Happy Holidays! I spend the majority of this podcast sharing the science of what we know about climate change and air pollution and how it impacts our health and communities. We can learn a great deal from the knowledge revealed by the scientific method about the importance of caring for our planet, what makes our environment unhealthy, and what steps we can take. However, it often seems that our communities are torn apart by insurmountable divides. There is rising skepticism about the knowledge offered by science and the credibility of scientific experts, and whether climate change is even happening. For those of us who recognize that it is urgent that we decrease greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution in order to ensure a healthy and livable planet for generations to come, this can be overwhelming and feel very dark. Many of us have families and communities that have deep political divides as well, often seeming to raise insurmountable obstacles to moving forward. 

However, there are many places where we often come together despite our particular partisan affiliations, and these can be powerful places for healing action. Our world is full of distinct and beautiful religious traditions, many of which share a powerful commitment to caring for the Earth. Obviously characterizing and quantifying something as challenging as spirituality or religious belief can be hard, but the United Nations estimates that over 80% of people on the planet  adhere to a religious or spiritual tradition. There are a wide variety of faith traditions incorporating care for earth and the environment into them. I thought for this holiday post and episode, it might be helpful to examine work being done in my own faith tradition as one particular example among many.  We call this time in the four weeks before Christmas the season of Advent, and we view it as a time of waiting for hope in the darkness. Similar themes are shared by a variety of faiths, and I provide more of those resources at the end of the show.