Solar and wind energy is delivered right to your community every day lost cost and climate friendly

 Forty percent of the world’s ship traffic, for instance, consists of moving coal and gas and oil back and forth across the ocean to be burned, a delivery job the sun accomplishes each morning as it moves across the heavens.

McKibben, Bill. Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (p. 50). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

The fact that forty percent of fossil fuels are transported by ship traffic which themselves burn tremendous amounts of fossil fuel just to facilitate their delivery is significant when another source of energy, solar and wind, is daily delivered right to our door without any effort on human effort whatsoever.

As a side note, Ukraine may be winning the war with Russia because it has damaged the ports and shipping of Russian oil which was providing the funding for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Will the customers for that Russian oil now be motivated to change their energy sources from fossil to renewable energy?

Environmental sociology

What Climate Change Will Do To America By Mid Century, The Atlantic, December, 2025 also entitled “The Dead Zones” in the print magazine

There is no going back to previous temperatures on earth. There is only adapting to the new normal which means determining the truth of the situation by accurately labeling the problem(s), figuring out how to best manage the problems to minimize their negative impact and capitalize on whatever, if anything is positive, and being flexible and reengineering our ways of living. This area of study is a new discipline called “environmental sociology.”

The article, What Climate Change Will Do To America By Mid Century describes some of the changes which are already occurring, the major of which are increasing rates of home insurance, climate migration to higher ground and cooler weather leaving “dead zones” and ghost towns if they are above water, and submerged communities as sea levels rise.

A consideration not covered in the article is the increasing importance of services from the Federal government to manage interstate relocation and management of damage from weather events with which local communities and even state governments don’t have the resources to mitigate and transform. 

The role of the federal government has already become an issue in presidential administration 47 because of withdrawal of federal money from FEMA. the gutting of the weather service, and the politicization of Federal resource distribution to the states based on partisan considerations.

One thing is paramount - United we stand and divided we fall.

Possible questions for consideration and/or discussion:

1. What do you think some of the biggest changes are that will have to be made to live in a hotter climate? 

2. How will climate warming affect your community in the next 30 years? 

3. How will your children and grandchildren have to adapt?

How Save the Children is dealing with massive budget cuts

The CEO Of Save The Children On Navigating A Sudden Funding Crisis, Harvard Business Review, September-October, 2025

When the Trump administration issued its January 20 executive order announcing that it was freezing all U.S. foreign development assistance—funding that typically accounts for about a third of Save the Children’s annual global program budget—our senior team was already gathered for a previously planned in-person retreat. Together, we quickly moved through every stage of grief.

First, denial: Was it even possible for a U.S. president to deny funds appropriated by Congress? Second, anger: How could the administration be so cruel as to cut off food, medicine, and education from children in need? Third, bargaining: Could we litigate or negotiate to get some of the money back? Fourth, depression: In the absence of U.S. aid, would we be able to continue our work? Finally, acceptance: We couldn’t avoid or reverse this massive crisis, but we would stay calm, creative, and agile—and eventually navigate our way through it.

Having worked my whole career of 57 years so far as a Psychiatric Social Worker in non profit agencies I have become very aware that many non profit CEOs are more skilled at management than profit making CEOs. They have to be more skilled and competent because the services their organizations provide are often life saving and life sustaining. Janti Soeripto, CEO of Save The Children, is a good example of excellent leadership and management in a time of crisis.\

She writes that in a crisis situation a non profit staff and board can engage in:  First, radical acceptance: Confront your new and brutal reality as soon as possible. Second, flexibility: In any volatile environment, you must keep your knees slightly bent, ready to absorb and adapt to new developments. Third, focus: Ignore the noise around you, home in on what you can control, and commit to working together to fulfill your mission. Fourth, decisiveness: In chaotic and fast-moving situations, you can’t always wait for more information, so understand that close enough is good enough and that, if things change, you can adjust course. Finally, vision: My team’s embrace of the three-phase outlook—starting with crisis response but then looking ahead to rebound and reform—helped us immensely, giving us a positive, proactive mindset and pointing us to the light at the end of the tunnel.

