth. She doesn't need saving, she will survive. We are the ones who are in danger of the results of our thoughtless acts against nature,against ourselves, and against all future generations to come. The planet has already begun her "cleansing process" in the way of natural disasters, floods, hurricanes, sunamis, earthquakes, heatwaves, melting of the polar caps. We have the choice to act consciously now or suffer the consequences for many generations to come. Time to wake up. –Buffalo Thunder Frank Del Toro Jr., TX
The power of one person can be immeasurable. History shows that again and again one person has made the difference. –Albert Cohen, CA