Stephan: As readers know I have just returned from cruising in Alaskan and Northern Canadian waters. It was an eye-opening experience. The waterfalls are disappearing, and we saw ocean temperatures as high as 75°F. Fishermen we ran into at fueling docks and moorings, reported that they had had the worst year since 1965 because all the fish had gone north into Russian waters to get away from the rising sea temperatures.
Do you hear about any of this in the ongoing train wreck of American politics? Of course not, not a word. And now it looks like American voters may elect Donald Trump to the Presidency, and that will mean nothing meaningful will be done about climate change. Civilization as we know it hangs in the balance.
The scale of warming in the ocean is ‘truly staggering’, the report warns. Credit: Ralph Lee Hopkins/Alamy
HONOLULU — The soaring temperature of the oceans is the “greatest hidden challenge of our generation” that is altering the make-up of marine species, shrinking fishing areas and starting to spread disease to humans, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of ocean warming.
The oceans have already sucked up an enormous amount of heat due to escalating greenhouse gas emissions, affecting marine species from microbes to whales, according to an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) report involving the work of 80 scientists from a dozen countries.
The profound changes underway in the oceans are starting to impact people, the report states. “Due to a domino effect, key human sectors are at threat, especially fisheries, aquaculture, coastal risk management, health and coastal tourism.”
Dan Laffoley, IUCN marine adviser and one of the report’s lead authors, said: “What we are seeing now is running well ahead of what we can cope with. The […]
Stephan: There is a kind of mordant fascination in watching a nation destroy the institutions previous generations spent centuries building. Here is new data on our educational infrastructure, and much like our bridges, airports, and healthcare, education is deteriorating, downgrading, and shriveling before our eyes.
In my view this is all part of the Neo-feudalism Trend. As you read this think about the kind of society it is describing; it is a new kind of peasantry.
Credit: AP
Grab your No. 2 pencils; it’s time for a pop quiz. Don’t worry—there’s only one question, and it’s multiple choice.
The purpose of sending children to school is to
A. Help them develop knowledge and critical-thinking skills.
B. Prepare them for citizenship.
C. Prepare them for work.
D. All of the above.
In a perfect world, D would be the correct answer. But a new poll shows that fewer than half of Americans believe the purpose of education is to acquire knowledge, while the rest are divided between thinking the purpose is to prepare students for work and the goal is to help them become good citizens.
That split, analysts say, is evidence that the struggling economy is having a lingering effect on how parents view the national school system. It’s also evidence, other experts say, of a two-tiered system in U.S. public education: knowledge for people who can afford it, work skills for everyone else.
The results of the 48th annual PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools “seem to assume and even accept that […]
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate Economist and Op-Ed Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: The abject failure of American corporate media to cover this election and the relevant issues in a substantive manner can be explained by the old journalistic canard, "If it bleeds it leads" which, in this case, means the endless vulgarity, nastiness, and lies of Donald Trump have come to dominate the news coverage.
MSNBC, CNN, and FOX, basically now either run Trump clips and discuss them endlessly, or occasionally make digressions into the meaningless nonsense of Hillary Clinton's emails, which might have meant something if, well, if the story actually had any real substance and meant anything.
This almost complete abdication of the media to cover the election and the issues that face America in an intelligent way -- when was the last time you heard a reporter ask either candidate about climate change, or endless war -- is not a trival trend. Paul Krugman lays the issue out very well.
Paul Krugman Credit: Businessweek
Americans of a certain age who follow politics and policy closely still have vivid memories of the 2000 election — bad memories, and not just because the man who lost the popular vote somehow ended up in office. For the campaign leading up to that end game was nightmarish too.
You see, one candidate, George W. Bush, was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in U.S. politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took America to war on false pretenses.
Yet throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Mr. Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were completely accurate — as slippery and dishonest. Mr. Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated […]
Stephan: The burning of gas and oil has huge negative social consequences that are almost never considered in total. If the true cost of petroleum and gas, including issues such as the medical one in this report, were actually figured in the number would be north of $100 a gallon.
Petroleum is not the wellness option, that is why is why it is more costly, less healthful, less efficient, and less pleasant to live under.
The function of the state should be to foster wellness and as citizens we should vote that way.
New analysis from the Clean Air Task Force shows that by 2025 America’s children will experience 750,000 asthma attacks each summer that will be directly attributable to the oil and gas industry.
The report, Gasping for Breath, is the first to quantify the effects of smog caused by oil and gas production and distribution. The authors used industry data submitted to the EPA’s National Emissions Inventory, particularly looking at methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which can interact to create smog. This chemical reaction is facilitated by ultraviolet rays and heat — which is why smog is a bigger problem in the summer than the winter.
VOCs, which include gasoline, benzene, and formaldehyde, are particularly concerning. Not only are they often heavier than air, allowing them to pool in low-lying areas, where people live and breath, and many VOCs are known carcinogens.
Stephan: I suggest this story is important for two reasons. First, it shows that the transition out of carbon is not an easy smooth path, but will require considerable innovation and restructuring. This is where jobs are already appearing, even as carbon employment is withering -- consider the coal industry.
Second, Texas is a deep red state, and George Bush is not a social progressive. Yet this shows that when the wellness option is chosen even in Red value states it takes hold and grows. I take that as good news.
Texas Wind Power Credit: MIT Technology Review
Texas is crushing its clean power goals. Ever since 1999, when then-governor George W. Bush signed a law deregulating the state’s power market, Texas has been building wind turbines like crazy. And the boom isn’t likely to end anytime soon, thanks to a combination of federal subsidies and the falling cost of both wind and solar.
As the Wall Street Journal reports, as part of the 1999 law, Bush included a provision that called for 2,000 megawatts of renewable power capacity by 2009. That milestone came four years early. Bush’s successor, Rick Perry, raised the bar to 10,000 megawatts by 2025.
The state blasted past that milestone as well. As of April this year, it had an astonishing 19,000 megawatts of renewables, enough capacity to power 4 million homes and good for about 16 percent of the state’s total energy diet. The vast majority of that is wind: nearly 18,000 megawatts, far and away the nation’s leader.
