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  • Climate setbacks and steps forward from 2025

    There’s no mincing words: The list of climate records broken and the number of “unprecedented” extreme weather events this year goes on and on. Just in the past few months, at least 1,750 people died in monsoon flooding in Asia that a consortium of climate scientists attributed to human-caused global heating. Related video above: Solar and wind power increased faster than electricity demand in first half of 2025, report saysIn the U.S., investments in renewable, non-polluting energy were rolled back, and policy moves like the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and the Environmental Protection Agency’s reconsidering a key part of the federal government’s legal authority to regulate emissions.However, other nations have continued to make policy progress on prioritizing renewable energy and protecting the environment, and so have some scientists and groups on this side of the Atlantic.Here are a few of the highs and lows of humanity’s effect on our planet this year.The bad news firstGoal of keeping warming to 2.7 degrees no longer realisticHumans have failed to keep global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, long considered the goal following the original Paris climate agreement, according to UN Secretary General António Guterres. “Overshooting is now inevitable,” he said.Scientists widely consider the 2.7 degree goal the point at which climate change will begin hitting its most severe, irreversible damage.“We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible,” Guterres said ahead of the 2025 UN climate summit COP30, urging humanity to change course immediately. COP30 fails to make substantive progressUnfortunately, the outcomes from that UN summit did not live up to the secretary general’s hopes. This summit is an annual meeting where member countries measure their progress on addressing climate change and agree to legally binding goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.However, this final decision coming out of this year’s summit only included new voluntary initiatives to accelerate national climate action. According to commentary from the World Resources Institute, more than 80 countries advocated for a “global roadmap” to guide the transition away from fossil fuels, but negotiators didn’t include it in the final decision after they faced opposition from countries whose economies are built largely on oil and gas extraction and exports.World passes first climate ‘tipping point’This year, the world passed its first climate “tipping point,” meaning a threshold of irreversible change. Warming oceans have caused mass death in coral reefs, which are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. These reefs support a quarter of marine life and a billion people. Other tipping points, such as the devastation of the Amazon rainforest and melting ice sheets, are also approaching, scientists warn. Record-setting days of heat in major citiesThe world’s major cities now experience a quarter more very hot days every year on average than they did three decades ago, according to a September analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development.“This isn’t a problem we can simply air-condition our way out of,” said Anna Walnycki, a principal researcher, in a press release. “Fixing it requires comprehensive changes to how neighbourhoods and individual buildings are designed, as well as bringing nature back into our cities in the form of trees and other plants.“Climate change is the new reality. Governments can’t keep their heads buried in the sand anymore.”Where positive action made a differenceGlobal renewable energy generation surpasses coal for first time This year, expanding solar and wind power infrastructure led to record shifts away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Wind and solar farms produced more electricity than coal plants for the first time, a massive shift for power generation worldwide.According to a report from climate think tank Ember, in the first six months of the year, renewable energy overtook the global demand for electricity. The world generated almost a third more solar power in the first half of the year than it did in the same period last year, meeting a whopping 83% of the global increase in demand for electricity.Solar installations were up 64% around the globe after the first half of the year, driven largely by China, whose solar installations more than doubled compared to last year. Solar installations rose in the U.S. by only 4%, however.Pennsylvania children see drop in asthma after a coal plant closedAfter a coking plant closed near Pittsburgh, the population living in the area saw an immediate 20.5% drop in weekly respiratory trips to the emergency room, according to a study published almost 10 years later. Even more encouraging was that over the immediate term, pediatric emergency department visits decreased by 41.2%, a trend that increased as the months went on. The region also saw lower hospitalizations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide.Congestion toll drops emissions in NYC by 22%In January, New York City became the first in the country to put in place a toll on drivers in certain parts of the city during rush hours. The measure was intended to reduce traffic and improve health. During the first six months of the policy, NYC emissions dropped 22%. The city is using the revenue to fund mass transit, including the subway system.

    There’s no mincing words: The list of climate records broken and the number of “unprecedented” extreme weather events this year goes on and on. Just in the past few months, at least 1,750 people died in monsoon flooding in Asia that a consortium of climate scientists attributed to human-caused global heating.

