Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

-----

Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, May 2, 2022

So We're On the Same Page With One Another re Green Infrastructure, Green Energy & Green Tech



So We're On the Same Page With One Another
re Green Infrastructure, Green Energy & Green Tech


As a bible/theology/philosophic-theology site let us not forget that God is interested in ALL of his creation and not simply the homonid species alone. If we think of the Genesis Eden or the book of Revelation's thought of the "lion laying down with the lamb" there are many illustrations in the bible that any responsible theology should also include as a major section devoted to humanity living in rhythm and balance with earth's many disparate environments. Let us call such a study an "ecological theology" or "eco-theology" for short.

Here at Relevancy22 there have been many articles speaking to our concern of people of all faiths - including the Christian faith - learning to live not only with one another but with the earth in all its forms. My fav term-to-date describing such an arrangement is learning to build a socially and ecological just "cosmo-ecological civilizations" where cosmo = cosmic... or cosmopolitan... but "cosmopolitan" speaks only to "urbanized human societies" whereas "cosmic environmentalism" speaks to ALL of creation "both on the earth and in the heavens" along with humanity.

Since there are many good environmentally responsible sites speaking to rethinking our role on this earth - and since it is unnecessary for me to recapsulate these sites in some form of "sanctified" Christian-speak language - I will simply lay out three necessary forms of eco-socieities we must think about to get from where we are to where we should be heading:

  • Green Infrastructure
  • Green Energy
  • Green Tech

Moreover, it should not be necessary to state the obvious - that we, in our human societies, cannot accomplish such things if we cannot live in peace with one another. Earth is filled with multiethnic and religious cultures. Consequently, we as nation-states must learn to live in peace and goodwill with one another. Finding the best in one another and learning to work out the differences between one another.

If we cannot share earth's resources with one another in a responsible and fair manner, then neither may we expect to accomplish global eco-societies with one another when we're fighting with each other for water, land, and space. Amen? Yes, Amen.

R.E. Slater
May 2, 2022

PS - I snuck in a very important bible lesson here without saying the word God, love, or bible. Did you notice??  :)

What does the Greek word Allelon mean? "One another." The phrase "one another" is derived from the Greek word allelon which means "one another, each other; mutually, reciprocally." It occurs 100 times in the New Testament. Here's a complete list from Strong's Concordance. If anyone ever asks you what's the most important word in the bible, perhaps, allelon might be a grand reply and WHY you think it is an essential doctrine in the world of God's love - and supposedly, in the church's language -  which nowadays I hear very little about in the storm of individual rights, state's rights, and the church's right. In this life, while we live together with "ONE ANOTHER" there is no I in We, and no We's without communities of I's. - res


* * * * * * *






What is Green Infrastructure?

Runoff from stormwater continues to be a major cause of water pollution in urban areas. It carries trash, bacteria, heavy metals, and other pollutants through storm sewers into local waterways. Heavy rainstorms can cause flooding that damages property and infrastructure.

Historically, communities have used gray infrastructure—systems of gutters, pipes, and tunnels—to move stormwater away from where we live to treatment plants or straight to local water bodies.  The gray infrastructure in many areas is aging, and its existing capacity to manage large volumes of stormwater is decreasing in areas across the country. To meet this challenge, many communities are installing green infrastructure systems to bolster their capacity to manage stormwater. By doing so, communities are becoming more resilient and achieving environmental, social and economic benefits.

Basically, green infrastructure filters and absorbs stormwater where it falls. In 2019, Congress enacted the Water Infrastructure Improvement Actwhich defines green infrastructure as "the range of measures that use plant or soil systems, permeable pavement or other permeable surfaces or substrates, stormwater harvest and reuse, or landscaping to store, infiltrate, or evapotranspirate stormwater and reduce flows to sewer systems or to surface waters."

Green infrastructure elements can be woven into a community at several scales. Examples at the urban scale could include a rain barrel up against a house, a row of trees along a major city street, or greening an alleyway. Neighborhood scale green infrastructure could include acres of open park space outside a city center, planting rain gardens or constructing a wetland near a residential housing complex. At the landscape or watershed scale, examples could include protecting large open natural spaces, riparian areas, wetlands or greening steep hillsides. When green infrastructure systems are installed throughout a community, city or across a regional watershed, they can provide cleaner air and water as well as significant value for the community with flood protection, diverse habitat, and beautiful green spaces.

Learn more:







* * * * * * *





WHAT IS GREEN ENERGY?
(DEFINITION, TYPES AND EXAMPLES)


Contents

  • What is it?
  • How does it work?
  • What does it mean?
  • Types
  • Why is it important?
  • Examples
  • Can it replace fossil fuels?
  • Can it be economically viable?
  • Which type is most efficient?
  • How can it help the environment?
  • Conclusion
  • What is Green Energy?

What is Green Energy?

Green energy is any energy type that is generated from natural resources, such as sunlight, wind or water. It often comes from renewable energy sources although there are some differences between renewable and green energy, which we will explore, below.

The key with these energy resources are that they don’t harm the environment through factors such as releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

How Does it Work?

As a source of energy, green energy often comes from renewable energy technologies such as solar energy, wind power, geothermal energy, biomass and hydroelectric power. Each of these technologies works in different ways, whether that is by taking power from the sun, as with solar panels, or using wind turbines or the flow of water to generate energy.

What Does it Mean?

In order to be deemed green energy, a resource cannot produce pollution, such as is found with fossil fuels. This means that not all sources used by the renewable energy industry are green. For example, power generation that burns organic material from sustainable forests may be renewable, but it is not necessarily green, due to the CO2 produced by the burning process itself. 

Green energy sources are usually naturally replenished, as opposed to fossil fuel sources like natural gas or coal, which can take millions of years to develop. Green sources also often avoid mining or drilling operations that can be damaging to eco-systems.




Types of Green Energy

The main sources are wind energy, solar power and hydroelectric power (including tidal energy, which uses ocean energy from the tides in the sea). Solar and wind power are able to be produced on a small scale at people’s homes or alternatively, they can be generated on a larger, industrial scale.

The six most common forms are as follows:

1. Solar Power

This common renewable, green energy source is usually produced using photovoltaic cells that capture sunlight and turn it into electricity. Solar power is also used to heat buildings and for hot water as well as for cooking and lighting. Solar power has now become affordable enough to be used for domestic purposes including garden lighting, although it is also used on a larger scale to power entire neighbourhoods.

2. Wind Power

Particularly suited to offshore and higher altitude sites, wind energy uses the power of the flow of air around the world to push turbines that then generate electricity.

3. Hydropower

Also known as hydroelectric power, this type of green energy uses the flow of water in rivers, streams, dams or elsewhere to produce energy. Hydropower can even work on a small scale using the flow of water through pipes in the home or can come from evaporation, rainfall or the tides in the oceans.

