Stephan A. Schwartz, Editor & Columnist - Schwartzreport & Explore
Stephan: We have had so many mass murders this year -- 14 murdered since the 15th -- that our flag appears permanently at half staff. This is going to publish in Explore but I am compelled to post in it now in SR, because American culture is being restructured by gun deaths before our eyes, and I want to do anything I can to help heal from our obsessive gun psychosis. No other country in the world, not in active war, has anything like the gun murders and suicides that happen daily in the United States.
So today, SR is dedicated to this one issue.
There are more guns than people in the United States. In a nation of 330,196,902 people, as of Saturday 10 April 2021,1 on that same day guns in civilian hands totaled an estimated 393 million weapons.2 Forty percent of adult Americans own a gun or live with someone who owns one,3 although both the total number of guns and gun owners may actually be considerably higher. Because of the various restrictions at both the federal and state level, the laws have been deliberately structured to make getting firm numbers impossible. To quote a research paper by Alex Yablon on this issue, “The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which regulates gun sales, even faces severe restrictions on how much it can digitize its records of firearms transactions, lest they form a de facto national gun inventory.”4
You may find this hard to believe but in the United States there are more gun shops than supermarkets, McDonald’s, Subways, or Starbucks.
What is particularly interesting is that the number of gun owners is going up exponentially. According to the the Firearm Industry […]
Stephan: I did an interview with Ian Masters whose program Background Briefing, in my opinion, is one of the best sources for rational fact-based commentary about current issues. This interview with masters is a complement to the previous article.
Stephan: Here is some excellent good news. Some Blue state cities are beginning to understand why fostering wellbeing is the way to grow into the future. As time goes on the disparity between Red and Blue value districts, I think, is going to grow every greater, and that is going to become a factor in the internal migrations that will plague the nation.
This same process is also going to play out around the world, as some cities do what is needed for them to deal with climate change and others do not until it is too late. Thirty years from now these migrations are going to define many cities and countries.
The city of Portland, Oregon, prides itself on being ahead of the curve. In 1993, it became the first U.S. city to adopt a climate action plan, which now calls for cutting carbon emissions by 50% by 2030, and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Portland also has long been a leader in progressive urban planning strategies, and since 2006 has been a member of C40, an international network of cities seeking innovative ways to reduce emissions.
That’s why in 2013, as the city’s planners began to develop the 2015 update to the climate plan, they started working with a new model to calculate the city’s carbon emissions profile. Using the Stockholm Environment Institute’s model, the city could enumerate the emissions of the life cycle of 536 different products and commodities used in the Portland metropolitan area—everything from raw materials like timber and food crops, to manufactured items like office furniture and chocolate.
It made for an unpleasant surprise.
“We actually all of a sudden had all this data about the impact of consumption,” says Kyle Diesner, Climate Action Program […]
Danielle Ivory, Lauren Leatherby and Robert Gebeloff, - The New York Times
Stephan: I have several Trumpers and conspiracy junkies, particularly one woman, who write me regularly with disinformation they find on alt-right websites, telling me the vaccination program is both ineffective, and a scheme, to do... they're never quite clear on what it is supposed to be about. At first I felt sympathy for them in their confusion; now, with more than half a million dead Americans,and over three million deaths worldwide, I just find them stupid and irritating. And of course there is a direct correlation with being a Trumper and not getting vaccinated. Again, at first I blamed Trump, who I think should be indicted and tried for mass murder. But now, I think that many of these deaths are partly due to the fact these people don't do the simple things appropriate for any medical epidemic and, thereby, put others at risk. Here is the hard data on this.
About 31 percent of adults in the United States have now been fully vaccinated. Scientists have estimated that 70 to 90 percent of the total population must acquire resistance to the virus to reach herd immunity. But in hundreds of counties around the country, vaccination rates are low, with some even languishing in the teens.
The disparity in vaccination rates has so far mainly broken down along political lines. The New York Times examined survey and vaccine administration data for nearly every U.S. county and found that both willingness to receive a vaccine and actual vaccination rates to date were lower, on average, in counties where a majority of residents voted to re-elect former President Donald J. Trump in 2020. The phenomenon has left some places with a shortage of supply and others with a glut.
For months, health officials across the United States have been racing to inoculate people as variants of the coronavirus have continued to gain a foothold, carrying mutations that can make infections more contagious and, in some cases, deadlier. Vaccinations have sped up and, in […]
Stephan: There was a time when American infrastructure from bridges to water supplies was the envy of the world. But that time is long past. American infrastructure has been deteriorating for decades, and the evidence is clear that water companies and government at every level all spend as little as possible on its maintenance. As a result, this is where the United now stands -- at the level of some developing countries.
Researchers say there’s a growing epidemic of tap water distrust and disuse in the U.S. Credit: Teresa Short / Moment Open / Getty
Imagine seeing a news report about lead contamination in drinking water in a community that looks like yours. It might make you think twice about whether to drink your tap water or serve it to your kids – especially if you also have experienced tap water problems in the past.
In a new study, my colleagues Anisha Patel, Francesca Weaks and I estimate that approximately 61.4 million people in the U.S. did not drink their tap water as of 2017-2018. Our research, which was released in preprint format on April 8, 2021, and has not yet been peer reviewed, found that this number has grown sharply in the past several years.
Other research has shown that about 2 million Americans don’t have access to clean water. Taking that into account, our findings suggest that about 59 million people have tap water access from either their municipality or private wells or […]
