The power of stories from real people in real situations about how the climate crisis affects their lives and livelihoods and how they are building our common home inspired the Jesuit European Social Centre (JESC) to launch Faces of Climate Change, a new section of the JESC monthly ecology newsletter, Eco-Bites.
The invitation to share stories aims to bring more depth in understanding the impacts of climate change by engaging the heart. JESC Secretary for Ecology Edmond Grace SJ shared that “to be human is to engage the heart and, if the heart is not engaged, we become inhuman. Heartless.”
Fr Grace reminds us that “accepting the reality of climate change is not enough” as this “acceptance needs depth” which goes beyond reading reports and learning the science and the politics.
The faces of climate change are the people and their stories – those “who go and see for themselves how the forests are being destroyed, how water is disappearing from view, and how land has lost its fertility.”
“The disturbing reality is that people can be unintentionally heartless…We may know all about the climate emergency and feel very strongly about it, but without stories about named people in named places, we can lose our capacity to respond in a helpful way to the reality which is shaping all our lives,” JESC said in their invitation.
For those who want to share their stories, please fill out this form.
