Campaigning and Climate Change
"It's up to us!" Professor John Sweeney, Climate Change Expert. NUI Maynooth *Professor John Sweeney leads a number of nationally funded funded research projects examining various aspects of climate change in Ireland. As one of the contributing Authors and Review Editors of the recently published Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John shared with several hundred other climatologists the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. But remember, your peers and community are more likely to listen to and believe you than they are him!
Having heard from leading climate change expert, Professor John Sweeny, John Smith and Joanne McGarry from Trócaire’s Campaigns Team, and Hannah Evans, Trócaire’s Parish Outreach Team. What is your sense of climate change as a pressing issue in all of our lives? For this ‘action’ piece for the week ahead, the first thing to do would be to record your own thoughts. How you been ‘convinced + converted’? What will you change, if anything? It would then be very useful to get a sense from your peers or your colleagues or people in your community/parish what their view of climate change is. A quick ‘survey monkey’ (See www.surveymonkey. com) would be really interesting to circulate to your peers. •
Begin researching on Trócaire’s campaign? Is there anything there that grabs your attention? Is there anything missing in your view? You can view their material online by going to www.trocaire.org/uptous. Or by phoning Joanne, John or Hannah on 016293333. Say you’re phoning from a JustFaith group and you’ll be especially well looked after!
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What do you think – even at this early stagewould grab your community’s attention around climate change? What would get them active on it? What will ‘convince and convert’?
A little bit of prayer around this as you go would be essential. Where is your faith in all of this? What is your faith teaching you? In terms of the research piece itself you might consider: •
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A little bit of reading around the Church and care of creation. What does the Church teach? Does Pope Francis, in particular have anything to say on this? The Bishops’ Pastoral called the Cry of the Earth might be a good place to start in terms of getting an Irish Church perspective Check out who else is working in this area; look up the work of eco-congregation.ie for example. What are they up to?
Remember you don’t have to ‘do’ anything yet, or even ‘decide’ anything, it’s just about doing a bit of surveying and surfing to see what is out there and to get the creative juices flowing!