Public Policy Initiatives cont.

• Regional environmental justice projects have been initiated in Catholic dioceses on the issues of sprawl (Los Angeles and Connecticut), sustainable agriculture (Iowa), transportation equity (Detroit), and water (Florida).
• Hundreds of people of faith signed a prayer petition sponsored by the National Council of Churches calling on political leaders to honor God’s command to tend the garden and commit to being better stewards of America’s air, water, wild lands and wildlife.

Outreach Beyond the Faith Community

The Partnership has engaged wide interest in its program beyond the faith community. In so doing, it has invited a wider environmental vision beyond policy and partisanship.

• The Partnership has helped prepare and facilitate similar multi-day retreats for the CEOs and executive officers of Monsanto Corporation and twice for CEOs of national environmental organizations.
• CEOs of labor unions, corporations, scientific associations, and environmental groups have joined religious leaders to discuss climate change.

• Internationally prominent scientists joined religious leaders from across the denominational spectrum to issue “Earth’s Climate Embraces Us All: A Plea from Religion and Science for Action on Global Climate Change,” calling on Congress to give serious attention to proposed climate change legislation.
• By many accounts, these interactions are encouraging environmentalists to explore essential values and vision for their own work in their own organizations.

Media Coverage

The Partnership has encouraged coverage of its activities in the secular media as well as the religious press, focusing largely on the activities of local faith communities. In so doing, it has helped move discussion of environmental issues beyond more narrow political partisanship and public policy.

• Over 2,000 news accounts have appeared, from the very smallest outlets such as the Laramie Daily Boomerang (WY) and the Downer's Grove Suburban Life (IL), to extended features in the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times and ABC World News Tonight.
• Thousands more stories and opinion pieces in the print, radio and network television media have featured the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign of the Evangelical Environmental Network, generating an unprecedented level of public interest in personal transportation decisions as moral and religious choices.