November 2024 Newsletter

Issue #93

In 1800 the predominant source of energy was wood; in 1900 it was coal; and in 2000 it was petroleum. In 2100 what will it be?

US Energy Information Administration

All fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil are finite. Based on known reserves and current production levels, coal is projected to be exhausted in 139 years (2163), oil in 56 years (2080) and natural gas in 49 years (2073), so new sources of energy

will be needed.

Our World in Data

Wind energy is a well-established source of power in the US and is one of the 5 major types of renewable energy sources along with: Biomass, Hydropower, Geothermal and Solar.

Collectively, in 2023 renewable energy sources amounted to 9% of the energy consumption (21% of total electricity generation) in the U.S. 

US Energy Information Administration

Currently there are more than 72,000 wind turbines across the country, generating clean, reliable power. Wind power capacity totals 151 gigawatts, making it the 4th largest source of electricity generation capacity in the country. This is enough wind power to serve the equivalent of 46 million American homes.

American Clean Power

The average capacity of turbines is increasing, meaning they have more powerful generators. The average capacity of utility-scale wind turbines installed in 2023 was 3.4 megawatts, up 5% from the previous year.

Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy

The wind power market has grown at a rate of 14% between 2010 and 2021 to reach 830 gigawatts. This has largely been possible due to favorable government policies that have provided incentives to the sector.

Energy Monitor

The potential for wind power in the U.S. ranges between 2.2 and 15.1 terawatts—far exceeding current U.S. electricity needs.

Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

Globally, offshore wind energy has the potential to generate 425,000 terawatts of electricity a year -- 18 times the global electricity demand of today.

Earth.org

In 2023 wind energy avoided 348 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.

American Clean Power

Coal’s "carbon footprint" is almost 90 times larger than that of wind, while natural gas is more than 40 times bigger. Overall, wind energy produces around 11g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated, compared with about 980g for coal. 

Earth.org

Wind has delivered $148 billion of investment in the last decade. In 2023 alone, the industry invested $10 billion in new projects.

American Clean Power

The wind industry employs nearly 126,000 Americans across all 50 states, including 20,000 wind manufacturing jobs at over 450 facilities.

American Clean Power

Wind projects delivered more than $2 billion in state and local tax payments and land-lease payments

last year.

American Clean Power

A typical modern turbine will start to generate electricity when wind speeds reach 6 to 9 miles per hour. Turbines are designed to shut down if the wind is blowing too hard (roughly 55 miles an hour) to prevent equipment damage.

American Clean Power

The largest wind farm in the world is the Gansu Wind Farm located in the west of Gansu province in China, on the outskirts of the Gobi Desert, with

7,000 turbines.

Earth.org

 Offshore wind can generate more electricity with fewer turbines. Offshore wind speeds tend to be faster and more consistent than on land, meaning that fewer turbines are needed to generate the same amount or even more electricity.

Earth.org

Wind’s cost has declined by 31% over the last decade, with improved technology and U.S.-based manufacturing making it competitive with other energy sources and the cheapest source of new electricity in many parts of the country.

American Clean Power

92% of people living within 5 miles of a wind turbine report positive or neutral experiences.

Berkeley National Laboratory

A typical wind turbine will repay its carbon footprint in less than 6 months, and it will generate emission-free electricity for the remainder of its 20 to 30 year lifespan.

American Clean Power

The top 5 states utilizing wind power:

1. Texas –with a capacity of 24,899 megawatts -- enough to power over six million homes.

2. Iowa – with a capacity of 8,422 megawatts -- providing 37% of its own electricity supply-- the largest percentage in the US.

3. Oklahoma – with a capacity 8,072 megawatts -- third in its share of electricity generated from wind with 31.9%.

4. California – with a capacity of 5,885 megawatts, has the current largest windfarm in the country, and the second largest onshore windfarm in the world. California has committed to 100% renewable energy by 2045.

5. Kansas – with a capacity of 5,653 megawatts, requires utilities to generate or purchase 20% of their energy from renewable sources

Power Technology

Globally, wind accounts for 7.82% of all the electricity produced.

Our World in Data

The US has 6 of the world’s top 10 onshore windfarms. Since 2015, wind power has almost doubled.