Exactly how ‘green’ the following three types of green energy are is dependent on how they are created…

4. Geothermal Energy

This type of green power uses thermal energy that has been stored just under the earth’s crust. While this resource requires drilling to access, thereby calling the environmental impact into question, it is a huge resource once tapped into. Geothermal energy has been used for bathing in hot springs for thousands of years and this same resource can be used for steam to turn turbines and generate electricity. The energy stored under the United States alone is enough to produce 10 times as much electricity as coal currently can. While some nations, such as Iceland, have easy-to-access geothermal resources, it is a resource that is reliant on location for ease of use, and to be fully ‘green’ the drilling procedures need to be closely monitored.

5. Biomass

This renewable resource also needs to be carefully managed in order to be truly labelled as a ‘green energy’ source. Biomass power plants use wood waste, sawdust and combustible organic agricultural waste to create energy. While the burning of these materials releases greenhouse gas these emissions are still far lower than those from petroleum-based fuels.

6. Biofuels

Rather than burning biomass as mentioned above, these organic materials can be transformed into fuel such as ethanol and biodiesel. Having supplied just 2.7% of the world’s fuel for transport in 2010, the biofuels are estimated to have the capacity to meet over 25% of global transportation fuel demand by 2050.

Why It Is Important?

Green energy is important for the environment as it replaces the negative effects of fossil fuels with more environmentally-friendly alternatives. Derived from natural resources, green energy is also often renewable and clean, meaning that they emit no or few greenhouse gases and are often readily available.

Even when the full life cycle of a green energy source is taken into consideration, they release far less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels, as well as few or low levels of air pollutants. This is not just good for the planet but is also better for the health of people and animals that have to breathe the air.

Green energy can also lead to stable energy prices as these sources are often produced locally and are not as affected by geopolitical crisis, price spikes or supply chain disruptions. The economic benefits also include job creation in building the facilities that often serve the communities where the workers are employed. Renewable energy saw the creation of 11 million jobs worldwide in 2018, with this number set to grow as we strive to meet targets such as net zero.

Due to the local nature of energy production through sources like solar and wind power, the energy infrastructure is more flexible and less dependent on centralised sources that can lead to disruption as well as being less resilient to weather related climate change.

Green energy also represents a low cost solution for the energy needs of many parts of the world. This will only improve as costs continue to fall, further increasing the accessibility of green energy, especially in the developing world.



Examples

There are plenty of examples of green energy in use today, from energy production through to thermal heating for buildings, off-highway and transport. Many industries are investigating green solutions and here are a few examples:

1. Heating and Cooling in Buildings

Green energy solutions are being used for buildings ranging from large office blocks to people’s homes. These include solar water heaters, biomass fuelled boilers and direct heat from geothermal, as well as cooling systems powered by renewable sources.

2. Industrial Processes

Renewable heat for industrial processes can be run using biomass or renewable electricity. Hydrogen is now a large provider of renewable energy for the cement, iron, steel and chemical industries.

3. Transport

Sustainable biofuels and renewable electricity are growing in use for transportation across multiple industry sectors. Automotive is an obvious example as electrification advances to replace fossil fuels, but aerospace and construction are other areas that are actively investigating electrification.




Can It Replace Fossil Fuels?

Green energy has the capacity to replace fossil fuels in the future, however it may require varied production from different means to achieve this. Geothermal, for example, is particularly effective in places where this resource is easy to tap into, while wind energy or solar power may be better suited to other geographic locations.

However, by bringing together multiple green energy sources to meet our needs, and with the advancements that are being made with regards to production and development of these resources, there is every reason to believe that fossil fuels could be phased out.

We are still some years away from this happening, but the fact remains that this is necessary to reduce climate change, improve the environment and move to a more sustainable future.

Can It Be Economically Viable?

Understanding the economic viability of green energy requires a comparison with fossil fuels. The fact is that as easily-reached fossil resources begin to run out, the cost of this type of energy will only increase with scarcity.

At the same time as fossil fuels become more expensive, the cost of greener energy sources is falling. Other factors also work in favour of green energy, such as the ability to produce relatively inexpensive localised energy solutions, such as solar farms. The interest, investment and development of green energy solutions is bringing costs down as we continue to build up our knowledge and are able to build on past breakthroughs.

As a result, green energy can not only become economically viable but also the preferred option.




Which Type Is The Most Efficient?

Efficiency in green energy is slightly dependent on location as, if you have the right conditions, such as frequent and strong sunlight, it is easy to create a fast and efficient energy solution.

However, to truly compare different energy types it is necessary to analyse the full life cycle of an energy source. This includes assessing the energy used to create the green energy resource, working out how much energy can be translated into electricity and any environmental clearing that was required to create the energy solution. Of course, environmental damage would prevent a source truly being ‘green,’ but when all of these factors are combined it creates what is known as a ‘Levelised Energy Cost’ (LEC).

Currently, wind farms are seen as the most efficient source of green energy as it requires less refining and processing than the production of, for example, solar panels. Advances in composites technology and testing has helped improve the life-span and therefore the LEC of wind turbines. However, the same can be said of solar panels, which are also seeing a great deal of development.

Green energy solutions also have the benefit of not needing much additional energy expenditure after they have been built, since they tend to use a readily renewable source of power, such as the wind. In fact, the total efficiency of usable energy for coal is just 29% of its original energy value, while wind power offers a 1164% return on its original energy input.

Renewable energy sources are currently ranked as follows in efficiency (although this may change as developments continue):
  1. Wind Power
  2. Geothermal
  3. Hydropower
  4. Nuclear
  5. Solar Power 

How Can it Help the Environment?

Green energy provides real benefits for the environment since the power comes from natural resources such as sunlight, wind and water. Constantly replenished, these energy sources are the direct opposite of the unsustainable, carbon emitting fossil fuels that have powered us for over a century.

Creating energy with a zero carbon footprint is a great stride to a more environmentally friendly future. If we can use it to meet our power, industrial and transportation needs, we will be able to greatly reduce our impact on the environment.




Green Energy vs Clean Energy vs Renewable Energy – What is the Difference?

As we touched upon earlier, there is a difference between green, clean and renewable energy. This is slightly confused by people often using these terms interchangeably, but while a resource can be all of these things at once, it may also be, for example, renewable but not green or clean (such as with some forms of biomass energy).

Green energy is that which comes from natural sources, such as the sun. Clean energy are those types which do not release pollutants into the air, and renewable energy comes from sources that are constantly being replenished, such as hydropower, wind power or solar energy.  

Renewable energy is often seen as being the same, but there is still some debate around this. For example, can a hydroelectric dam which may divert waterways and impact the local environment really be called ‘green?’

However, a source such as wind power is renewable, green and clean – since it comes from an environmentally-friendly, self-replenishing and non-polluting source.

Conclusion

Green energy looks set to be part of the future of the world, offering a cleaner alternative to many of today’s energy sources. Readily replenished, these energy sources are not just good for the environment, but are also leading to job creation and look set to become economically viable as developments continue.

