Disparities of Urban Heat Islands Over Time

Sam Harrelson on December 17, 2024

Fascinating study here that moves beyond the normal mode of similar studies that focus on a fixed point in time (say mid-Summer) and look at long term data across a wider region. This is important work for our future.

A new study by Yale School of the Environment researchers found that communities of color in the U.S. face more heat exposure and have fewer cooling options than predominantly white communities and those disparities are increasing.

Source: People of Color Exposed to More Extremely Hot Days

Europe’s only Indigenous Group and a Growing Recognition of Ecotheology

Sam Harrelson on July 25, 2024

How Europe’s only Indigenous group is inspiring a greener Christianity:

“Sámi traditions and our practices all have to do with collaboration — with the place, with animals, with everything that grows,” said Lovisa Mienna Sjöberg, a Sámi theologian at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Norway. “You should not take more than is your part to take.”

But more than 600 years after their first encounters with missionaries, Sámi communities are also some of northern Europe’s most devoutly Christian. Mixing Indigenous cosmology and ethics with Christian stories, imagery and theology, the Sámi have, over centuries, evolved a multilayered faith of their own, often in the face of bitter oppression and persecution by puritan churches and state authorities.