(Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action has now contributed our Climate Corner column to the Parkersburg News and Sentinel for over three-and-a-half years. I want to thank the editor for her willingness to have published our column all this time and to continue publishing as we submit. It has been the honor and privilege of all our writers to keep information on the global climate crisis and related subjects in the weekend editions of the paper.

The community has largely been accepting, or at the very least deferential, to our column and we also appreciate that as we continue to engage with folks in the area in numerous ways. Some published responses to our column, though, particularly by one writer, have been derogatory, often fallacious, and made use of refuted talking points. I’d like to address that here, as well as share with you our plans as an organization for 2025 following the outcomes of the recent elections.

MOVCA is an organization consisting of and supported by people from all walks of life. While I am an outspoken atheist Humanist, many of our members and supporters are people of faith embracing many different belief systems and faith traditions and affiliated with a wide array of churches and other religious organizations. We have long been recipients of financial support, for example, from the Sisters of St. Joseph in Wheeling, W.Va., as part of their efforts to help carry forward the message of Pope Francis’s second encyclical, Laudato Si’ (“praise be to you”), which was about caring for the planet.

Caring for creation is considered an important part of many Protestant Christian faiths as well and many of our Protestant members have joined in our efforts for that purpose. We count among our members folks who are not only Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians but also Jewish, members of the Baha’i Faith, Buddhists, Unitarian Universalists, Catholic Universalists, and others.

I won’t use this column to engage in theological discussions or argue about faith vs. works, but what I want to make clear is that there are many, many community members who disagree with the writer in question from a position of faith and do not believe that climate change as it is occurring today is just some cyclical pattern of life on earth or that we must passively relegate responsibility for addressing it to a deity.

Anthropogenic (human-caused) global climate change is real and it’s at crisis levels as we alter the delicate balances of our life support systems on timescales never witnessed in geologic history. We are not attempting to save the planet itself; it would go on and numerous life forms would thrive without us. We are attempting to spare ourselves and posterity a great deal of agony and the very real possibility that we will make our only home in the cosmos uninhabitable, both for us and for countless other species.

As far as solutions, renewable energy options like solar and wind are not “pixie dust,” but crucial forms of energy production harnessing the inexhaustible rays of our solar system’s star and the inextinguishable force of air streams circling and churning around our planet. Coupled with storage technologies, some about to be produced in Weirton, W.Va., they are a vital way of kicking our expensive, filthy, dangerous, and planet-destabilizing fossil fuels habits. We’ve already ceded too much ground to China which, despite extensive continued coal use, has become far and away the leader in the manufacturing and production of the energy of the 21st Century.

In 2025, it is MOVCA’s goal to be a central hub in our area for information on the affordability, accessibility, and functional performance and importance of renewable and sustainable alternatives to the status quo. Solar arrays, energy storage options, zero tailpipe emissions transport and charging options, maximization of energy efficiencies, more sustainable agriculture and diets, localization of consumption, composting methodologies, recycling everything possible and doing so effectively, and other means of more simple and sustainable living will be our focus.

In accordance with our mission and values, we will still organize and mobilize around public policy, engage where needed in the judicial system, advocate for responsible investment and divestment, and educate and inform the public on the crises at hand. However, given the outcomes of the 2024 elections, we will concentrate more of our energy and resources on empowering people directly.

Working with coalition partners and our student climate ambassador program, we will utilize our website, social media presences, email lists, other media (TV, radio, newspapers, billboards), and our public programming and presentations to relay this vital information to the public and help folks make changes that are safer, healthier, more sustainable, and, very importantly, save them money.

We at MOVCA wish you a happy, safe, and healthy holiday season and look forward to working with you in the new year with renewed resolve and passion equal to the task, come what may.

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Eric Engle is board president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.