Entangled States

The situation in Haiti

There was some good reporting about the heroic ministry of the Episcopal bishop of Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake on Friday. The Wall Street Journal talked about the "island of organization" in the midst of chaos that he had managed to create.

Kendall Harmon points to this video from the WSJ this afternoon:

The Episcopal Cafe has this letter from the bishop calling for help to be delivered through Episcopal Relief and Development:

I am writing to you from the tent city we have set up behind the rubble of College Ste. Pierre, our marvelous senior secondary school that is no more. As you know, we have gathered approximately 3,000 people here alone. Across the land, the Diocese of Haiti has set up at least 21 refugee camps, caring for more than 23,000 people.

In this letter, I wish to make clear to the Diocese of Haiti, to Episcopal Relief and Development and to all of our partners that Episcopal Relief and Development is the official agency of the Diocese of Haiti and that we are partners working hand-in-hand in Haiti’s relief and recovery efforts.

I also am announcing in this letter that I am appointing The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley, Appointed Missionary of The Episcopal Church, to work directly with ERD on my behalf. I am asking all partners in The Episcopal Church to communicate directly with Rev. Stanley, so as to keep communications with the Diocese of Haiti open. Rev. Stanley is to communicate and work with ERD on my behalf.

In addition, I am asking that all of our partners in the Presbyterian Church USA work directly with ERD, with Rev. Stanley as the central communications person. PCUSA has worked with us for many years, and we are deeply grateful for their compassion and their commitment to the people of Haiti.

We in the Diocese of Haiti have a vision and a plan for this relief and recovery effort. We know the situation on the ground, we are directing emergency relief to those who need it most, and we already are making plans and moving forward to help our people. Since the earthquake struck, we have been and will continue to work closely with your two representatives here, Ms. Katie Mears and Ms. Kirsten Muth. I have complete confidence in you and your agency.

Finally, I wish to make it plain: I know that many of our partners wish to come to Haiti right now to help. Please tell them that unless they are certified professionals in relief and recovery, they must wait. We will need them in the months and years to come, but at this point, it is too dangerous and too much of a burden for our people to have mission teams here.

Please tell our partners, the people of The Episcopal Church, the people of the United States and indeed the people of the world that we in Haiti are immensely grateful for their prayers, their support and their generosity. This is a desperate time in Haiti; we have lost so much. But we still have the most important asset, the people of God, and we are working continuously to take care of them.

He writes to us all in the midst of what is being described as unimaginable loss.

A group of us have been scrounging about to find pictures of the now destroyed murals at Holy Trinity that told the story of the Bible with a wonderful, local Haitian flavor. You can see some of what has been found here. The New York Times has an article about what the loss of this sort of cultural heritage means to the Haitian people.

There's this too about the ruins of the Episcopal Cathedral:

Craig Uffman: Where Was God in the Earthquake?

There's a helpful piece up on Craig's blog that sketches out an answer to the question that I think will be on the mind of many this weekend as they sit in Church. If God does not will evil upon us, then how can God abide such horror such as we see today in Haiti?

"Theologian David Bentley Hart offers the best answer I know in his book The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?  He wrote it upon reflecting on the great tsunami that struck Asia in 2004.  Hart reminds us that 'we are to be guided by the full character of what is revealed of God in Christ.  For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers.  And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.'

As we participate vicariously in the tormented tears of young girls, lost and alone in the Haitian darkness, as our hearts pour out tears for the thousands of sons and daughters and mothers and fathers who have died so suddenly and shockingly, and as we turn to our task of being the loving and living hands of Christ in response to this tragedy,  let us never forget the urgent truth about God that it is our vocation to proclaim: God does not will our sickness or our death; God does not will that evil be done; God has conquered evil and death through the Cross.  This is the meaning of the empty tomb. This is our Easter faith.  As Hart says so well, 'Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation.  Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces - whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance - that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with perfect hatred.'

Where, then, is God in the earthquake? Hart puts it well: 'As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy.... for [ours] is a faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead....rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, [God] will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes - and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, 'Behold, I make all things new.''"

Read the full article here.

Please donate to Haiti Earthquake Response

As you all know this morning Haiti was struck by a devastating earthquake late yesterday afternoon. The reports are still spotty but they are uniformly grim. Many, probably tens of thousands of people have been killed and more are injured and in need of emergency assistance.

