Perspectives on Social Issues
(June 2005)
Global Warming: A Critical Public Health Issue
"[There are] at least 17 million Americans (including 5 million children) today who have coughed, wheezed and fought for breath because of asthma-nearly double the number of reported asthma cases two decades ago. As researchers across the country race to find out 
what is causing asthma rates to rise so rapidly, some are focusing on the influence of global warming. ‘Climate change represents possibly the most challenging public health issue we've ever faced,’ says Jonathan Patz, an expert on climate-related health issues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ‘It involves population growth, energy consumption, emissions, even land use issues because forests absorb carbon dioxide. Air pollution is expected to increase due to warming, and that will affect a lot of people, especially asthmatics.’
Asthma is considered a complex illness with strong genetic and socioeconomic influences, but the burning of fossil fuels and global warming present ‘multiple assaults’ for people who suffer from the disease, according to Paul Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. First, carbon dioxide -- a by-product from burning fossil fuels that is considered one of the key greenhouse gases causing climate change -- increases the formation of ground-level ozone, or smog, by accelerating the reactions between other by-products of fossil fuel production. Further, global warming is associated with more weather extremes, says Epstein, including floods, which bolster fungal growth indoors, and droughts that spur wildfires, adding particulates to the air."
"Out of Breath" by Rene Ebersole, Your Health, National Wildlife, Ap/May 2005.
Humanity: A John Paul II Legacy
"There can be no doubt that John Paul II deeply marked this papacy, which ended one millennium and began another, with an enormous amount of humanity. A young pilgrim, interviewed in St. Peter's Square in Rome, responded to a journalist's question on why so many young people had come to accompany John Paul II. He answered that the Pope wasn't like traditional priests who only teach doctrine; what John Paul communicated was humanity.
I think that his answer reflects a deep need within the human heart: How to live humanly in a world that is so dehumanized? That is the great hope of young people in every corner of the world-that we older people can leave them a more human world. The transmission of this legacy was a special objective for John Paul ll....
Our world has been dehumanized by the tragedy of war and many different types of violence; dehumanized by the scandal of misery and extreme poverty, of the social marginalization and exclusion of millions of human beings who, rather than really living, barely survive in conditions in which the most basic respect for human rights is absent. Swimming against this current of dehumanization was one of John Paul II's most important legacies."
"Bringing Humanity to the Papacy" by Laura Vargas, The Catholic Peace Voice, Pax Christi USA, May/June 2005.
Christian Alliance Working Against Indian Child Welfare Act
"Another tentacle of the anti-Indian movement has emerged. It is called the Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare (CAICW). The newsletter for CAICW is called the ‘Family News and Update’ and the first copy was sent out in March under the Citizens for Equal Rights Alliance (CERA) postage permit in Minneapolis. CERA is the umbrella anti-Indian organization in the country and has chapters, units, and cells all over Indian Country. CERA has recently formed coalitions with other groups who work against American Indian interests. Along with prayer the newsletter urges readers to write to decision makers and approach government leaders to reverse ICWA. The purpose of CAICW is to abolish or weaken the Indian Child Welfare Act, under the guise of Christianity.
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) took years to get passed, as Indian children were being literally confiscated by States and Counties and raised by non-Indians. ICWA (finally) gave Indian tribes jurisdiction over their own children!"
"Anti-Indian Movement Spawns Christian Alliance," HONOR Digest, Mar/Ap 2005.
Improving Children's Lives Reduces Crime Rate
"What does work in crime prevention is the improvement of the lives of poor children while they are growing up. In 1984, the RAND Corporation, an institution not generally thought of as politically progressive, conducted an in-depth study of the operation of the Chicago Area Project (CAP) over the previous fifty years. CAP organizes slum residents into community committees that work personally with local youths in trouble, improve the physical appearance of neighborhoods and provide recreational facilities for youngsters. According to the study, these efforts proved to be ‘effective in reducing rates of juvenile delinquency.’
Likewise, in the Perry Preschool Program, 123 ‘borderline educable’ mentally handicapped children from an extremely low-income black neighborhood in Ypsilanti, Michigan, were enrolled in preschool two years early and visited by their teachers at home once a week for two years. Twenty-seven years later, participants were found to be only one-fifth as likely as a control group of non-participants to become habitual criminals, and only one-fourth as likely to be arrested for a drug-related crime.
Similar results were found in Syracuse University's Family Development Research Program, another long-term pilot study that emphasized helping parents raise their children while they were still very young. These initiatives succeed in preventing crime because they attack the root causes of crime: poverty, absent fathers and abuse."
"The Carrot and the Sticks" by Jens Soering, America, Mar 21, 2005.
A Historical Perspective on Social Security Figures
"The revenue that [Social Security] is taking in currently exceeds its obligations by more than $163 billion a year. And that is just the annual surplus. The Social Security Trust Fund has an accumulated surplus of more than $1.7 trillion dollars. For comparison, in 1983 the Trust Fund was out of money and the program actually had to borrow just to meet its payments to beneficiaries. Now that could be considered a crisis. But we are, according to the numbers that President Bush is using, about 36 years away from that kind of a situation.
In other words, according to the numbers that President Bush is using -- the estimates of Social Security's Trustees -- Social Security is stronger than it has been throughout most of its 70-year history. And even those estimates are most likely overly pessimistic. For one thing, they are based on the assumption that our economy (GDP) will grow at only 1.85 per cent annually, on average, over the next 75 years. That's about half the rate of growth that we have had over the past 75 years."
"Social Security -- If It Ain't Broke..." by Mark Weisbrot, NETWORK Connection, May/June 2005.
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Gratitude to the Institute for Peace and Justice
for use of their Pope Paul VIth graphic. |
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