    Related video above: Solar and wind power increased faster than electricity demand in first half of 2025, report says

    In the U.S., investments in renewable, non-polluting energy were rolled back, and policy moves like the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and the Environmental Protection Agency’s reconsidering a key part of the federal government’s legal authority to regulate emissions.

    However, other nations have continued to make policy progress on prioritizing renewable energy and protecting the environment, and so have some scientists and groups on this side of the Atlantic.

    Here are a few of the highs and lows of humanity’s effect on our planet this year.

    The bad news first

    Goal of keeping warming to 2.7 degrees no longer realistic

    Humans have failed to keep global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, long considered the goal following the original Paris climate agreement, according to UN Secretary General António Guterres. “Overshooting is now inevitable,” he said.

    Scientists widely consider the 2.7 degree goal the point at which climate change will begin hitting its most severe, irreversible damage.

    “We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible,” Guterres said ahead of the 2025 UN climate summit COP30, urging humanity to change course immediately.

    COP30 fails to make substantive progress

    Unfortunately, the outcomes from that UN summit did not live up to the secretary general’s hopes. This summit is an annual meeting where member countries measure their progress on addressing climate change and agree to legally binding goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    However, this final decision coming out of this year’s summit only included new voluntary initiatives to accelerate national climate action. According to commentary from the World Resources Institute, more than 80 countries advocated for a “global roadmap” to guide the transition away from fossil fuels, but negotiators didn’t include it in the final decision after they faced opposition from countries whose economies are built largely on oil and gas extraction and exports.

    World passes first climate ‘tipping point’

    This year, the world passed its first climate “tipping point,” meaning a threshold of irreversible change. Warming oceans have caused mass death in coral reefs, which are some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems. These reefs support a quarter of marine life and a billion people.

    Other tipping points, such as the devastation of the Amazon rainforest and melting ice sheets, are also approaching, scientists warn.

    Record-setting days of heat in major cities

    The world’s major cities now experience a quarter more very hot days every year on average than they did three decades ago, according to a September analysis by the International Institute for Environment and Development.

    “This isn’t a problem we can simply air-condition our way out of,” said Anna Walnycki, a principal researcher, in a press release. “Fixing it requires comprehensive changes to how neighbourhoods and individual buildings are designed, as well as bringing nature back into our cities in the form of trees and other plants.

    “Climate change is the new reality. Governments can’t keep their heads buried in the sand anymore.”

    Where positive action made a difference

    Global renewable energy generation surpasses coal for first time

    This year, expanding solar and wind power infrastructure led to record shifts away from fossil fuels and toward renewables. Wind and solar farms produced more electricity than coal plants for the first time, a massive shift for power generation worldwide.

    According to a report from climate think tank Ember, in the first six months of the year, renewable energy overtook the global demand for electricity. The world generated almost a third more solar power in the first half of the year than it did in the same period last year, meeting a whopping 83% of the global increase in demand for electricity.

    Solar installations were up 64% around the globe after the first half of the year, driven largely by China, whose solar installations more than doubled compared to last year. Solar installations rose in the U.S. by only 4%, however.

    Pennsylvania children see drop in asthma after a coal plant closed

    After a coking plant closed near Pittsburgh, the population living in the area saw an immediate 20.5% drop in weekly respiratory trips to the emergency room, according to a study published almost 10 years later. Even more encouraging was that over the immediate term, pediatric emergency department visits decreased by 41.2%, a trend that increased as the months went on. The region also saw lower hospitalizations for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide.

    Congestion toll drops emissions in NYC by 22%

    In January, New York City became the first in the country to put in place a toll on drivers in certain parts of the city during rush hours. The measure was intended to reduce traffic and improve health. During the first six months of the policy, NYC emissions dropped 22%. The city is using the revenue to fund mass transit, including the subway system.

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  • Indonesia’s protests over the economy turn to police brutality

    Protests in Indonesia sparked by economic hardship have elicited a heavy-handed response from police, triggering concerns that the Southeast Asian nation could be returning to its authoritarian past.

    As police trucks have been spray-painted with anti-law enforcement slogans, President Prabowo Subianto has denounced the demonstrations as “treason and terrorism” while seeking to assuage wide-ranging discontent.