The Episcopal Church, who's largest diocese is in Haiti, has set up a special fund to channel aid to the country.

"To donate to the Haiti Fund, visit www.er-d.org or call 1-800-334-7626, ext. 5129. Gifts can be mailed to Episcopal Relief & Development, PO Box 7058, Merrifield, VA 22116-7058. Please put ‘Haiti Fund’ in the memo line of all checks. In addition, Episcopal Relief & Development is preparing a bulletin insert, which will be available on its website."

Go here to find a direct link to quickly donate.

Your gift will make a huge difference. I've already given, and will probably give again as soon as my wife and I can talk about amounts. You should too.

Climate change God's judgement not Man's fault?

The BBC has a report this morning on a growing sentiment in parts of the developing world that the climate change that they are witnessing is not due to the actions of humankind. They are a result of God's judgement upon us. And as such, there is nothing we can change that will have any effect on the situation other than pray for help.

From the end of the article:

"Climate change is a global issue transcending national boundaries, but impacting first on those who can least afford to cope with the consequences.

The 'God not man' cry from the lady in Kenya's northern reaches illustrates a common problem relating to understanding the underlying causes, and underscores the incapability of people in such situations to deal with the crisis that has impacted so severely on their communities.

As Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, notes:

'Climate change will bring massive ecological and economic challenges… therefore, alleviating dehumanising poverty will become even more difficult.'"

Read the full article here.

The point the article is trying to make, but doesn't really in the end, is that attributing the climate changes to God leads us to think that God is going to be the one who's going to reverse them. It's the very definition of magical thinking and is not likely to be very effective.

It doesn't seem all that different, to me at least, than the line of thought attributed to people like the former Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who believed the rapture was so imminent that there was no reason for Christians to conserve natural resources. Instead, the reasoning went, profligate use of the resources was a sign of strong faith that God was coming soon and would remake the earth and effectively restore everything we had used.

Not unlike using the ever-increasing equity in our homes to pay off our ever increasing credit card debt...

The BBC article really doesn't suggest any solutions to the problem of magical thinking among the poor in the developing world other than to "harness the power of youth". But as the sixties remind all of us who grew up in them, that doesn't really guarantee anything. Youth can act destructively as likely as they might act constructively. Such is the way of mankind.

Better, for Christians at least, would be to emphasize the meaning of stewardship among the Christian people in the developing world. We should be encouraging them to expect their governments to find ways to live gently in their environment, to do their collective best to steward the natural riches of the nations in which they live. I remember when I was in Swaziland, talking with local farmers who had begun to realize the toll that western style, petrochemical based agriculture was taking on their tribal lands. The old style tradition of small gardens, compost and regular crop rotation was much more effective at producing enough to eat, and was sustainable.

Of course that will require those of us who live in the developed world to put our money where our mouth is first. Otherwise why should anyone listen to us? We'd be like the Pharisees who bind others with burdens too great to bear while finding loopholes to excuse ourselves.

It will probably require us to downsize the homes we live in, move back into the cities closer to the places we work and shop, buy smaller cars, etc. In other words, live more like European society has been living for years. It's really not an awful thing to contemplate if we put it into that context is it?

Will our actions make a difference? There's a legitimate disagreement going on about whether the climate change we are observing is caused by human actions or not. But if not, it makes sense to act conservatively so as to try our best not hasten the rate of the change. Plus living as if it were will help us to start focusing our attention on what might be needed to survive what might come.

It's not all that bad really. Imagine living in a small German, French or Italian city, or in one of the villages that surround them. What's to fear in that future?

I've never seen anything like this before - a service in four languages on Advent 4

This was the scene yesterday at the fourth of our five regular Sunday liturgies. I was at the first three and took some people out to lunch and had to miss this service, but I was there for the opening. I'm only fluent in one language - there were four in use during the service - so I really wasn't qualified to be at the altar.

From Greta Huls account of the service:

Members of the Sudanese congregation lead the processional with singing and dancing accompanied by the sound of pounding drums. They also offered music during the offertory and the recessional. Mariachis provided most of the additional service music.

The Rev. Anderia Arok of St. Paul's gave the sermon while The Rev. Canon Cameron Guerrero of Catedral de la Trinidad translated his Dinka-accented English into Spanish - which lead to a little confusion and a few laughs at times.

