Earth Notes & News Networking and News

Volume I, Issue 1. We would like to begin networking all the

J. M. Kuhlman - editor eco-justice teams in our synod to share
ideas, help facilitate, communication, and
Earth Notes & News is
generally help one another. If your
a publication of the congregation has an environmental or
Stewardship Team of social justice team, please ask one of
the Texas-Louisiana their members to serve as a contact
Gulf Coast Synod of person and send their contact information
The ELCA. to joykulman@aol.com.
All images and text in LENS homepage (Lutheran Earthkeeping Network
this document may be of the Synods): http://www.webofcreation.org/LENS/index.html
used in your newsletters

The Stewardship Team of the TX-LA Gulf Coast Synod

has an Eco-Justice sub-team. If you or any member of
your congregation might be interested in becoming a
member, please contact Joyce Kuhlman,
joykulman@aol.com, for more information! We are
currently meeting on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays at 4:30
pm at Covenant Lutheran Church (unless there are
schedule conflicts).

April 22 is Earth Day!!

Celebrate Earth Day 2008!

If you are looking for a good day to schedule a worship service for
care of the earth, why not plan to celebrate God’s creation on April
20th or 27th?

There are several internet resources available to help you get

started: If you choose to celebrate using this year’s theme go to
the following for information including a guide for study,
liturgies, sermons & sermon starters and ideas for youth:
http://www.earthday.net.

If you choose to celebrate using a general Earthkeeping theme, check out

http://webofcreation.org/Worship/index.htm or http://www.seasonofcreation.com/

http://webofcreation.org/LENS/c4cliturgy.html or http://www.eco-justice.org/tips-w.asp

which contain liturgies, prayers, blessings, litanies, a list of appropriate hymns, and petitions, in
short all you will need.

One Church’s Story… We would like to start up a regular feature about how various churches
who have environmental or social justice groups went about getting them started. If your
congregation has such a group please send us your info (it doesn’t have to be fancy… if we have
the facts we can write it up) so others might learn what works and what doesn’t. Send info to
Joyce Kuhlman at
joykulman@aol.com.
 What Can We Do To Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
“A whopping 46% of home
energy use is really energy loss!
Here are simple ways of
reversing this, mostly by
changes of habit. Thanks to
climatecrisis.net and The Home
Energy Diet (New Society
Publishers, 2005) for many of
the carbon savings figures."1

"And to man He said, 'Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
And to depart from evil is understanding.'" Job 28:28

Pray. This one doesn’t get a number because it is more important than the rest…

Pray for guidance, pray for our leaders, pray for the earth…

We who have lost our sense and our senses—our touch, our smell, our vision of who we are; we who
frantically force and press all things, without rest for body or spirit, hurting our Earth and injuring
ourselves and others: We call a halt. We want to rest. We need to rest and allow the Earth to rest. We
need to reflect and to rediscover the mystery that lives in us, that is the ground of every unique
expression of life, the source of the fascination that calls all things to communion. We declare a Sabbath,
a space of quiet: for simple being and letting be; for recovering the great, forgotten truths; for learning
how to live again. Amen” http://webofcreation.org/Worship/liturgy/prayers.htm

For general information: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3724763

1. Adjust your thermostat by two degrees. You can save 3% of your heating costs
by simply turning your thermostat down 2 degrees. During the summer, each degree
you raise the temperature of your air conditioner saves 3-4% of your cooling costs. On
days when it’s feasible, open a window instead of running the AC. Changing your
thermostat by two degrees throughout the year saves about 1 ton of C02 a year.

2. Turn off that oven. For a meal that requires 1 hour to cook in an
electric oven, and which uses 2.7 pounds of C02, a crockpot uses 0.9
pounds of C02 for seven hours, a toaster oven takes 1.3 pounds of C02
for 50 minutes, and a microwave only 0.5 pounds of C02 for 15 minutes of
cooking. A solar cooker requires NO C02!1

3. Buy local. Buy local fruits and vegetables whenever possible. Choose a Texas wine. Be
mindful of the petroleum miles it takes to bring products to your table. Some grocers (HEB for
one) label their produce as local when applicable.

