Stephan: Increasing temperatures, rising seas, increasing wildfires, declining water resources. Almost every day now another alarm goes off about climate change. And yet 139 Republicans in Congress aren't prepared to say human activity plays a role in all this, and therefore the Congressional response to all this is pathetically inadequate.
Los Angeles County Firefighters put out hot spot on a brush fire, estimated at 24 acres, in Westlake Village, California, on April 29, 2021. Credit: Mel Melcon/ Los Angeles Times/ Getty
Federal meteorologists and climate experts say the potential for another devastating wildfire season is higher than normal for much of the western United States, where a brutal heat wave shattered temperature records across multiple states this week.
Nearly 90 percent of the West is experiencing drought, increasing the amount of “fuel” for fires, such as dead trees and brush that is drying out up to a month ahead of schedule in many places, according to the latest climate update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The past spring has been the warmest on record and the driest since 2006 in the lower 48 states.
Drought conditions have only intensified during the latest heat wave. More than 40 million people experienced triple-digit temperatures this week, straining power grids in Texas and California and prompting officials across the Southwest to warn the public against walking dogs on hot sidewalks and spending […]
Stephan: The Millennial Generation, those born between 1981 and 1999 as a group are not prospering. I see this report as another wake-up call of the deteriorating quality of life in America. And yet we cannot seem to wake up to what is happening to us. About a third of us don't even live in reality anymore. The only thing that is going to fix this, is that each of us who do live in reality must, with each choice we make, use the option that fosters wellbeing. At the end of the day, take a minute. Sit quietly and go through your day, and consider every choice you made; did it do that, did it foster wellbeing?
Credit: The Telegraph
Millennials are starting to enter their 40s without much to show for it, said Olivia Rockeman and Catarina Saraiva at Bloomberg. “In almost every way measurable,” those born between 1981 and 1999 are doing “worse financially than the generations that came before them.” At 40, Millennials’ average net worth is $91,000, compared with $113,000 (in today’s dollars) for Baby Boomers when they hit their fifth decade. Only 61 percent of these older Millennials own a home, versus 68 percent for members of Gen X and 66 percent for Boomers at the same age. The drop-off is no surprise: To buy a home, Millennials need to spend 50 percent more, after inflation, than their peers did three decades ago. Meanwhile, “more Millennials borrow to pay for college than previous generations, and the loans are bigger,” trailing these borrowers for longer. “If predictions of a long, post-COVID economic boom are to be believed,” hope is not lost for a recovery before retirement. But there should be a new sense of urgency.
“In terms of income and, especially, wealth, Millennials as […]
Stephan: I see this report on Oakland County, Michigan as good news. Because it suggests to me that democracy may survive in both form and substance. There is enough vitality left in our society to heal the Trump years. Indeed, it is an opportunity to reinvigorate civil involvement on a mass scale. For people to take voting really seriously, as they should. This story gives me hope.
Oakland County, MIchigan Credit: Politico
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Republican National Committee opted not to order an autopsy into what exactly led to the party’s decline in suburban communities that were, until recently, considered deep red.
But if RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel wanted to understand what happened, she could do worse than to look back at the place she was raised: Oakland County, Michigan.
“Oakland County was kind of the quintessential suburban Republican stronghold over the postwar period,” says Jeff Timmer, a longtime GOP strategist who was executive director of the state party from 2005-2009. It was (and is) a huge source of campaign donations for the party and its candidates. It had massive influence in Lansing, and an influential bipartisan delegation in Washington. It was a must-visit locale for every aspiring Republican presidential candidate.
“When I ran the Michigan Republican Party, we always pointed to Oakland: ‘These guys have got their shit together,’” says Timmer.
To put it bluntly, the shit is no longer together.
Ten years ago, Republicans held two of the four GOP-drawn U.S. […]
Paul Hockenos, Berlin-based writer - Yale Environment 360
Stephan: Here is some very good news. You can augment this wellbeing fostering trend by reassessing your lifestyle and using the least amount of plastic that can't be recycled you can. And recycle everything you can. This is a trend in which an ordinary person can have real impact.
A beach in Naples, Italy covered in plastic waste following a storm in 2018. Credit: SALVATORE LAPORTA / KONTROLAB / LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY
In Europe, beachgoers have grown accustomed to the dispiriting sight of plastic garbage strewn along shorelines. Indeed, 85 percent of the continent’s saltwater beaches and seas exceed pollution standards on marine litter. The Mediterranean Sea is the most defiled of all, with researchers collecting an average of 274 pieces of plastic refuse per 100 meters of shoreline. And beneath the waves, microplastics have turned coastal waters into toxic “plastic soups.”
In an all-out push to clean up Europe’s beaches — one plank in the European Union’s trailblazing efforts to address the almost 28 million U.S. tons of plastic waste it generates annually — a ban comes into effect July 3 that halts the sale in EU markets of the 10 plastic products that most commonly wash up on the continent’s shores. These include, among other items, plastic bottle caps, cutlery, straws and plates, as well as Styrofoam food and beverage containers.
Stephan: Any world leader who has an IQ bigger than their waist size, ought to realize that migrations due to climate change, the wars they are going to produce over water, social disruption, and unliveable poverty, must be prepared for now. When they happen it will be too late. I have been writing about this for over a decade (see SR archive), and if I can see this in the data, why don't they? But they don't or don't act on it. Short-term greed, "it won't happen on my watch," are the obvious answers to why they don't but there is more to it than that. Right now we have more than 82 million people forced on the move. By 2050 the best estimates I have seen suggest that number will grow to over 350 million, many will be Americans. The effect will be worldwide and civilization-altering.
climate change migrants
A report released Friday by the United Nations Refugee Agency finds that more than 82 million people across the globe were forcibly displaced by war, persecution, the climate crisis, and other factors by the end of 2020, a record high that one international aid group called “an epic failure of humanity.”
“Behind each number is a person forced from their home and a story of displacement, dispossession, and suffering.” —Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
The U.N.’s annual Global Trends in Forced Displacement (pdf) assessment estimates that girls and boys under the age of 18 account for 42% of the 82.4 million people who have fled their homes in search of safety and basic human dignity. Nearly a million children were born as refugees between 2018 and 2020, the report shows.
“Behind each number is a person forced from their home and a story of displacement, dispossession, and suffering. They merit our attention and support not just with humanitarian aid, but in finding solutions to their plight,” said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR). “The tragedy of so many […]