The Rev. Canon Licia Baldi Affer of Trinity Cathedral celebrated the Eucharist and offered the Bendición in her native Italian.

More information, with pictures here. Thanks Greta for putting up the article!

Help the Cathedral support Habitat for Humanity

Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix is one of a number of Episcopal congregations in the central part of Arizona who, together with Central Arizona Habitat for Humanity, build two houses a year in the Phoenix metro region and one house in the developing world.

For the Cathedral to be part of this, we need to pony up our share of the cost of the houses. Rather than use money that we spend on clean water projects, orphan education, free clinics for the homeless, etc, we are going to try to raise this money independently of our general budget. We are doing this with the help of Tim Sprague, a Cathedral member and one of the musicians in the local band "Crisis".

We're going to be putting on a big block party in central Phoenix, right next to the Roosevelt and Central Light Rail station on Nov 14. If you're in the city on that night, come and join us! Free food, music and dancing. Honor bar for those wish to fortify themselves against the cold. Good times for all.

You can buy your tickets in advance at Rocksupport.org. If you can't come, you can still donate!

Jon Trott of the Jesus People (USA) on the idolotry of "community"

I stumbled across this interview with Jon Trott while surfing the web this morning waiting for an appointment. Trott was one of the founders of the "Jesus People" which began in the sixties, achieved national recognition in the seventies (at least I remember reading about them) and today represents a network of people living in intentional Christian community in Chicago.

The interview in Christianity Today is about the lessons he's learned along the way as he's struggled to find sustainable models for Christian community. He talks about how younger folks are using different sources (like the Rule of St. Benedict) to augment the tools that his group initially had.

I was particularly struck by this quote from the interview sounding a note of warning:

"Community can become its own goal. So the biggest thing I'd warn anybody about community is to not worship it. A community does not exist for itself. It's there for others. I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer is the one who said that if a community is not for the world, then that community is no earthly good. In other words, community is ultimately a tool for ministry."

Read the full article here.

There's something to be said for this warning. It's a recent trend in the Church, and in the Episcopal Church especially, that community for its own sake is the rationale for the life of the parish. Creating community so that people have a place to call home is wonderful thing and, as the mega-hit "Friends" demonstrates, a common need felt by young urban professionals that the Episcopal Church often attracts.

But Trott's got it just write when he warns that community just for community's sake is a form of idol worship. (Or Bonhoeffer had it right if you prefer.)

One of my mentors, Fr. Karney, used to say that a church couldn't be a church if it didn't have someone to love. I've found that he was absolutely right more times than I care to remember. Sometimes in very painful ways.

That's part of the motivation I suppose for the Episcopal Church's involvement in the MDG's. I just hope we remember that the MDG's are, for the Church, a means to an end and not the end in and of themselves.

Naco Procession (video blog)

Here's the first public video that a new initiative at our Cathedral has produced:

Seems to me the video speaks for itself.

If you're looking to get a sense of what's going on down at the borders, this gives you a sense more profoundly than anything I could possibly write about the situation.

This is an edit from the full 25 minute DVD. If you're interested in getting a copy, drop me a note and we'll take care of you.

Here's some of the background.

(And a picture of one of our cathedral clergy participating in the procession.)

Here's the link to our "channel" on YouTube. We're planning on putting a bunch of additional videos up there in the coming months.

Switchgrass-based Ethanol

Here's some encouraging news in the bio-fuel area. Researchers have found that fuel made from grass is able to provide significantly more energy for fuel than is required to grow the grass.

" Switchgrass grown for biofuel production produced 540 percent more energy than needed to grow, harvest and process it into cellulosic ethanol, according to estimates from a large on-farm study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Results from the five-year study involving fields on farms in three states highlight the prairie grass' potential as a biomass fuel source that yields significantly more energy than is consumed in production and conversion into cellulosic ethanol, said Ken Vogel, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service geneticist in UNL's agronomy and horticulture department.

The study involved switchgrass fields on farms in Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. It is the largest study to date examining the net energy output, greenhouse gas emissions, biomass yields, agricultural inputs and estimated cellulosic ethanol production from switchgrass grown and managed for biomass fuel.

