Stephan: I have been telling my readers for years that this was coming, and now it is beginning, and it's a trend that is going to get worse every year from now on. And we are utterly unprepared; we even have one party that doesn't believe human-mediated climate change even exists. The vote in November is going to determine where you and your children, and their children live in the years to come.
Resident Austin Giannuzzi cries while embracing family members at the burned remains of their home during the LNU Lightning Complex fire in Vacaville, California on August 23, 2020
August besieged California with a heat unseen in generations. A surge in air conditioning broke the state’s electrical grid, leaving a population already ravaged by the coronavirus to work remotely by the dim light of their cellphones. By midmonth, the state had recorded possibly the hottest temperature ever measured on earth — 130 degrees in Death Valley — and an otherworldly storm of lightning had cracked open the sky. From Santa Cruz to Lake Tahoe, thousands of bolts of electricity exploded down onto withered grasslands and forests, some of them already hollowed out by climate-driven infestations of beetles and kiln-dried by the worst five-year drought on record. Soon, California was on fire.
Over the next two weeks, 900 blazes incinerated six times as much land as all the state’s 2019 wildfires combined, forcing 100,000 people from their homes. Three of the largest fires in history burned simultaneously in a ring around the San Francisco […]
Stephan: As you read this, ask yourself, given these facts, and these are the facts, how can any rational person vote for this man? That said what does it say about Americans that 43% approve of Trump and what he has done?
If you are in the 99% here is how well you are faring under Trump policies compared to the 1%—for each dollar of increased income that you earned in 2018, each One-Percenter got $88 more income.
Huge as that ratio is, it’s small change compared to the super-rich, the 0.01% of Americans with incomes of $10 million and up. That ratio is $1 for you and $2,215 for each super-rich American household.
The slice of American income pie going to the poor shrank under Trump by the same amount that it grew for the super-rich.
Ponder that for a moment. For each additional dollar that you earned in 2018 compared to 2016, each of the wealthiest taxpayers got an additional $2,215.
The bottom line: with Trump as president it’s good to be rich
The average super-rich American enjoyed $7.1 million more income under Trump in 2018 than in 2016, the last year that Barack Obama was president. For the Ninety-Nine-Percenters, in contrast, average income rose just $3,360 with most that gain among those making $200,000 to $500,000.
Stephan: Do you realize that there are literally thousands of animals, birds, and insects your children and their children will never see? How many butterflies did you see this summer? And if you think there will be no effect on humans you are wildly wrong. The negative implications of these extinctions are so great they are hard to calculate.
To obtain the actual report: https://f.hubspotusercontent20.net/hubfs/4783129/LPR/PDFs/ENGLISH-FULL.pdf
Aerial view of a deforested area in the municipality of Melgaco, Para State, Brazil, on July 30, 2020. Credit: Tarso Sarraf/AFP/Getty
A new report from the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) reveals that population sizes of “mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish” are down by 68 percent since 1970, amounting to an “unprecedented” rate of destruction of Earth’s diverse range of species.
“Biodiversity is fundamental to human life on Earth, and the evidence is unequivocal – it is being destroyed by us at a rate unprecedented in history,” the WWF explains in its report. The authors cite a number of reasons for the massive loss of wildlife including the industrial revolution, human population growth, increases in global trade and consumption, urbanisation and climate change. The WWF argues that humans are overusing the planet’s biocapacity by at least 56 percent, in the process polluting most of our oceans, destroying 85 percent of the area of wetlands and significantly altering 75 percent of the planet’s ice-free land surface.
Stephan: Trump in a hundred ways has made it clear that he cares nothing for ordinary people, so why does it surprise anyone that he cares nothing for the environment or the other beings who make up the matrix of life. But you and your family will live with the consequences of Trump's indifference for years after he is gone.
A gray wolf pup emerges from a den. Conservation groups warn that the mass killing of wolves in Idaho over a one-year period that ended this summer “represented nearly 60% of the 2019 year-end estimated Idaho wolf population.” Credit: Hilary Cooley/USFWS
Conservation groups on Friday raised alarm about the Trump administration’s push to lift protections for gray wolves across the country after an analysis revealed how a record-breaking 570 wolves, including dozens of pups, were brutally killed in Idaho over a recent one-year period.
“This inhumane mass killing of wolves abuses federal recovery objectives and is one of many reasons why Endangered Species Act protection is so important for gray wolves nationwide.” —Zoe Hanley, Defenders of Wildlife
“It’s sickening to see how wolves have been slaughtered in Idaho once federal Endangered Species Act protections were lifted,” Andrea Zaccardi, a senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in statement. “If wolves are delisted nationwide, this cruelty could extend to all wolves within our country’s borders. This treatment of our nation’s wildlife is unacceptable.”
Stephan: Trump makes it clear that he does not believe in climate change. But also note, that he describe what is going on in California, Oregon, and Washington as a "management problem." That isn't true but, if it were, the federal government manages more forest land in those states than the state do. But what is even more alarming is his comments that "Science doesn't know." Sound just like his comments on Covid, doesn't it?
Trump speaks during a briefing on wildfires with local and federal fire and emergency officials in Sacramento, California. Credit: Brendan Smialowski/Getty
President Donald Trump touched down in California on Monday to survey the wildfire damage and immediately launched into his usual talking points about poor forest management while denying the role of climate change.
Trump arrived in Sacramento as more than two dozen major wildfires burned across the state. More than 2 million acres in the state have burned this year, a nearly 2,000% increase in land burned compared to this time last year.
At a roundtable discussion about the wildfires, California Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot said Trump’s focus on forest management was obscuring the grim reality that climate change was behind the historically high temperatures and years of drought.
“It will start getting cooler. You just watch,” Trump fired back at Crowfoot, adding, “I don’t think science knows actually.”
Minutes before, when Trump had just disembarked his plane, reporters repeatedly asked him to acknowledge how climate […]
