 Well, welcome to this year's Interfaith Climate Conference. Just out of curiosity, how many of you were here last, not here, but at this event last year? OK, good. Well, those that were there, remember that the speaker, Kathleen Dean Moore asked us, do we have the moral responsibility to preserve the beauty and life-giving systems of this planet that we call home? That was her question. And I think we, not surprisingly, answered in the affirmative that there is a moral responsibility. This year, the question perhaps is posed a little bit differently, maybe more specifically. How shall we live? How shall we live? Given that we understand that ours is a world of complex systems, we don't even talk about globalization anymore because we understand that our world is profoundly globally interconnected. And thus, our actions, that is, our individual and our collective actions, impact the physical world and all the peoples of the planet. So how should we live? How should we live, given that we understand these things? This year's theme is climate justice, rising to the challenge with faith, love, and hope. Perhaps not words that enter our public vocabulary, but words that people of faith use on a routine basis as part of their liturgies and remembrances. But perhaps I could suggest a slightly different, a slightly altered way of thinking about this theme. Perhaps I'd suggest rising to the challenge with faithfulness, with a vision to name our neighbor and proactively love him or her, and with hope. Not mere optimism, but an unshakable understanding that if we plant seeds of faithfulness today, a fruit of healing will come. Faithfulness, faithfulness looks beyond results to do what's right. It means taking a long walk in the same direction. It's not just faith in a vague sense, but it's faithfulness to continue that walk, even if the results seem distant, and sometimes they do. Love, knowing that in such a connected world that we must know our neighbors, we must know our neighbors near and far. The question has always been, who is my neighbor? And it must be answered by each generation as we understand the impacts of our lifestyles and we do. Love suggests that we approach our neighbor with that very thing we want for ourselves, to live in peace, to raise our families, to think about a better life for our children. And as we understand in our globally interconnected world the plight of our neighbors who live with the externalities of our behavior, whether it be in the tar sands or in North Dakota or South America, from where our oil is extracted, we must change our lifestyles as an act of love. Hope, you know, hope is not optimism. Hope is a commitment to engage in symbolic acts and tell stories. Symbolic acts, I didn't say mere symbolism. I said symbolic acts. Acts that in the doing of them embody a principle. They live what we believe the future to be in the here and now. But symbolic acts also point in a direction that we want to go. And then we tell stories about them. Why do I live this way? Why do I choose this act? Why do I go in this direction? And our hope is, as a narrative people, which we all are, a people of stories, a people who are compelled to act through the stories of our neighbors and friends and loved ones, our hope is grounded in that by living and telling we will bring about that change. Faithfulness, love of our neighbor, wherever that neighbor is found, and hope, engaging in those symbolic acts that live in the now and point to a collective future that we all desire. Thanks for coming today. Thanks for being part of a discussion of these issues. May we all have an opportunity today to find a spot where we can change, where we can grow. And I think our speakers will certainly help us expand our understanding of the impacts of our lives on our neighbors. Just a few logistical items. Please feel free to get up as you need. Find refreshments. You can leave through that door, that in the next room over. I think the restrooms are up on this side of the building, out this door. I'm sorry, they're that side of the building. I had north, it must be south. Okay, do you want to get that wrong? Just to point out that Davis Media Access is recording the sessions. And so if you could just kind of avoid unnecessary noise like rock us a plot after I finish, for example. Just kidding. And then we'd invite all of you to stay for a vegetarian lunch with vegan and gluten-free options before the afternoon workshop. There should be no reason to leave early today. It's raining, just stay put. Gluten-free snacks too. But if you, or when you do leave, make sure that you don't leave without filling out this evaluation, which is mostly, which is about the morning session, we really value these evaluations to help us craft a better program for the coming years. So thanks again for being here. So I'm Lorraine Vischer. Some of you know me. My former life is a school teacher. Now I'm a folk singer. That's my new title. I'd like to sing for you this morning a song called Keepers of the Earth. And I would encourage you, as I get towards the second or third time through, to please join me on the chorus. I think it's right there in your program. I think I'm a little loud here. And you're gonna get a chance to join me again a little bit at the end of our time here this morning also. So you'll have a couple of chances to sing with me. We welcome the elements of creation. Please join me in the response. We give thanks for the earth and her creatures. We acknowledge our complicity. In the causes of climate change. We recognize our responsibility as people of action and reflection. We pray for all nations to honor and extend their commitments made at the Paris climate negotiations. We join hands in a spirit of humility to refresh and clean the air, to purify the waters for our children, to safeguard plants and woodlands. We join hands in a spirit of determination as advocates for peace and justice as builders of a planetary community, as protectors of the beauty of each place. We join hands in a spirit of hope as lovers of the birds