'This clearly demonstrates that switchgrass is not only energy efficient, but can be used in a renewable biofuel economy to reduce reliance of fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance rural economies,' Vogel said."

This is significant because you don't get anywhere near this kind of yield in corn based ethanol fuel. At best advocates for the corn based fuel see about 167% yield, but that number is apparently disputed with some folks claiming there is no net yield.

And of course growing grass for fuel would leave corn available for human and animal consumption. Food shortages in the developing world are being traced back to the diversion of the corn crop to fuel rather than feed.

Read the rest here.

Showdown in Arizona

The New York Times has an op-ed piece today that actually sort of "gets it". They describe the situation at a location that is only a few blocks away from where I live in Phoenix:

"Want to see America unraveling? Come here, to Thomas Road and 35th Street, to M. D. Pruitt’s furniture store. Come on Saturday morning and stand near the eight delivery trucks barricading the parking lot, like the wall of an urban Alamo.

For the last seven weeks, a sidewalk protest here by Latino immigrants has blossomed into a feverish reality show, attracting Minutemen, mariachis, children dancing in Mexican folk costumes, white racists, United Nations observers, Phoenix police officers and Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies.

The weekly confrontation — strident and stalemated — perfectly mimics the national debate. But it’s a sideshow to something even uglier: what happens when immigration’s complexities are handed to local law enforcers sympathetic to the fury of one side."

For all I thought I knew about the immigration debate before I moved to Phoenix, I've discovered that I had only scratched the surface. Do read the article. It's quite good.

Read the rest here.

BBC NEWS: Biofuels bonanza facing 'crash'

News that the biofuel solution to the energy crunch is looking less realistic:

"The biofuels bonanza will crash unless producers can guarantee their crops have been produced responsibly, the UN's environment agency chief has said.

Achim Steiner of the UN Environment Programme (Unep) said there was an urgent need for standards to make sure rainforests weren't being destroyed.

Biofuel makers also had to show their products did not produce more CO2 than they negated, he told BBC News.

Critics say biofuels will lead to food shortages and destroy rainforests.

They point to the destruction of Indonesia's peat swamps as an example of biofuel folly."

Read the rest here.

AVIAN INFLUENZA part 1

Deacon Bill (see below) has sent along this first column:

On both November 2 and 9, the Bishop of Arizona’s E-pistle included excerpts on pandemic influenza planning along with a partial list of additional resources. Since I have a relatively extensive background in the study of infectious diseases, I submit the following as an introduction on this potentially deadly infectious disease.

Infectious diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. It is no secret that new and re-emerging microbial agents that can cause a number of infections, including influenza, are a growing concern among scientists. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that seasonal influenza causes more than 200,000 hospitalizations per year and about 36,000 deaths annually. Those at highest risk are the very young, the very old, those undergoing chemotherapy, or those whose immune systems are compromised, such as AIDS patients or organ transplant patients. Moreover, influenza can dramatically impact both our economy and all aspects of normal life.

Most virologists believe that another pandemic (worldwide) will occur. Indeed, influenza pandemics have occurred throughout history such as the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak. The major culprit responsible for ordinary influenza and all pandemics is the group A influenza virus, which includes the Avian (bird flu) influenza viruses. The major concern is that all these viruses are able to readily mutate. This is certainly true with the H5N1 Avian influenza virus, which is continuing to evolve. In 2006, there were about 100 confirmed cases of H5N1 in humans, the majority of them fatal. It is well known also that H5N1 virus continues to be a problem primarily among poultry in Asia and Europe. Although rare, person-to-person transmission has also been documented. What public health officials fear is that this virus may well mutate in ways that make sustained transmission of H5N1 possible. Even more troubling are the recent studies conducted at CDC that showed these viruses to be more lethal than the 1918 Spanish flu virus. This alone strongly implies a very potent disease-causing virus.

In another blog, I will discuss what a pandemic of Avian Influenza may look like.        

Energy Consumption is starving the poor

The BBC article that I posted earlier this morning points out that there's no way that the developed world can expect energy to continue to be available at present levels.

The unexpected consequence of this is being felt in Swaziland. The article in the Guardian below points out the real impact in a country that has no real resources other than its minimal agricultural industry:

"It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought. It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.

