Environmental Justice

Environmental Justice groups at The First Universalist approach environmental issues through a faith-based lens. As environmental justice team member Stan Sattinger expressed, “The seventh principle is the one that environmental justice ties most closely with. It’s about the interconnectedness of everything that’s in the world. It’s our duty to protect and recognize that interconnected web of existence, and that’s why, as Unitarian Universalists, we’re so strong about climate issues.”¹

Stan Sattinger and Bill Elwood, members of the Environmental Justice Team, explained the team’s recent goals from their strategic planning process in 2016:²

• “Complete the community solar project for our church that Bill Elwood has been developing and promoting for more than two years. That’s a priority. Our goal is to sign up 75 households. Each household produces about seven tons of CO2 per year just from their electric generation. The consequence of this program will be that that electric generation won’t happen—it’ll just be solar.”

• “Another goal, and this is something I got real excited about, is convening around a book titled The Soil Will Save Us, which is about CO2 sequestation through plants. We have a goal of starting a workshop on carbon sequestration of the soil to happen by sometime next year at the latest.”

• “Betsy, Bill’s wife is heading up a renewed thrust for us to reduce our household carbon emissions, reduce our carbon footprint, via getting a home audit and energy audits done and implementing them. We’ll keep pounding and pounding until it happens.”

• “Get involved with with World Water Summit. To start, we broke up into tables and came up with ideas of what to do about water protection and ideas about shoreland restoration. We want to renew the flow of the river throughout the lakes.”

• “The last goal is to educate our congregants and others outside our congregation about environmental issues; we publicize inside and outside our walls.”