and flowers, as companions of the animals, as singers of the songs of the heavens. We join hands in a spirit of gratitude. We commit to fostering a peace within which all can flourish. We commit to preserving our good earth. We commit to protecting all people, creatures and plants. We join hands in the strength of unity as the people have spoken, so may it be. Good morning. It's a great pleasure to be here at the Interfaith Climate Conference. A little bit about myself. I'm a third year Environmental Science and Management major, specializing in soils and biogeochemistry at EC Davis. As a freshman though, I was a Neurobiology major preparing to dedicate my future to meticulous research that I had at the time knew absolutely nothing about and I thought that's what I wanted to do. However, one of my general class requirements was to take a geology course where actually one of the main components was a case study on the Sacramento San Joaquin River Delta. I got to learn about its river ecology and how the environment around this region like influenced its character. And I got to learn how as humans we utilize this as a resource. But not only how we've utilized it, but also degraded it. We have destroyed its natural chemistry. We have afflicted the native species. We've introduced non-native species. The list goes on. We've degraded the water quality and shaken up the countless stakeholders that have invested in and learned to be dependent on this resource. But that's why it's interesting, the fact that all of these characters come together to influence one another. Interconnection of these hydrologic, geologic and even social factors influence one another and means that not one piece of this picture will function sustainably when the other one is not in flux with each other. Gradually I knew I wanted to understand how all of these entwined together and how one physical resource had generated such a huge social and philosophical and scientific contention. I remember sitting at Starbucks at a table writing a paper about all of this and realizing something. I picked up my phone and I texted my mom and I said, mom, I have to save the water. This is what I'm gonna do, I need to do this and it was really exciting because I had a newfound purpose that kind of changed the trajectory of my college career. The next couple of years and up until today, it's become quite apparent of course that the crisis of the River Delta is part of a much larger story. All of the earth has been touched, changed and even some pieces sadly and irreparably damaged. In our arrogance, humans have declared sovereignty over the earth itself and we expect it to bend to our short-sighted winds but that just isn't the case. The Delta that I studied and its precious water are not the only things in danger. In fact, the climate as a whole is changing and quite significantly. We're seeing increased frequency and intensity of droughts and wildfires and floods and species diversity loss and with those come the repercussions of people groups all over the planet. The story of climate change is not just a story about a changing and a burden environment but a story of a burdened humanity full of our brothers and sisters. This conference for me is a way to engage in that story and that conversation about climate change. It's an opportunity to engage in it, not just to hear each other but to listen to each other's wisdom and experiences not just to consume what we're listening to but to really be transformed by it. I'm absolutely so thrilled today that Franciscan sister Joan Brown is here to speak and share that side of the conversation. She's the executive director for New Mexico's Interfaith Power and Light, organization committed to caring for the earth in response to climate changing and she's an Oxfam sister ambassador of the planet dedicating efforts towards alleviating poverty and stimulating livelihood for millions of people. She attended both the Copenhagen and the Paris Climate Talks and was one of only 12 people to be selected by the White House's champion of change program for being a faith leader and protecting the environment and communities against climate change. As a journalist and photographer, environmental caretaker and justice advocate, Joan shares this conversation of climate change with those who hold the desire to listen and respond. I hope that as we hear from her, we gain a deeper understanding of how each of us fit into this story. I hope that we may be transformed by her experiences and her knowledge and walk away in greater unity than when we arrived. I pray that her infectious hope of humanity, her kindred love of the earth and her deeply moving faith in God challenge us and embolden us to rise to the challenge of achieving climate justice with a hope, a love, and a faith of our own. Thank you and please welcome Joan Brown. Thank you, Katelyn. That was a lovely introduction and it's wonderful to hear about your life and your work as well. And it leads right into our presentation this morning that I'd like to share. And actually your love of the water and care of the delta and the river around here and all that is part of your lifeblood is the way I'd like to begin, but with an event that happened this week. And I think we might need the lights off in order to see this. So on Thursday there was a monumental kind of event that happened. The indigenous activist Bertha Caseras from Honduras was assassinated and she had worked for decades on her river in her place in her community of Rio Blanco and the river Guacarraque to prevent it from being dammed for hydro electricity and energy and use for extractive industries. So I'd like to, and she's also the winner of the Goldman environmental prize. So in her memory, I'd like to dedicate this presentation this morning and I'd like for us to just in a very special way take a moment to honor her by honoring the place in which we all live. So with that I'd just like to invite you and this picture was taken of her about two years or a year and a half ago at a meeting in the Vatican called by the