The fact is that fossil fuels need to become a thing of the past as they do not provide a sustainable solution to our energy needs. By developing a variety of green energy solutions we can create a totally sustainable future for our energy provision, without damaging the world we all live on.

TWI has been working on different green energy projects for decades and has built up expertise in these areas, finding solutions for our Industrial Members ranging from electrification for the automotive industry to the latest developments in renewable energy.

Contact us to find out more and see how we could help advance your energy project: contactus@twi.co.uk.


* * * * * * *


What is Green Technology in 2022?
The Greentech, Climate Tech & Cleantech Guide

GREENTECH LINK           Reading Time - 16 min


Green technology in 2022 is the intersection of much new terminology and a wide range of innovative solutions around energy production, pollution reduction, and climate change reversal. Here we offer a Complete Guide to Greentech – new environmental technology including Climate Tech, Cleantech and everything in between.


Consumer awareness of human impact on the planet is on the rise, with it green technology is growing, adapting and developing. Following on from last year’s COP26 event in Glasgow, 2022 is set to be a year of extensive greentech growth and development after numerous government committments. This is in addition to the many recent documentaries, television programmes by David Attenborough, protests from Extinction Rebellion and multiple speeches by Greta Thunberg, which have placed the issues of climate change and the environment in front of the consumer.

Joe Biden has taken office as President of the United States and has made many public statements that his term will see the US pursue a strong green agenda.

Everything from fashion to energy consumption will be impacted by government there and worldwide, and personal goals to tackle the pressing threat of environmental problems. Therefore, being aware of key terms and developments will keep you ahead of the trends as we embrace a greener lifestyle.

To stay ahead of recent trends and developments, we will be taking an in-depth look at green technology in 2022. This article outlines what green technology is, some key terms and their definitions, developments in greentech, types of technologies being developed, and leading companies within each type.


What is Greentech?

Greentech is often split into two areas that are referred to as climate tech and cleantech. Between them, their technologies look to deal with existing and future damage to the environment caused by humans, as well as reducing or eliminating sources of further damage from our energy production and pollution.

Although there is current speculation around the use of these terms and whether there are better alternatives out there, we will be referring to each technology as a section within these two areas.

Clean Energy Ventures defines climate tech as “expressly concerned with the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions” and cleantech as focusing on humanity’s impact on the environment.

Climate tech has a focus on greenhouse gas emissions so therefore includes sectors such as carbon capture and afforestation. The focus of these sectors is to reduce the severity of greenhouse gas emissions, either through trapping the already existing gases or considering how greenhouse gases can be reduced moving forward.

We can define this area by considering whether the sector considers its impact on the planet beyond greenhouse gas emissions, if there is little consideration or this has been considered but the impact on greenhouse gas emissions is greater then the main goal of the company or project sits within climate tech.

Cleantech looks at cleaning humanity’s impact from the environment. This includes areas like pollution and air quality as well as recycling and waste management.

These sectors don’t necessarily consider the impact of this work on emissions but know that the work will impact and reduce humanity’s impact on the wider environment. For example, recycling and waste management may require vehicles or machines that emit greenhouse gases but the impact on human waste seeping into oceans or waterways is reduced, therefore its focus is cleantech.

Greentech in 2022

Within the two areas of climate tech and clean tech, we find a whole host of sectors that focus on certain aspects of business and society that make up the landscape of greentech in 2022. Some of these sectors solely occupy climate tech or cleantech, others overlap and look at both areas in order to create change in society.

For example, clean energy is concerned with mitigating greenhouse gas emissions while also reducing human impact on the environment through the extraction of resources to be used for creating energy.

Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, they do not mean the same thing. The two areas share similar ideas but the overall goals they are working towards are different. Some companies and sectors may overlap in their actions and ideas but returning to the main goal of their actions is the best way to understand what area they belong within. Placing green technologies within the two areas allows us a better understanding of the goals driving those technologies and the key focus of companies who work within that sector, defining every action they take in order to ensure effectiveness and efficiency.

Below you’ll find a useful diagram from Clean Energy Ventures that outlines many of the green technology sectors that are explored throughout this article, and highlights the intersection and difference between cleantech and climate tech:


Cleantech vs Climate Tech Diagram by Clean Energy Ventures


What is climate tech?

Climate tech is green technology that focuses on the reduction and mitigation of the effect of greenhouse gas emissions. This includes both reducing the greenhouse gases currently being produced, capturing or removing the greenhouse gases that are currently in our atmosphere and reducing the greenhouse gases that will be emitted in the future.

Carbon Capture

Carbon dioxide is the main gas contributing to global heating, therefore the thinking behind carbon capture involves catching the carbon at the source of it being created and then piping it to a place where it can be stored or used. It can be used as the carbon dioxide for things like carbonating drinks but can also be used to create hydrogen which can be used in factories as a clean-burning fuel. According to the IEA, carbon capture could reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by 70% (The Guardian, 2020).

Carbon capture allows manufacturers to avoid expense in adapting to run on clean energy and the technology already exists in order to get carbon capture projects up and running. It also opens up new business opportunities in creating hydrogen which could then be sold on as fuel.

Developments around new environmental technology in 2022 include efforts by the UK National Grid who have already set up a large carbon capture project in the Yorkshire and Humber region, and are now looking to continue developing on this work with their partners Drax and Equinor. The project could see the Humber become the world’s first net zero carbon region. For this project, the carbon is taken from industrial factories in this region and piped into storage in the North Sea.

The “storage” is a porous rock under the seabed which is injected with liquid carbon dioxide. Alongside this project, Phillips 66, Uniper and Vitol have proposed the Humber Zero decarbonisation project, placing the UK as global leaders of carbon capture technology alongside Scandinavia and the United States.

Finally, a UN report has recently called for an increase in the use of carbon capture in order to drastically combat climate change, identifying key barriers to the development of this technology. The future looks promising for carbon capture, especially for UK businesses who may benefit from world-first net zero manufacturing.

Afforestation

Afforestation is the creation or establishment of a forest where there was previously no tree cover. This action aids carbon capture but the trees also reduce carbon dioxide levels and add more oxygen into the atmosphere, helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A number of government and non-government organisations partake in planting trees to offset their carbon emissions, including government goals to achieve within a set time as part of the action to tackle climate change. There is also scope to use other technologies within afforestation plans to speed up the process and some businesses build tree-planting into their product as a benefit to the eco-conscious consumer.

Symbiosis Investimentos is a Brazilian privately owned investment company that transforms degraded areas into established forests by restoring native species, working within the timber industry to improve quality of wood and quality of the planet.

Agtech

Agtech is short for agricultural technology and includes a whole range of companies that support the agriculture industry to become greener. From smart robots that gather data from crops to reducing livestock manure through LIvestock Water Recycling (LWR), this sector encompasses a range of innovative technological developments to improve efficiency of agriculture and mitigate greenhouse gases.

