Stephan: Back in the early 1970s, when I was a member of the MIT/Secretary of Defense Study Group on Innovation, Technology, and the Future, the "hot" subject was overpopulation. Endless academic articles and books confidently predicted its occurrence and speculated on its effects. It has all turned out to be wrong. Even before climate change has wrought its full impact it is already clear that in the developed nations the issue is how to get more babies born.
China has seen the effect of limiting couples to one baby and discovered the many downsides to this policy, and how hard it is to reverse it. (See SR archive) In the U.S., with our dreadful lack of social policies to support couples who want to have children, and a growing cultural shift where having multiple children, or any children, is not a priority, and fewer women choose that option, what we are seeing is fewer children and an aging population which will require more support. Japan is already facing this formidable situation.
Climate change, which was unknown in the 1970s, is going to further exacerbate the declining birthrate and, except in Africa, high birth rates are not going to be a social issue, and overpopulation a mistaken fantasy of the past.
In her cabin in the woods, Sarah Yurczyk tries to get her baby and her twins ready for bedtime in Cook, Minn. Sarah Yurczyk decided to be a stay at home mother because the price of child care would have taken 90% of her monthly salary. Credit: Melina Mara/The Washington Post
More U.S. adults who do not already have children are saying they are unlikely to ever have them, a new Pew Research Center survey finds — findings that could draw renewed attention to the risks of declining birthrates for industrialized nations.
Experts are concerned that the U.S. birthrate, which has declined for the sixth straight year, may not fuel enough population growth on its own to keep the future economy afloat and fund social programs.
Women between the ages of 18 to 49 and men between 18 and 59 who said they are not parents were asked the question, “Thinking about the future, how likely is it that you will have children someday?”
Stephan: I have been telling my readers since the early nineties not to buy coastal property in Florida because it is doomed by climate change and the sea rise that will create and that reality is now coming to pass, as this article in the Miami Herald outlines so well. The same is true to varying degrees along the North Carolina coast, Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Boston, Baltimore and Washington. Also greater Los Angeles, and all surrounding coastal cities, San Francisco and Seattle.
Miami roadway flooding
The constant complaints that Miami Beach, Fla.,’s plans to raise roads in the face of sea rise would flood nearby homes has finally resulted in lawsuits.
A group of property owners sued the city for raising the road in front of their houses and sending floodwater into their property, making it unusable as a short-term rental.
For Miami Beach, it’s the latest challenge to efforts to deal with rising seas — and an example of the legal hurdles that cities around the state (and nation) may face as they plan for the future.
“Miami Beach is at the forefront of resilience efforts to reduce flood risk from storms, high tides and sea level rise. We strongly believe the city’s resilience program benefits all properties, including this one. The City has not been served with the complaint, but once we are, we will proceed accordingly,” city spokesperson Melissa Berthier said in a statement.
In the lawsuit, the owners argue that they have never been legally required to manage the stormwater that flows onto their property. They said […]
Jon Kamp, Robbie Whelan, and Anthony DeBarros, Reporters - Wall Street Journal
Stephan: Over 1,000 people are still dying of Covid each day in the U.S., overwhelmingly the unvaccinated. Although no one seems to be willing to say it out loud, after reading dozens of research papers, and countless articles in the general media, it seems clear to me that the truth of the situation is that we are not going to get a handle on Covid until hundreds of thousands more unvaccinated Americans commit Covid-suicide. It is obvious you just can't fix stupid, even when it costs people their life.
A doctor checks on a Covid-19 patient in Tarzana, Calif.. Experts blame the continued spread of Covid on the Delta variant and low vaccination rates in some communities. Credit: Apu Gomes/Agence France-Presse/Getty
The number of U.S. Covid-19 deaths recorded in 2021 has surpassed the toll in 2020, according to federal data and Johns Hopkins University, demonstrating the virus’s persistent menace.
The total number of reported deaths linked to the disease topped 770,800 on Saturday, Johns Hopkins data show. This puts the pandemic-long total at more than twice the 385,343 Covid-19 deaths recorded last year, according to the most recent death-certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The spread of the highly contagious Delta variant and low vaccination rates in some communities were important factors, infectious-disease experts said. The milestone comes as Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations move higher again in places such as New England and the upper Midwest, with the seven-day average for new cases recently closer to 90,000 a day after it neared 70,000 last […]
The New York Times Editorial Board, - The New York Times
Stephan: American policing is a disaster compared with the policing of other developed nations. It isn't just the baked in White racism it is that like every other institution policing is first and foremost about profit. The New York Times Editorial Board has joined me in expressing this opinion.
Some police departments across the country have embraced the corrupting and unjust practice of raising revenue for their municipalities by pushing officers to write as many traffic tickets as possible.
Policing for profit encourages unfair enforcement of the law. It also increases the likelihood that motorists stopped for infractions largely unrelated to public safety will be killed or injured during encounters with officers who are trained to view traffic stops as moments of mortal peril.
The situation cries out for departments to change how officers are trained. Ultimately, these departments need to stand down from practices that bring many more people than necessary into contact with the law under circumstances that too often lead to what one district attorney refers to as “anticipatory killings” by police officers.
The New York Times lays out these and other issues in an alarming investigation of the culture that too often transforms traffic stops for common violations into unnecessary beatings, car chases or shootings.
Stephan: Here is some more smart guidance on how and what we, each as individuals as well as acting collectively, can do in response to what climate change is doing to our world.
Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy/The Guardian
The world as we knew it is coming to an end, and it’s up to us how it ends and what comes after. It’s the end of the age of fossil fuel, but if the fossil-fuel corporations have their way the ending will be delayed as long as possible, with as much carbon burned as possible. If the rest of us prevail, we will radically reduce our use of those fuels by 2030, and almost entirely by 2050. We will meet climate change with real change, and defeat the fossil-fuel industry in the next nine years.
If we succeed, those who come after will look back on the age of fossil fuel as an age of corruption and poison. The grandchildren of those who are young now will hear horror stories about how people once burned great mountains of poisonous stuff dug up from deep underground that made children sick and birds die and the air filthy and the planet heat up.
