enviromentalism can = Mormonism

Last night I went to a lecture by BYU professor George Handley at the Provo Library,  it was part of the Sierra Club Forum.  The topic of the lecture was Faith and Environmentalism, and he addressed some ideas about the role that religion and more specifically LDS communities can do to lessen our ecological footprint.  I thought it was interested and true when he talked about how so often being mormon and being an environmentalist seem on the outset difficult for people to digest, as if being concerned about the earth were strictly a political issue.  I feel like this could be an extensive conversational post, but I am going to gather my thoughts and facts better before I do that, but I just wanted to point out a few of the points he made that I think are helpful to all of us.  

He spoke about the scripture, "the hearts of the children were turned to the fathers and the hearts of the fathers were turned to the children..."  He said that so often we focus on the beginning part of that scripture with genealogy, which is indeed very important, but he pointed out that the second part of the scripture helps us to remember that we are not the only people who will need the earth for a home, but that as we become older, and thus more accountable stewards, maybe our hearts can be a little more turned to the generations that will come after us.  He said that it is so often easy to believe that everything is in God's hands, including the condition of the earth, but many environmental problems are directly linked to our consumption, which is where religion can play a major role.  We can better live LDS principles of learning to not be selfish and be content with what is sufficient for our needs, even by walking places, consuming less meat, buying less when we don't really need it, doing more to take action to help those in need in our community.  These are a few of the things I've been really wanting to change in my own life and am making efforts to do so.    At the end he made a list of his main points

-Talk with others about values

-focus on local, personal ethics of behavior

-talking about values is more important than talking about ideas

-make it obvious that being concerned about the environment also means being a Mormon

-focus on what wards can do specifically to reduce ecological footprints

Lots to think about.