Vatican for organizers working on the environment and she had a meeting with Pope Francis. So I'd like to invite everyone to stand for just one brief moment. And as Bertha was very connected and rooted to her place and she loved it deeply, we all know that we are not going to care for, protect anything unless we really have an emotional commitment to it and a deep love. So for a moment I'd just like to put your hands by your sides and remember, hold a place that you love. It might be by a tree, it might be the river and just find yourself in that place that you love with the natural world. Hold all of the people that you love in that place. And then I'd like you if you can just to reach down to your feet and just bend over. And as you're bending over pull from that place the ground that your feet are rooted in all of the love of that place and pull it up through your body and to your heart and then I'd like to invite you to raise your hands and extending that love to all of the earth, to all of your loved ones, to your children, your grandchildren, to those brothers and sisters that you do not know that are affected greatly by climate change in Bangladesh and Africa and in Berta's beloved Honduras. I want you to give gratitude for all of the gifts of the earth and for this love, unconditional love that we are given by God, by the Holy One, by Allah, by Buddha and then place your hands again on your hearts, centering yourself and you may sit down now. And this is the place out of which we will come this day is this great love that motivates us and calls us in this centering place. And I begin with this embodied prayer and actually we can have the lights on again now because we're not gonna have any more slides till towards the end of the program. So maybe if somebody could get the lights, okay? So I began with this embodied prayer because the call to climate justice rising to the challenge with faith, hope and love is embodied. We are the earth, we are part of the earth. The creator has put through all that is a sacredness and this love that we live out and this is about our story and our story comes from that specific place and we all have a story out of which we come from and it is rooted in our bodies. And I was so thrilled, Pope Francis had this one quote that I just loved before the encyclical came out, Laudato si, praise be on care of our common home and he included this quote in the document and I'd like to read it because it's just amazing to me that a world faith leader would speak in these terms. All of us are linked by unseen bonds and together form a kind of universal family, a sublime communion which fills us with a sacred affectionate and humble respect. God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment and the extinction of species as a painful disfigurement. So we feel the desertification as a physical ailment and extinction of species as a painful disfigurement. So we are not separated from what we are experiencing with climate change, with the water pollution, with greenhouse gases, it is our bodies are connected and what a wonderful thing for Pope Francis to remind us of that, a spiritual leader to remind us of that or call us back into that, into our bodies and all this holy like that. So these stories are very important and so I'd like to begin by just telling a little bit of my story very shortly and then I'm gonna move into some more about Laudato si and make some Franciscan connections and I'm gonna close with some pictures from the Paris UN climate change meeting, conference of parties 21 or I'll be referring to it as COP 21. So to begin, what we love, we will work for and we'll care for and I come from a farm in Kansas near the Bluestem Prairie Grasslands, a dry land farm and my brother's still farmed there and a very simple small farm and I love that place and we love that farm and in spite of the difficulties and challenges we love that place. I mean, having been through droughts, through hailstorms, through years with no crops, with wondering what are we gonna do in the winter when there's no money coming in, yet we love that place and the loving of that place was very, very linked in my childhood to my spiritual tradition as Catholic and our small parish, St. Joseph's Parish. We had Rogation days, we had, we had, you know, processions, we had May crownings, we had dropping of flower petals for Corpus Christi. We had walks to the cemetery, which is a mile away in the bitter cold of November for all souls day connecting us to the ancestors, to all of the seasons. At Christmas we walked with candles in the cold and incense. Our farming community rooted on the land in this place that we love deeply was deeply, deeply linked to ritual, to prayer and to our faith and deep spirituality embedded in our bodies and souls and that is really, really important. Those are two things that have formed me and I think are important as we move forward with addressing climate change and living in this crisis moment. Now the third area that I think is really important that I learned early on was a call to justice. Now I was given a sister when I was six years old and she was born October 12th but she didn't come home to our family until Christmas day and her name is Carol and my sister Carol is Down syndrome and she has taught me many, many wise lessons along the way and at an early age my father who was a simple farmer who barely finished high school would recruit me to go with him like to the state capital and other places to fight for education for her, for busing, to school and all of these things because it was at a time when people like my sister Carol were not so integrated into the community or maybe even thought to be valued. So I had an early training in advocacy and justice but I had another training as well and that was from the wisdom of my sister whose verbal skills are quite limited and so I remember specifically one time so she's learned to do this. If she's in a group and people aren't listening she'll say excuse me, excuse me. So there was one time when I was with some friends or