[Episcopal Public Policy Network] The drastic impacts of climate change are evident across the globe. Coastal erosion, tremendous hurricanes, severe heat waves, and prolonged droughts often most harshly impact our vulnerable communities: the poor, the homeless, the elderly, and the young. Addressing climate change is a moral challenge of our generation.

Fortunately some policymakers are responding to the challenge. Carbon dioxide and other heat trapping gases are a leading cause of climate change, and reducing carbon emissions represents a significant step in addressing this global phenomenon. President Obama recently unveiled his Climate Action Plan, which includes a carbon rule for existing power plants. This rule would reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 30% from 2005 levels by 2030 through assigning customized carbon reduction targets to individual states.

The United Nations is also constructing a global framework for carbon reduction and will meet in New York City in September of 2014 to continue this discussion. For nations to effectively curb climate change, ambitious carbon reduction targets coupled with support for affected communities will be a critical outcome of this process.

In our General Convention, The Episcopal Church urges the President to collaborate with other nations to lower carbon output. Every day, faith communities around the world are calling on political leaders to respond to the moral challenge of climate change. Will you join them?

This month, consider taking three steps to address climate change:

1. Submit a comment or testify in support of the President’s proposed carbon rule for existing power plants.

1. Call on our political leaders in the United States to take a leading role in helping to craft a moral global framework for the UN climate negotiations. Click here to sign the Faith Climate Petition!

1. Demonstrate your own leadership by making an action pledge! Pledges for action can be as simple as changing a light bulb to installing solar panels on your congregation to hosting a climate vigil or sermon. These pledges will be highlighted during several faith events in New York in September. Click here to pledge to take action!

Together, let us respond to the challenge of climate change with compassion; lifting up the voices of our neighbors living in or near poverty, and striving to preserve God’s “good” Creation.