Resolutions for a New Year

Yes, 2007–the New Year–is now upon us. Some of us, as each new year begins, consider making new year’s resolutions. Whether you’re one of those who usually makes the conventional kind of new year’s resolutions (or not), and whether you usually keep the resolutions you might make (or not), there’s something that I want to encourage you to consider as you think about the year to come. What I’m inviting you to do is certainly important, because it may well make a difference in our children’s lives. But I hope it will be fun as well.

You may be aware that the June, 2006, General Assembly (GA) of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) passed a “resolution,” a Statement of Conscience expressing concern about the impact of Global Warming and Climate Change. The statement calls on individual UUs (like you and me), congregations (like our Fellowship), the UUA, and our elected governmental representatives to take action to reduce carbon emissions and to do what we can to reverse the cycle of climate change. Copies of the statement are available in the sermon racks in the Fellowship coatrooms (look for the green paper). So my invitation to you and your household is this: why not make an environmental resolution for 2007? Why not spend some time, with the other members of your household (if any), considering what steps you might take as a household to reverse climate change.

Here are a few suggestions, from the Statement (with a few of my own adaptations):

• Can your household reduce its use of energy, and/or reduce its consumption of manufactured goods that become waste?

• Can you choose the most energy-efficient transportation means that meet your needs and abilities (e.g., walk, bike, carpool, use mass transit and communication technologies, and limit travel)?

• Can you determine your personal energy consumption and pledge to reduce your use of energy and carbon emissions by a specified percent by 2010?

• Can you eat and serve more energy-efficient food that is either locally produced or “low on the food chain” or both?

• Can you choose appliances that are rated energy-efficient (e.g., by the EPA Energy Star Program), and choose products and materials that are made from renewable resources and can be recycled at the end of their usefulness?

The statement contains more of these suggestions, but it might be more fun to come up with your own ways to reduce your household’s consumption of energy (or other resources, like water) and your production of waste. Why not ask your children, or your neighbors, for their ideas? Why not put a chart on your kitchen wall, and measure this year’s energy consumption against last year’s? Why not see what a difference your ideas make when put into practice? And if you share your results with me. I’ll see what I can do to help share the ideas that appear to have the most impact throughout the Fellowship and the community. Maybe we’ll even have a prize!

Some of us–like me, for instance–might have better luck with this if we were to meet regularly (perhaps monthly?) with a group of people who were also working towards one or more self-determined goals, and who were willing to help support each other in this challenge. If there is enough interest–and I hope there will be, because it’ll make a difference to me!–let me know and we’ll form one or more of these groups.

If you’d like to make a new year’s resolution like this, and you’re willing to let at least a few others know about it, please contact Debbie Czarnopys-White, Stan Harris, or me. The three of us want to do what we can to help anyone willing to try this!

With best wishes for a joyous and fulfilling 2007,  

Bill S.