Thursday, November 24th, 2016
Forsetti's Justice, - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: In 1996 my late wife and I bought a 36 foot Bluebird Wanderlodge, a kind of RV, and spent the next four years traveling on blue highways around every nook and cranny in the U.S. so I could write a book on traveling the parts of American most people who don't actually live there rarely see. The book never got written because Hayden came down with cancer and died in the course of this long project, and it was just too painful to write about. But I have never forgotten my submersion into Red value White "Christian" flyover America and I think this essay accurately lays out the relevant points about what happened in this election very well.
Credit: Kansas Historical Society
As the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump is being sorted out, a common theme keeps cropping up from all sides: “Democrats failed to understand white, working-class, fly-over America.”
Trump supporters are saying this. Progressive pundits are saying this. Talking heads across all forms of the media are saying this. Even some Democratic leaders are saying this. It doesn’t matter how many people say it, it is complete bullshit. It is an intellectual/linguistic sleight of hand meant to throw attention away from the real problem. The real problem isn’t east coast elites who don’t understand or care about rural America. The real problem is rural America doesn’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why they are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of choices they’ve made and horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe.
I grew up in rural, […]
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Thursday, November 24th, 2016
Dénes Csala, Lecturer in Energy Storage Systems Dynamics at Lancaster University - CleanTechnica
Stephan: If he is to be believed -- a big if -- Donald Trump intends to re-emphasize carbon energy in a big way, coal, fracking, petroleum in general, everything his rich friends want. The result will be that the U.S. will fall further behind the dominant trend which is moving out of carbon energy. Here is another data point in support of my hyopothesis.
Charanka Solar Park Gujarat, India
Credit: CleanTechnica
India aims to build 1 terrawatt of global solar power – four times the current worldwide total – and become a 100% electric vehicle nation by 2030. Those are great ambitions, but they still far short from what is needed for a true energy transformation away from coal, writes Dénes Scala of Lancaster University. Courtesy of The Conversation.
One of the world’s largest solar power projects has just been completed in southern India. At 648 megawatts (MW), the Kamuthi solar plant can generate as much electricity as most coal or nuclear power stations.
This is great news. But it must be only the start of an unprecedented Indian solar boom. For the country to achieve its Paris climate pledges it will need hundreds more Kamuthis.
India has become one of the big names in renewable energy in recent years. The country championed the International Solar Alliance, an initiative launched a year ago at COP21 in Paris which is expected to be ratified at the follow-up […]
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Thursday, November 24th, 2016
Stephan: While Oklahoma is being destroyed by fracking earthquakes, and First American tribes are trying to defend their sacred lands from the rape of pipelines, and our in-coming President brags about his commitment to re-immerse the U.S. in carbon energy, other nations are emphasizing the transition to another newer world. Here is the work of Studio Roosegaarde a social design lab of Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde and his team of designers and engineers which make ideas of future landscapes become reality. Roosegaarde creates interactive designs which explore the dynamic relation between people, technology and space through unique innovations.
The Studio Roosegaarde innovative air cleaning technology at work in China. Credit: Studio Roosegaarde
Studio Roosegaarde‘s smog-sucking vacuum tower is actually cleaning up the air in China. The Smog Free Tower has been installed in Beijing, a city notorious for its air pollution, and the country’s Ministry of Environmental Protection recently announced the air around the tower is in fact 55 percent cleaner than it was before. According to Studio Roosegaarde, the tower has snatched billions of PM2.5 fine particles out of the polluted air.
Over the last 41 days, the Smog Free Tower has busily scrubbed 30 million m3 of air, according to Studio Roosegaarde. That’s equal to the volume of 10 Beijing National Stadiums. Studio Roosegaarde reports that locals referred to his tower as a “clean air temple,” drawing comparisons to China’s famed pagodas.
What to do with all that pollution captured by the tower? Make jewelry out of it, of course. Smog particles sucked up by the Smog Free Tower […]
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Wednesday, November 23rd, 2016
teleSUR , - Mint Press News
Stephan: Here is the latest report on the rise of Neo-feudalism. We are moving into a world with a small aristocracy of ultra-high net worth individuals, as they are known to economists, a small middle class, mostly professional people, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and a vast peasantry. In the middle ages wealth was largely determined by large land ownership farmed by villeins or serfs who worked the land but did not own it, or only a small strip. In the modern manifestation the peasants are mostly the people who work for hourly wages -- which is to say most of the U.S. population -- but own nothing but a car, and perhaps a mortgaged modest house, if they own even that. Sixty two per cent of Americans have less than a $1000 of cash available to them, 21% don't even have a savings account and live paycheck to paycheck.
The multi-national corporations owned by the uber-rich are becoming the true power centers as they buy and control legislatures by proxy, which is giving birth to what can appropriately be seen as baronies and duchies.
This process is being hurried along by racist nativism of the people with the least education and lowest income Whites, the ones most easily dispossessed by immigrants. It is this reality that elected Donald Trump; ironically a member of the 1%. Based on the news today he seems poised to benefit from being President as Louis XIV benefited from being King of France. And his followers to unwelcome surprises.
Credit: Shutterstock
As global crises of climate change, forced migration and conflict continue to heat up, battering the planet’s most vulnerable, the age-old story remains true: the world’s rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep getting poorer, and the trend is only expected to continue, according to a new report released Tuesday.
The Global Wealth Report 2016 from the Credit Suisse Research Institute finds that wealth inequality is on the rise, with the bottom poorest half of the world’s adults in control of less wealth than the top 1 percent. Meanwhile, the richest 10 percent of the world enjoyed a boost from the 2008 financial crisis and now own a whopping 89 percent of all assets.
Vast wealth inequality is a familiar story, but the levels of economic disparity in 2016 remain shocking.
“This huge gap between rich and poor is undermining economies, destabilizing societies and holding back the fight against poverty,” Oxfam’s head of inequality policy, Max Lawson, said in a statement in response to the new report.
The […]
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Wednesday, November 23rd, 2016
Feliz Solomon , - Fortune
Stephan: The creation of a multi-generational aristocracy in the U.S. in the emerging geopolitical Neo-feudalism, as this report explains, is due not to upward mobility but to the inheritance laws, which are creating an enormous transfer of wealth.
Credit: Shutterstock
Despite little wage growth and declining job prospects among young Americans, the U.S. is home to vast stores of wealth and a millionaire class that outsizes that of any other country in the world. And it’s about to get even bigger.
The number of Americans who meet the millionaire threshold is set to increase by an average of 1,700 every day for the coming years, Bloomberg reports, based on projections by the Boston Consulting Group. By the year 2020, the U.S. is expected to welcome 3.1 million new members into its millionaires’ club, which grew by 2.4 million from 2010 to 2015.
Today, there are about 8 million American households with assets worth more than $1 million, excluding properties and luxury goods, the firm said.
The coming spike in individual wealth will largely be due to what Bloomberg calls “the largest generational transfer of wealth in history.” Much of America’s wealth is concentrated among older generations, whose mostly already affluent offspring are about to inherit a fortune.
Inheritance matters in maintaining financial […]
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