Stephan: Here's the reality. The Paris Climate Accord, as written is nowhere near enough.
Credit: AP Photo / Michel Euler
In almost exactly a year’s time, nearly 200 countries will have the chance to go back to the drawing board and make revisions to their Paris Agreement commitments. It sounds boring, but those voluntary commitments are pretty much the only global tool humanity currently has at its disposal to fight the looming climate crisis. What these countries decide to do when they get together in Glasgow next November to update their commitments will quite literally determine whether the planet devolves into a climate-wrecked hellscape or starts tracking a far more livable course.
A new U.N. report published on Tuesday, a week before many of those nations gather in Madrid for an annual climate change conference, shows exactly what the world needs to do to avoid catastrophic warming. Spoiler alert: it will not be easy.
The report says that nations need to make their emissions-reductions goals five times more ambitious in order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C — the threshold scientists say is the danger line for global warming. Even if all of the countries involved […]
Stephan: Here is another disaster that directly connects with criminal Trump's gutting of regulatory oversight. You'd think people would wake up to what is happening, but they don't. I'd be interested in knowing how many people in Port Neches went through this experience and thought: Trump is serving corporate interests not mine, and I'm not going to vote for him again. Very few I suspect.
Concerns about air quality lingered Wednesday following a major early morning explosion at a chemical plant in Port Neches, Texas that shot a fireball into the sky.
The disaster at the TPC Group-owned facility roughly 94 miles west of Houston took place a week after the Trump administration rolled back safety rules meant to protect workers and people who live near chemical plants. In light of the timing, Catherine Fraser, Environment Texas’s clean air associate, called Wednesday’s explosion “a timely warning that state and federal officials need to do more to keep communities safe.”
“It shook our house twice,” Shawn Dunlap, who lives in neighboring Nederland, toldNBC News. “It was just like a bomb going off.” Twitter user @souljaslim52 put it another way: “shit blew tf up.”
According to a statement from TPC Group, the incident occurred at 1:00am local time. The company said it “cannot speak to the cause of the incident or the extent of damage.” The Port Neches Police Department, in a statement posted to Facebook, said, “There’s extensive damage throughout the city.”
Area residents reporteddamaged homes, with some suffering shattered glass and blown-off doors. Three workers at the plant also suffered minor injuries, the company said.
“Throughout the morning more booms could be heard in […]
Stephan: Average Americans as a population, based on the social outcome data, facts ladies and gentlemen, facts is what we are talking about here, are fat, eat a very poor diet, are highly stressed, depressed, not sleeping well, breathtakingly ignorant about how their government works, filled with conspiracy theories, and living shorter lives than we did as recently as four years ago.
I do not see how this can continue and we remain a democracy. Indeed, we seem to be creating a perfect environment for authoritarianism and social disorder.
How do we avoid this? We have to commit to fostering wellbeing, and we need to do it as an expression of mass intention, and not just talk but action expressed in every choice we make. Nobody can solve this but we ourselves.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
From 2010-2019, average of 28% in the U.S. say they weighed 200 lbs. or more
Up from 24% who said the same in 2001-2009
54%, on average, say they want to lose weight, down from 59% in previous decade
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the second decade of the 21st century ends, a look back at 2010-2019 finds that more Americans have said they weigh at least 200 pounds than did so from 2001-2009. An average of 28% of Americans said they weighed 200 pounds or more from 2010-2019, up from 24% during the prior decade. Accordingly, Americans’ average self-reported weight has also risen, to 178 pounds — up from 174 pounds during the previous decade, with similar increases among men (4 pounds) and women (3 pounds).
More Americans Say They Weigh 200 Pounds or More This Decade Than Last
What is your approximate current weight?*
124 lbs. or less
125-149 lbs.
150-174 lbs.
175-199 lbs.
200 lbs. and over
Average weight
%
%
%
%
%
lbs.
2010-2019
All Americans
7
18
23
19
28
178
Men
1
7
23
25
42
196
Women
14
28
24
13
14
159
2001-2009
All Americans
8
19
24
20
24
174
Men
2
7
23
29
38
192
Women
15
31
25
12
12
156
*Averages of answers between the listed dates
GALLUP
These data come from Gallup’s Health and Healthcare survey, conducted in November of each year. Gallup […]
Joshua A. Krisch, Contributing Writer - Live Science
Stephan: Sixty four percent of Americans have never been outside the United States, and they have absolutely no real understanding of what life in other countries is like. That same percentage, 64%, are so willfully ignorant that they cannot even name the three branches of government created by the Constitution. So while these people think America is a world leader in quality of life, education, technology, and life expectancy none of those beliefs is correct.
Here is the latest on the continuing decline in life expectancy in the U.S., something that directly affects you and yours.
Credit: Shutterstock
After increasing for decades, U.S. life expectancy is on the decline, and a new study reveals some of the reasons behind the alarming trend.
The study, published today (Nov. 26) in the journal JAMA, found that the decline is mostly among “working-age” Americans, or those ages 25 to 64. In this group, the risk of dying from drug abuse, suicide, hypertension and more than 30 other causes is increasing, the authors said..
The findings suggest that life expectancy in the U.S. is rapidly falling behind that of other wealthy countries. Indeed, the particular decline among working-age adults has not been seen in other countries, and is a “distinctly American phenomenon,” said study co-author Steven H. Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
“Death rates among working-age adults are on the rise,” Woolf told Live Science. “We have known for years that the health of Americans is inferior to that of other wealthy nations, but our research shows that the decline in U.S. health […]
Wilfred Codrington III, Fellow at Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law - The Atlantic
Stephan: It has been my view for many years that the Electoral College should be eliminated through a Constitutional Amendment. Here is a good exegetic essay that speaks to this issue.
Counting of Electoral College votes at a joint session of Congress. Credit: Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection/ Getty
Is a color-blind political system possible under our Constitution? If it is, the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 did little to help matters. While black people in America today are not experiencing 1950s levels of voter suppression, efforts to keep them and other citizens from participating in elections began within 24 hours of the Shelby County v. Holder ruling and have only increased since then.
In Shelby County’s oral argument, Justice Antonin Scalia cautioned, “Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get them out through the normal political processes.” Ironically enough, there is some truth to an otherwise frighteningly numb claim. American elections have an acute history of racial entitlements—only they don’t privilege black Americans.
For centuries, white votes have gotten undue weight, as a result of innovations such as poll taxes and voter-ID laws and outright violence to discourage racial minorities from voting. (The point was obvious to anyone […]
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
