Southern California Outreach Director
by Allis Druffel, CIPL Southern California Outreach Director
On Sunday, September 21st, the largest climate march in U.S. history will take place in New York City. I’ll be there and I can’t wait!
Before joining California Interfaith Power & Light, I worked at a large Catholic church on various justice issues, such as local and global hunger, immigration, and fair trade. Over time, I recognized that these and many other concerns had an intimate link to the issue of climate change.
Today, as a person of faith, and having worked on this issue for a decade, I have faced two realities:
- First, because of my lifestyle and the things I enjoy on a daily basis, I am part of the problem. I cannot point to forces just outside of myself as the cause of our increasing environmental challenges. As such, I must work to lower my own carbon use as well as challenge external forces that keep us overly-dependent on carbon pollution sources.
- Second, I have learned to work in a truly communal way. I am, happily, just one of tens of millions of people working for a healthier future.
As the international community prepares for the 2015 Paris climate talks, we must demonstrate the overwhelming support that exists now for action on climate change. U.S. national and international pollution reduction treaties are crucial to the health of our planet and to stave off the worst effects of a changing climate.
I look forward to posting pictures and notable moments of the march on CIPL’s Facebook and Twitter and to meeting up with fellow California marchers, including The Rev. Sally Bingham, and CIPL Steering Committee member Abiding Abbess Linda Ruth Cutts, a leader in the Buddhist community.
Along with hundreds of thousands of others, we will demonstrate overwhelming support for federal action on climate change, and that further delay is not an option.