The Faith Communities Go Green Advocacy Team equips members to bring the compassion and ethics of their faith to the work of shaping environmental policy.  Coming from many faiths, we are passionate about equity, advocating for policies and practices that reduce the disproportionate impact of pollution and climate change on low-income and vulnerable people.

We work to be proactive in legislative debates, particularly at the state level (Ohio) and mobilize people to send comments to regulatory agencies like the EPA when rules are being drafted.  Meeting monthly by Zoom and tracking relevant bills, we develop action alerts for members to use in newsletters, bulletins, and letter-writing campaigns. We also help organize meetings with elected officials.

We also share stories of success to keep hope and resolve strong.  Greater Cincinnati is providing more and more good news about the impact of vision, collaboration, and the commitment to measure impact. Download “State and local resources on environmental policy” to discover outstanding non-profits and regional collaborations that provide a wealth of information through reports, blogs, seminars, and newsletters.

Faith communities have unique resources to motivate people to engage in “climate action,” but this requires a new way of framing the issue, according to the research of Prof. Ed Maibach of the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication.  In a webinar for the Catholic Climate Covenant, “Why the Faith Community Holds the Climate Change Key,” he advised mobilizing faith communities’ core strengths of trust and moral leadership. “Simple, clear messages, repeated often by a variety of trusted voices, suggest and motivate solutions,” he wrote.

He encourages faith leaders to change the framing of the issue from doom to opportunity, from climate change to climate action: “Framing climate action as transforming society for the better is effective at motivating people – even people who aren’t convinced that climate change is real.”

Faith leaders can inspire people to engage in climate action to build “better health and more sustainable wealth for all,” Maibach adds.

“Successful campaigns also frame issues in a manner to suggest and motivate solutions,” he writes.  The “five most important facts/beliefs about climate change are:

• It’s real
• It’s us (human-caused)
• Experts agree (that human-caused climate change is happening)
• It’s bad (for people)
• There’s hope, there are solutions