Power Technology

The top 5 countries that utilize wind power:

1. China -- 342 gigawatts

2. US -- 139 gigawatts            

3. Germany -- 64 gigawatts

4.  India -- 41 gigawatts

5.  Spain -- 29 gigawatts

Power Technology

For more on the Environment, click here.

The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo, a grass-roots movement of atomic bomb survivors, “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.”

Nihon Hidankyo has for decades represented hundreds of thousands of survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These survivors, known as the hibakusha, are living memorials to the horror of the attacks and have used their testimony to raise awareness of the human consequences of nuclear warfare.

For more information, click here.

Wind Resource Database

A resource from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and funded by the United States Agency for International Development. Offers an up-to-date, long-term dataset tailored to wind energy applications. Provides access to model simulations across the U.S. and other countries with time series data for meteorological variables every 5 minutes and every 2 kilometers. For a given location covered by a dataset, it is possible to see the wind resource either at a given time or averaged over a certain period. Learn more.

For more on the Environment, click here.

Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church 

By Hahrie Han. Tells the story of Undivided, a faith-based program in Cincinnati, designed to foster antiracism and systemic change. Chronicles the story of four participants—two men, one Black and one white, and two women, one Black and one white—whose lives were fundamentally altered by the program. As each of their journeys unfolded, in unpredictable and sometimes painful ways, they came to better understand one another, and to believe in the transformative possibilities for racial solidarity in a moment of deep divisiveness in America.

Read more.

For more on Racism, click here.

Millennium Alliance for Humanity

and the Biosphere (MAHB)

An initiative of Stanford University, that helps society address the interconnections among the threats to human well-being such as: climate disruption, loss of biodiversity (and ecosystem services), land-use change and degradation, global toxification, ocean acidification, decay of the epidemiological environment, an economic system based on growth, pressure from increasing population, and resource wars. Offers a variety of resources such as literature, multi-media materials, analysis, movies, and editorials. Learn more.

For more on the Environment, click here.

A Bowl of Perfect Light: Stories of Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Repairing

the World

By Megan McKenna. Through scripture and stories from diverse traditions including the gospel narratives, Jewish midrash, Hassidic tales, Native American oral traditions, and others, presents insights on–and practices in–forgiveness, reconciliation, restorative justice, healing from trauma, and participation in “repairing the world.” Each chapter includes reflections, practices, and questions making the book a helpful resource for journaling or group discussion. Learn more.

For more Forgiveness resources, click here.

A New Vision for Ending Homelessness

in the U.S.

A TED Talk, featuring anti-homelessness champion Rosanne Haggerty, who points to success stories from across the US, showing how we can end homelessness by reinvesting in collaboration, community and a data-driven approach — because safe housing is a fundamental human right.

Watch now.

For more on Housing, click here.

3 Reasons Why Medications Are So Expensive

An TED-Ed Talk, that takes a look at the US supply chain to explore why medications are so expensive. For example, a vial of insulin generally costs less than $6 to make, but those in the US pay on average 10 times more than those in other countries— leading some patients to take less than prescribed.

Watch now.

For more on the Health Care System, click here.

From Prison to Purpose Through

Wildland Firefighting

A TED Talk, featuring Royal Ramey, who shares the story of how doing public service in prison inspired him to cofound the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program, a nonprofit helping formerly incarcerated people become wildland firefighters — and find purpose along the way. Watch now.

For more on the Criminal Justice System,

click here.

What Does Poverty Look Like on a Plate?

A TED Talk, featuring economic policy researcher Huiyi Lin, a cocreator of "The Poverty Line" -- an art project examining poverty through the lens of food. By photographing the daily food choices of people living at the poverty line in 38 countries and territories around the world, Lin shines a light on the problem of poverty in a way no policy report ever could. Watch now.

For more on Poverty, click here.

Doctrine of Discovery

A video that tells the story of the Doctrine of Discovery and how European descendants benefitted from a violent history of land grabbing and genocide that was justified by patriotism and religion. This theology formed an international legal structure that continues to dispossess Indigenous Peoples of their land. Watch now.

For more on Racism, click here.