The locker room slogan “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” might be better said, “When the going gets tough, the tough get smart.”

Questions for consideration and possible discussion:

1. When resources are cut or dry up, how can a nonprofit continue to pursue its mission to achieve its vision or should it change its mission and vision, or give up and disband? How is this decision made?

2. How important is it to measure key performance indicators and point out the value of program results?

3. How can an organization continue to be focused on mission over money when money is necessary to carry out the activities necessary for the mission?

4. The three legged stool of good outcomes, cost efficiency, and customer satisfaction stand in dynamic tension such that often only two out of three can be achieved. Which two do you think are most important and which one is most easily sacrificed for the other two?

Save The Children Web Site

Article of the day, "Why doesn't anyone trust the media?"

Today, November 10.2025, a new column is being introduced on Markham's Slow News called "Article Of The Day." Most days an article about an article will be posted that looks at the various social systems that we all participate in. This first article is a about the media.

 Why doesn’t anyone trust the media? Harpers, November, 2025

Perhaps most telling is the changing relationship between media and political power. There is a palpable sense of surrender in the air. In December, ABC News agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle a defamation suit he had filed against the network. CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, later settled its own Trump lawsuit, also for $16 million, three weeks before securing Federal Communications Commission approval for its merger with Skydance Media. Trump has since filed a host of additional suits against media organizations, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and threatened the broadcast licenses of major networks.

All of this raises pressing questions: In an era of declining trust, industry collapse, and technological disruption, does the media, as we’ve historically understood it, have a future? What essential functions does professional journalism serve that cannot be replaced by other forms of information gathering and dissemination? And why, finally, do Americans view the media with such skepticism?

The article is composed of a panel discussion with four journalists none of whom seem to get the key reasons that the public no longer trusts traditional media. Here are a few reasons not discussed.

First, the rise of autocratic government is based on disinformation and propaganda so that the leaders can shape the truth in a direction favorable to their power grab and domination. There is an intentional and deliberate attempt to discredit truthful, accurate news reporting if the facts undermine their policies and procedures.

Second, under the misguided notion of “fair and balanced” the news media is reluctant to report the truth. The “both sideism” has destroyed the public's trust that there are facts and not just opinions about the facts.

Third, news has been turned over to entertainment interests and what is popular is more important than what is honest. Readers attention and engagement is based on “likes” and not on factual reporting.

Fourth, increasingly, audiences want communications that are cognitively consonant with their belief system rather than cognitively dissonant even if the cognitively dissonant information is true and accurate. Part of this tendency to avoid or dismiss the cognitively dissonant is just human nature and a great deal of it is a failure of our educational systems and culture to encourage curiosity and critical thinking. At the same time that the media is increasingly distrusted, science is under assault.

Having read this article, many more questions arise such as:

1. What will help people become more curious about facts and ideas that stretch their current belief system?

2. How can news media communicate truthful but unpopular ideas in a way that audiences are willing to listen and consider them?

3. How can truthful and honest communication be funded and morally supported if the audience doesn’t want to pay for it?

4. How can truth telling communicators be trained and supported in their difficult work?

Houston, we have a problem." Climate change denial

“Houston, we have a problem.”

11/10/25

On Sunday, June 27, Canada broke its all-time heat record, 113 degrees Fahrenheit, when the temperature reached nearly 116 degrees in Lytton, a community of around 250 residents on the Fraser River, in southern British Columbia. The next day, that record was broken, again in Lytton, when the temperature hit 118 degrees. On Tuesday, it was smashed again, when the temperature in the town soared to 121 degrees.

McKibben, Bill. Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (p. 44). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

The famous phrase from the Apollo 13 movie is “Houston, we have a problem.” The statement is memorable because it is an under statement of the dire situation the astronauts found themselves in. We can now say the same thing as we experience the soaring hot temperatures on our planet in the solar system, Earth.

