Mennonite Weekly Review

ALTONA, Man. — For people who aren’t quite ready to go green to decrease their environmental footprints, there’s an alternative: going green for peace.

Dan Kehler, associate pastor of Bergthaler Mennonite Church in Altona, Man., biked 125 kilometers to Winnipeg in the rain to attend Mennonite Church Canada’s 2008 assembly.

— Photo by Dan Dyck/MC Canada

That’s what Dan Kehler is doing. The associate pastor of Bergthaler Mennonite Church says society’s addiction to oil has made it a commodity that drives war.

“I figure the less carbon I use, the less I participate in the economy of oil and the less I participate in the war that is currently going on in Iraq,” he said.

Kehler credits a Mennonite Church Canada Learning Tour to Colombia in February 2007 with raising his awareness about oil dependency.

After returning from the trip, he and his wife struggled with the contrast between their comfortable Canadian lifestyle and the poverty and injustice they observed in Colombia, where people are routinely forced from their land or murdered so that others can reap profits from natural resources such as oil.

Oil “further divides the poor and the rich, the hungry and the not hungry,” he said. “It changes the entire landscape of humanity from one where we are called to live in harmony and close communion with the land to one where I don’t have to think twice about eating a banana from South America because oil is cheap enough to bring it here.”

That banana, he said, was commercially grown in an area where the land should be used to grow food for the local community.

He decided to start making lifestyle changes.

He began to leave the car at home as much as possible, even biking in the winter and using a bike trailer to buy groceries. The Kehlers still use their vehicle for family vacations or for visiting outside of town, but in an average week they spend less than $20 on fuel. Some weeks, the car never leaves the driveway.

In July, Kehler rode his bike for three hours and 40 minutes to Winnipeg from Altona for MC Canada’s annual assembly. It was pouring rain at the time.