Former President George W. Bush’s administration gets the credit for branding the “faith-based initiative,” but President Obama’s team at the Environmental Protection Agency has taken the idea to a new level, working with faith communities to fight climate change.
“The faith community has been very engaged in climate change discussions for many years, and they have been very active,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said. “Clearly, religious leaders across the board, I think you know about Pope Francis, but others have really been speaking out about the moral obligation of acting on climate,” she said.
But it’s not pie in the sky talk, she added, explaining that the effort begun in January and adopted by dozens of churches and faith institutions is a realistic program to cut methane emissions by curbing food waste.
McCarthy’s “Food Stewards” program targeted at churches, mosques and temples has a simple goal: making use of the one-third of all food purchased and thrown away, where it rots in landfills and creates methane, a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas.
The program encourages better use of food in church programs and events, such as weddings, but also provides ideas for faith leaders to use in reaching out to food producers, restaurants and grocery stores to grab food still good but headed to dumps.
McCarthy said the EPA has been giving “Energy Star” conservation tips to churches, and saw an opening in helping them pursue their humanitarian mission with a global warming angle.
“We thought it would be a nice opportunity to talk to them about another effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in this case methane, by looking at how they work with their community to look at diverting what otherwise would have been wasted food to food pantries and working with their local grocery stores to look at how they purchased food so they don’t waste, and what may be not sellable in the market but still be usable gets diverted and working with restaurants and others,” said the administration’s top environmentalist.
“That allows them to talk to their communities and expand the work they are doing with soup kitchens, with homeless shelters, with food pantries and others. We’re just providing them information that allows them to do what they want to do anyway, which is to figure out how to address the poverty in their community. But they can do it in a way that also has large climate benefits.”
Buzz Aldrin wants five-nation project to Mars
Former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, is calling on President Obama to create a “United Nations” type of initiative to build a manned station on Mars.
Aldrin, promoting his latest book, a life lessons page-turner titled No Dream is Too High, told the Washington Examiner that the effort should include Europe, Japan, China and Russia, and that the U.S. should take the lead.
“The U.S. should come up with the concept,” he said. He even suggested a name: “The International Lunar Development Authority.” He compared it to past U.S. efforts to create world bodies such as the League of Nations and the United Nations.
“We seem to come up with these concepts,” said the nation’s top space cheerleader.
His plan is for a universal station, shared by the five powers, and initially tested on the moon before being moved to Mars. “The moon is a little closer, so if we know what we want to do on Mars … we could learn how to do it at the moon, make changes before we put similar things on Mars,” he said.
“Everyone could share the use of that design in getting what they want to do,” Aldrin said.
That, he concluded, would cut down on wasteful and expensive competition. “It is much better to be friends.”
Yik Yak, featuring the ‘fake Obama’
Like any good dad, Homeland Secretary Jeh Johnson likes to check in on his college kids when he can. But unlike any regular dad, he comes with lots of baggage — oodles of security, even his own eight-car motorcade.
Johnson recently recalled visiting his son when he was a freshman in California. His trip was unannounced. As he pulled up with his police entourage, Johnson joked, “You hear lots of toilets flush, and lots of doors slam. Eventually somebody peeks out and says, ‘Oh, your dad is here, now I understand.'”
His daughter, at another California school, got him to leave his security down the street. But the entourage still drew eyes.
“When I hit the campus, Yik Yak lit up,” said Johnson, referring to the anonymous college app.
He recalled the traffic on the site:
“Hey. There are two Secret Service agents on the campus, what up?”
“Obama must be here … Malia is here.”
Eventually, said Johnson, who bears a similarity to the president, “somebody figured it out. ‘It’s the fake Obama.'”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