    Thousands have taken to the streets in major cities in the last week, joined at times by rioters setting fire to government buildings and looters ransacking the homes of politicians. At least 10 people have died and hundreds have been injured in the ensuing unrest.

    On Wednesday, a coalition of student unions met with lawmakers and demanded an independent investigation into the police violence, portending further protests.

    Frustrations in the world’s third-largest democracy have been building since Prabowo, a former military general and businessman, took power last year, implementing austerity measures that have cut billions from public services such as healthcare and education.

    Many ordinary Indonesians criticize the government for primarily serving the interests of the wealthy elite even as youth unemployment soars and wages stagnate.

    The initial wave of demonstrations began Aug. 25, with thousands gathering outside the country’s parliament to decry one stark example of such inequality: a $3,000 housing allowance for lawmakers that was nearly 10 times the minimum wage in Jakarta.

    The discontent escalated into violence when a 21-year-old motorcycle taxi driver was fatally struck by an armored police vehicle speeding through the crowd.

    Prabowo and his police chief have apologized for the incident, and one of the officers involved in the crash has been fired.

    At a televised news conference, Prabowo stressed that the right to peaceful assembly should be protected but that “the state must step in to protect its citizens.”

    Neither these measures, nor the president’s promise to scale back the lawmakers’ perks, have quelled the outpouring of public anger, which has been met with a police response that human rights groups have decried as excessive.

    “Nobody should die while exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” said Montse Ferrer, Amnesty International’s regional research director for East and Southeast Asia.

    On Monday, the United Nations called for an investigation into the “alleged use of unnecessary or disproportionate force by security forces.”

    Since the demonstrations began, Indonesian police have used tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets against protesters, some of whom have lobbed back Molotov cocktails and rocks. Authorities have arrested over 3,000 people.

    Two deaths have been attributed to the police crackdown: a pedicab driver in the city of Solo who died last week while being treated for tear gas exposure, and a college student who died Sunday after apparently being beaten by police.

    Such incidents have resurfaced the Indonesian public’s festering distrust of the police force, said Jacqui Baker, a scholar of Indonesian security and policing at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia.

    “Ordinary people have long repeated a saying ‘report a chicken, lose a buffalo,’ meaning if you engage the police in routine law enforcement … you are likely to suffer more material loss than the original theft,” she said.

    In recent years, civic groups have accused police of dozens of extrajudicial killings and torture.

    Many of the country’s policing problems stem from a three-decade-long period of authoritarian rule under then-President Suharto that ended in 1998.

    With the police remaining wedded to political interests even after the country’s democratization, Baker said, the “historical sense of entitlement has generated a deeply corrupt, violent and predatory force that is widely hated by ordinary people.”

    President Prabowo himself is accused of human rights abuses, such as the abduction of dissidents, under Suharto’s rule. Critics say he is now pulling the country back into authoritarianism by expanding the military’s involvement in civilian institutions. Prabowo denies these claims.

    Max Kim

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  • American Religion Is Not Dead Yet

    American Religion Is Not Dead Yet

    Take a drive down Main Street of just about any major city in the country, and—with the housing market ground to a halt—you might pass more churches for sale than homes. This phenomenon isn’t likely to change anytime soon; according to the author of a 2021 report on the future of religion in America, 30 percent of congregations are not likely to survive the next 20 years. Add in declining attendance and dwindling affiliation rates, and you’d be forgiven for concluding that American religion is heading toward extinction.

    But the old metrics of success—attendance and affiliation, or, more colloquially, “butts, budgets, and buildings”—may no longer capture the state of American religion. Although participation in traditional religious settings (churches, synagogues, mosques, schools, etc.) is in decline, signs of life are popping up elsewhere: in conversations with chaplains, in communities started online that end up forming in-person bonds as well, in social-justice groups rooted in shared faith.

    For centuries, houses of worship have been the center of their communities, where people met their friends and partners, where they raised their kids, where they found solace, where they broke bread, where they organized around important issues.