family and she was sitting next to me and we were talking and talking and Carol kept tapping me on the shoulder excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, excuse me and we continued to talk and she finally said excuse me, excuse me, excuse me you are not listening to me. Excuse me, excuse me, you are not listening to me. So that was a very important lesson for me and I believe that our earth has been saying excuse me, excuse me, you're not listening to me and I believe the creatures and some of those extinct species have been saying excuse me, excuse me, you're not listening to me and the poor island nations and the people of Bangladesh and the farmers in Africa and our brothers and sisters in Honduras and the indigenous brothers and sisters have been saying excuse me, excuse me you're not listening to me and the scientists have been saying excuse me, excuse me, you're not listening to me and the children and future generations have been saying excuse me, excuse me you are not listening to me and I believe that Pope Francis's Laudato si, praise be on care of our common home is a document that was put forth to us as a gift for all people as he says in the introduction with him saying excuse me, excuse me you people of faith of all traditions and people in general have not been listening I think it's a wake up call it's a call inviting us to listen so we might say well why aren't we listening why don't we listen and in my work as executive director of New Mexico Interfaith Power and Light I hear all kinds of reasons I hear oh it's too late it's not gonna make any difference anyway, oh climate change is too big my little part won't help I'm too old and I'm so glad those younger folk are gonna deal with this I'm not sure that climate change even exists why should I be concerned about it my actions won't make any difference I'm involved in too many other issues I just don't have time for this and then one that I heard from a young person not too long ago oh I don't wanna go there that would make my day a real downer and my friends and me we don't wanna have downer days so these are a few you have your own they're all there they're all real but we need to not push them aside we need to embrace them and we need to move on and go forth and that's what Pope Francis in Laudato Si is telling us and he's telling us that we need to do this we're invited to do this with great joy and wonder and beauty and he says in the beginning the document he said rather than seeing the world as a problem to be solved the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise so he's placing all of this this crisis moment what we're addressing in a spiritual place in a place of the human spirit the human soul of what we love it goes on to say that experience of nature is a magnificent book out of which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of infinite beauty and goodness and this spiritual stance is really really important a few weeks ago I was in Tucson giving a presentation and at one point some young people from the university who were part of a class came into the panel we were having on what faith communities are doing to address climate change and we just invited them to have some dialogue and this one young man said something to me that I just thought was so wise and startling to me I mean I believe it but he was just coming up with this he said you know this climate change is so big and our issues are so large and we need to create a movement to address them but he said you know faith and our spirituality is really important because you know when you don't have money when everything is against you when you have all these challenges you can go to your faith and to your spirituality and you'll get through otherwise you can't stick it out over the long haul over the long term we need he said faith and spirituality to create this climate movement to address our challenges I thought that was amazing very very wise so moving into Laudato Si I think it's important to understand this document that's set within the canticle of Francis of Assisi and it begins in the very beginning praise be to you my Lord for sister mother earth who sustains and governs us and I don't have time today to go into it but I would invite reflection on that mother earth who governs us because we don't act that way live that way and it's very significant but this is a beautiful poem a canticle a love song so to speak it transforms us to see that everything is brother and sister in a new world paradigm a kinship that was revolutionary Francis was putting forth that's very significant but the other thing is we would think oh Francis must have been in ecstasy when he wrote this he saw these connections how beautiful wrong this was one year before Francis died he was basically blind his body was full of wounds some say now he probably had leprosy his brothers his community were in shambles he shook his head and said did I make a big mistake he thought God had failed him or that he had failed God have I given my life to the wrong thing he was ready to die and he basically said I am ready to go if this is it just take me I'm ready to go I'm in your hands but then he awoke and he had these words of this canticle he awoke from this dark night of the soul so to speak and had this canticle and I believe that using this canticle within the encyclical Laudato Si has a parallel to our moment which I believe we can also say is a dark night a dark night where we see more and more effects of environmental degradation climate change our suffering brothers and sisters economic disparity many things that are not that we want to shy away from that are dark and yet in the midst of this we're given this document and not just for Catholics but for everybody on the planet and the pope even uses some sacred documents some texts from some of these other traditions so I think that's very significant and we need to remember that we also need to know in Laudato Si says that everybody's talents and involvements are needed everybody every single person and we are