As outlined by Deloitte (2016), agriculture businesses are having to be more open to innovation and change in order to keep up with the changes in the market. Their report also predicts that start-ups and innovators will seek to disrupt the industry through the introduction of new technology.

Future Growing LLC is an industry-leader in Agtech through the development of the aeroponic growing process which removes the need for soil when growing herb crops and places these crops in vertical towers, instead of into long rows in the ground.

Geoengineering

Commonly referred to as climate engineering, geo engineering is a large-scale intervention in the climate system of the Earth. Within this sector, there are a number of subcategories such as solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal. Climate engineering looks predominantly to environmental modelling to present solutions to current problems placing much of the work in this area as theoretical and difficult to action in the short-term.

Projects can be expensive and risky but given the current climate emergency, could provide a breakthrough to complement the work of other sectors.


The Climeworks’ direct air capture technology allows the company to suck carbon dioxide straight from the air with a similar route for the carbon dioxide as carbon capture, storing it below ground. This is an expensive process and will not be enough to solve climate change alone.

Alongside this work, there is a solar geoengineering research project run by Harvard University (Voosen, 2020) that hopes to use particles in the atmosphere to block the sun’s rays and therefore prevent the warming of the Earth.

The project has made progress using models and theories and is now looking to release a balloon into the atmosphere, release chalky particles and then monitor what happens.

Climeworks is one of the companies profiled on the Elevate Green website, which looks at products, services and projects that will help to reduce the environmental impact of industry, protect nature, or actively reverse the negative impacts we have already had on our environment and the global climate.


What is cleantech?

Cleantech is green technology that increases the performance, productivity or efficiency of production while reducing the impact on the environment. The technology may focus on the impact on a particular environmental element, such as water or air, that would normally be subjected to chemicals or pollutants as part of the production process. Some of these technologies might impact or influence your day-to-day life without you even realising.

Clean Water

Water is essential for human life yet universal access to clean water is not available. Innovative technologies for clean water allow communities across the world to thrive and grow, promoting the growth of families, businesses and education in places where this wasn’t possible before. On top of this, as the global population grows and industries use more and more water for manufacturing, having enough clean water for everyone is a rising concern.

Supporting businesses to clean and re-use water creates a cycle where new water does not need to enter the process, allowing that water to be used elsewhere in the community.

Innovative Water Technologies developed water filtration systems that were portable, solar and wind powered and reliable, providing 20,000 litres of clean water every day for 10 years or more. The Lifestraw is another portable technology that filters water as you drink, providing much-needed water access during emergencies where clean water might not be readily available.

Recycling and Waste

What we do with our waste matters. Whether it is household waste or manufacturing waste, for a long time we were just dumping waste into the ground or the ocean and we have now realised that eventually, the space will run out.

On top of that, the waste will poison our sources and make growing food or finding clean water more difficult. Recycling programmes have been rolled out globally, with governments changing their approaches to waste and changing behaviours of entire nations in the process.

Most recently, plastic recycling has come to the forefront of this sector. Plastics are hard to recycle due to them being mixed with other things in the production process and therefore becoming hard to separate and take back to its original form.


Unlike something like glass which can simply be melted down and reformed several times over its lifetime. PureCycle aims to reduce plastic waste through research and development of the recycling process to create pure recycled polypropylene that can be used in an endless loop.

Air quality and Pollution

Air quality impacts health. It’s as simple as that. Poor air quality will impact people living and working in that area, causing the development of new and underlying illnesses and making existing illnesses worse.

On top of people, air quality impacts the growth of wildlife and nature, impacting the ability of trees to photosynthesise and respire and therefore affecting the homes and lives of wildlife.

The UK government has researched into air pollution and its impacts on people, creating a specific website to track air pollution across the UK. The use of data to create real time images and forecast future pollution is a way to support those whose health may be impacted in times of peak air pollution, choosing to avoid certain times and areas for being outside.

On top of this, the UK now has years of data tracking air quality and pollution across the entire country, which can be drawn upon to create technological developments that can help to find a resolution.




Cleantech and Climate tech

Where cleantech and climate tech overlap, we find sectors that permeate every aspect of society and our existence. Everything from moving goods around the world to the careful choice of energy providers by businesses and consumers.

From a business perspective, these sectors are at the forefront of the green technology impact on how a business looks to grow and develop in the future. These sectors also provide interesting approaches and insights on how consumers and businesses can impact the environment through small changes in behaviours and choices.

Clean Energy

Clean energy is probably the most well-known environmental industry, from wind farms to solar panels. Clean energy is technology that creates energy from renewable, zero emission sources. These are probably the most familiar technologies to us out of all green technologies.

Many companies in this sector are thriving through businesses and consumers demanding access to green energy, supported by the emergence of a number of challenger energy providers who can offer green energy at a competitive rate and have enjoyed rapid growth.

One of the most recent developments in clean energy is floating solar panels which removes the use of soil while still allowing the capture of energy from the sun. This is a promising growth trend for this sector and has been widely tested in Japan, China and Southeast Asia, countries which will need this adaptation in order to cope with their lack of accessible land. Water-based panels also improve the performance of panels as the water and winds cool the cells.

The use of renewable hydrogen opens up a new opportunity for businesses, set to grow to a size similar to the oil and gas industry with much lower rates of emissions, there is a lot of potential here that has been grasped by industry experts.


Over 10 countries are currently competing to be world leaders, and Air Liquide is one company who has recently announced plans to introduce 200 hydrogen filling stations across the US by 2025.

With so much clean energy already present in our lives, this sector presents many promising opportunities for development, whether that be in wind, turbo, geothermal, solar or somewhere else. The technology is accessible with lots of work already completed which allows new innovators room to adapt, develop and grow the already-existing technology.


Emerging Trends #5: CleanTech and Climate Tech
Mar 20, 2020



Built Environment

When referring to built environment, we mean buildings and human structures. The adoption of green technology in construction helps to increase the efficiency of the building in staying warm or cool, using water effectively and ensuring that your building materials have a low impact on the environment.

From simple things such as green insulation made from recycled materials to electrochromic smart class that electrically charges windows to change the amount of solar radiation they reflect, the choices range wildly between simple solution and ultra-technological design.

Biotecture is a company that designs and builds living walls made from plants for community and work spaces, reconnecting people with nature in their everyday spaces. The company can create both interior and exterior living walls that provide a calming feel to any space.

They have created work for Centrica, Heathrow Airport, Smeg stores and other spaces, making a stand-out impact on visitors and workers who regularly use these spaces. By introducing plants, the interior air quality is improved and the actions taking place within the space improve too.

Transportation

Transport encompasses public and personal transport as well as the transportation of goods around the world. In the clean tech sector, the main discussion is currently around the use of cars, electric cars and charging stations for electric cars.

