David Wallace-Wells, Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: Here is proof that profit is more important than people, and that is what is fundamentally wrong with human cultures, and why we are going to be so devastated by climate change.
Credit: Ibrahim Rayintakath
For every thousand people alive on earth, 973 are regularly inhaling toxins. Only 27 are not. Which means, almost certainly, you are too.
Last fall, the World Health Organization lowered its global air quality standard from 10 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter to five. Those terms and standards can feel abstract, which makes their meaning a bit hard to fathom. But last month the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index project — the gold standard on global air quality research — releaseda major update
✎ EditSign, incorporating the new guidelines and producing that 973 out of 1,000 (97.3 percent) figure.
The harm is most intense in poorer, still-industrializing places. But the revision was especially dramatic, A.Q.L.I. found, in the wealthier parts of the world. In the United States, before the W.H.O. update, about 8 percent of the country was judged to be breathing dirty air; after, the figure was 93 percent. Across Europe, the revision pushed the numbers from 47 percent to 95.5 percent.
Stephan: As is now the case in almost everything except military expenditure, the United States ranks very poorly in longevity, how long you are likely to live. We are not in the top 10 or 20, or 30 or top 40. America ranks 46th. Yet politicians continue to lie about the status of the U.S. in everything from infant mortality to longevity, and media rarely covers or presents information telling the American people the truth. Consequently, most Americans go around thinking their nation leads the world in everything that matters.
Chinese people now live longer than their U.S. counterparts, latest data showed.
The average life expectancy of Chinese people has risen from 76.5 years in 2016 to 77.93 at present, Mao Qun’an, a senior official from the National Health Commission, announced on Tuesday. This puts it above that of the U.S., which stood at 76.6 years in 2021.
Calculations in 2018 suggested that life expectancy in China was on course to overtake that of the U.S. around 2027, but the process has been sped up by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. experienced a historic decline in life expectancy due to COVID-19, which became the third leading cause of death in the country in 2020 and 2021, as a new study by the National Cancer Institute found.
More than a million have died from COVID in the U.S. by May this year, driving a major drop in life expectancy for the second year in a row.
Published in April, a study based on government provisional data found a net loss of 2.26 years in U.S. life expectancy […]
Stephan: One of the central strategies pursued by fascists is to get control of education so that children are indoctrinated with a chain of lies, as opposed to being educated with the truth. In Red states throughout America this process is in full swing as this article describes. The result will be children who have been lied to so constantly that they will have no real understanding of American history or a host of other issues. What the Republican christofascists are doing is assuring America will continue to be a second-class nation.
In late June, a conservative education coalition called the Civics Alliance released a new set of social studies standards for K-12 schools, with the intention of promoting it as a model for states nationwide. These standards, entitled “American Birthright ” are framed as yet another corrective to supposedly “woke” public schools, where, according to Republicans, theoretical frameworks like critical race theory are only one part of a larger attack on the foundations of American democracy.
“Too many Americans have emerged from our schools ignorant of America’s history, indifferent to liberty, filled with animus against their ancestors and their fellow Americans, and estranged from their country,” reads the introduction to “American Birthright.” (The “birthright” here refers to “freedom.”) And the fields of history and civics, it suggests, exemplify the worst of that trend. “The warping of American social studies instruction has created a corps of activists dedicated to the overthrow of America and its freedoms, larger numbers of Americans indifferent to the steady whittling away of American liberty, and many more who […]
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Northern California comes as the Biden administration is working on replacement rules for the Trump rollbacks and means the protections will be restored while the review process continues, AP News explained.
“The court spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise,” Earthjustice attorney Kristen Boyles said in a statement from the plaintiffs emailed to EcoWatch. “Threatened and endangered species do not have the luxury of waiting under rules that do not protect them.”
Earthjustice represented the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, National Parks Conservation Association, Wild Earth Guardians and the Humane Society of the United States in a lawsuit to block the Trump regulations passed in 2019. The lawsuit targeted five regulations in particular, according to AP News.
Stephan: This is what Blue state governance by Demnocrats looks like. You would never see this in a Republican-governed Red state.
Monthly insulin costs range from $300 to $500 for many Americans. Credit: Simon Dawson / Reuters
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced Thursday that the state will start producing its own insulin, lowering the price of an essential treatment that typically costs people with diabetes thousands of dollars of years to obtain.
The endeavor will make California the first state to produce its own drugs ― an undertaking long reserved for private pharmaceutical companies that operate under lax government oversight.
“Nothing epitomizes market failures more than the cost of insulin,” Newsom said in a video announcing the project. “Many Americans experience out-of-pocket costs anywhere from $300 to $500 per month for this lifesaving drug. California is now taking matters into our own hands.”
The endeavor is included in the $308 billion state budget Newsom signed last week. In it, $100 million is set aside for insulin production contracts that will allow people with diabetes to obtain insulin “at a cheaper price, close to at-cost,” the governor said. Half of the funding will be spent on […]