too in all cultures and experiences and that we need to discover what those are and what a joyful thing in the midst of great challenges to discover our talents our souls our call that creates great meaning in our lives and excitement and wonder it's a marvelous marvelous thing and we are called into that and we're called into also a deep compassion and this follows on and action and solidarity and this really follows along the lines of some of the earlier encyclicals and Pope John Paul II in on social concern describes compassion and solidarity and he says these are not shallow or easy as your mayor earlier spoke in reality on the contrary it means a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good not just my good but the common good that is to say the good of all and of each individual because everyone and everything is important we are all responsible so Laudato Si really outlines several things that are significant and I just like to go over those just briefly for a moment it's talking about climate change and environmental degradation and it's talking and inviting us into the conversation the dialogue actually about economic disparity and that we're talking about this in terms of relationship our sister mother earth and that there has been great deterioration of the environment and also of our society and Laudato sees and understands very intimately and this is one of the reasons it's been so controversial is that we're not dealing with two issues one environmental and one social but we are facing one issue, one concern and Laudato Si in its excuse me, excuse me, excuse me kind of sentiment says we are faced not with two separate crisis one environmental and the other social but rather one with complex crisis which is both social and environmental and strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty restoring dignity to the excluded and at the same time protecting nature so Pope Francis goes on to describe that as an integral ecology and again that would be a whole retreat in itself and within this our goal is not to amass information or to satisfy our curiosity as he says in the document but to do something about it and that's why we're here but we need to remember this doing something about it has to be rooted and in an integral and a holistic way so some of the tools that were given I believe in Laudato Si and I just like to list some of those or places from which we can come from is what? is one, knowing that we are all brothers and sisters a sense of Franciscan kinship and that is with water, with air with our brothers and sisters with children, with the future generations there's a whole lot about intergenerational justice in the document so that's number one we're called to live simply and in solidarity especially with those who are most vulnerable because they are affected most by climate change we need within that to address the throwaway culture and what he calls a culture of indifference and very importantly, Laudato Si in 209 says an awareness of the gravity of today's culture and ecological crisis must be translated into new habits new habits I call it spiritual practices of how I drink water, how I use water, what I eat, how I use energy a third element we're called to is to stand in awe, wonder and beauty at all of the gifts that we've been given and are part of us and that is the praised be a fourth element, love and the document says for we are made of love and actually love is taken into the politics at one point there's a section called the politics of love now have you heard of that before for our political leaders wonderful, very insightful, very human, very important the next element I think is integral and this is what Pope Francis says the whole document really is about is dialogue dialogue with those we agree with with those we don't agree with and I would venture to say dialogue with us humans and the natural world and the reason for this is to quote, heal the rupture heal the ruptured world that we live in and that the spiritual foundation is very, very important and in the last part of Laudato Si, 216 he says a commitment, this lofty meaning this goal to understand ourselves in a new place as human beings cannot be sustained by doctrine alone without a spirituality capable of inspiring us without an interior impulse which encourages, motivates, nourishes and gives meaning to our individual and communal activity so it is integral to all that we are doing to all of our knowledge, information and actions so I'd like to for just a couple of minutes to show some slides and go into a few of the highlights of the COP 21 that I attended but I wanna do this in the context not only of Laudato Si Laudato Si came out in June of last year and what followed were very, very, very important and significant spiritual documents from all the world traditions that led up to COP 21 COP 21 was there, these documents came out to influence COP 21 and they were from the Islamic leaders they had an amazing document that they put forth to the 1.6 billion Muslims and to others our Buddhist brothers and sisters with it was signed by the Dalai Lama and many others the World Council of Churches the Black Church had a climate change statement the Jewish people a rabbinic letter on climate crisis the Hindus had a declaration on climate change indigenous elders and medicine peoples at the UN presented theirs and the Baha'i community in December also so all of these documents were very significant very, very important and they all led up to the COP which I'd like to share some things on and we don't have a whole lot of time because I know you have a wonderful political leader who's coming who's going to share about the politics of love with you in your own area so just a few things so the presence of the religious and civil society was integral in COP and there were events all over the city of Paris and inside the COP and I was an official observer with Franciscans International inside the COP this is some of those folks at the Notre Dame Paris these are some Episcopals who prayed every noon in a