Topic:

Topic: Eco-Spirituality and Co-Creating a Sustainable Future

Presenter: Sister Paula Gonzalez

Note taker: Gary Przyborski (UUUS SC Chair)

Date: 2008-12-06

Paula is energetic, passionate. She wore a polo shirt with a photo of Earth with the added text- “crew member.” She covered a lot of material in the 6 hour seminar in which she would often ask, “Do you follow?” to make sure that people understood. The following notes were taken at Sister Paula's excellent presentation. Unfortunately, the nature of taking notes does not do this presentation justice.

Notes–

We need to look at the Earth as we look as though we are a part of it.

Race is not a scientific but a social construct. (My comment: a lot of people are not aware of this.)

We can approach Climate Change with either fear or excitement.

Earth Charter presented to UN at 2000.

Rivers, mountains are our cousins.

Humility is not a natural human trait.

How unsubstainable are we? Wayne Elgin, chart, Stage IV decay...

Earth's ecological productive land ¼ land, ½ habitable, +1 billion people every 14yrs.

Ecological Footprint, Wackernagel

1 acre/min of Amazon disappears

Footprint per North American 9.5 hectares/person

China 1 coal fire plant/wk

To those who much are given, much is expected. (Bible)

Consumption exceeds Earth's regenerative capacity by 30%

We must change to a cyclical system, like nature.

**If everyone lived like North Americans, it would require 3 extra Earths (resources + landfills).

Human bodies are 75% salt water (cells are from the ocean).

Causes for Current Environmental Disaster??

lack of broad vision

religious perceptions

industrial model

today's lifestyles

We have 100 to 150 years at outside...

$4/gallon gas was one of the great blessings for humanity

mobilizing to save civilization

** People can choose peril, problems too big to solve (so we'll just die...)

limiting factor is modern industrialization

**Don't call them natural resources but life support

environmental devestation

depletion of resources

massive extinctions

Coal Plant, best 40% efficiency, 1% efficiency w/ incandescent light output

$7/drink of bottled water, equivalent to $40/gallon gasoline

Champagne model of economics: 20% have 83% of income. 60% share 3% of the income.

World Population per year (in billions (B))

1804 1B

1927 2B

1960 3B

1974 4B

1987 5B

1999 6B

2013 7B

2028 8B

Systemic problems in other countries

Only 30% of children reach age 5

sex maybe their only recreation

We must learn from nature how to redesign our systems.

Next industrial revolution.

** There is no such thing as an individual organism. (My comment: This is a very good point.)

Ecosystem decomposers (bacteria, fungi), consumers (herbivores, carnivores), producers (plants)

2 Main Cycles on Planet

Photosynthesis: 6CO2 + 6H2O + SOLAR ENERGY → C6H12O6 + 6O2

Respiration: C6H12O6 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + ENERGY FOR LIFE

Cyclic Economic System

Next Revolution

Interface Carpet- close-loop material carpet, green lease

Eco-economic revolution

We must imaginatively develop and apply... (charter)

The last days of ancient sunshine (book)

Centered around just, equitable and tight-knit communities.

As before in history, common destiny... (charter)

What can we do?

Re-envision human role in sacred Earth community.
Realize that you can make a difference. (It does matter what car you drive. If you brought you're own ceramic cup (lasts 5,000 years) with a cloth napkin inside, that's better than paper-plastic...)
Commit to action toward one area of Earth-healing! (don't select it but pray with your deepest interior to get calling. Reduce your footprint.)

Reduce Our Footprint, will, my choices, contribute to that goal?

World's meat eaters, car drivers, consumers are mainly responsible.

Eat less meat.
Eat 'in season' foods.
Grow garden.

Vehicles

Take bus.
Ride a bike.
Drive a high mpg car.

Throwaways:

Don't use them.
Reuse when possible.
Recycle aluminum & steel cans, #1 & 2 plastics
Avoid plastic water bottles.
Use a canvas shopping bag.
Set up a compost pile.

Creating Alternatives

Eat from local sources. (farmer's markets, CSAs (great))
Reduce electrical use by 75- Use CFLs (Georgia interfaith power & light- Minora CFLs w/ jokes, religious response to this)
Insulate water heater.
Buy “green energy “ from your utility

Welcome to Solar Age.

