The Austin Interfaith Environmental Network in the News with a mention of AZC's participation.

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/local/local-faith-groups-produce-manual-on-how-to-go-gre/nXR5R/

Here's a fascinating, and, maybe, somewhat amusing coalescence of science fiction, concern about climate change, and Buddhism. Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson has written a trilogy of novels where all three of those themes come together.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/04/in-300-years-kim-stanley-robinsons-science-fiction-may-not-be-fiction/274392/

Climate Change Communication

From Jared Michaels:

Dear AZC ESG,
Here's a set of tools that will help us enormously.
Warmly,
Jared

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-ending-the-silence-on-climate-change/

Equanimity in the midst of the Great Unraveling

- by Jared Michaels        
        
I have spent a lot of time over the past handful of years in overwhelm and despair. That's what happens, I think inevitably, when we first really absorb the impact of our way of life - the pain we are causing countless sentient beings, and the destabilized world we are leaving behind for our children. Now I want to share a new place I reached recently. It is a place of equanimity.

As our eco-system, biological community, and society unravels, something good and necessary may happen to humanity. Some people think it is already happening. For centuries now, and perhaps as long as we have been on the Earth, we have been operating from the delusion that we are disconnected, separate, and alone. As a consequence, we have used most of our energy in fear, defensiveness, self-centeredness, and isolation. The results are far-reaching. They range from psychological pain, to omnicide (a word from Derrick Jensen that means the genocide of people, animals, and plants), to a carved up and polluted planet.

The cure? The wisdom that we are connected - delivered by mother nature via hurricanes, wide-spread droughts, record breaking temperatures, and so on.

Of course I hope that we learn this lesson before we kill every living thing on Earth. It actually doesn't look promising. The window of opportunity is far smaller than most people know. Either way, the lesson will be good for us. The pain will force us to wake up. And that brings me some peace... because it will bring us all some peace.

Some folks from the Environmental Studies Group went on a camping trip to Colorado Bend State Park the weekend of November 10.  We hiked to Gorman Falls and back on Sunday.  The best part of the trip were the pies that Eric's wife Vivian made.  They were comprised of pre-buttered potato bread and cherry pie filling.  We loaded this sandwich into a metal enclosure with hinges and two arms that you hold onto as you bake the pie in the fire.

Paul Hawken

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, and the author of...Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming  (Viking, 2007). In that book, Hawken documents the emergence of...a worldwide network of organizations, "from billiondollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes," that has arisen spontaneously in response to global crises that threaten the survival of our ecosystems and of humanity itself.... Drawing on a vast range of sources, including his longtime study of Zen Buddhism, Hawken fashions a lucid, erudite, and convincing argument.

http://www.tricycle.com/interview/movement-no-name

Joanna Macy

The Buddha's central doctrine of the "dependent co-arising" reveals the dynamic interdependence of all phenomena. Its insight and practices help to free us from the prison cell of egocentricity, and from the greed, hatred, and delusion it engenders. The term Engaged Buddhism refers to the social application of these teachings, as they bring us into responsible and resilient relationship with the world around us.

http://www.joannamacy.net/