
Earth Day 2008: Something We Can All Believe In
In coordination with the National Council of Churches, the Religious On Earth Day 2007, EDN was successful in creating 12,000 sermons |

By CAROL GLATZ and ALICIA AMBROSIO, Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY. Expanding its mission from saving souls to saving the planet, the Vatican is going green.
A giant rooftop garden of solar panels will be built next year on top of the Paul VI audience hall, creating enough electricity to heat, cool and light the entire building year-round.
“Solar energy will provide all the energy (the building) needs,” said the mastermind behind the environmentally friendly project, Pier Carlo Cuscianna, head of the Vatican’s department of technical services.
And that is only the beginning. Cuscianna told Catholic News Service May 24 that he had in mind other sites throughout Vatican City where solar panels could be installed, but that it was too early in the game to name names.
Even though Vatican City State is not a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, a binding international environmental pact to cut greenhouse gases, its inaugural solar project marks a major move in trying to reduce its own so-called carbon footprint, that is, the amount of carbon dioxide released through burning fossil fuels.
The carbon dioxide-slashing solar panels will be installed sometime in 2008 after prototypes, environmental impact reports and other studies have been completed, Cuscianna said.
In a May 23 article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Cuscianna wrote that safeguarding the environment was “one of the most important challenges of our century.”
The Italian engineer said appeals by Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II to respect nature inspired him to help power the Vatican’s energy needs with renewable resources.
He recalled how, in his 2007 World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict warned of “the increasingly serious problem of energy supplies” that was leading to “an unprecedented race” for the earth’s resources.
Cuscianna also found inspiration from Pope John Paul’s 1990 peace message, dedicated in its entirety to the need to respect God’s creation.
“We cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past,” the pope wrote, calling for “a new ecological awareness” that leads to “concrete programs and initiatives.”
Cuscianna took the initiative and helped draw up and deliver to the Vatican governor’s office a feasibility study of going solar.
He said the Paul VI hall was chosen first for a number of reasons: Cooling and heating the large audience hall makes it one of the top energy guzzlers in the Vatican, and its roof was in need of repair.
When the project is finished, more than 1,000 solar panels will cover the football field-sized roof.
While not revealing how much the solar project will cost, Cuscianna said “it will pay for itself in a few years” from the savings on energy bills.
Whatever solar power the hall is not using will be funneled into the Vatican’s energy grid and benefit other energy needs, he said.
The solar rooftop garden is not the first environmental project the Vatican has undertaken. In 1999, as part of preparations for the jubilee year, the entire lighting system of St. Peter’s Basilica was upgraded to be low-impact. Strategically placed energy-saving light bulbs were installed inside and out, cutting the basilica’s energy consumption by an estimated 40 percent.
In 2000, the Vatican unveiled its own electric motor vehicle recharging station, where electric wheelchairs, scooters and cars could “tank up.”
Unfortunately, the idea of replacing polluting, gas-powered cars with a network of electric vehicles within the Vatican stalled. U.S. Cardinal Edmund C. Szoka, the former archbishop of car-capital Detroit, had pushed for the cleaner switch while he was head of the commission that governs Vatican City State.
Pope John Paul, however, regularly used an electric car at Castel Gandolfo toward the end of his pontificate when he was no longer able to move easily around the grounds.
Cuscianna said the Vatican has a commission that studies environmental issues and potential eco-friendly practices. Programs facilitating recycling, composting and waste reduction have not yet been established.
An expansion of the Vatican’s use of renewable energy resources would not only reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, Cuscianna said, “it could be a condition that makes Vatican City more autonomous” and less dependent on Italy’s power grid.
With Italian news headlines warning of yet another sweltering summer and potential power brownouts and blackouts, greater energy autonomy for the Vatican through the sun sounds like a cool idea.
Filed under: Alternative Energy
by U.S. Green Building Council
What is LEED®?
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED gives building owners and operators the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.
LEED provides a roadmap for measuring and documenting success for every building type and phase of a building lifecycle. Specific LEED programs include:
New Commercial Construction and Major Renovation projects
Existing Building Operations and Maintenance
Commercial Interiors projects
Core and Shell Development projects
Homes
Neighborhood Development
Guidelines for Multiple Buildings and On-Campus Building Projects
LEED for Schools
LEED for Retail
USGBC is also developing LEED for Healthcare, and LEED for Labs.
We also have the LEED Resources page which has informative PowerPoint presentations, brochures, and case studies, as well as LEED News and LEED-Online sample credit templates.
How is LEED Developed?
The LEED Rating System was created to transform the built environment to sustainability by providing the building industry with consistent, credible standards for what constitutes a green building. The rating system is developed and continuously refined via an open, consensus-based process that has made LEED the green building standard of choice for Federal agencies and state and local governments nationwide. Click here for more information on the LEED Development Process.
What is LEED Certification?
The first step to LEED certification is to Register your project. A project is a viable candidate for LEED certification if it can meet all prerequisites and achieve the minimum number of points to earn the Certified level of LEED project certification. To earn certification, a building project must meet certain prerequisites and performance benchmarks (“credits”) within each category. Projects are awarded Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum certification depending on the number of credits they achieve. This comprehensive approach is the reason LEED-certified buildings have reduced operating costs, healthier and more productive occupants, and conserve our natural resources.
Note for Product Manufacturers and Service Providers:
Although USGBC does not certify, promote, or endorse products and services of individual companies, products and services do play a role and can help projects with credit achievement. (Note that products and services do not earn projects points.) Learn more here about how you and your company can help advance green building, while also achieving your own environmental and economic goals.
Who Can Use LEED?