This is one of many examples of a trade that was described last month by Jean Ziegler, the UN's special rapporteur, as 'a crime against humanity'. Ziegler took up the call first made by this column for a five-year moratorium on all government targets and incentives for biofuel: the trade should be frozen until second-generation fuels - made from wood or straw or waste - become commercially available. Otherwise, the superior purchasing power of drivers in the rich world means that they will snatch food from people's mouths. Run your car on virgin biofuel, and other people will starve.

Even the International Monetary Fund, always ready to immolate the poor on the altar of business, now warns that using food to produce biofuels 'might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further'. This week, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls 'a very serious crisis'. Even when the price of food was low, 850 million people went hungry because they could not afford to buy it. With every increment in the price of flour or grain, several million more are pushed below the breadline.

The cost of rice has risen by 20% over the past year, maize by 50%, wheat by 100%. Biofuels aren't entirely to blame - by taking land out of food production they exacerbate the effects of bad harvests and rising demand - but almost all the major agencies are now warning against expansion. And almost all the major governments are ignoring them.

They turn away because biofuels offer a means of avoiding hard political choices. They create the impression that governments can cut carbon emissions and - as Ruth Kelly, the British transport secretary, announced last week - keep expanding the transport networks. New figures show that British drivers puttered past the 500bn kilometre mark for the first time last year. But it doesn't matter: we just have to change the fuel we use. No one has to be confronted. The demands of the motoring lobby and the business groups clamouring for new infrastructure can be met. The people being pushed off their land remain unheard.

In principle, burning biofuels merely releases the carbon the crops accumulated when growing. Even when you take into account the energy costs of harvesting, refining and transporting the fuel, they produce less net carbon than petroleum products. The law the British government passed a fortnight ago - by 2010, 5% of our road transport fuel must come from crops - will, it claims, save between 700,000 and 800,000 tonnes of carbon a year. It derives this figure by framing the question carefully. If you count only the immediate carbon costs of planting and processing biofuels, they appear to reduce greenhouse gases. When you look at the total impacts, you find they cause more warming than petroleum."

Similar food price increases are expected here in the US as growers start to sell their harvest for biofuel processing, and thus reduce the food surplus that have kept prices low.

Read the rest: The western appetite for biofuels is causing starvation in the poor world | Guardian daily comment | Guardian Unlimited

BBC NEWS: Energy needs 'to grow inexorably'

With crude oil poised to break $100/barrel and gas over $4/gallon in the Bay Area, I heard a report on NPR this morning saying that the spiking prices were due primarily to "speculation".

My first response to the radio voice was that "speculation" is what happens when demand exceeds supply - and that it is probably not going to go away. Which means that energy prices are just going to continue to climb.

The news last night talked about a similar rise in natural gas and coal prices.

The reason for this rise is that our energy demands in a rapidly developing global market (think India and China especially) are now outstripping our supply.

This news article from the BBC this morning confirms that.

"The global demand for energy is set to grow inexorably through to 2030 if governments do not change their policies, warns a top energy official. Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said such a rise would threaten energy security and accelerate climate change.

He said energy needs in 2030 could be more than 50% above current levels, with fossil fuels still dominant."

Again, there's some economic slack that can be taken up and adjusted for here in the US. The real moral challenge is going to be that at the same time that is happening, and dollar is sliding downward, our money is going to be desperately needed in the developing world...

Read the rest: BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Energy needs 'to grow inexorably'

Religious Groups Push Climate Aid for Poor

Kendall Harmon has the following bit of news - and since there's no link to the original source - I'll just quote it and update it later when I get a chance to google around for the source:

"An alliance of religious groups is vowing a relentless push to restore a key provision to assist the international poor in America's Climate Security Act, the first greenhouse gas cap-and-trade bill with a realistic chance of passage in the Senate.

In a press conference today, top faith leaders from the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Council of Churches, and the Union of Reform Judaism emphasized the need for U.S. funding of adaptation efforts in the world's poorest countries, which emit relatively little carbon dioxide but may be hardest hit by global warming because of their locale and lack of infrastructure and money.

'As always, poor and working-class people need advocates, and that is what the faith community traditionally does,' Paul Gorman, executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, told U.S. News before the press conference. 'We plan to be sending out materials to delegations and making phone calls. The single most striking thing about us and this issue is the degree of unity across the ideological spectrum. We see this as an extension of our traditional concern for the international and domestic poor.'"

