This is a wonderful good news story making so clear why fostering wellbeing, even when you may not fully comprehend the effects is always the right choice, and here is an example of why this is so. I don’t know why its seems hard for people to understand this.
A NASA plane flew over the Palmer Peninsula of Antarctica on Oct. 14, 2017. The flight was part of the Atmospheric Tomography mission to survey over 200 gases as well as airborne particles. CC BY 2.0
In 1985, the British Antarctic Survey alerted the world that in the atmosphere high above the South Pole a giant hole was forming in the Earth’s protective ozone layer. World leaders swiftly assembled to work out a solution. Two years later, the United Nations agreed to ban the chemicals responsible for eroding the layer of the stratosphere that shields Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Known as the Montreal Protocol agreement, it is still one of the UN’s most widely ratified treaties.
The Montreal Protocol was a win for diplomacy and the stratosphere. But unbeknown to its signatories at the time, the agreement was also an unexpected ward against climate catastrophe. As new research shows, the aptly named ozone-depleting substances that created the hole over Antarctica are also responsible for causing 30 percent of the temperature increase we saw […]
Richard Coleman, President, Axon Federal - Politico
Stephan:
Here is some good news. Not surprising, since it is so logical but nonetheless good. Body cameras are revealing, and I suspect constraining to police behavior. And all it does is get police to behave as they should, and to provide a cinema verite of what happened. Cameras are a neutral instrument, and in this case it fosters wellbeing.
Axon Body 4 body camera, the current state of the art. Credit: Axon
Over the last 10 years, there has been a sea change in transparency, accountability and safety among law enforcement as body-worn cameras have been embraced at the local, state and now federal levels. In fact, at a time when both parties may disagree on a number of other issues, support for expanding body-worn cameras at the federal level has been an issue with strong bipartisan support.
Last year, President Joe Biden issued an executive order laying out numerous short-term and long-term projects for federal law enforcement agencies (LEAs), ranging from the creation of effective body-worn camera policy to the implementation of stronger use of force policies that protect human life.
Now, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Marshals Service and the Veterans Affairs Department, among other federal agencies, are all utilizing body-worn cameras. This adoption has proven beneficial in helping to maintain accountability, justice and safety.
While the May 2022 executive order itself includes 23 distinct sections, the goal of the piece is […]
Here is another example showing how fostering wellbeing produces unanticipated good consequences. My views about this are not based on partisan politics. What I care about is well produced social outcome data. And it is clear on that basis that fostering wellbeing is always the best choice.
Offshore wind turbines in the North Sea, the Netherlands. Credit: Peter Adams / Avalon / Universal Images Group / Getty
In a discovery by researchers from Leiden University in the Netherlands, offshore wind turbines have become a haven for benthos — the community of marine organisms that live in, on or around the seafloor.
There are more soil animals per square meter living in the foundations of offshore wind farms than on the floor of the North Sea, a press release from Leiden University said.
“The turbine foundations provide hard substrate for settlement in areas where these habitats have never been present before. Except for islands, there are now structures spanning the entire range from sea floor to sea surface,” Jan Vanaverbeke, a postdoctoral researcher at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, told EcoWatch in an email. “A lot of organisms, normally living on hard substrates (rocks, bio- or geogenic reefs) have larvae with pelagic stadia, drifting in the water column and trying to find a suitable place to settle and grow into an adult. The turbines provide such […]
Here, in contrast to the preceding stories, is what happens when you chose a course other than fostering wellbeing. It just couldn’t be any clearer.
Families gather for resources, including Medicaid eligibility and enrollment information offered by Neighborhood Health, outside the Springfield/Franconia Family Resources Center on April 27, 2023 in Springfield, Virginia. Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post / Getty Images
With a green light from the federal government, states across the U.S. have thrown hundreds of thousands of low-income people off Medicaid in recent weeks—and many have lost coverage because they failed to navigate bureaucratic mazes, not because they were no longer eligible.
More than a dozen states, including Florida and other Republican-led states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, have begun removing people from Medicaid as part of the “unwinding” of a pandemic-era federal policy that temporarily barred governments from kicking people off the program.
In a bipartisan deal late last year, Congress agreed to cut off the pandemic protections, giving states 12 months to redetermine who is eligible for the healthcare program that covers tens of millions of Americans.
I have been telling readers for more than a decade that if you live in a coastal area or where major fires increasingly occur watch what is happening with home insurance and insurance rates because my prediction is that part of what is going to drive internal migration in the U.S. is how the insurance corporations behave. They are watching the climate change data very closely and when they think the risk is greater than the reward they will first make major increases in rates and, then, just bail on insuring those areas. As a result I predict a trillion dollar crash in real estate values, and that this would particularly impact Florida because a large part of the state is going underwater. I warn readers again that if you live in such an area, take a close look at what is predicted for your area and decide to move away before the value of your property crashes because insurance companies won’t insure in your area.
Image via Creative Commons.
Florida homeowners have been facing considerable difficulty from an insurance standpoint. In early April, Tampa-based National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate WUSF-FM reported that homeowners in that state will see their property insurance rates increase by 40 percent in 2023 — despite the fact that they are already paying almost three times the national average.
But Florida is not the only state where climate change is making insurance a headache for homeowners. Axios reports that in California, State Farm will no longer accept new applications for homeowner’s insurance, effective Saturday, May 27.
State Farm cited “rapidly growing catastrophe exposure” and “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation” as among the main reasons for its decision. The company, however, said it will continue to honor existing homeowner’s insurance policies in California.
Axios’ Rebecca Falconer, in a report published on May 29, explains, “Multiple studies show climate change is influencing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, increasing the risk of wildfires and also, the proportion […]
