One pastor's mission to prepare his community for climate change » Yale Climate Connections - Yale Climate Connections
One pastor's mission to prepare his community for climate change " Yale Climate Connections
Rev. Gerald Godette is a pastor and scientist. So he’s in a unique position to talk to people of faith about sea level rise, extreme weather, and other climate change impacts.
“My faith is a driving force that gets me excited about telling people that, ‘Look, this Earth is a gift from God, this universe is a gift from God, and we’ve got to take better care of it,’” he says.
For Godette, the issue of climate change is personal. For about a decade, he was a steward and his wife was the pastor at the Saint Paul African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Aurora, North Carolina.
In that time, the church flooded twice: during Hurricane Irene and Hurricane Florence.
Now Godette is the pastor of Reels Chapel in Beaufort, which was also damaged by Florence.
“When I got to Reels Chapel, that church had not been in operation for two and a half years, partly because of the hurricane,” Godette says. “So climate change has really impacted both places where I’ve been severely.”
As a result, he’s passionate about sharing climate change information with his congregants. And he’s dedicated to helping his community prepare now for future storms.
Reporting credit: ChavoBart Digital Media
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.