Biomass

Wind

Solar

Sister Paula's Solar house faces south: biomass heater, 1980-1985, 1400 ft2, made changes $10/ft2 using reused materials. 1990- Cleans people's garages. Timber frame (30yr throwaway buildings) 1.3kW PV for electricity lights. +2.5 kW Pvs for heat pump, solar panels water+glycol heats in summer, bio-plantings, 65W+170W panels to power solar powered cart.

Simplify our lives. We can be co-creators of the planet.

Great Websites to Reference:

50simplethings.com ase.org ses.org awea.org 1sky.org usgbc.org interfaithpowerandlight.org ohipl.blogspot.com nrdc.org

The story of Stuff, www.storyofstuff.com

1/3 of planet's resource base is gone. In U.S. Only 3%. 5% of population consumes 30%. Amazon 2,000 trees/minute. BFR's toxic. Externalize true cost of production. Radio Shack $4.99 radio – consumer doesn't pay but accounting books won't show. 99% of stuff is trashed in 6 months. Change was designed Victor LeBow in the 1950s- our enormously productive economy... demands” planned obsolescence “designed for trashing. “perceived obsolescence” changed the way it looks so that you are not supporting the arrow. 3,000 times/day ads are to make us upset with what we have. Peak happiness occurred in 1950s. Work, watch, spend work cycle. 4.5# garbage/day. Incineration is really bad. Dioxins... Recycling is good, but never enough because 70 barrels of trash upstream for 1 barrel at the back end.

Victor Lebow’s comments concering American consumer culture, which state:

“Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…. we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”

www.oneearth.org video narrated by Peter Coyote

Let the earth be your guide, Jewish, Ellen Burstein coejw.org, NRPE.org umbrella covers different.

Green, Meet God. USA Today.

Nuclear takes 8 to 10 years to come online

We have no long term plans for storage.

Wind generated electricity is competitive with nuclear

Assault on Reason is a good book.

Email groups about Pres. Bush attacking the environment.

National Religious Partnership on the Environment

Union of Concerned Scientists

God's Creation and Global Warming

"By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see." Teilhard de Chardin

Mary Conroy Coelho http://www.thegreatstory.org/QuakerMetarelig.html

Contemplation is essential to undersanding how to lead a life of engaged spirituality Lilo

SOT Solar Thermal Concentrators (CSP)

100 Quads: quadtillion BTU

Energy Efficiency EE is provide services with better efficiency.

“Our greatest energy resource is the energy we currently waste.” US Secy Energy Spencer Abraham

American Solar Energy Society: Wedge Diagram

Buildings 43% (homes are worst): SIPs sandwich insulation foam with particle board, R8 windows, R11 windows

Austin, Texas: PV recharge lot

Hydrogen is presently derived from oil at present through the cracking process.

YouTube water hydrogen car Tampa

Vandana Shiva- Oil in our food.

U.S. Food takes 20 times the energy that it produces.

Cellulosic ethanol can be made from bacteria.

Saw grass produces 7 times energy that corn ethanol produces. Also, saw grass is perinniel versus the every year planting for corn. {My comment: everyone knew this but the corn farming lobby (ADM, large farmers, etc.) got this through Congress and the President. Corn based ethanol is believed to produce more energy than it takes. Also, corn based ethanol is a major contributor to high food prices.}

Geothermal 250 provides electricity for 1 million people in 22 countries. (The IHM sisters Monroe, MI installed a 240 well system.)

Hydropower produces 24% 675,000 MW for over 1 billion people.

Tital and Wave Power (Puget Sound, Hawaii)

OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) President Ronald Reagan scrapped it the first day in office along with taking solar panels off white house.

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Natures inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

In conversation with Henry Ford and w:Harvey Firestone (1931); as quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31

Obama proposes $150 billion over 10 years for R&D on renewables.

Sister Paula hopes that we can outgrow recycling. Doesn't use environment or environmental since this applies something separate.

Renewal DVD is good according to Sister Paula, see http://www.neoflix.com/store/FIN88/FIN8831REN01

Some Great Quotes:

People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done.

Walter Brueggemann http://www.sunflower.com/~uman/

http://www.gaia.com/quotes/walter_brueggemann

Some day after we have mastered the wind

the waves, the tides, and gravity

we shall harness for God the energies of love.

Then for the second time in history of the world

man will have discovered fire. Teilhard de Chardin