New data shows that the ending of the popular Child Tax Credit payment program due to objections from conservative Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin (West Virginia) has resulted in a massive increase in the childhood poverty rate throughout the U.S.
Reviews of the payments showed that they had immediate and lasting impacts throughout the program’s six-month run. In the first month of payments, around 3 million children were kept out of poverty due to increases in monthly family incomes; by the last month, the number of children being kept out of poverty by the program went up to 3.7 million.
The program also had a remarkable success rate in terms of payments going toward necessities that families had previously struggled to afford. A study by the U.S. Census Bureau found that 91 percent of low-income families spent the monthly benefit on basic needs.
Stephan: Here is yet another story focused on how rich people who derive much or all of their wealth from the petroleum industries are renting Congress members, and Presidential administration high ranking officials to get them to preserve the nation's reliance on oil and gas. Billions of people world wide are having their lives degraded by these greedy monsters.
My personal view is that these people, both the funders/renters and the recipients should be arrested, indicted, and tried and convicted for crimes against humanity, and put into prison for the rest of their lives. Their ugly greed is literally destroying the wellbeing of the earth and all the beings on it.
Pumpjacks in New Mexico. Credit: Charlie Riedel/AP
American private equity tycoons are profiteering from the global climate crisis by investing in fossil fuels that are driving greenhouse gas emissions, a new investigation reveals.
Oil and gas pipelines, coal plants and offshore drilling sites linked to Indigenous land violations, toxic leaks and deadly air pollution are among the dirty energy projects financed by some of the country’s largest private equity firms, according to an investigation by the corporate accountability nonprofits LittleSis and the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (Pesp).
Private equity refers to an opaque form of financing away from public markets in which funds and investors buy and restructure companies including startups, troubled businesses, and real estate. Globally, the industry manages more than $7 trillion for wealthy individuals and institutional investors such as mutuals, hedge funds, endowments and pensions, investing in every sector from retail chains and healthcare to prisons and weapons.
Some of that money finances fossil fuel projects that release greenhouse gases that cause global heating. Higher atmospheric and ocean temperatures are directly linked to the rise in catastrophic […]
Stephan: It is a measure of the unconsciousness of most humans that profit is the only consideration that matters. Greed above all has produced this. We are literally destroying the wellbeing of the planet in order to satisfy the lust of greed.
An electoral poster objecting to a proposed ban on subsidies for Swiss farms. A 2021 report found almost 90% of global farming subsidies are harmful. Credit: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty
The world is spending at least $1.8tn (£1.3tn) every year on subsidies driving the annihilation of wildlife and a rise in global heating, according to a new study, prompting warnings that humanity is financing its own extinction.
From tax breaks for beef production in the Amazon to financial support for unsustainable groundwater pumping in the Middle East, billions of pounds of government spending and other subsidies are harming the environment, says the first cross-sector assessment for more than a decade.
This government support, equivalent to 2% of global GDP, is directly working against the goals of the Paris agreement and draft targets on reversing biodiversity loss, the research on explicit subsidies found, effectively financing water pollution, land subsidence and deforestation with state money.
The authors, who are leading subsidies experts, say a significant portion of the $1.8tn could be repurposed to support policies that are beneficial for nature and a […]
Stephan: Pharmaceuticals have flooded the world, and polluted the rivers and lakes. SR has done stories on this but, until recently not much attention has been paid to this, but this is how virus mutations like Covid occur. These chemicals are also altering Earth's ecosystems and that is causing a spectrum of changes. We need to develop new technologies, drug medicine is proving to be an environmentally disordering technology. The whole idea of wellbeing requires a new world view in which consciousness is recognized as causal and fundamental, and its effects are included in any consideration of new technologies.
To download the full scientific research paper that is the focus of this report for a general audience go to: https://www.pnas.org/content/119/8/e2113947119
Dallas, Texas, was among the locations with the most drugs detected in rivers. Credit: 4kodiak / E+ / Getty
Pharmaceutical drugs have polluted the world’s rivers and pose “a global threat to environmental and human health,” according to a new study by the University of York. The most extensive global study to date found that among the most polluted rivers were those in Bolivia, Pakistan and Ethiopia, while rivers in the Amazon rainforest, Iceland and Norway were those with the least amounts of drug pollution, BBC News reported.
The study, “Pharmaceutical pollution of the world’s rivers,” in which 127 researchers representing 86 institutions participated, was published by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Typically, what happens is, we take these chemicals, they have some desired effects on us and then they leave our bodies,” research leader Dr. John Wilkinson said to BBC News.
“What we know now is that even the most modern efficient wastewater treatment plants aren’t completely capable […]
Stephan: Renewing infrastructure or building new must be done recognizing the effect it will have on the matrix of life. Just as with the drug problem in the previous article this is going to require new technologies.
Road work in Denver in July, part of a project to expand Interstate 70. Credit: Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post/Getty
The highways in Colorado, one of the nation’s fastest-growing states, are frequently clogged with suburban workers driving into Denver, skiers heading high into the Rocky Mountains and trucks rumbling across the Interstates.A Western frontier state with an affinity for the open road and Subaru Outbacks, Colorado’s traditional answer to traffic congestion could be summed up in two words: more asphalt.But widening highways and paving new roads often just spurs people to drive more, research shows. And as concerns grow about how tailpipe emissions are heating the planet, Colorado is among a handful of car-dominated states that are rethinking road building.In December, Colorado adopted a first-of-its-kind climate change regulation that will push transportation planners to redirect funding away from highway expansions and toward projects that […]
