Green Patriarch

Green Patriarch backs UN climate change framework

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I weighs in on the Bangkok Climate Change conference where delegates were greeted with “stern pep talks”:

Istanbul, Turkey, 9/28/2009

In view of the international negotiations on climate change commencing in Bangkok, Thailand, and only two months before the crucial United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, we urge the international community to undertake courageous commitments for the prevention of the most severe consequences of global warming.

The accomplishment of a good agreement within the framework of the international negotiations in Copenhagen does not solely constitute a moral imperative for the conservation of God’s creation. It is also a route for economic and social sustainability. Taking action against climate change should not be understood as a financial burden, but as an important opportunity for a healthier planet, to the benefit of all humanity and particularly of those states whose economic development is lagging behind.

We pray for the achievement of the best possible international agreement during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, so that the industrialised countries undertake generous commitments for a total reduction of the polluting greenhouse gas emissions by 40% until 2020, compared to the 1990 levels, as well as for the provision of important financial support to the developing countries.

The urgency of the situation and the progress of science and technology pave the way for a low-carbon global economy, the development of renewable energy sources and the aversion of further deforestation. We all need to collaborate, in order to make sure that our children will be able to enjoy the goods of the earth, which we bequeath to them. We need to secure justice and love in all aspects of economic activity; profit and more specifically short-term profit making can not and should not constitute the sole incentive of our deeds, specifically when it undermines our common and God-given natural heritage.

Source: Order of St. Andrew the Apostle

Green Patriarch’s U.S. schedule released

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The Ecumenical Patriarchate has launched a new Web site for the visit of Bartholomew I to the United States from Oct. 20 to Nov. 6. The detailed schedule of the patriarch’s visit is heavy on meetings with U.S., Greek and United Nations officials.

The trip begins on Oct. 20, with the arrival of His All Holiness in New Orleans for the start of the environmental symposium, which runs through Oct. 25.

A patriarchal “audience” and meeting with SCOBA hierarchs is scheduled for Oct. 27 at the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in New York.

On Oct. 29-30, the patriarch visits the headquarters of the Coca-Cola Co., where he will meet Muhtar Kent, president and chief executive officer.

On Nov. 3-4, Patriarch Bartholomew will offer lectures in Washington at John Podesta’s liberal-leaning Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institution.

Podesta is also arranging a meeting between President Barack Obama and the patriarch, but no exact time has been announced. Other politicians on the schedule include Vice Presdent Joseph Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Watch the new, 42-minute video The Green Patriarch.

blurb:

Like Al Gore, who named him the “Green Patriarch,” the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church is a prominent leader in the environmental movement. Since 1997, he has been bringing principal scientists, environmentalists, religious leaders from all faiths, and policy makers from all over the world together to work on the ecological crisis.

This film looks at the ecological consequences of the historical split between science and religion, how we came to see ourselves as separate from nature, and how our consumer based economy found its moral justification in a Judeo-Christian view that humans have dominion over the planet’s resources. At the same time it also explores how Bartholomew’s activism is inspired by the Orthodox position that we are part of nature, and that God’s intention for humans is to be stewards, or caretakers, of all creation.

In a world of unprecedented consumption of the earth’s natural resources, Patriarch Bartholomew shows by example how saving the planet is finally a moral issue, not solely a technological one. And as this film follows him on his trips to the most ecologically threatened areas of the planet, it also illustrates why these views are so controversial.

‘Fuels from Hell’

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Rev. Sally Bingham with Obi

Bruce Nolan, a reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, offers a preview of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s symposium at various locales on the Mississippi River next month. For the article, Nolan interviews Rev. Canon Sally Bingham of the Episcopal Church. She is also president of The Regeneration Project and the Interfaith Power and Light campaign. Nolan said that Rev. Bingham was helping with the planning for the symposium.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders often see environmental concern as a duty to honor God by protecting his creation, Bingham said. Buddhists have described it as a duty to maintain balance in the universe, she said.

“Religious leaders are used to saying our responsibility is saving souls. But many have come to realize that if we don’t protect our air, water and resources, there won’t be any souls to save.”

Bingham said Bartholomew “is one of the first leaders of a huge denomination to make this connection.”

Rev. Bingham serves as the Environmental Minister at Grace Episcopal Cathedral and chairs the Commission on the Environment for the Diocese of California where she was installed as Canon for Environmental Ministry. In a recent commentary, “The Resources from Heaven,” she wrote:

… I would describe those fossil fuels such as oil and coal as the fuels from hell—from the dark places of the earth. Besides providing those sources of energy, God provided energy from heaven—wind and sun. We have overused the resources from hell and we have barely explored the ones from heaven, which are clean, renewable and infinite.

[ … ]

I hope that Jesus, Ghandi and other heroic prophets with visions for a peaceful future will make space in heaven for Rep. Henry Waxman, a man who laid the foundation for a new world economy with his bill supporting a cap-and-trade market-based mechanism to reduce the world’s greenhouse gases. I say “the world” because without the U.S. making a strong commitment to reduce its own emissions, other countries such as China and India will not make the effort either. All eyes are on the U.S. right now. Instead of looking at the past to dictate the future, we need to be more visionary ourselves and create a new future that provides security and health and peace for all of God’s creation.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: ‘Humans have lost their original humanity’

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His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

In an address Tuesday at the University of the Peloponnese in Tripolis, Greece, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew said that “a homogenization of humans and peoples is in progress” and underlined that the environmental threat points to “problematic anthropology.” He spoke of an “ecological crisis” and stressed that “the looting of the planet, the burning of the forests and the pollution of the air and water mean that humans have lost their original humanity. People never knew as much as they know today but never before were so catastrophic toward their fellow human beings and nature.”

The patriarch also said that the future cannot be entrusted to “extremist technocrats” who see humans as machines and underlined the need for the mobilization of the young generation.

He completed his visit to the region that was devastated by wildfires with a symbolic gesture by planting two trees, a sycamore and a fir, characterizing as “criminals targeting humanity” all those who deliberately set fires and destroy the “house of God, the natural environment which is our home.”

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Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: Turkish relations improving

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Greek Reporter’s Anastasios Papapostolou interviews Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I about improving relations with the Turkish government and his upcoming environmental symposium in the United States next month.

Greek Reporter: It is a great honor for us to meet you.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew: Your visit gives me joy and I am glad we are meeting today. I would like to take a moment to send my regards to all the readers of Greek Reporter and all the members of Greek diaspora.

GR: You have planned a visit to the US. Please tell us about your upcoming mission.

EP: I will be in the US the last days of October and I will stay until November 10th. I will first visit Mississippi where we will participate at the 8th International Inter-religious Ecological Symposium. This conference was started by the Patriarchate in 1995 and first convened on an island in the Aegean Sea. Subsequent locations included meetings near the Black Sea, Danube River, Adriatic Sea, Baltic Sea, Amazon River, in Finland, and now the 2009 conference is to be held at the Mississippi River from the 18th of October until the 25th.

GR: Are you planning any visits to other states?

EP: From Mississippi I will go to New York for the celebration of St. Demetrius on the 27th of October. On this day the United States Archbishop celebrates not only his name day, but also 10 years since his election to the position. Then I will spend one day in Atlanta because the president of Coca-Cola is Turkish and he is a very good human being and very successful, proof of this is that such a major company chose him to be their CEO. Continue reading →

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