Here is the latest on some good news about homelessness SR has been covering. It offers an example of how real Christians, as opposed to christofascists, behave and seek to foster social wellbeing.
A rendering of Bethel AME’s new housing complex in San Diego. Credit: LPA Design Studios
About five years ago, Harvey Vaughn, the senior pastor at Bethel AME, the oldest Black church in San Diego, heard a radio report about rising homelessness in his city. He wondered if his congregation, which owned a roughly 7,000-square-foot lot around the corner, could help.
Today, the lot is a construction site for a new housing complex that will offer 25 one-bedroom apartments for low-income seniors and veterans. It’s the first of what advocates hope will be many such projects in San Diego, led by a group called YIGBY, which stands for Yes in God’s Backyard, a spin on the pro-housing Yes in My Backyard movement.
In a country with a shortage of affordable homes and a surplus of religious institutions grappling with rising costs and declining memberships, developers are looking to partner with churches, temples, and synagogues to build new housing. And amid a thicket of […]
Here is some more good news. It is clear that the collective consciousness of humanity is shifting; people are beginning to realize much more needs to be done to prepare for what climate change is doing. I hope we see this same awareness in the upcoming election.
Climate activists protest against fossil fuels at the UNFCCC COP28 Climate Conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Dec. 12, 2023. Credit: Sean Gallup / Getty
According to a new global survey of 75,000 people — Peoples’ Climate Vote 2024 — 80 percent want their governments’ climate commitments to be stronger.
The poll, conducted by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), GeoPoll and Oxford University, posed 15 questions via telephone to residents of 77 countries that represented 87 percent of the global population, reported AFP.
“The Peoples’ Climate Vote is loud and clear. Global citizens want their leaders to transcend their differences, to act now and to act boldly to fight the climate crisis,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP administrator, in a press release from UNDP. “The survey results – unprecedented in their coverage – reveal a level of consensus that is truly astonishing. We urge leaders and policymakers to take note, especially as countries develop their next round of climate action pledges – or ‘nationally determined contributions’ under the Paris […]
Global air pollution kills 2,000 kids under five every day — that 730,000 little kids a year. It has become, as this report describes, the second-biggest killer of children under the age of five globally. Meanwhile, the carbon corporations pour tens of millions of dollars a year into further corrupting America’s politicians in order to preserve their profits and see that nothing is done about this. Instead of leading the world in mitigating air pollution, we are one of its biggest sources. And in other countries the rich behave similarly. I think greed is the biggest flaw in the human psyche.
A girl walks on a heavily polluted road in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on December 28, 2023. Credit: Kazi Salahuddin Razu / NurPhoto / Getty
Air pollution is now the second-biggest killer of children under the age of five globally, a new report released Wednesday shows, with the climate emergency and the continued use of dirty energy sources inextricably linked to the growing risk faced by young children exposed to toxic fumes.
Each day, according to the State of Global Air report by the Health Effects Institute (HEI) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), nearly 2,000 children under the age of five die from the effects of air pollution, with children in the Global South most at risk.
In most African countries, children under five are 100 times more likely to die from asthma and other other effects of air pollution than their counterparts in high-income countries.
In 2021, according to the report, air pollution was second only to malnutrition as a risk factor for death among young children. For […]
Air pollution and the death it causes in children is just one of the trends shaping the earth, and the people living on it. Food is another and this is what is happening. This is going to result in massive death and tens of millions of people displaced and on the move. This is the world that is emerging. Take a moment and on Friday look at my podcast, Five Trends that are Shaping the Earth. Check the research references I post, as I always do, for even more information.
The UN says 40% of the world’s land is already unable to sustain crops. Credit: Getty
Droughts and flooding have become so common in some of the poorest places on Earth that the land can no longer sustain crops, the director of the World Food Programme’s global office has said.
Martin Frick told the BBC that some of the most deprived areas had now reached a tipping point of having “zero” harvests left, as extreme weather was pushing already degraded land beyond use.
He said that as a result, parts of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America were now dependent on humanitarian aid.
Mr Frick warned that without efforts to reverse land degradation globally, richer countries would also begin to suffer crop failures.
The Global Environment Facility estimates that 95% of the world’s land could become degraded by 2050. The UN says that 40% is already degraded.
When soil degrades, the organic matter that binds it together dies off. This means that it is less able to support plant life […]
Xochitl Gonzalez, Contributing Writer - Microsoft Start / The Atlantic
Stephan:
America is one of the least literate nations in the developed world. Fifty-four percent of American adults can’t read past sixth-grade level, and 43% can read past fifth-grade level. That means there are literally millions of Americans who can not read and properly comprehend The Washington Post or the magazine in which this article was originally published. I have covered this before (see SR archive and look at the SR podcast). Finally, and sadly late, some positive changes are occurring that may improve this illiteracy. I certainly hope they are effective because you cannot have an illiterate democracy.
Recently, an old friend of mine from elementary school ran a hand over my bookshelf, stopped, and said, “You stole this.”
“I did not!”
“Yes, you did. You totally stole it from school.”
She pulled out my copy of The Once and Future King, and showed me the inside of the front cover. It was stamped: Board of Education, City of New York.
Okay, so I stole it. But I had a good reason. I loved that book so much; I couldn’t bear to return it to the school library.
My grade-school memories are full of books: bulletin boards that tracked the class read-a-thons, hand-written book reports, summer-reading lists. But a student growing up, as I did, in New York City’s District 20, will have a very different experience today. The city has adopted a new literacy regimen under which many public elementary schools are, in effect, giving up the teaching of books—storybooks, narrative nonfiction books, children’s chapter books—altogether. The curriculum is part of an initiative from the Eric Adams administration called, ironically, NYC Reads.
Plummeting reading comprehension is a national problem, but it’s particularly acute in New York City. Half of its third to eighth graders—and 60 […]
Recently, an old friend of mine from elementary school ran a hand over my bookshelf, stopped, and said, “You stole this.”
