By Margaret Slattery

After joining TIPL and learning about TVA’s energy audit program, the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan of Knoxville is trying to become more energy efficient. In March, a team met to conduct an energy audit of Good Sam’s facilities. Members included representatives of TVA, a vestry member for buildings and grounds, a consultant from a lighting firm, and an energy efficiency engineer from ORNL (Good Sam parishioner). Tom Irwin from TVA is to prepare a report with specific suggestions for improvements. Overall, these were the initial observations.

Though heating and cooling consume a large portion of the church’s energy use, the units were in pretty good shape. They will need to double check that the programmable thermostat is set to what it should be. It’s possible raising the temperature one degree in the summer and lowering it one degree in the winter could save a considerable amount.

The easiest area to tackle first will likely be lighting. There are two key areas in the church to consider changes: the sanctuary (high hanging chandeliers and spotlights) and the main meeting hall (lots of fluorescent tubes). Although lighting only accounts for about $2000 a year, replacing LEDs in the sanctuary will have four major benefits:

The quality of light should be superior and more flexible to create a variety of different lighting environments.

1. LEDs will lower those lighting costs by about 80%.
2. Because they last so much longer, bulbs could burn up to 20 years depending on use. Not having to change those difficult to reach bulbs is a major incentive.
3. Improvements to lighting will definitely pay for themselves over time. The payback time will be shorter if they qualify for TVA’s funding.

Once the energy audit confirms areas to tackle and quotes are attained for the costs of the upgrades, Good Sam will apply to the TVA Energy Right Solutions program that pays $.10 for every kilowatt saved. That program has currently run out of funds, but Tom Irwin hopes it will be funded again within a few months. Good Sam hopes to have an application ready as soon as funding is available.

(Note: See this link to learn more about how your church can benefit from a TVA energy audit.  We will ask Margaret to do another blog when the Church of the Good Samaritans takes another step towards saving energy.)

The Moral Problem

We now understand that our burning of fossil fuels causes climate change.  Oil and coal have fueled our industrial growth and our high standard of living.  Because there is a wide gap between our carbon pollution and the harmful effects of climate change, we are the generation benefitting from carbon pollution, but our children are at our mercy.  It is our children and their children who will suffer the burdens of the increasing weather extremes of unabated climate change:  increased hunger, homelessness, a decline in public health, and a changing natural world that no longer supports well-being as it has ours.

People have developed powerful technologies that have changed how natural systems function on a global scale.  Our reliance on coal and oil to fuel those technologies have brought us to changing the climate, ushering in different climate conditions, including the real possibility that the changes may be so extreme that human civilization and the species itself may not survive.

Our children and their children will bear the consequences of our behavior. Climate change will have different impacts around the world and among different populations.  Through our inaction, we are imposing the costs of our behavior on our children and upon the most vulnerable.

The Moral Challenge

Climate change is fundamentally a moral issue.  The core moral principle embodied within our response to climate change is that we should not harm others for our self-benefit.  If we unintentionally cause harm to another, then compensation for the harm is expected.

The moral response would be to reduce the harm of climate change by reducing our carbon pollution.  For the harm we have already created, we must somehow compensate future generations by helping them prepare for the worsening storms.

Our moral response to climate change turns on our willingness to act on climate change even if we must somehow sacrifice our current levels of benefitting from carbon pollution.  While many would agree that our children should not bear the burden of our private gain, what is it worth for us to avoid future generations suffering the consequences of our behavior?

A closely allied moral belief is that we must uphold the value of life.  The well being of others is as important as ours.  The date when harm occurs does not affect the value of life.  People living in the future have the same value as those living today.  Do we value someone’s life less because they live at a different time?

Many believe that we have special responsibilities to be stewards of Creation and protect the sanctity of the natural world.  How much are we willing to sacrifice to do that?

The small but real chance exists that unabated pollution carbon pollution will cause an utter climate catastrophe that will risk the collapse and perhaps extinction of the human population.  The moral question is how important is it to avoid a climate catastrophe that might put at risk the very survival of our species.  The time to think about the future of humanity is upon us.

The Moral Thing to Do

We as a society must acknowledge the moral issues associated with climate change and the need for painful decisions.