Everyone: Architects, real estate professionals, facility managers, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, construction managers, lenders, government officials…
The LEED program also includes a full suite of training workshops and a Professional Accreditation program to develop and encourage green building expertise across the entire building industry.
Questions?
Visit the LEED Help section of our website.
"We do not condemn modern civilization but we don't like to get it at the cost of God Consciousness, that is suicide."
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The Beauty of Beans
"One acre of beans produces ten times more protein than an acre of pasture set aside for meat production." -Higher Taste
Moundsville, West Virginia
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ISKCON Gita Nagari Farm Community
Port Royal, Pennsylvania
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ISKCON New Goloka Farm Community
Hillsborough, North Carolina
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ISKCON New Talavan Farm Community
Carriere, Mississippi
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ISKCON Saranagati Eco-Village
British Columbia, Canada
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ISKCON Gaura Vrindaban
Paraty, Brazil
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ISKCON Krishna Valley Farm Community
Somogyvamos, Hungary
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Bhaktivedanta Eco-Village
Sagar Taluq, South India
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ISKCON Cow Protection
"There are so many facilities afforded by cow protection, but people have forgotten these arts. The importance of protecting cows is therefore stressed by Krsna in Bhagavad-gita (krsi-go-raksya-vanijyam vaisya-karma svabhavajam [Bg. 18.44]). Even now in the Indian villages surrounding Vrndavana, the villagers live happily simply by giving protection to the cow. They keep cow dung very carefully and dry it to use as fuel. They keep a sufficient stock of grains, and because of giving protection to the cows, they have sufficient milk and milk products to solve all economic problems. Simply by giving protection to the cow, the villagers live so peacefully. Even the urine and stool of cows have medicinal value."
-Srila Prabhupada
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"The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance."
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MANTRA ONE
"Everything animate or inanimate that is within the universe is controlled and owned by the Lord. One should therefore accept only those things necessary for himself, which are set aside as his quota, and one should not accept other things, knowing well to whom they belong."
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MANTRA TWO
"One may aspire to live for hundreds of years if he continuously goes on working in that way, for that sort of work will not bind him to the law of karma. There is no alternative to this way for man."
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MANTRA THREE
"The killer of the soul, whoever he may be, must enter into the planets known as the worlds of the faithless, full of darkness and ignorance."
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MANTRA FOUR
"Although fixed in His abode, the Personality of Godhead is swifter than the mind and can overcome all others running. The powerful demigods cannot approach Him. Although in one place, He controls those who supply the air and rain. He surpasses all in excellence."
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MANTRA FIVE
"The Supreme Lord walks and does not walk. He is far away, but He is very near as well. He is within everything, and yet He is outside of everything."
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MANTRA SIX
"He who sees everything in relation to the Supreme Lord, who sees all living entities as His parts and parcels, and who sees the Supreme Lord within everything never hates anything or any being."
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MANTRA SEVEN
"One who always sees all living entities as spiritual sparks, in quality one with the Lord, becomes a true knower of things. What, then, can be illusion or anxiety for him?"
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MANTRA EIGHT
"Such a person must factually know the greatest of all, the Personality of Godhead, who is unembodied, omniscient, beyond reproach, without veins, pure and uncontaminated, the self-sufficient philosopher who has been fulfilling everyone's desire since time immemorial."
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MANTRA NINE
"Those who engage in the culture of nescient activities shall enter into the darkest region of ignorance. Worse still are those engaged in the culture of so-called knowledge."
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MANTRA TEN
"The wise have explained that one result is derived from the culture of knowledge and that a different result is obtained from the culture of nescience."
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MANTRA ELEVEN
"Only one who can learn the process of nescience and that of transcendental knowledge side by side can transcend the influence of repeated birth and death and enjoy the full blessings of immortality."
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MANTRA TWELVE
"Those who are engaged in the worship of demigods enter into the darkest region of ignorance, and still more so do the worshipers of the impersonal Absolute."
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MANTRA THIRTEEN
"It is said that one result is obtained by worshiping the supreme cause of all causes and that another result is obtained by worshiping what is not supreme. All this is heard from the undisturbed authorities, who clearly explained it."
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MANTRA FOURTEEN
"One should know perfectly the Personality of Godhead Śrī Kṛṣṇa and His transcendental name, form, qualities and pastimes, as well as the temporary material creation with its temporary demigods, men and animals. When one knows these, he surpasses death and the ephemeral cosmic manifestation with it, and in the eternal kingdom of God he enjoys his eternal life of bliss and knowledge."
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MANTRA FIFTEEN
"O my Lord, sustainer of all that lives, Your real face is covered by Your dazzling effulgence. Kindly remove that covering and exhibit Yourself to Your pure devotee."
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MANTRA SIXTEEN
"O my Lord, O primeval philosopher, maintainer of the universe, O regulating principle, destination of the pure devotees, well-wisher of the progenitors of mankind, please remove the effulgence of Your transcendental rays so that I can see Your form of bliss. You are the eternal Supreme Personality of Godhead, like unto the sun, as am I."
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MANTRA SEVENTEEN
"Let this temporary body be burnt to ashes, and let the air of life be merged with the totality of air. Now, O my Lord, please remember all my sacrifices, and because You are the ultimate beneficiary, please remember all that I have done for You."
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MANTRA EIGHTEEN
"O my Lord, as powerful as fire, O omnipotent one, now I offer You all obeisances, falling on the ground at Your feet. O my Lord, please lead me on the right path to reach You, and since You know all that I have done in the past, please free me from the reactions to my past sins so that there will be no hindrance to my progress."
