By: Br. Jack Ratschmidt, OFM Cap. and Chandu Visweswariah “I hate funerals, Chandu,” a friend whispered as we were leaving church. “They are sad,” I said. “Not sad enough,” my friend persisted. “Omar overdosed on fentanyl, and no one even mentioned the horrors of addiction and the opioid crisis. Felt sad and hollow.” No one wants to speak ill of…
By: Chandu Visweswariah [Lead image courtesy ChatGPT] Science helped us win WWII. Science helped us build the world’s most dominant economy. Science helped us survive measles, AIDS and COVID-19. Now are we willing to sacrifice science in exchange for a campaign contribution from the fossil fuel industry? The U.S. Environmental Pillaging Agency (EPA) is attempting to repeal the “endangerment clause.” …
By: Chandu Visweswariah The last few centuries have seen dominance on the global stage by Britain, and then the United States. It is no surprise, therefore, that English has become the world’s lingua franca. In the remote villages of Africa and India, parents tell their children to learn English because it opens up a world of opportunities. Alas, global energy…
By: Chandu Visweswariah The oil giant Saudi Aramco recently published an article on Carbon Capture which got my attention. Is Carbon Capture the holy grail to solve the climate crisis? The fossil fuel industry is pushing carbon capture as a panacea to our greenhouse gas emission problems. Fossil fuels are wonderful and essential to our way of life, they say….
By: Chandu Visweswariah [Mount Rushmore image acknowledgment: By Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90107110] Dear Mr. President, If this letter gets to you, I hope you read it because it describes the single most important thing you can do to boost your legacy. More on this a bit later in this letter. Earlier today, I received a renewal notice…
By Bob DeAngelis, Yorktown100 As the earth circles the sun, and a new year begins, it’s a great time for renewing our commitments towards something better. This year, how about committing to learning more about our impacts on the environment and taking action to reduce them? There are many areas that each one of our households impacts: water pollution, air…
By Susan Buck & Laura KosbarPublished in Yorktown News, February 2024 Has your child or a young friend asked why the skies were orange last June, why it doesn’t snow like it used to, or even queried “What is climate change?” Have you been able to answer their questions or have you found yourself just trying to allay their fears…
By: Jeffrey Prosserman As my wife was discharged from Greenwich Hospital, two days after my daughter was born on June 5, 2023, wildfire smoke tinted the sky an eerie orange. The smoke from the fire burning in Canada had created the worst air quality levels since the United States Environmental Protection Agency began measurements in 1999. As the nurse waved…
By: Chandu Visweswariah In India, a billion people went to the polls over a 6-week period ending on June 1, 2024. Meanwhile, a scorching heat wave raised temperatures in New Delhi, the capital city, to an unbearable 120oF (49oC). Despite this juxtaposition of intense political and climate activity, climate change was not a plank in the platform of any of…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Dear human race, Congratulations on centuries of progress and triumph (albeit bumpy at times). Your intellectual, artistic, medical and scientific progress in the last few centuries has been impressive. You have also made incremental progress on injustice, bigotry, discrimination and exploitation of all kinds, be it slavery, racism, colonialism or elitism. Failure However, it pains me to…