Governments are placing bans on the creation of new petrol and diesel cars to accelerate the industry’s development and the public’s uptake of electric vehicles, making developments in this area crucial to car manufacturers and the success of electric vehicles with the public.


AFC energy recently unveiled a new hydrogen-powered rapid charger to support the introduction of electric vehicles and improve options of charging vehicles efficiently. The charger, called CH2ARGE, sees compressed hydrogen delivered to on-site units that use the gas to generate electricity, stored in a 40kW battery which can then be used to rapidly charge an electric vehicle.

Supply Chain

Environmentally friendly practices can be implemented at almost every stage of the supply chain. From packaging options to transporting goods, companies can choose green solutions to help decrease the environmental impact of their business and products. These options are becoming more popular due to being cost-effective and planet-friendly.

Examples of green technology in the supply chain may be ethical sourcing, closed-loop manufacturing and reducing fuel emissions. Consumers are becoming more invested in the impact their purchase may have on the planet so will carefully research a company’s supply chain before considering buying.

Greenpeace have created a report which documents the progress made by industries and companies globally – Destination Zero. The report also highlights barriers and makes suggestions for how these could be overcome in the future, challenging the global market to do better and strive for further progress.

With relation to drinks, Good Things Brewing Company, based in Sussex, UK, has recently unveiled a closed-loop brewery and implements several green options within their supply chain, such as using cans instead of bottles as they are lighter to transport and using a fleet of electric vehicles to deliver their products.

The closed-loop brewery means they keep their sources within the loop of their brewery, treating waste on site and using the water elsewhere in the business as well as creating their own energy through photovoltaic panels.




The future of green technology

As the market of green technology grows there are new opportunities for businesses and governments to fund prospective projects and ideas that may grow into a world-saving technology. As climate change and environmental issues have been carefully portrayed as societal, governmental and individual issues, the general public are looking for ways to support and promote products and practices that are friendly to the planet.

Investing is becoming a popular way to save and grow money towards financial goals and through the development of investing platforms and the prominence and access of finance education on social media platforms, more people are considering investing their money in order to make it grow.

With this readily available information and climate issues at the forefront of society, green investing (or ESG investing) is gaining traction with investors around the world. The coronavirus pandemic has intensified discussions about the interconnectedness of finances and green technology, resulting in key trends in climate change and social unrest emerging as areas important to investors.

What is ESG Investing?

ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. These are non-financial factors that can be selected when you choose to invest your money. These factors are not mandatory but companies are increasingly disclosing information linked to their sustainability.

There is also demand from investors for these factors which is, in turn, influencing companies to disclose and ensure they look good to secure investors’ wealth.

It is key to know that there are no ESG standards that companies have to follow, therefore there is not one list for comparing. ESG factors link and can be hard to classify in one area and the factors can often be measured but sometimes do not have a monetary value.

ESG investing is similar to Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) but they are not the same. SRI has a process of screening with a specific set of criteria whereas ESG looks for a broader sense of value.


The Future of Green Technology
Mar 3, 2022



In Summary

Cleantech and climate tech are amazing areas of technology and innovation, offering up opportunities to support businesses, agriculture, health and future generations.

Green technology has seen real ebbs and flows in public interest and government support, but in 2022 it looks like green technology is only going to rise and rise through government targets to reduce the climate’s temperature growth and through the empowerment of individuals looking to invest their money where it will make an environmental and social impact to support generations to come.


References



Saturday, April 30, 2022

The Betrayal of God by Church and State


The Betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot

The Betrayal of God by Church and State

by R.E. Slater


“For me, Russia is the guardian of
Christian values.” - quote from a
Russian Orthodox Leader


It is curious that so many traditional bible commentators have added unloving words and deeds to a God of love.

Not only so, but we find these same kind of statements about God's violence over and over again in the bible throughout the Old and New Testament books and in large biblical passages speaking to God's judgments and wrath.

Further, wishing to be suitably "biblical," the American evangelical church echoes these same passages of the bible declaring "the violence of the God of old" even as it actively participates in the dismantling of American civil democracy. In place of the United State's Bill of Rights and the American Constitution today's conservative Christian religionists seek to replace these legal documents with their own less qualified, and unloving, religious drafts.

Worse, such radical American groups have become voices for Russia's Putin, for global conservative Church Dominionism, and for White Christian Nationalism, as led by the immoral and failed presidency of Trump, his fascist GOP party members, and White supremacist groups found throughout America.

So then, we might ask, "Why is it Christians acknowledge 'God as love' but then divert this truth about God's holy personage for an idol made in man's own violent image?

It is hard to charge the Christian church with its misplaced beliefs about God if it is simply repeating biblical writer's claims in the bible of an unloving God made in their own ancient, religious and cultural, assessments of God.

But where have these errant beliefs about God gotten religious man?

After 4000+ years of preaching of a violent God might we ask just where has all this violent God-talk gotten us?

Nowhere... absolutely nowhere...

More pain... more suffering...

More inequity... more injustice...

Just more church-sanctioned violence begetting more and more brutish Christian violence used by religious zealots to purge unwanteds from their lands so to steal their oil, farms, and water resources including their faith adherents.

Our most recent example of the "Church gone bad" (besides the aforementioned Trumpian evangelicalism of America) is Komrade Putin's genocidal massacre of Ukraine under the guise of impugning Nazism to the Ukrainians. All the while being encouraged by a thoroughly corrupt and power-hungry Russian Orthodoxy urging Putin forward by-right-and-by-might 

So my question stands... what comes of violence... but even more violence? Both by the State and by religion, each together united in purpose to wield Russian Imperialism and Russian doctrinal dominionism over a civilly free and sovereign populace such as the Ukrainians.

Moreover, what comes of a God of violence but endless ages of violence committed in God's name however immorally and religiously justified?

And how can a God of love be taught when so much scripture in the bible speaks to God's violence and wrath? 

Let me suggest this small observation:

"Perhaps Jesus came to show the Jewish priesthood just how wrong their unloving doctrines of God really were? That they were making the same error - now carried to extremes in today's postmodernity era - within their first century sanctimonious religious creeds and confessions even as their wicked predecessors had done before them... albeit the empires of Assyria, Babylon, and later, Persia and Rome."

Ironic isn't it?

That the God of love is violently crucified by an unloving faith of religious zealots protesting their own self-rightness by their very acts of religious paganism?

In contrast, Jesus showed love, care and compassion to all who came to Him, all-the-while strongly pronouncing anathema upon the entire unloving Jewish religious system (and upon all future religious systems built on sin and evil)....

"And what did Jesus' intolerance for unloving creeds and behaviour get Him?" The very same religious and cultural violence He had preached against....

And we wonder today WHY the Christian church is so full of self-righteous anger and violence within its piestic halls and chambers?

