After failing to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, the Trump administration now has its sights set on our Clean Power Plan. For this one, they won’t have to go through Congress. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has announced his intention to “withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan” — and replace it with a far weaker standard. The Clean Power Plan is one of the most powerful tools we have to curb carbon pollution from the power sector and move our country toward a clean energy economy. Weakening this plan…
What should the Peoples Climate Movement do next?
It has been three years since 400,000+ people came together in the streets of New York City for the first Peoples Climate March in 2014, and we’ve achieved a lot. But there is so much still on the line, perhaps more than ever before. This year and next are critical in the fight for action on climate, jobs and justice. NC Interfaith Power & Light is working alongside hundreds of national and local groups to determine our strategies for 2018 and beyond – and together as the Peoples Climate Movement,…
Praying in Opposition to Fracked Gas Pipelines
The Atlantic Coast Pipeline met more opposition last week. This time in the form of a prayer gathering by faith leaders outside the Department of Environmental Quality office. DEQ and the Cooper administration are currently considering a 401 water quality permit application that the pipeline must have before moving ahead with construction later this fall. Susannah Tuttle, Director of NC Interfaith Power & Light, brought word to the assembly of a resolution adopted by the NC Council of Churches Governing Board condemning the construction of pipelines such as the Atlantic…
Hurricanes and Interfaith Power & Light
Over the past week we have experienced a thousand-year flood in Houston and the most powerful storm ever to form in the Atlantic. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says now is not the time to talk about climate change. But the mayor of Miami says “if this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is.” Hurricanes Irma and Harvey were intensified and strengthened by the warming waters of the Atlantic Ocean – just like climate scientists have predicted. We need to take action now to fight global warming. Religious organizations are…
Rights Advocacy At Risk
The optics, as they say, are terrible. But in a state whose motto is “To Be Rather Than to Seem,” it’s even more important to look at the substance. And the substance is worse. Think about it: In a Southern state where the legacy of race discrimination and its attendant social ills remains starkly visible, our leading public law school is on the verge of being forced to abandon the courtrooms where the struggles for civil rights have so often played out. Conservative ideologues now clustering among the leaders of…
Gov. Cooper Speaks Up for Protecting NC’s Coast
Governor Roy Cooper has announced his strong opposition to offshore drilling and seismic blasting along North Carolina’s coast. “Our coast is part of our identity,” he said, speaking to the press at Fort Macon State Park near Atlantic Beach Penny Hooper, NCIPL Leadership Council Chair, was in the room for the Governor’s press conference. She was among representatives of faith communities, businesses, fishing families, beachgoers, and conservationists that have all joined together to protect our coast from drilling operations even as some political leaders push to let oil companies drill…
Wood Pellet Plant Would Be Environmental Injustice
More than 10,000 individuals and 50 organizations have signed a petition asking Governor Cooper to revoke the world’s largest wood pellet manufacturer’s flawed air quality permit in Richmond County. At a Raleigh press conference on July 18, speakers represented prominent NC organizations such as Dogwood Alliance, Concerned Citizens of Richmond County, and Clean Air Carolina. Susannah Tuttle of NC Interfaith Power& Light was among the speakers. She said: We are called to be stewards, but are giving away our resources. Our faith calls upon us to stand with the people…
Great to Meet You at Wild Goose!
We were delighted to meet many of you at the Wild Goose Festival last week. Council staff members enjoyed spending time with friends from across the country, hearing your stories, and discussing ways to work together for a more just society. Although Wild Goose 2017 may be over, opportunities for progressive people of faith to gather are not. We hope you will join us for a variety of Council events in the works across the state for fall.
More Wind Energy, Not Less
It is becoming a national trend for politicians to “divide and conquer” by attacking the wind industry while supporting other forms of clean energy. This is fracturing the renewable energy community as folks are being forced to take positions that do not support one another. As Director of NCIPL, I pray that we do not take sides and instead continue to support all sources of renewable energy without pitting one against another. NCIPL is a member of the NC Sustainable Energy Association (NCSEA). Below is their statement on HB 589 and a summary…
Rising Up with Richmond County
“Biomass” may sound like a clean idea, but it actually means cutting down and turning trees into fuel pellets to be burned for energy — creating more carbon pollution than coal, accelerating global warming, and driving climate chaos. North Carolina’s former governor opened the floodgates to the wood pellet export industry. It tears down the very trees that capture carbon pollution and protect people’s health and quality of life, making wood pellets for export where they are burned in power stations to generate electricity. Enviva, the world’s largest wood pellet…
GA’s Budget Proposals — Harmful not Helpful
The General Assembly leaders meeting to resolve differences between the House and Senate versions of the budget are working with two deeply flawed proposals. As our friend Chris Fitzsimon at NC Policy Watch explains, the plans range from spiteful to dishonest. He writes in part: Senate leaders included breathtakingly bad policy decisions in their budget including one provision taking food benefits fully funded by the federal government away from 133,000 people and another that bans wind farms in the state. The already bad Senate plan was made even worse in…
Now what? Staying Engaged and Grow the Interfaith Climate Movement
We were already living in a time of profound consequence. President Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement means that while the needs of our endangered climate are increasing, the response to global warming is diminishing at the national level. Our actions now, as climate conscious people of faith, matter more than ever. There are a few things you can do right now to help maximize our collective impact as North Carolina’s statewide multi-faith network committed to addressing climate change as a moral issue: Engage your interfaith climate conscious…
2018 Budget Proposal is the Antithesis of our Call
Plenty of analysis is already happening around the 2018 budget proposal out of the White House. The Washington Post provides two helpful graphics here and here. More is being written than most of us can fully absorb, but Politico offers a key observation: On close reading, the budget is less a credible attempt to eliminate, or even pay down, the U.S. debt and more an ideological policy agenda disguised as a program of fiscal responsibility. If the proposal is, as such plans are often described, a place to begin discussion…
Raleigh Report — May 10, 2017
By George Reed, Retired Executive Director [For more information on bills, including committee referrals and re-referrals, texts of bills, procedural histories, and recorded votes, go to the General Assembly website www.ncleg.net.] Newly Introduced Bills EDUCATION Three companion bills would impact food served in schools. H 891, Free Breakfast and Lunch in K-12 Public Schools, would provide funds ($200 million per year) to make free breakfast and free lunch available to all public school students who request it. It would also create a fund to which taxpayers could contribute through a…
The People’s Climate March — Called to Respond
Multi-faith pilgrims on a moral high road unified to honor God’s creation at the Peoples Climate March last month on the National Mall. The event, which came as a crescendo in a week of climate action, drew 200,000 people from every state, with broad support from more than 400 sister marches in the U.S. and around the world. Interfaith Power & Light was represented by more than 40 state affiliate groups. NCIPL led North Carolinians as part of the “Keepers of Faith” contingent. We expressed our deep concern from our…