Vigils for climate justice this Sunday in NC

For people not taking the Greenway Transit bus from Durham to NYC for the People's Climate March this Sunday, there will be vigils for climate justice Sunday (the 21st) in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Asheville:

Vigil 2-3pm at Peace and Justice Plaza in Chapel Hill (in front of the Post Office on Franklin Street, opposite UNC).  It is being organized by the United Church of Chapel Hill's United Earth Ministries.

There will be a prayer vigil at 4pm at the Community United Church of Christ in Raleigh (814 Dixie Trail), organized by the Triangle Interfaith Alliance, but with other sponsors, such as the Wake County Audubon Society.

There will be a vigil and voter registration 1-3pm at the Vance Monument in downtown Asheville.

This seems to be a religious initiative (see NC Interfaith Power & Light for more information: http://www.ncipl.org/event/local-vigils-and-rallies/ ), but people of all faiths and none should demand that action be taken to deal with climate change.  This year should be a wake up call for our area.  It is probably impossible to say if our greenhouse gas emissions caused the unusual weather patterns this year, but the impacts have been obvious and may be long-lasting.  After the repeated and late cold snaps and ice last winter, there have been very few butterflies around this summer, in numbers of individuals and diversity of species.  That was followed by an unusually cool and wet summer, which helped my corn, but I wonder if this strange weather heralds another bitterly cold winter.  Note that our winters could get worse for a while even though the Earth as a whole is warming up; snow isn't evidence that human-caused climate change isn't happening.