QEW Response to the 2008 FCNL Priorities setting process

QUAKER EARTHCARE WITNESS
173-B North Prospect St., Burlington, VT 05401-1607
802/658-0308 FAX 413/714-7011

April 29, 2008

Dear Friends on the FCNL Policy Committee,

At our meetings this past weekend, the Steering Committee of Quaker Earthcare Witness minuted its deep appreciation for FCNL’s growing focus on “seeking an earth restored” as expressed in the 2004 and 2006 legislative priorities. QEW is grateful for the commitment and good work of Ned Stowe and his assistant Joelle Maruniak. Your growing “witness for the earth” has led us to encourage all QEW financial supporters to also support FCNL.

While the attached response attempts to work within the framework of previous priorities, this letter adds our call for a shift in your thinking about the role of “seeking an earth restored” in FCNL’s work.

We note that in FCNL’s inspirational “we seeks” statement, the arenas in which you work decrease in size from “the world” to “society” to “community,” yet end with the largest arena of all, and the one on which all the rest depend – the earth.

We suggest that all our aspirations for peace and justice will be for naught if human over-consumption and overpopulation destroy our planet – unique in the universe, as far as we know, in its interconnected life-supporting systems.

We are already seeing the results of climate change, which are likely to be catastrophic, with sea level rise and extreme weather events displacing, if not destroying, millions of people. Our administration’s mistaken embrace of corn-based biofuels has led to skyrocketing food prices and increased hunger world-wide. Our lust for oil is at least partly the cause of the terrible war in Iraq, and the scarcity of clean water and its growing privatization will soon be the next source of wars.

We urge you to lift up to Congress, and to your constituents in your next set of priorities, this total inter-relatedness of all of the “we seeks” and their ultimate dependence on the success of the last—“seeking an earth restored”.

The attached queries were approved on Sunday, April 27, as QEW’s response to your invitation to participate in FCNL’s legislative priority setting process.

Working for peace on Earth, peace with Earth,

Hollister Knowlton, Clerk

Response to the 2008 FCNL Priorities setting process

From: Quaker Earthcare Witness Steering Committee

Date: April 29, 2008

Last weekend, 38 Friends (ranging in age from mid-20s to early 80s, but most of 50 to 60 years) met in small worship sharing groups for discernment. The following set of queries was drafted by our FCNL Working Group and presented to the Steering Committee for approval on Sunday, April 27.

Queries for the Policy Committee

1. How might awareness of the earth’s unique value (in the context of the Universe’s 13.5 billion-year evolution) be heightened in the preamble of the legislative priorities statement for the 111th Congress?

2. How can the priorities statement as a whole convey an understanding that all of our hopes for a world at peace with equity and justice depend upon arresting the damage that industrial societies are causing the biosphere?

3. Recognizing that FCNL does not want to dilute its lobbying efforts by taking on too many issues, we ask to what extent the following issues can be included in the priorities for the 111th Congress:

Within, “A world free of war and the threat of war”:

• Recognition of the ecological costs of war and resource scarcity as a cause of war
• Dialogue with Iran and North Korea to reduce tensions
• Pursuing efforts to reduce U.S. military influence in Africa

Within, “A society with equity and justice for all”:

• Repeal of all provisions of the Patriot Act that undermine equity and justice
• Reduction of the U.S. prison population
• Elimination of discrimination caused by DNA testing
• Preparation for welcoming refugees displaced by climate change impacts
• Ensuring that U.S. food and energy policies do not contribute to global hunger

Within, “A community where every person’s potential may be fulfilled”:

• Support for universal health care in the U.S.
• Support for population and health programs around the world
• Support for regional economic development and locally based food systems

Within, “An earth restored”:

• Shifting subsidies, e.g., from airports to public transportation; from fossil fuels and nuclear energy to clean and renewable energy, green jobs, and energy conservation, especially assisting lower income homes with fuel costs
• Shifting taxes, specifically toward a carbon tax
• Promoting the equitable and sustainable use of the world’s natural resources, especially water
• Protecting biodiversity on land as well as our oceans.

Might the following be given consideration in future revisions of the FCNL Policy Statement?

• While we realize that the “we seeks” constitute FCNL’s vision/mission statement, and therefore are fixed in many settings, we ask, as context permits, that “we seek an earth restored” come first, in recognition that it is foundational for the other three.
• Reducing corporate influence on U.S. policy
• Reforming the global financial architecture in order to reduce extremes of wealth and poverty
• Redesigning the U.S. monetary system so that it serves the well-being of communities and the nation rather than the growth of GDP