4. Use cold water to wash your clothes. Switching to cold water washing
saves 80% on energy used for laundry (an estimated $60 a year).1 Hang
dry your clothes. Over its lifetime, a T shirt can send up to 9 lbs. of C02 into
the air.2 Hanging your clothes saves 700 lbs of C02 a year.

5. Turn off the lights when you aren’t using them and reduce your direct
lighting energy use by 45% Stop using heat-producing halogen lamps (they can
also be fire hazards). Install occupancy or motion sensors on outdoor lights.1

6. Replacing your incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent

one (CFL). They last 10 times longer and use only one-fourth of the energy of
incandescents. Replacing one 100-watt bulb with a just-as-bright 30-watt CFL
cuts more than 1,300 pounds of CO2 pollution over the life of the bulb,
assuming a 15,000-hour life for the CFL. It also substantially lowers your
electric bill and pays for itself in 5 months! According to
fastcompany.com/magazine “if every one of 110 million American households
installed just one CFL in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved
would is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.”
 7. Use a power strip for “anything that can be powered by a remote control or
that has a power cube transformer (little black box [see left]), and turn it off,
and/or unplug, when not in use. (Power cubes are 60-80 percent inefficient.)”1

8. Keep your tires inflated. This improves gas mileage by 3%. When waiting
in a drive thru, do not let your car idle; turn it off. Every
gallon you save also saves 20 pounds of C02 emissions.1
Chart your itinerary to include as many right turns as possible. According to
Time Magazine, UPS has reduced C02 emissions by 1,000 metric tons since
January using this policy. 2

9. Insulate your water heater. This will save a half ton of C02/year. Insulate hot water pipes.

10. Pay your bills online. According to

Maryanne Murray Buechner, at Time Magazine2, if
you pay your bills online it not only saves trees but
also helps reduce fuel consumption used in
transportation (trucks & planes). The author also
notes that if everyone in the U.S. paid their bills
online, the switch would cut solid waste by 1.6
billion tons a year and curb greenhouse-gas
emissions by 2.1 million tons a year, according to
Javelin Strategy & Research. Having your employer to directly deposit your paycheck saves your
time, fuel to take it to the bank and additional paper consumption.

11. Plant a tree. Α single tree removes one ton of CO2 over its lifetime by sequestering the
carbon and releasing oxygen. It also removes particulate matter
from the air, is a natural air conditioners providing shade and
reducing the need for air conditioning and, without leaves in the
winter, trees allow the suns rays to naturally warm the house. Trees
also evaporate water to the atmosphere which increases cloud cover
and helps cool the planet.

12. Say “NO” to plastic bags. According to Carolyn Sayre at Time

Magazine2 485 billion plastic bags end up in landfills every year.
These bags can take up to a thousand years to biodegrade and emit
harmful greenhouse gases in the process. Paper bags use up trees.
Buy some canvas bags and use them over and over again.

13. Buy more products that use recycled paper. According to

Coco Masters at Time Magazine2, although Americans do recycle 50%
or 42 million tons of what they use, the rest, or another 42 million
tons is not. We use 900 million trees every to feed our paper hunger.
Recycled paper uses 60% less energy than virgin paper; each ton of
recycled paper “purchased saves 4,000 kW-h of energy, 7,000 gal. of
water and 17 trees, and a tree has the capacity to filter up to 60 lbs. of pollutants from the air.”2

14. Recycle more. You can save 2,000 pounds of CO2 every year by recycling half of your
household waste.3
1
http://www.care2.com/channels/solutions/home/3335
2
http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/environment/?internalid=AOT_h_03-29-007_51_things_we_ca
3
www.climatecrisis.net