“Sustainability
Helps the Poor”
Habitat puts their low-income home owners'
best interests in the forefront of all they do…
(Written by Kelly Gauthier for inside the FORUM on March 17th, 2013.)
Have you ever had to choose between paying a utility bill and paying
for your child’s school trip?
Habitat for Humanity understands that low-income homeowners must often
make hard choices in how they spend their money. That’s why Habitat makes its homes as
energy-efficient as possible. Every
dollar a family spends on their utility bill is a dollar they can’t spend on
other needs.
The Catholic Church stresses the
connection between poverty and climate change.
Some say that worrying about the environment is a rich person’s luxury,
but consider:
·
Instead of reducing our consumption and
recycling, we choose to buy cheap stuff and then throw it away…but who lives
next to the garbage dump?
·
We subsidize polluting industries that devour
the earth’s supply of fossil fuels…but who labors in dangerous mines, or lives
downwind from coal-fired power plants?
·
We allow fracking companies to poison our water
supply…but who can’t afford to buy water when it becomes an expensive, limited
resource?
·
Some think that low-income home owners don’t
need to worry about energy efficiency…but who’s receiving a shut-off notice in
the middle of a winter cold spell?
We could choose to do things differently:
·
Germany
currently gets about 25% of its electricity from clean, renewable sources.
·
High school students made sidewalk tiles that generate
electricity using electromagnetic induction, showing us that creative thinking
and technology can provide lots of renewable energy.
·
Trash sorters in India
and South America have formed unions and
cooperatives that raised thousands of people out of poverty, while diverting
compostable and recyclable materials from landfills.
Despite the warnings from
scientists around the globe, despite the calls from our Church leaders, despite
the rising human cost of rapidly depleting resources and changing weather
patterns, we often resist making changes to our lives of comfort and excess.
The US bishops
remind us, “Our religious tradition has always urged restraint and moderation
in the use of material goods, so we must not allow our desire to possess more
material things to overtake our concern for the basic needs of people and the
environment …. Rejecting the false
promises of excessive or conspicuous consumption can even allow more time for
family, friends, and civic responsibilities.”
What will you do
to help? Support or volunteer for
nonprofit organizations? Advocate with
elected officials? Make more thoughtful
choices in everyday life?
We must recognize that all life is connected and remember
that “we don’t inherit the earth from our
ancestors; we borrow it from our children”.
No comments:
Post a Comment