Nuns & Nones

An intergenerational, spiritual community dedicated to care, contemplation, and courageous action in service of life and liberation. Participants work to create lasting community, sustain lives committed to justice and spiritual practice, and to collectively respond to the needs of the times. Currently there are two domains of work: an emerging spiritual Covenantal Community and the Land Justice Project. Learn more.

For more Justice resources, click here.

A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs 

By Crystal R. Sanders. Tells the little-known story of "segregation scholarships" awarded by states in the U.S. South to Black students seeking graduate education in the pre–Brown v. Board of Education era. Examines Black graduate students who relocated to the North, Midwest, and West to continue their education with segregation scholarships, revealing the many challenges they faced along the way. Demonstrates how white efforts to preserve segregation led to the underfunding of public Black colleges, furthering racial inequality in American higher education. Read more.

For more on Racism, click here.

Women Called to Catholic Priesthood: From Ecclesial Challenge to Spiritual Renewal

By Sharon Henderson Callahan & Jeanette Rodriguez. Drawing on the stories of forty-two women serving in the United States, Canada, Colombia, Europe, and South Africa, explores the contexts, calls, journeys, spirituality, and theology of women called to priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church. Ranging in age from their early thirties to their late eighties, these women tell stories that help readers understand the spirituality and deep sense of call womenpriests experience despite the challenges they face in challenging canon law.

Read more.

For more on Gender Inequality, click here.

John Lewis: A Life

By David Greenberg. Traces Lewis’s life through the post-Civil Rights years, when he headed the Voter Education Project, which enrolled millions of African American voters across the South. Reveals the little-known story of his political ascent first locally in Atlanta, and then as a member of Congress. Captures Lewis’s influential career through documents from dozens of archives, interviews with hundreds of people who knew Lewis, and long-lost footage of Lewis himself speaking to reporters from his hospital bed following his severe beating on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma. Read more.

For more Justice resources, click here.

Dorothy Day: Radical Devotion

By Jeffry Odell Korgen, Christopher Cardinale & Friar Mike Lasky OFM Conv. A graphic novel that introduces readers to the life of Dorothy Day, reviews her impact on the church and peace and justice movements, and provides an informative understanding of the process of canonization. Read more. 

For more Justice resources, click here.

Catholics for the Common Good:

An Eternal Offering

By Daryl Russell Grigsby. Thirty-six portraits of contemporary Catholics show how they have lived the eucharistic prayer, "Lord, make of us an eternal offering to you" in their commitment to the common good and to human flourishing. Read more.

For more Catholic Social Teaching resources,

click here.

Prayer

A Prayer for Leadership 

Give us, O God,

leaders whose hearts are large enough 

to match the breadth of our own souls 

and give us souls strong enough

to follow leaders of vision and wisdom.

In seeking a leader, let us seek 

more than development for ourselves—

though development we hope for—

more than security for our own land—

though security we need—

more than satisfaction for our wants—

though many things we desire.

Give us the hearts to choose 

the leader who will work with other leaders

to bring safety to the whole world.

Give us leaders 

who lead this nation to virtue

without seeking to impose 

our kind of virtue 

on the virtue of others.

Give us a government

that provides for the advancement

of this country

without taking resources from others 

to achieve it.

Give us insight enough ourselves

to choose as leaders those who can tell 

strength from power,

growth from greed,

leadership from dominance,

and real greatness 

from the trappings of grandiosity.

We trust you, Great God,

to open our hearts to learn 

from those to whom you speak 

in different tongues 

and to respect the life and words

of those to whom you entrusted

the good of other parts of this globe. 

We beg you, Great God,

give us the vision as a people

to know where global leadership truly lies, 

to pursue it diligently,

to require it to protect human rights 

for everyone everywhere.

We ask these things, Great God, 

with minds open to your word

and hearts that trust in your eternal care.

Amen.

By Joan Chittister

Since 2017, there have been more than 450,000 visitors to the Social Justice Resource Center website. We provide a wide variety of facts and figures on specific social issues as well as thousands of free resources including films, publications, links to other organizations, prayers, quotes, principles of social justice, key dates throughout the year, action ideas, Diocesan office contact information and biographies of famous people who have worked for social justice.

To learn more, click here.

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