Who are we?
We are building a group of Episcopalians seeking to mobilize our Church and our churches on the path toward climate justice.
This project grew out of the companion relationship between the Episcopal Diocese of California and the Anglican Diocese of Curitiba, Brazil.
What is “climate justice?”
Climate Justice is the affirmation of human dignity in the context of catastrophic climate change. It holds that those members of the human family who have historically benefited the most from carbon pollution, have a proportionate ethical responsibility to reduce their carbon emissions. As a principle, climate justice suggests that the overdeveloped parts of the world ought to reduce their consumption in ways that benefit the most environmentally marginalized communities directly. It recognizes that real solutions to climate change already exist within environmentally vulnerable communities and seeks to build power and resilience in these communities. In seeking to address climate change, therefore, climate justice privileges the experiences of indigenous peoples, subsistance farmers, fisherfolk, forest dwellers, women, and in the United States especially, communities of color, working people, and the poor.
About the Facilitator:
The Rev. P. Joshua Griffin is a priest associate at St. David of Wales Episcopal Church in Portland, OR and a doctoral student in cultural and environmental anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle. He received his M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School in 2009, and previously served as the Environmental Justice Missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of California.
