by John Cronin | Jan 31, 2015 | Human Sustainability
I AM A ROMAN CATHOLIC. Like many, I have struggled to marry ecological and spiritual principles. It is possible to coax instructive interpretations from the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. But it is a largely unsatisfying effort. This leaves us with...
by John Cronin | Jan 29, 2015 | Climate Change, Energy, Pollution
Although Senate sponsors will deny it, the passage of a bill to force the approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would deliver petroleum from the tar sands of Canada to a port in the Gulf of Mexico, was largely symbolic. President Obama has repeatedly promised he...
by Guest Contributor | Jan 25, 2015 | EarthDesk Sunday
«« »» Patrick “Pat” Bagley is an American editorial cartoonist and journalist for The Salt Lake Tribune in Salt Lake City, Utah. His cartoons have appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian of London, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal,...
by John Cronin | Jan 23, 2015 | Environmental Justice, Human Sustainability, Poverty, Water
The United Nations reports that more than 800 million people suffer from a lack of safe and adequate water. Its declaration on the human right to water states: The water supply for each person must be sufficient and continuous for personal and domestic uses. But the...
by John Cronin | Jan 19, 2015 | Ecology, Environmental Justice, Ethics, Human Sustainability, Pollution, Poverty
James Gustave Speth: If there is a model it is the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. It had a dream. The dream of modern American environmentalism was founded on the dream of the American civil rights movement. You would not know it today. In his April 16, 1963...
by John Cronin | Jan 14, 2015 | Homelessness, Human Sustainability, Poverty, Water
Lava Mae Delivers Dignity One Shower at a Time More than 2 million residents of the United States experience homelessness during the year. For them, access to water and basic hygiene is non-existent or a rare luxury, not the fundamental human right the United Nations...
by John Cronin | Jan 8, 2015 | Art
Political cartoons hold an honored place at EarthDesk. Our weekly feature, EarthDesk Sunday, has presented the works of cartoonists from around the globe more than fifty times in the last 18 months. On January 7, masked gunmen armed with assault weapons attacked the...
by John Cronin | Jan 6, 2015 | Ethics, Human Sustainability, Poverty, Water
The United Nations says water is a fundamental human right. In 2014, Detroit decided differently. The city shut off water to 17,000 residents who could not pay their water bills. The government-recognized poverty rate in Detroit is 38%. United Way says the real rate...
by John Cronin | Jan 6, 2015 | Law & Policy, Pollution, Water
“It is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985.” ~ 1972 Federal Clean Water Act, Section 101(a)(1)