To protest the Canadian government’s inaction on climate change, activists refused to leave MPs’ offices last month and got arrested.

Now a local activist is trying something completely different to influence this month’s international climate talks in Copenhagen: prayer. “I’m very concerned about what’s going to happen — or not happen — in Copenhagen,” says former United Church moderator Bill Phipps. He plans to fast for a week, beginning December 7, and sit outside local politicians’ offices throughout. It will be Phipps’s first time fasting, and he says it won’t be a protest but a “prayer for courage” done quietly — “a different thing than politicians normally experience.”