Interfaith Coalition for Earth Justice (ICEJ) is a volunteer organization of San Diego faith leaders and communities that advocate for climate and environmental justice both in policy and in the public square. We believe that the values held in common by all faith traditions include the care for creation and care for the most vulnerable in society.

This has been a tough year – war in Ukraine, war in Gaza, a compromised COP 28, a looming presidential election that may determine whether the U.S. is democratic or authoritarian.  The list goes on.  “Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All” seems as distant as ever.  I am fond of saying that our faiths bring centuries of accumulated wisdom to the environmental justice table – do they have something for this season of unrest?  I think the answer is yes.  I offer two examples:

The first is a Muslim hadith (saying): The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Even if the Resurrection were established upon one of you while he has in his hand a sapling, let him plant it.”

I understand this hadith to mean that doing the right thing (like planting a tree) should be done even if there seems no future in it.  It represents an eternal yes to Allah which is not based on rationality but something deeper. We might call it a hope beyond hope and for all the crises which the world faces it seems to me a helpful answer.

The second is a Jewish story, I believe from one of the great Hasidic masters, but I could not find it on the internet so I will paraphrase:

A rabbinic student asked his teacher why the law is said to be written on the outside and not on the inside of the heart.  The teacher paused and said he must think about it.  Days later, he replied to the student, “The law is written on the outside of the heart so that when the heart breaks, the law will fall inside.”

The message here I think is a little more complicated.  Certainly it seems to imply that suffering (the heart breaking) is built into the universe and real wisdom is only gained after some amount of suffering, of tragedy even. As one after another tragedy plays out on the world stage, we can hope that some kind of wisdom will be gained but I think it will take great risk and a radical openness to the ultimate meaning of the universe however we define it.  In that spirit, all of us at ICEJ wish you a deeply fulfilling holiday season whether you celebrate  Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, the Solstice or any other holiday!

Blessings,

Phil Petrie

ICEJ Co-Chairperson

There is a move afoot in San Diego to replace SDG&E with a non-profit power utility owned by the City.  This is not a new idea: public power is as old as privately owned utilities and is thriving in places like LA and Sacramento.  The campaign in SD is being spearheaded by Power San Diego which is chaired by Bill Powers.  Powers says “The only way for us to be able to craft our own destiny as a city in both controlling our electric rates and coming up with the most cost-effective, smartest, innovative decarbonization clean energy plan is to have local control of the electric power utility.  Without that local control, we do not control our destiny.”

Further arguments for public power include:

• SDG&E has the highest rates in the nation and 1 in 4 SD households cannot pay their utility bills
• SDG&E and their parent company Sempra continue to undermine rooftop solar in favor of large solar arrays in the desert which necessitate expensive transmission lines
• SDG&E’s profits directly fund Sempra’s fracked gas (methane) infrastructure projects; methane is about 28X more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2; by paying SDG&E’s charges we are directly funding climate change!

To get the initiative on the ballot for Nov. 2024 over 80,000 signatures must be collected by May 14.  A kick-off event was held on Dec. 5 at First Unitarian Universalist Church in Hillcrest where our Co-Chair Yusef Miller spoke (see photo above).  ICEJ is one of several orgs (SanDiego350, UCSD Green New Deal) that will be collecting signatures.  If you would like us to visit your place of worship to do just that, please contact Phil at phil@icejsd.org. 

And if you can help collect signatures, please go here to sign up.  

Thank you!!

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