Anglicans Join Ecumenical Climate Advocacy Campaign

Canadian Anglicans have joined a coalition of 35 Canadian churches and faith-based organizations have come together for an unprecedented, months-long campaign of personal environmental action coupled with federal climate advocacy. 

Prioritizing social justice action with an emphasis on environmental justice is one of three primary objectives our diocesan Mission Action Plan (MAP) and Climate Justice Niagara encourages Anglicans in Niagara to come alongside this initiative. 

For the Love of Creation’s faith-in-action campaign mobilizes people of faith from across Canada to reduce household greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and demonstrate their support for increased federal climate action. 

“During the pandemic lockdowns we have seen the resiliency of creation begin to recover from damage human activity can cause. There is time for us to change the trajectory of that damage — if we will pay attention. For the Love of Creation lets us pay attention now,” says Archbishop Linda Nicholls, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada. 

The campaign runs through October 4, 2021 (the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi and the end of the Season of Creation). 

Anglicans are being invited to take action to reduce their own GHG emissions and engage in acts of solidarity with justice-seeking communities. Participants will also be encouraged to write to federal Cabinet Ministers to call on the Government of Canada to: 

• increase Canada’s national GHG emissions reduction target; 
• invest in a just transition to a fair, inclusive, green economy; 
• implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including, but not limited to, the right of free, prior and informed consent; and
• commit equal support for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in the Global South. 

“During the COVID-19 pandemic there have been reductions in greenhouse gases because of less flying, cruising and driving,” observed Sue Carson. “We need to accept that our individual actions collectively have caused catastrophic impacts on our air, seas and land, and the creatures that inhabit all three ecosystems.”

Complementing this campaign, and following up on a successful March Zoom event on water, Climate Justice Niagara is planning for an Earth Day event on April 22. Katerina Gonzalez, an Al Gore-trained presenter for the Climate Reality Project, will be the featured speaker. She will focus on the dangers that greenhouse gas emissions have caused in our world and the things that we need to do to mitigate these. 

“As we quickly adapted during pandemic restrictions, we need to use these skills to lessen the impact that we are making on the earth’s resources,” says Sue Carson, chair of the diocesan Climate Justice Niagara committee. “While dealing with one crisis we must never forget the importance of the greater one, climate change, that is affecting our planet.”

Learn more at: fortheloveofcreation.ca/advocacy/campaign/ and visit the diocesan website to register for the upcoming Earth Day Zoom event.