This is exactly the sort of thing that needs to start happening. There's been numerous studies that have pointed out that the poor and the developing world are going to bear the primary burden of climate change. While the effect may be noticeable to the wealthy, the poor have fewer option to adapt to a concurrent rise in prices or scarcity in food.

Read the rest here: TitusOneNine - Religious Groups Push Climate Aid for Poor

The Population Cluster Bomb?

One of the new blogs on the NYTimes website (newly accessible to people who have setup a free account) is the Dot Earth blog. The focus is on how the Earth's environmental change is effecting human life.

I was a bit unnerved by the following post, which appears to be a follow-up on the news that the UN released late last week about the dangerous combined effects of the climate change mixed with population growth:

"Many population experts foresee the next few decades evolving in a way that is very different from the global-scale, catastrophic ‘population bomb’ concept that caught hold in the 1960s.

What they depict is more like a dangerous scattering of cluster bombs, as the world splits into two types of countries: those with aging, shrinking populations, like Japan and much of Europe, and those regions, like most of Africa and parts of south Asia, still mired in poverty, disease, illiteracy or government dysfunction with resulting high birth and death rates.

Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University calls them ‘imploders and exploders,’ and Jason DeParle’s continuing Border Crossings series on population flows around the world has perfectly captured the consequences.

I caught Joseph Chamie, a sociologist and demographer, on the phone a couple of nights ago to explore the inevitability of nine billion and these other trends. It’s telling that he used to run the United Nations Population Division but recently migrated (~sorry~) to the Center for Migration Studies.

It is flows of people, and regional population crises, that will matter most in the next two generations, Dr. Chamie said."

What I find myself particularly thinking about in all this is how the Church is going to be called to respond. It looks like there will be a window of opportunity, where we in the developed world will have the necessary resources to reach out to people in the developing world in a way that will mitigate some of the effects of climate change and population growth.

But I don't think we're going to have much time to come up with a coherent response. And if we don't start taking seriously the reason we do mission - because of our relationship with Jesus, there's not going to be many of us around trying to help...

Read the rest here: The Population Cluster Bomb? - Dot Earth - Climate Change and Sustainability - New York Times Blog

Matthew Davies: Unity in Mission

Matthew Davies, the editor of Episcopal Life online has written a wonderful editorial on what he's hearing as he travels around the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion:

"Ask the average Anglican to name the most important aspects of his or her religion and you will not be treated to a rundown of legislation, litigation, formal reports or public statements. You will hear stories of relationship, partnership, tradition and mission. The articles and perspectives prevalent in the mainstream secular media might suggest otherwise. Reading the headlines, one could assume that the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are in a state of irremediable turmoil, even on the brink of schism. But interviews with Anglicans engaged in mission around the world indicate that this scenario is not the reality.

Journey to the communion's grassroots in communities throughout the world and you'll find people of faith committed to serving God and one another. Meet the missionaries in Africa, Asia or South America; explore the friendships forged through companion-diocese relationships; or witness people's lives transformed by relief and development programs in the world's poorest communities -- that's where you'll find Anglicanism in its most authentic form.

'There will always be issues on which we cannot agree and issues which may threaten to fracture our communion,' says the Rev. Bob Snow, canon to the ordinary in the Episcopal Diocese of the Dominican Republic. 'But as missionaries serving in the Dominican Republic for 12 years, we have observed that Christians, no matter where they stand on the issues, agree that we have a responsibility to serve those in need.'"

Read the rest here: Episcopal Life Online - NEWS

Only $3.1 Million to Feed 400,000

News from Swaziland today:

"Despite the worst harvest in the country's recorded history and the aftermath of fires that destroyed crops and plantations, Swaziland's appeals for international assistance are falling on deaf donor ears.

In July UN agencies appealed for US$18 million to feed about 40 percent of Swaziland's one million people, who are facing acute food shortages. So far, only $3.1 million has been forthcoming, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

'The low funding of the appeal is extremely worrying. The food reserves that people have been living off of will begin to run out in September, and it is very likely that many households will have eaten the seeds they would have planted in the coming agricultural season, thus prolonging their situation of food insecurity,' Kelly David, head the OCHA Southern African regional office, told IRIN.

'Without assistance, there is no question that people will be facing serious food shortages in the coming month [September].'