We must reduce carbon pollution and pay the costs of mitigating climate change to compensate future generations for the harm of the climate change we caused.

We cannot risk being responsible for the possible collapse or even extinction of humanity and must take urgent action to avoid that consequence of unabated carbon pollution.

We must pull the damages out of the future into the present.  Most of the costs of controlling carbon pollution caused climate change must be paid now to avoid the cost of climate change damage.

We can work together to redeem ourselves for the sake of our children.

Moral Outcomes

Through our actions of fulfilling our moral responsibilities we can avoid putting our children in harms’ way.

Our children and their children will look back on us with gratitude as we cared for their well-being by abating our carbon pollution.

We are creating a future for our children and their children with a potential for life without overwhelming climate changes and social challenges.

We are upholding the sanctity of the natural world through learning how to live within it harmoniously.

By keeping in mind those living today and in the future, the most vulnerable here within our community and those around the globe, we participate in the collective moral response to the climate challenge and learn how all can live well together.

We as a society can rise to this moral challenge of our generation through our actions today and take pride that we have done the right thing to do.

Resource:  Climate Change and Moral Judgment  Ezra Markowitz and Azim Shariff, Nature Climate Change March 2012.

A powerful extra-tropical storm side-swiped the coast of New Zealand’s South Island bringing gales and flooding to the city of Christchurch and the heaviest rainfall seen in almost 40 years.

This winter’s severe cold over the Great Lakes–Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario–froze a near-record amount of ice this year.  Dating back to 1977, only February 1979 (94.7% peak) had greater ice coverage.

When the cold of the eastern U.S. is put into a global perspective, January 2014 was the 4th warmest global average since 1880.

In February, TIPL sprang ahead.  The Greater Knoxville TIPL found the only sunny day in February to have its first Climate Vigil of the year in Fountain City.  Many thanks to Rev. Susan Sgarlet (Hospice chaplain), Rev. Randy Frye (Fountain City UMC), and Gloria Johnson (25^th District State Rep.) for sharing their reflections with the forty-some gathered to witness their concern for climate change.

The TIPL steering committee welcomes its partner faith groups and individual members.  We sent to our faith group partners a “Welcome Packet” describing TIPL and its activities.  Members and partners were encouraged to join the TIPL steering committee on a call with the national IPL’s staff Andree Duggan who talked about IPL’s Cool Congregation and Preach-In.

The Knoxville Climate 1000 initiative moved forward, adding Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Alliance for Energy as new partners.  Climate 1000 wants the City of Knoxville to come out in support of strong EPA carbon rules and to make weatherization affordable for lower income homes.  This collaboration of faith, economic justice, and environmental communities will have a climate rally on Market Square in downtown Knoxville on July 12.

The Knoxville News Sentinel published this letter to the editor from Louise Gorenflo on February 27, 2014.

Last quarter the record setting cold wave caused TVA’s top five energy days. The call centers of Local power companies are scrambling to help customers with their power bill sticker shock.  Local power companies are encouraging customers to get an energy efficiency audit to learn how they can prepare for the next extreme temperature event.

Most limited income households cannot access TVA’s energy efficiency programs because they cannot afford the cost of a home energy audit, nor do they have the discretionary funds to implement recommended energy efficiency measures, nor do they have the required 625 credit score to get a TVA energy efficiency loan.  Moreover, a large percentage of lower income families do not own their own homes.

A 2010 Oak Ridge National Lab study found that lower income homes used nearly 20% less energy than the non-low income.  Yet the low income consumed 25% more energy per square foot of heated space than the non-low income.  The study found that the inefficiency of the lower income housing stock accounted for this difference.

The wealthier among us can afford to shrug-off higher power bills, but for some such bills push them into homelessness or into making such difficult choices as between having a roof over their head or getting medical care.

I urge the TVA board and president to develop with local power companies and other stakeholders energy efficiency products that target  limited income homeowners and landlords.  It is a difficult problem, but one that can no longer be ignored.  Without strong and dynamic  leadership from the highest levels of TVA, lower income householders will bear the harshest burden of the extreme temperatures of climate change.