When I was a kid in the early ’90s, I was in an environmental club called Kids for Saving Earth.

Makes sense: it was an era defined by anxiety about the hole in the ozone layer and acid rain. I don’t remember much about the specifics of the club itself — I think we “adopted” a whale? — but I do vividly remember the logo: a scribbly, childlike crayon drawing of Earth, with its amorphous green and brown blobs, on a misshapen blue ball. Exactly how I would have drawn it as a kid and maybe how you would have, too.

I am happy to see this club still exists; I didn’t know it at the time, but KSE is a non-profit organization based in Minnesota founded in 1989 by an elementary school student named Clinton Hill, who tragically died of cancer at the age of 11. I am also happy to see that the logo is unchanged.

Earth feels like an ubiquitous image, so familiar a child can draw it, the stuff of solar-system models and textbooks. But being able to see actual images of the pale blue dot we call home is a relatively recent human achievement.

There’s a big change taking place in the way Canada provides foreign aid — and faith-based relief and development agencies are concerned about it.

In the past, decisions about where to spend international development dollars were based on the needs of the world’s poorest citizens. But now the federal government is linking aid with trade in order to benefit Canadian businesses.

“Having development support our trade is key,” Randeep Sarai, the secretary of state for international development, told me earlier this year.

Emergency humanitarian aid would not be affected by the change, he said. But money intended for development projects — things like health care, education and agriculture — would be linked to trade. “We are trying to focus on where there are trade opportunities,” he said.

“We May Not Be Big, But We’re Small.” That was the motto of The Vinyl Cafe, a fictional record store owned by Dave, a character featured in the stories of the late Canadian author and CBC radio host Stuart McLean.

It could also be the motto for the United Church of Canada, according to moderator Kimberly Heath.

I spoke with Heath last September, after she was elected to that position. Looking ahead to her new role, she noted that United Church members still liked to think of their church as big — even though that was no longer the case.

The numbers prove the point. From a high of just over one million members in 1965, the church reported having about 325,000 in 2023. According to the Church’s own projections, that figure may decrease to 110,000 members by 2035.

Let this sink in — $108,000.

That’s what GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy could cost you over 25-30 years. If you’re prescribed Ozempic “off label” for weight loss (same drug, just for diabetic treatment) it will cost you less.

But let’s do the math: Wegovy runs roughly $400-$570 per month in Canada. No provincial drug plan covers it for weight loss. Multiply that out over a few decades, and you’re looking at well over $100,000, out of pocket, over the course of your life.

I’m not anti-medication. GLP-1 drugs are genuinely impressive, and I coach people who use them effectively. But “impressive” and “magic injection” are two very different things. Before you or someone you care about commits to a drug for life, you deserve to understand what the research actually says.