350 Update: Church Bells Tolling for Climate Action in Massachusetts
A small but growing number of churches in Massachusetts began tolling their bells 350 times last week, bearing spiritual witness to the changes we have wrought on the world's climate.
It's one of the latest efforts to emerge from 350.org, an international grassroots campaign that aims to mobilize a global climate movement united by a common call to action -- to reduce the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.
Beginning on June 22, two United Church of Christ congregations kicked off the effort in Dennis Union and Williamstown. From a local piece on the Dennis Union action:
"We ring 350 times this Sunday to proclaim that the environmental solutions we plan must match the scale and urgency of the dangerous ground we are on,” said Rev. Dale Rosenberger, Dennis Union’s senior pastor.
The effort is the beginning of a larger vision by Rev. Jim Antal, president of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, who has issued a challenge to the 400 congregations in the state, asking that 350 of them ring their bells 350 times by year's end.
“When Christians learn that our choices threaten the most vulnerable people on earth and all future generations, they will change their behavior and demand that governments change everyone’s behavior,” says Antal.
350.org hopes the effort will resonate with other faith communities around the world and is working to provide online support to connect organizers of these events.
The beginning of this faith effort coincided with other events unrolling in the 350.org campaign. As a lead in to their annual forum, the Tällberg Foundation in Sweden using their incredible network of officials, scientists and world opinion leaders to gather over 150 signatories on a full page ad endorsing the 350ppm target.
The ads ran in the New York Times, Financial Times, and International Herald Tribune, among other papers, stating, “We, the signatories of this message from all continents, call upon all nations in the ongoing climate negotiations to adopt 350 as the target to be reached peacefully and deliberately, with all possible speed.”
Participants in the Tällberg Forum this past weekend discussed the way to achieve 350ppm, and included NASA scientist James Hansen, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and author and 350.org cofounder Bill McKibben.
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