Peace Pair Anne McCarthy, a Benedictine Sister of Erie, Pax Christi USA Ambassador of Peace and former Pax Christi USA national coordinator, and Jessica Sun are participating in the Great Ohio Climate March, walking over 100 miles over 13 days, May 16 to 28, to draw attention to the harms caused by the extractive oil and gas industries, particularly to our public lands and to promote a cleaner, more economical path with renewables.
Use this PDF to read the daily schedule for the march.
The march coincides with Laudato Si’ action week, celebrating the anniversary of the publication of the Laudato Si’ encyclical with actions for our common home. Jessica and Anne write, “We hope to walk, to go slow, to listen with the heart, to grow in the love and passion for the earth, our common home, which is the essence of Pope Francis’ encyclical.”
As Sr. Pat Lupo, OSB, proclaimed during the Holy Saturday Lamentation on climate at the Benedictine Sisters of Erie monastery: “Cultural transformation, deep, people-focused change, requires new vision, new language, new energy, new action. We need to reconnect with the wonder and power of the Earth. Listen to the heartbeat of hope as we engage the forces of oppression in our dying culture. Let go of the hysteria of consumption, fossil fuels, plastics and our viral response to advertising and addictive behavior. Listen to Earth. Catch her vision that both challenges us and fills us with hope.”
Jessica, a volunteer organizer with the Catholic Caucus of Christians for a Free Palestine, member of the Pax Christi USA Young Adult Caucus, and incoming postulant with the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, draws parallels between Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine, as well as Israel’s ongoing ecocide. Climate justice is inextricably linked with all anti-colonial, anti-militarization, and anti-apartheid struggles.
For nearly two years, Israel has waged a genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza and across historic Palestine, devastating lives, land, and ecosystems. UN experts have described Israel’s crimes as including domicide, urbicide, scholasticide, medicide, cultural genocide and ecocide. This genocide is inseparable from environmental destruction:
- Over 100,000 tons of bombs dropped, with a carbon footprint greater than the annual emissions of many entire countries.
- Widespread contamination of soil and water with depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and heavy metals.
- 80 percent of Gaza’s cropland destroyed, creating famine and long-term ecological collapse.
- Energy, water, and agribusiness corporations are complicit, supplying fuel, coal, and technologies that enable Israel’s war machine, settlements, and apartheid system.
Climate justice and Palestinian liberation are inseparable. The corporations and states profiting from fossil fuels, militarism, and ecological destruction are the same ones enabling genocide.
States don’t have any money for climate finance, but have billions for bombs and bullets against the Palestinian people. No amount of empty words will ever erase their complicity. We need action and accountability.
Without access to energy, oil, coal, gas, and the funding from global industries, Israel would not be able to continue the genocide in Gaza and its settler-colonial expansion and aggression in Palestine and in the region. It is up to the people of the world to hold accountable all complicit entities fueling Israel and permitting it to escalate its violent oppression of Palestinians.
Pax Christi International has released this new statement calling attention to Earth Overshoot Day, which will happen this July — this will be the point at which humanity’s demand for natural resources exceeds what the Earth can regenerate within the same year, effectively placing us in ecological “debt” and further accelerating the climate crisis. In the US, the overshoot day was reached on March 14. Visit this website to find the list of countries and the day they are estimated to reach their overshoot day.