If anything, the church acts no differently than has its religious progenitors over the aeons before it:

Like the prophets of old who testified to man's ignoble end by violence and sword, so too may we say, "Yeah, verily, it will be so." 
Violence begets violence. Bloodshed and war begets hatred and evil. What is sowed shall be reaped a hundredfold.

If we chose to live by the sword we will die by the sword. And in Putin's case - who commits no less crimes than his ignoble line of Russian despots before him - Putin is murdering innocents in the name of God and the church showing himself and his religious beliefs to be as vain and empty as all other ways of religious men and their heinous institutions: "Unrepentent, violent, evil."

The blood of the innocent of this world, who are trying to live by love, cries out from the earth for justice and an end to violence. 
Violence is not God ordained nor God inhabited. But love is.... 
Know this, God is a God of love, goodness, and justice. Stop impugning God for what God is not. And start becoming what God is. This is the betrayal of God by man both by church and state.

R.E. Slater
April 30, 2022


* * * * * * * *



Russian President Vladimir Putin is using religion for political purposes, and Patriarch
Kirill has instrumentalized the invasion for Russian Orthodoxy’s purposes. | Photograph
by Mikhail Svetlov / Getty


The Long Holy War Behind
Putin’s Political War in Ukraine

by Paul Elie
April 21, 2022


Eastern Orthodox and Catholic leaders in the U.S. weigh in
on the Russian invasion—and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Pictured: Russian President Vladimir Putin and
Orthodox Patriarch Kirill attend a ceremony together.


In the eight weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, the war there has been interpreted in terms that are familiar from previous wars—terms that often seem to be in contradiction with one another. It is a proxy war, and it is a fight for national self-determination. It is a reprise of the Cold War, and a reset of Yalta. It is an inevitable consequence of nato expansion, and an unprovoked act of aggression by an autocrat bent on reclaiming a “greater” Russian unity that he thinks was taken by Western forces of globalization and political integration. All those ways of seeing the war are apt, but another familiar interpretation is pertinent, too. This is the view of Ukraine as a religious hot spot, where competing claims to a holy city, Kyiv, can be traced back hundreds of years, and where religious commitments and rivalries are deeply enmeshed in the society.

Since March 6th, when Kirill, the patriarch of Moscow and primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, gave an incendiary homily likening Russia’s invasion to a culture war against the West, plenty of questions have been asked about his role and his motives. Is he a tool of Vladimir Putin or Putin’s spiritual adviser? Is his vision of “Russky Mir” (“Russian World”) the basis for Putin’s war or just a rhetorical glaze applied to it? How can a religious leader with any integrity support so brutal a war, and might another leader—Pope Francis, with whom Kirill entered into dialogue in 2016—persuade him to withdraw his support and urge Putin to stand down?

Leaders of religious communities in the U.S. with histories in the region have some answers. Throughout Lent—the penitential season prior to Easter, which for the Orthodox is this Sunday—Ukrainian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and Ukrainian Greek Catholic bishops, metropolitans, clergy, and scholars have been consumed with the issues of the war. At conferences, on Zoom, and on Public Orthodoxy, a Web site hosted by the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, they have engaged in arguments that are often abstruse, but the underlying feeling is simple and shared: Anyone paying attention should have seen this coming. At a conference at Georgetown University, Metropolitan Borys Gudziak, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic archbishop based in Philadelphia, who also serves as the president of the Ukrainian Catholic University, in Lviv, said, “There are so many precedents, and there are so many trends, that were under way for such a long time.” He listed several long-term developments that he saw as having enabled an eventual Russian invasion, from the lack of any Nuremberg-like reckoning with the evils of Soviet Communism to the personal friendships that Western politicians of all stripes have cultivated with Putin. “There are so many explicit expressions of intention that our surprise is actually a result of us not wanting to hear—not hearing,” he said.

Last week, on Fox News, George Demacopoulos, a theologian at Fordham who has been honored as an archon—a distinguished Christian—by Bartholomew I, the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, declared that “Putin is an instrumentalizer of religion.” Demacopoulos meant that, rather than looking to religion as a guide to action, Putin (who is Russian Orthodox) attacked Ukraine and then invoked Christianity to justify the invasion as an act of holy war. At a March 18th rally in Moscow, Putin paraphrased from the Gospel of John to exhort the self-sacrifice that his war against “genocide” in Ukraine would require of many Russians: “And this is where the words from the Scriptures come to my mind: ‘There is no greater love than if someone gives his soul for his friends.’ ”

There’s no question that Putin is using religion for political purposes, yet it is also true that Kirill has instrumentalized the invasion for Russian Orthodoxy’s purposes. Eastern Orthodox and Catholic leaders in this country thought it improbable that Kirill would stand back from this war, because they see the war as an extension of the Russian Orthodox Church’s efforts in Ukraine. For two decades, the R.O.C. has used state money and propaganda to assert itself in that country. Through his full-throated support for the war for a greater Russia, these leaders say, Kirill is militating against their own transnational Orthodox project, which has been under way since the fall of Communism.

Ukraine is where, more than a thousand years ago, a warrior prince took up Christianity to marry a daughter of the patriarch of Constantinople, and then compelled thousands of others to convert as he had. The conversion of St. Vladimir—also known as St. Volodymyr—is claimed as the foundational act of Christianity in the region, to which both Russian Orthodoxy and Orthodoxy in Ukraine trace their roots, and Ukraine has been religiously controverted territory ever since. José Casanova, a sociologist of religion at Georgetown, with Ukrainian family ties, sets out the modern religious history of the country in a recent essay. The historic center of Orthodoxy is Constantinople—present-day Istanbul—and the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople is recognized by other patriarchs (there are nine in all) as primus inter pares, or first among equals. In the nineteenth century, national churches that were allied with Constantinople but autocephalous (each with its own head) became “the norm throughout the Orthodox world,” Casanova writes, but Ukraine, which had not gained national sovereignty, remained mainly Orthodox but dividedly so, with the west in the sphere of Constantinople and the east in that of Moscow, due in part to a grant of authority that the ecumenical patriarch gave to the Moscow patriarch in 1686—and which has been contested repeatedly since then.

After the Russian Revolution, in 1917, the U.S.S.R. suppressed all churches. When Ukraine declared independence, as the Soviet Union dissolved, in 1991, and religion was freely permitted in civil society again, many Ukrainians sought to worship in churches with local or national ties rather than in those with ties to Moscow, and the new nation claimed many formerly Russian Orthodox churches as its own. In response, the renewed Russian Orthodox Church—then led by Patriarch Alexy II, with Kirill as its director of external relations—sought to reassert itself in Ukraine, using state funds to build several thousand new churches there. The R.O.C. wound up as the Orthodox church with the most property but the fewest adherents; Ukraine, a country with thirty-five million Orthodox Christians, was still without an autocephalous church.

