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Apr 29, 2013 | Jeanie Sablatura

St. David's Guild Teams Up to Release Important Environmental Tool

Climate Change St. David's
Energy Action Team, Photo courtesy of KEYE

Religion. Climate action. Can they go together? In Austin, the answer is YES. Via the combined efforts of two small, local nonprofits - the Interfaith Environmental Network of Austin (IEN) and Climate Buddies - Austin area congregations, including St. David's Episcopal Church, are taking action to reduce CO2 emissions and the threat those emissions pose to humanity.

On Earth Day, the groups released "Becoming Carbon Positive: A Manual for Places of Worship" at the Austin Earth Day Festival. Fourteen months in the making, "Becoming Carbon Positive" is a community-drafted manual, designed to help religious congregations achieve meaningful, measurable, and team-based climate action. It is a first-of-its-kind tool that lays out congregational-approach to climate action.
 

The manual was beta-tested with five local congregations: All Saints Episcopal; Austin Zen Center; Central Presbyterian; First Unitarian Universalist; and Saint David's Episcopal. By using the manual, the combined participation from these five congregations led to the reduction of more than 1,000,000 lbs of CO2 in 2012!
 

The manual provides evidence of diverse spiritual and religious bases for environmental stewardship, a section on basic climate science, and resources for developing groups and group leadership.
 

See Austin American-Statesman story
 

See KEYE story