An "Inconvenient" Opportunity:
Why a Climate Change Resource Page Now? Around Memorial Day, an unusual movie will be premiering in theaters across the country. Unlike most summer blockbusters, the film features no car crashes, no love scenes and no basketball-playing dogs. This movie's drama derives from the fact that it tells a story unfolding in real-time, right outside our windows. It’s the story of climate change, and the movie is called An Inconvenient Truth .
The Reform Movement considers climate change to be one of the most important issues we face today. In 1998, the Central Conference of American Rabbis passed a resolution acknowledging the “threat of climate change,” and declaring, “Together, the people of the world can, and must, use our God-given gifts to develop innovative strategies to meet the needs of all who currently dwell on this planet without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Effects of climate change are already being seen around the globe, from the increased intensity and frequency of hurricanes, to disappearing glaciers, to ever-worsening drought in sub-Saharan Africa. The five hottest years on record have all occurred within the last decade, and recent studies show that the world’s poor will bear the brunt of climate change’s negative effects. Climate change is not merely an “environmental” issue: it is a crisis with far-reaching moral and humanitarian implications, and it is an issue that demands urgent action.
The Religious Action Center is timing the launch of our climate change resource page to coincide with An Inconvenient Truth’s release in order to begin a conversation that we hope will spread through congregations and communities across North America. The movie presents an important educational opportunity for its audiences and challenges us to take action. Please take advantage of this page's discussion questions, text studies, sample sermons and more, so that together we can to work to place climate change at the center of our national agenda and begin to take steps to reverse its effects.
http://rac.org/advocacy/issues/issuecc/challenge/intro/