As Russia’s 2014 occupation of parts of the Donbas and annexation of Crimea—regions where Russian ethnicity and Orthodoxy are robust—escalated the Russia-Ukraine fight, the conflict in Ukraine between Russian and Eastern Orthodoxy was also growing. Bartholomew I had attended Pope Francis’s inauguration in Rome, in 2013, becoming the first ecumenical patriarch ever to attend that papal event. Then, in 2015, his ideas were featured in the Pope’s encyclical on climate change, “Laudato si’,” auguring an alliance of the two leaders and their churches on “care for our common home.” Meanwhile, a pan-Orthodox council was being planned for 2016, and Bartholomew signalled an intention to eventually grant autocephaly to the church in Ukraine, aware that Kirill—now the patriarch of Moscow—would see the act as an encroachment on R.O.C. territory.

Kirill, too, was strategizing. Capping two decades of negotiations between Rome and Moscow, he met with Francis—the first such meeting in a thousand years—in Havana, and saw to it that their joint declaration referred to plans for a more independent Ukrainian church as a “schism” violating “canonical norms”—a clear rebuke of Bartholomew. And Kirill deepened long-standing relationships with Christian fundamentalists from the United States, making common cause with them on issues of gender and sexuality, especially. When the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church was held on the island of Crete in July, 2016, the R.O.C., along with a number of other national churches, did not participate. After the council, several dozen Eastern Orthodox leaders who had attended drafted a hundred-and-ten-page document framing a common “social ethos” in terms associated with the West—denouncing nationalism and racism, and affirming liberal democratic ideals of freedom and equality. “What we’re seeing on full display” in the R.O.C.’s support for Putin “is a kind of rejection” of that ethos, “a kind of religious nationalism that in many ways is cancelling out the other,” Aristotle Papanikolaou, an Orthodox theologian at Fordham, who helped draft the document, said at the Georgetown conference. “Regardless of how the other Orthodox churches see it, it’s out there, and thank God it’s out there, because it’s at least a prophetic witness for a different way of thinking and living the Orthodox faith.” Finally, in December, 2018, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was established at the St. Sophia Cathedral, in Kyiv. The next month, Bartholomew recognized it. Kirill declared the new church illegitimate and accused Bartholomew of “violating all rules.”

All this maneuvering, José Casanova writes, has resulted in “three competing ‘national’ churches”: one loyal to the ecumenical patriarch; one loyal to the Moscow patriarch; and a third, much smaller one that is loyal to the Pope. In polls conducted in 2019 and 2021, between a third and just over half of Ukrainians identified with the new church, and between a fifth and a quarter with the Moscow-allied church; others identified as “simply Orthodox,” as Ukrainian Greek Catholics, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, or Muslims, or claimed no religion. Yet the striking element was how well all these communities (the Russian Orthodox excepted) were working together. Given Russian Orthodoxy’s long sway over Ukraine and the historic pattern of religion in the region—a dominant state-allied church in each country, and a limited presence for other churches and other faiths—the religiously diverse post-Communist Ukraine, Casanova says, was a “sociological miracle.”

After the Russian invasion, Ukraine’s religious diversity has been subsumed into national unity. Whatever the war’s outcome, the biggest loser, in religious terms, will almost certainly be the Russian Orthodox Church. Last month, nearly three hundred R.O.C. priests and deacons signed an open letter in which they denounced the “fratricidal war in Ukraine” and called for an “immediate ceasefire.” (Those church leaders, however, are a tiny minority of the forty thousand clerics in the R.O.C.) Ukrainians who worshipped in churches tied to Moscow may sour on a religious leader who has lent holy purpose to Russia’s bombing of their country and its killing of their neighbors, and whose stature has been diminished forever by those acts. During services in Moscow on April 10th, Kirill gave a long discourse on the exercise of power, and concluded with a prayer: “May the Lord help us all in this difficult time for our Fatherland to unite, including around the authorities,” in order to “have true solidarity and the ability to repel external and internal enemies” for the sake of “goodness, truth, and love.”

But, if it’s clear that Kirill is not going to waver in his support of Putin, it is less clear what his Eastern Orthodox counterparts can do about it. They have encouraged the ouster of the R.O.C. from the World Council of Churches, and lauded the suspension of Kirill’s deputy, Metropolitan Hilarion, from the theology faculty at the University of Fribourg. Some have openly supported Ukraine’s effort to defend itself militarily and have spoken of it in terms not unlike those that Putin used last month: as a Christ-like act, a sacrifice, as Borys Gudziak has said, “for something that is greater than their very lives.” Mostly, though, they have been forced to look on from a distance, having no more power to stop the carnage than seemingly anyone else.

- TNY


* * * * * * * *



Vladimir Putin with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox
Church, in 2020. (Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin Pool/Sputnik/Reuters)


How Putin’s invasion became
a holy war for Russia

by Jack Jenkins
March 21, 2022


Two days before he launched a bloody invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin sat alone in front of a camera and delivered a rambling hour-long address. It outlined the ideological justification for what would ultimately become his “special military action” in Ukraine — an invasion that, as far as Putin was concerned, had more than a little to do with religion.

“Ukraine is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space,” he said.

Two days later, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, spoke to military leaders and published a statement in honor of Defender of the Fatherland Day. The cleric congratulated Putin for his “high and responsible service to the people of Russia,” declared that the Russian Orthodox Church has “always striven to make a significant contribution to the patriotic education of compatriots,” and lauded military service as “an active manifestation of evangelical love for neighbors.” Within hours, bombs began to rain down on Ukraine.

This religious ramp-up to war was the culmination of a decade-long effort to wrap Russia’s geopolitical ambitions in faith — specifically, the flowing vestments of the Russian Orthodox Church. Fusing religion, nationalism, a defense of conservative values that likens same-sex marriage to Nazism, and a version of history that seeks to define Ukraine and other nearby nations as mere subsets of a greater “Russkiy mir,” or Russian world, the partnership of Putin and Kirill laid the ideological and theological groundwork for the invasion.

But as explosions continue to rock Ukraine, some in the church are beginning to resist the religious appeals of Putin and Kirill, pushing back on efforts to recast naked Russian aggression as something that sounds a whole lot like a holy war.

The partnership of Putin, 69, and Kirill, 75, began in about 2012, when the politician was reelected for a third presidential term. It was then that Putin began embracing the Russian Orthodox Church — not necessarily as a point of personal conversion so much as a mechanism for political gain, something foreign policy experts often call “soft power.”

The relationship between the president and the prelate escalated rapidly. Kirill, allegedly a former KGB staffer like Putin, hailed the president’s leadership of the Russian Federation as a “miracle of God.” Meanwhile, Putin worked to frame Russia as a defender of conservative Christian values, which usually meant opposing abortion, feminism and LGBTQ rights. The pitch proved popular among a broad swath of conservative Christian leaders, including prominent voices within the American religious right: In February 2014, evangelist Franklin Graham offered cautious praise for Putin in an editorial for Decision magazine, celebrating the Russian president’s support for a law barring dissemination of “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” — a statute which, activists argued, effectively banned children from accessing media that presents LGBTQ identities and relationships in a positive or normalizing light. Graham would travel the next year to Russia, where he met with both Kirill and Putin, and told local media that “millions of Americans would like [Putin] to come and run for president of the United States.”

