Every Earth Day, we are reminded that all life on this planet is interconnected. We remember that the natural world is sacred and that we have a lot of work left to do to protect our ecosystems and atmosphere.
Support International Climate Action
Every Earth Day, we are prompted to pause and reflect on our own actions: How can I live a more sustainable life? How can I make my local community cleaner and greener? How can my individual actions benefit not only my neighborhood, or city, or state, but the entire world?
Our planet’s largest environmental problems are often the most daunting to face as individuals. It can be challenging to decipher how just one person can make a difference as our world grapples with loss of biodiversity, polluted ecosystems, and a warming planet. Global problems can feel far-removed from our day-to-day lives. If we can’t always feel the daily effects of climate change, how do we know where to even begin?
I faced these same questions at an Emerging Leaders Multi-Faith Climate Convergence in Rome, Italy, during the summer of 2015. I talked with the 100 other young people from more than 40 countries about how my faith led me to lobby on climate change and heard their perspectives on the same issue, in advance of the UN climate talks in Paris that were happening later that year. At the convergence, I realized how climate change was already a deeply personal issue for so many people.
Through the stories of my friends, I was reminded how climate change is already affecting communities all around the world. Their stories emphasized that the U.S. has a moral obligation to support international efforts to address climate change.
I will never forget listening to my friend from Fiji describe the anguish and fear she and her friends from other small-island nations feel because of sea-level rise caused by climate change. She said “We’re begging the world to come save us. … It is a question of our everyday survival. … Can your country spare some soil?”
Through the stories of my friends, I was reminded how climate change is already affecting communities all around the world. Their stories emphasized that the U.S. has a moral obligation to support international efforts to address climate change.
Right now, the U.S. has an important opportunity to demonstrate our continued commitment to the people whose way of life is already threatened by climate change.
Since 1992, our country has been part of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which seeks to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” For the past 26 years, the U.S. has contributed to the operating budget of the UNFCCC and its cousin organization, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international body that assesses the science related to climate change.
Today, that commitment is in jeopardy. Earlier this year, Congress passed a funding bill that did not include the $10 million we historically have given to the UNFCCC and IPCC, despite bipartisan support for this funding in the Senate. By backing away from this investment, we are failing to provide the support we’ve pledged to the international community, weakening our relationships with our nations and harming global momentum to take action. The UNFCCC and IPCC are doing critical work to keep climate change from irrevocably altering the lives of people around the world. The U.S. should reinstate its contribution next year.
Working for FCNL, I have seen firsthand the power a constituent has when they contact their members of Congress and actively seek to build a relationship with them.
Working for FCNL, I have seen firsthand the power a constituent has when they contact their members of Congress and actively seek to build a relationship with them. We achieve policy change when constituents send letters, make phone calls, write letters to the editor, and set up meetings with members of Congress and their staff.
So, this Earth Day, in addition to working in your local communities, I urge you to also contact your members of Congress in support of international climate action. Only together can we begin to address those daunting global problems and begin the work of restoring that great tangled web of life on earth.
