Faith-based environmental groups take on fossil fuels as 'a sacred duty'

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “ asked Citi what its justification was for continued fossil fuel expansion, and they didn’t have an answer,” said Rabbi Jacob Siegel, climate adviser for Dayenu, a 4-year-old Jewish organization focused on addressing the climate crisis, and one of the four clergy at the Sept. 18 meeting. “How does Citi explain not just the inconvenience but the devastation that people suffer because of what they’re doing to measurably destroy people’s communities?” GreenFaith began in New Jersey in 1992 as a local volunteer organization called Partners for Environmental Quality, then advocating for interfaith communities to purchase their electricity from renewable energy providers. “I felt that religious groups needed to address the fact that the planet was being destroyed, and that this was something we needed to do with diverse faith groups.” The organization’s early actions included energy audits, solar panel installations and “toxic tours,” in which GreenFaith members took religious leaders on visits to environmentally contaminated sites in Newark, where they heard from local activists about the challenges their communities were facing. “The Paris Agreement was forged on the streets of New York at the People’s Climate March,” Harper said, referring to the global treaty on climate change signed in 2016.