By 2017, Politico was already describing Russia as “the leader of the global Christian right.”

The impact of this religious diplomacy was even greater in Eastern European nations that once belonged to the Soviet Union, where the Russian Orthodox Church and its allies still enjoy outsize influence. When Moldova sought stronger ties with Europe, Orthodox clerics operating underneath the Moscow Patriarchate campaigned against the move, with one bishop telling the New York Times in 2016, “For me, Russia is the guardian of Christian values.” Things were similar in Montenegro, where the Serbian Orthodox Church has a close relationship with the Russian patriarchate; priests there advocated against the nation’s plans to join NATO, and last year Russian Orthodox leaders lambasted Montenegro’s leaders for supporting “eurointegration.”

Kirill has long perpetuated a version of history that insists many countries that made up the former Soviet Union are one people with a common religious origin: namely, the 10th-century baptism of Prince Vladimir I of Kiev, known as St. Vladimir. It’s often paired with a geopolitical (and geo-religious) vision that hundreds of Orthodox theologians and scholars recently decried as a heresy: a “transnational Russian sphere or civilization, called Holy Russia or Holy Rus’, which includes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (and sometimes Moldova and Kazakhstan), as well as ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people throughout the world.”

It’s a Russian world with Moscow as its political center, Kyiv as the spiritual heart, and Kirill as its religious leader.

“May God grant that the Moscow Patriarchate, which unites us not on the political level, not on the economic, but the spiritual level, might be preserved to take pastoral care of all the ethnoses united in the great historical Rus,’ ” Kirill said in 2018.

But Russia’s religious and political arguments hit a wall in Ukraine, where protests — aided, in some instances, by Orthodox clerics — thrust off a pro-Russian government in 2013 and 2014, triggering Putin’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. Frustration with Russia boiled over into the religious realm, exacerbating an existing divide between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Constantinople: In 2018, many of Ukraine’s Orthodox Christians declared independence from the Moscow Patriarchate. Kirill refused to acknowledge the new body, but the Orthodox Church of Constantinople, led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, recognized it. So dangerous was this schism to Russia’s interests that Kremlin-linked hackers responded by reportedly infiltrating the email accounts of Bartholomew’s aides.

And then came 2022, when soft power morphed into support for outright war in Ukraine. Shortly after the invasion began, Kirill issued a statement making a vague call for peace and asking all parties to limit civilian casualties. But Archbishop Daniel, head of Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, which is loyal to Kyiv, decried the statement as the words of a “religious politician” and rejected Kirill’s appeal to a “common centuries-old history” rooted in St. Vladimir’s baptism.

“To say that we share the same ethnic background and what have you — I think it’s a mistake,” Daniel said. “It’s an incorrect statement. And I wish the religious leaders would correct that terminology [when Kirill is] utilizing it.”

Kirill’s rhetoric has only escalated in the days since. He referred to Russia’s opponents in Ukraine as “evil forces,” and delivered a sermon on March 6 in which he suggested the invasion was part of a larger “metaphysical” struggle against immoral Western (read: liberal) values.

“Today there is a test for the loyalty to this new world order, a kind of pass to that ‘happy’ world, the world of excess consumption, the world of false ‘freedom,’ ” Kirill said. “Do you know what this test is? The test is very simple and at the same time terrible — it is the gay pride parade.”

It’s a distillation of an argument Kirill has pushed for years, contrasting Western values with those of the purported Russian world. For Kirill, this is often rooted in anti-LGBTQ sentiment: He has suggested that acceptance of same-sex marriage is a “dangerous sign of the apocalypse,” and once blamed the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group on efforts to escape “godless” Western societies that embrace gay pride parades.

As for his take on the ongoing conflict, Kirill reportedly has presented an image of the Virgin Mary to Viktor Zolotov, leader of the Russian national guard.

“Let this image inspire young soldiers who take the oath, who embark on the path of defending the Fatherland,” Kirill said.

But after years of wielding faith as a tool for accruing power, Kirill’s support for the war — tacit or otherwise — may end up costing him influence this go-round. To be sure, some of the pushback has come from expected corners: Kirill’s rhetoric triggered an immediate response from Orthodox Christians whose leadership is based in Kyiv, with one cleric dismissing Kirill as “discredited” and likening Putin to the Antichrist.

Yet calls for change are also coming from inside the manse. Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev, who oversees the Russian Orthodox faithful in Ukraine, immediately decried the invasion as “a disaster” and a “repetition of the sin of Cain, who killed his own brother out of envy.” Many of his priests in the country have since stopped commemorating Kirill during worship, and some even asked Onuphry to entertain breaking away from the Russian Orthodox Church — much to the chagrin of the patriarchate.

Outside Ukraine, more than 280 Russian Orthodox priests — most of whom operate within Russia — recently signed a petition condemning the “fratricidal” invasion and emphasizing Ukraine’s right to self-determination. One of the signers was later arrested in Russia after he preached a sermon criticizing the war. Authorities reportedly charged him with “discrediting the use of the Armed Forces.”

Meanwhile, the archbishop of Russian Orthodox churches in Western Europe has publicly implored Kirill to raise his voice with Russian authorities against the “monstrous and senseless war.” He also rejected the characterization of the conflict as a “metaphysical” battle.

“With all the respect that is due to you, and from which I do not depart, but also with infinite pain, I must bring to your attention that I cannot subscribe to such a reading of the Gospel,” read the archbishop’s letter.

And at least one Russian Orthodox church in Amsterdam has made moves to leave the church because of Kirill’s stance on Ukraine, hoping to affiliate with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. This despite an intimidating visit from a Russian archbishop: The cleric, who arrived in a car from the Russian Embassy, told priests that the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Foreign Ministry were keeping an eye on their church.

“We cannot go back on our decision to distance ourselves from Patriarch Kirill,” read a statement from the church’s priests. “Our consciences will not allow that.”

It remains to be seen whether these and other efforts will push Kirill to deviate from years of operating in lockstep with Putin. The Russian president’s drive to continue the war remains strong, as does his embrace of religious rhetoric: At a rally Friday, Putin praised Russia’s troops in a way that echoed Kirill and paraphrased the Bible, saying, “There is no greater love than giving up one’s soul for one’s friends.”

But religious pressure on Kirill doesn’t appear to be letting up either. When Pope Francis held a meeting with Kirill last week to discuss the conflict, he made a point of warning against trying to justify armed invasion, expansion or empire with a Christian cross — something the Catholic Church knows something about.

“Once upon a time there was also talk in our churches of holy war or just war,” Francis told Kirill, according to the Vatican press office. “Today we cannot speak like this.”

— Religion News Service