(NCC) Washington, D.C.—For the first time ever, the Sierra Club and National Council of Churches are teaming up to protect America’s beautiful landscapes, launching TV and newspaper ads calling on Americans to “keep our promise to care for creation.”
Evoking religious themes, the ads say Americans ought not ruin the land we’ve been entrusted to protect. Rather than destroying special landscapes for oil, we can find more energy through new technologies. The television and newspaper ads will run all week in Georgia, Arizona, North Dakota, Indiana, Missouri and Delaware.
“People of faith take seriously the biblical mandate to be good stewards of creation, and that means finding smarter, cleaner, safer ways to satisfy our energy needs without damaging the irreplaceable gifts of nature with which our nation has been so blessed,” said the Rev. Dr. Robert W. Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches. “Furthermore, conservation is more effective, providing much greater benefits that are more permanent, and in the long run are less costly, than a modest and short-lived increase in oil supply at the price of a ravaged environment.”
“We don’t need to ruin the land we love to meet America’s energy needs,” said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. “When Americans want renewal and inspiration, we sit by a river or hike to a mountaintop. America’s beautiful landscapes are too valuable to dig, drill and destroy — instead, we need an energy policy that is clean and safe. With modern technology, we can have clean energy and protect the places Americans love.”
The ads say the answer to our energy needs does not lie in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but rather can be found from quicker, cleaner, cheaper and safer energy-efficient technologies, and alternative energy power like solar and wind.
For more information, visit www.ncccusa.org.