    Shadi Hamid: America without God

    As Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell demonstrated in their 2010 book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, most Americans no longer orient their lives around houses of worship. And that loss is about more than just missing out on prayer services. It means that when people move to a new city, they have to work much harder to find new friends than previous generations did. When someone falls ill, they might not have a cadre of their fellow faithful to offer home-cooked meals and prayers for healing. This reorientation away from houses of worship is one of the factors that has led to the decline of a sense of community, the rise of social isolation, and the corresponding negative effects on public health, especially for older adults.

    Religion has historically done four main “jobs.” First, it provides a framework for meaning-making, whether helping our ancient ancestors explain why it rained when it rained, or helping us today make sense of why bad things happen to good people. Second, religion offers rituals that enable us to mark time, process loss, and celebrate joys—from births to coming of age to family formation to death. Third, it creates and supports communities, allowing each of us to find a place of belonging. And finally, fueled by each of the first three, religion inspires us to take prophetic action—to partake in building a world that is more just, more kind, and more loving. Through the pursuit of these four jobs, religious folks might also experience a sense of wonder, discover some new truth about themselves or the world, or even have an encounter with the divine.

    So rather than asking how many people went to church last Sunday morning, we should ask, “Where are Americans finding meaning in their lives? How are they marking the passing of sacred time? Where are they building pockets of vibrant communities? And what are they doing to answer the prophetic call, however it is that they hear it?”

    There have never been more ways to answer these questions, even if fewer and fewer people are stepping into a sanctuary. People are meaning-making in one-on-one sessions with spiritual directors and chaplains. One in four Americans—across racial and religious (and nonreligious) backgrounds—has met with a chaplain in their lifetime, according to a recent survey that Gallup conducted for the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, of which one of us, Wendy, is a founder. Most find their time with chaplains valuable.

    People are preparing for the end of life with the Shomer Collective, a group that helps people as they prepare for and navigate the end of life, offering wisdom from the Jewish tradition. Death doulas now work with people from a variety of backgrounds, giving hand massages, preparing food, and doing much more for dying people and their loved ones.

    These spiritual offerings are not just for individuals. People are gathering in communities in new ways to celebrate Shabbat rituals with OneTable, and mourning the loss of their loved ones with the Dinner Party. They’re joining small groups through the New Wine Collective, a movement helping people build spiritual communities, and the Nearness, a platform for nurturing your spiritual life while discovering community online. And they’re pursuing faith-driven justice work with organizations such as the Faith Matters Network and Living Redemption.

    From the April 2017 issue: Breaking faith

    Many theological schools aren’t yet training their students to reimagine how to serve people outside traditional religious contexts. Most are still preparing clergy to serve in congregations, a job with diminishing prospects these days. However, a growing number of groups, many of them led by seminary graduates, support spiritual leaders who are fostering new kinds of spirituality in their flocks.

    The Glean Network, of which Elan is the founding director, has incubated more than 100 faith-rooted ventures over the past seven years through its partnership with Columbia Business School. Some of these programs focus on meaning-making, many on building communities, others on creative rituals, and still others on answering a prophetic call. The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab brings chaplains traditionally siloed in the settings where they work—health care, the military, higher education, prisons—into a broader learning community. More than 4,000 chaplains belong to the Lab’s private Facebook group—what we believe to be the largest virtual gathering of chaplains in the world—sharing advice, insights, and improvisational rituals from around the globe. These networks and a growing number of others equip spiritual leaders from a broad range of faith traditions to do their best work, and challenge theological schools to make their education more responsive, expansive, accessible, and practical.

    This swell of spiritual creativity comes at a time when Americans seem to need it most. We are more lonely, more divided, less hopeful, and less trusting than in previous decades. And while there is much to celebrate as these new offerings take shape, their growth comes alongside an unprecedented decline in religious affiliation, which does entail losing some things that are unlikely to be replaced by these creative efforts.

    We are witnessing a tectonic shift in the landscape of American religious life. Putnam was right when he declared a decade ago that religious disaffiliation has “the potential for completely transforming American society.” But he also predicted that it “has the potential for just eliminating religion,” and we beg to differ. Before we conclude that this transformation is solely about decline, let’s make sure we’re looking in all the right places.

    Wendy Cadge

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