public area for the meeting and the leaders various ritual symbolic prayers, wishes renewable energy, art this is speaking of our climate refugees and art, very powerful piece more prayers, meditation and public places and before the COP began and I think this is a very significant interview that the Pope gave where he calls the moment we live if he dares use such a term a suicidal moment a suicidal path that the human community is on I am still reflecting on that I have to say I don't totally understand really, really in my heart and my soul and in my own life what I need to do and what that means I think that's very significant from a world leader who calls us to hope and action and this calls us to hope and action again more art and I would love to have more time to go into this but I don't so I tried to think of an image that would speak of what this COP was about to people like yourselves who you know don't have a clue and the image that came to me was bread and sharing bread so every day inside the COP we'd walk past this bakery and one time one day I took this picture they have a sign that says we bake 10,000 breads a day for COP so COP there were like 40,000 people there I mean we're talking with NGOs, world leaders, negotiators, etc so for me Paris meeting and moving beyond into our circle today is a sacred bread event we all sit at table with family's friends we don't always agree with them I think everybody has a bad experience about everything but we can eat together we share bread together and we bake bread or make food every person on the planet eats some kind of some type of bread whether it's tortillas, pitas or French bread and everybody at COP was walking around eating French bread so to put it in context the developing world our brothers and sisters in the global south were very strong moving into COP the civil society pushing, pushing and at the COP this is a wonderful woman from the Carterette Islands and actually her story is quite profound they are the first island nation that had to relocate the five most important takeaways I believe from the COP one, that we got to even though we are nowhere near meeting it the temperature goal to stay well below 2 degrees Celsius with an aspirational goal of 1.5 literally the global south was saying their motto was 1.5 to stay alive 1.5 to stay alive excuse me, excuse me, excuse me you have not been listening to me 1.5 to stay alive and it is true there is within the document mechanisms to ratchet up what the countries which every country had to submit their plans what they are going to do the 195 nations it is a wonderful story about Bangladesh but I cannot tell it now but so the ratcheting up mechanism and accountability is incredibly important financial assistance by the developed countries and for the first time developing nations even said we will put something in this is very difficult for the United States while I was there we still had not even put money into the green climate fund secretary of state Kerry came forth and said we are going to put 800 million in in a special press conference this is a huge message to our fossil fuel industry and our fossil fuel use each one of us sitting in these chairs that the end of fossil fuels is coming the document does not give a date but it says to reduce global peaking of greenhouse gases as soon as possible and finally loss and damage I was actually part of groups with other NGOs doing some negotiating and pushing at the COP this was a big one we were working for with human rights, indigenous rights, workers rights and loss and damage we were very pleased there is something in the actual document on loss and damage which is significant because we can work with that throughout the years had it not been in the document that would not be possible this was also something that was being pushed for by developing nations so my reflections on COP this is, it was an amazing moment when thousands and thousands of people said yes to the document some of the negotiators this is a marvelous quote by the women from South Africa, Durban that basically says and they said, they were very honest they said this is not a perfect document this is the best the world can do at this moment it is a foundation we have to go forward and we have to make this stronger and we have to work on this collectively and then they quoted Nelson Mandela with this quote which was very, very powerful just again, highlighting the importance of the faith community and civil society the facilitators of the COP said this was the first time in any of the 21 meetings of COP that the ethical, moral, imperative of climate change was front and center on the floor with the delegates the first time in 21 meetings and that's because of all the work people have been doing we need to keep up the drumbeat on the civil society and faith community's engagement interfaith power and light has been doing many things we had a talk at the COP under the State Department tent and we unveiled many of you might have signed them the Paris pledges by individuals saying we're gonna reduce our carbon emissions we're continuing to do that we need to connect dots like with immigration and some other concerns that our brothers and sisters in Central America here pointed out quite clearly and solidarity with our brothers and sisters these are some men from Ghana part of our carbon covenant project of protecting forests and trees and finally the reality is that we're nowhere near where we need to be and if we really want to embrace this it means that if we embrace 1.5 degrees the richest nations which is each of us need to reach zero fossil fuel use by 2030 if we're really serious about 1.5 degrees this is Cardinal Turksen of Ghana who was one of the chief writers of Lodato Si and he had an amazing press conference saying we are all brothers and sisters we need action but most of all we need love we need to embody that love in sharing bread in dialogue in baking bread in moving forward on this planet so I just like to end with excuse me excuse me excuse me are you listening to me