News Items

The Forum regularly posts news articles of interest here from a variety of sources and news outlets. You can check back here or view the most recent ones from the homepage. We also archive these articles here, for those doing research, with news going back to 2006. Use the menu on the right to explore the archived articles.

News

Advent: Let's start to heal our planet

December 13, 2010
By Mallory McDuff
USA Today

As a child during Advent, I fought with my three siblings over Jesus. We didn’t argue about conversion, but rather the right to put a one-dimensional infant the size of a thumbnail onto the Advent calendar made from red felt and glitter glue. My mother devised a rotational system, which meant that every four years, each child would...

The Risk of Ocean Death from CO2

December 10, 2010
Planetwork

Cancun – The new trump card in climate change will be ocean acidity, or what might be better called ocean death. This newly recognized threat makes drastically cutting CO2 astronomically more urgent, even as negotiators are just now barely beginning to agree to the emissions reductions required to avert dangerous climate change.

Gift endows interdisciplinary studies of theology and the environment at Yale

December 10, 2010
By Rich Heffern
Press Release

NEW HAVEN, CT -A gift pledge of $3 million will endow a joint senior faculty appointment between Yale Divinity School/Berkeley Divinity School and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in honor of H. Boone Porter, a Berkeley and Yale graduate, and his wife, Violet M. Porter.

Faith-based Organizations Advocate for Climate Justice

Presented by the World Council of Churches (WCC), Action by Churches Together (ACT Alliance), and Caritas Internationalis (CI)

ENB on the side
International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)
December 8, 2010

This event discussed the work of faith-based organizations in the context of climate change.

If an island state vanishes, is it still a nation?

December 6, 2010
By Charles J. Hanley
Associated Press

CANCUN, Mexico – Encroaching seas in the far Pacific are raising the salt level in the wells of the Marshall Islands. Waves threaten to cut one sliver of an island in two. “It’s getting worse,” says Kaminaga Kaminaga, the tiny nation’s climate change coordinator.

Has Environmentalism Lost Its Spiritual Core?

December 6, 2010
By Bryan Walsh
Time

Environmentalism began as a religion. Certainly that’s how paleo-greens like John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, would have seen it. Muir was awakened to nature when he first explored Yosemite in the 1860s, and he felt it in a religious way — he called what would become one of the nation’s first national parks “the grandest of all...

Climate justice is focus of four-day Episcopal/Anglican gathering in Dominican Republic

December 6, 2010
By Lynette Wilson
Episcopal News Service

Anglican and Episcopal leaders from North, South and Central America and the Caribbean are arriving Dec. 6 in the Dominican Republic for a four-day gathering to explore the intersection between poverty and climate change.

Hindus laud Pope's interest in solar-powered electric "popemobile"

December 3, 2010
ANI

Nevada (US): Hindus have praised Vatican’s preference in having solar-powered electric popemobile, thus showing care for the planet and promotion of sustainable and green energy.

What is an ethical Christmas?

December 3, 2010
By Rev. Ian Galloway
Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations

One of the dilemmas of the age is how to celebrate a Christian Christmas or, if you prefer, a mid-winter festival without costing the earth and without being labelled a scrooge!

Vatican has not endorsed genetically modified food

December 2, 2010
By Carol Glatz
National Catholic Reporter

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican did not endorse an 11-page final statement in favor of easing restrictions on and allowing more widespread use of genetically modified crops, especially in poorer nations, said a Vatican official.

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