What do you make of climate change denial? How much does it  jeopardize the well being of the occupants on Mother Earth? How should climate change denial be managed?

Truth and the need to be always right.

 

In the October 13. 2025 issue of Time Magazine it is written 

"...Vice President J.D. Vance appeared on Charlie Kirk's podcast the Monday after the conservative activist was killed, "We are going to go after the NGO network that foments and facilitates and engages in violence," he said, referring to nongovernmental organizations he claimed are left-leaning. (A study of U.S. political valence by the libertarian leaning Cato institute found that right-wing terrorism has cause more deaths than leftist violence both over the past five years sand since 1975." p.15

How important is it for people to be told the truth?

What happens when government officials in authority mislead people to believe social facts that are inaccurate? Is this immoral? If so, how is the harm to be repaired?

The first thing that can be done is the provision of accurate information. This can be distressing for people especially if the facts don't validate current beliefs. This contradiction between facts and beliefs is what social psychologists call "cognitive dissonance."

Cognitive dissonance for most people is distressing and they feel fearful of the truth. Why would people be afraid of the truth? Because they have some sort of vested interest in their inaccurate beliefs. What kind of vested interests are there? It can be as elementary as "saving face." Some people are insecure and have a vested interest in being right sometimes at all costs up to and including death.

Calculator for ACA premium changes

If you and/or anyone you know uses the healthcare marketplace (Affordable Care Act/Obamacare), whether federal or state run, here is a link to a calculator to find out how much more you and/or they will be paying if the program is not extended (this is what the federal government shutdown is over). Please pass this on.

https://www.kff.org/interactive/how-much-more-would-people-pay-in-premiums-if-the-acas-enhanced-subsidies-expired/

Pay to play makes democracy rotten to its core.

 Western analysts use the word corruption to describe these systems, but this can be misleading: here corruption does not describe bureaucrats soliciting bribes for small acts of civil service (though this happens too); it describes the people in charge using the instruments of government in order to amass wealth, but also using their wealth to perpetuate power. This corruption is integral to the system. The system cannot exist without corruption because corruption is its fuel, its social glue, and its instrument of control. Anyone who enters the system becomes complicit in the corruption, which means everyone is always in some way or another outside the law—and therefore punishable.

Gessen, Masha. Surviving Autocracy (p. 47). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Gessen points out that the money to be obtained in politics isn’t exactly corruption because it is a natural, necessary fuel for the old so-called "democratic processes.” It takes huge amounts of money to campaign for Federal and State offices and that money comes from corporate donors and oligarchs who want their politicians elected who will do their bidding.

So it is a system of pay to play. 47 is right when he says the system is rigged. It is rotten to its core. How can this toxic practice be changed if we are to improve our democratic processes if we ever get beyond the current American autocracy?

Help Save The Lift Bridge Book Shop in Brockport, NY

The closing of the Main Street bridge in Brockport, NY has decreased the business at Lift Bridge 30 - 40%. The closing has now dragged into the third year and the Lift Bridge is struggling. Sara, a co-owner, said last week that the store might have to close by the end of the year. Then a  friend, Christina Daniels, started a Go Fund Me campaign to save the Lift Bridge last week and so far it has gathered over $20,000.

Will you help keep the Lift Bridge open? Sarah and John Boncyck need our help.

Go to the Go Help Me website and donate what you can.

Thanks for your consideration and assistance. Donate what you can and then spread the word.

Terrible things are happening outside - Anne Frank

Make no mistake—these are dark times. As Anne Frank wrote, “Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes.”

For more click here.

One of the methods of autocratic government is to strike terror in the minds of the population in order to control and subdue it. This is now happening in cities across America from Los Angeles, to Chicago, to Memphis. It is coming to a city near you if you live in a Blue State. The Republicans have stated that Democrats are the enemy, Is this the America we want to live in?