Green Fund in Baildon Methodist Church

John Anderson is the Eco-officer of Baildon Methodist Church, and a guide at York Minster.  At our recent Big Environment Celebration inYork Minster, John led some of the Green Man tours.  He tells us how his church have used a Green Fund to make changes in their church.

"Emissions of carbon dioxide by humans are far too high for Gods earth and its creatures to survive in their present form and numbers. We must reduce emissions. As regards travel, it is better not to set off than to offset.  But in some cases we MUST emit carbon dioxide to live, for example in using electricity or heating our houses.  We can pay a sum of money for action to be taken that will off-set our own emissions by reducing those of our church. These donations comprise our Green Fund.

"I recommend a Christian website set up by A Rocha [the Rock] which also oversees our Eco-congregation activity:   www.climatestewards.net.  It works out the costs of carbon offsets. Go to ‘Off set now’, and then click on ‘Flying’ and ‘Land Travel’ and ‘Heat and Power.’ You can use the calculations there for donations to your own Green Fund. If you have not got access to a computer at home, please use those in the library:  the librarians will help you!

"We suggest people donate, per person, £10 for flights outside Europe, £7 per person for flights inside Europe, and £2.50 per 1000 miles for your car.  Moreover, all of us emit carbon dioxide if we use fossil fuel like gas or coal for heating, and by using electricity.  If you cannot go to a website, then I suggest you consider an offset payment of £10 per year if you have one bedroom, £20 a year if you have two, £30 a year if you have three, and £40 a year if you have four bedrooms. This could be a donation for Lent.

"Our Green Fund has contributed much to the campaign to put an energy- and draught-saving porch on Wesley’s.  Once this is done, it will be used to help pay for other energy-saving measures in our church buildings."

Eleanor.