To date, funding for relief aid by the World Food Programme has received roughly $1.6 million; the promotion of self-feeding schemes like backyard and community gardens, just over $1.5 million."

Read the rest: allAfrica.com: Swaziland: Only $3.1 Million to Feed 400,000 (Page 1 of 1)

Climate Feedback: Flash floods - a sign of what's in store?

Olive Heffernan, writing at Climate Feedback is writing on the increasing incidence of flooding being seen around the world:

"Calling it a ‘21st century catastrophe’, Michael McCarthy at the Independent writes that ‘Britain is suffering from a wholly new type of civil emergency: a disaster caused by 21st-century weather,’ which has left more than a third of a million people without drinking water, nearly 50,000 people without power, thousands more people homeless and caused more than £2bn worth of damage so far.

Britain is not alone in experiencing extremely heavy rainfall. As reported on MSNBC, ‘parts of China had the heaviest rainfall since records began, killing more than 700 so far this year. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced by flash floods in southern Pakistan.’

While these single events cannot be attributed to climate change, many are questioning if the flash flooding is a sign of what is in store for the future. And scientists have some of the answers.

In a paper coming out in Nature this Thursday, Francis Zwiers of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Toronto and colleagues present the first evidence that human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have altered rainfall patterns in the 20th Century. In the region between 40 and 70 degrees North, covering northern Europe, Russia and parts of North America, rainfall increased by 62 millimetres per century between 1925 and 1999. Zwiers and colleagues say that 50-85% of this increase can be attributed to human activity. For further discussion and comments on the paper, there’s a news story by my colleague Daniel Cressy on News@Nature. And it’s also been picked up by the BBC.

And a recent paper published in Science in June suggests that global warming may result in even more rainfall worldwide than is currently evident in climate model simulations. Frank J. Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in Santa Rosa, California and co-workers compared global satellite data from 1987 to 2006 and found that rainfall increased at the same rate as atmospheric water vapour per degree Celsius of surface warming. Climate models had projected a dampened response of rainfall to global warming owing to a decrease in surface winds, but Wentz and colleagues found that surface winds have in fact become stronger, leading to heavier rainfall (more on this in Nature Reports Climate Change soon)."

What the paper does not mention, but which others have, is that the effects these changes seem to be the most disruptive in the developing world - and represent a real crisis that may block their movement toward being fully sustainable economies.

Read the rest here: Flash floods - a sign of what's in store?

(Via Climate Feedback.)

Alden Hathaway on the effects the Anglican troubles are having in Africa

+Alden Hathaway, my former bishop from my years as a priest in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and one of the finest pastors I have ever known, has written an article in the Living Church. His article talks about the ways that our polity fights within the Anglican Communion are working at odds with our intentions regarding responding to the significant challenges facing that continent:

"For 10 years I have been going to East Africa, taking solar equipment to electrify homes and schools, orphanages, offices, hospitals, clinics, and whole villages in the rural hinterlands of Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. I have 10 years of experience leading teams of American young people and African youth into the bush to install the equipment and to witness what a transformation electricity makes in the lives of people and the development of their communities.

On our first mission trip, we went to the verge of the impenetrable forest to install small solar units in two cinderblock houses the government had built for some resettled pygmies. These strange little people sang, ‘You came all the way from America to bring us the light. ‘Tukutendereza Jesu’.’

Over those years we have seen and done a lot. More than 2,000 installations have been subsidized by the charitable gifts of individuals and churches from all over America. It has been a collaboration of church, private enterprise, and government working together in local settings to make things happen and turn on the lights. With a commercial firm in Kampala, Solar Energy Uganda, we are partnering to build the first solar fabricating plant in East Africa.

But the most important fruit of these 10 years is the nearly 200 American kids, with a nearly equal number of Africans, who have caught a vision; who, in the words of our patron, First Lady Janet Museveni, have become true ‘internationalists.’ They are future leaders in this emerging global civil society we are witnessing— political, economic, spiritual."

Bishop Hathaway goes on to discuss the ways that this witness he describes is now in jepardy. I'd quote the whole article here, but I'd be much more delighted to drive some traffic to the Living Church's website - they need our support and are doing wonderful work at the moment being journalists in a sea of blogs.

So go read the rest here: Distractions Hinder African Outreach