I have been telling you for years to watch what the insurance companies are doing in your region because they, more than any other industry, are following what is happening with climate change. They are the canary in the mine whose choices will tell you when it is time to sell. And here is a report on what they are doing. I urge you to act accordingly, since the biggest asset most American families have is the equity in their home.
Flooded house. Credit: WCNC
Climate change and generations of U.S. housing and development policy are making homes, neighborhoods and entire municipalities riskier to insure, undermining the ability of Americans to live where they choose.
The current face of this crisis is a nationwide withdrawal by the insurance industry from regions threatened by wildfires and hurricanes, particularly along the Gulf Coast and California.
While there are other factors at play, this retreat is largely driven by the collision of climate change with long-term federal decisions to incentivize ever more expensive homes in riskier areas.
But insurance is just one manifestation of a larger problem, experts told The Hill, a canary in the coal mine offering a warning of more significant dangers rising out of sight.
And in a country whose economy is among the most unequal in the rich West, the cost of that danger falls increasingly on those least able to bear it.
A record number of billion-plus dollar weather disasters hit the U.S. in 2023, with 28 such incidents costing nearly $100 billion collectively, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The previous record was set in 2020 at 22 […]
He is the latest fact-based assessment as to what is happening about religion in the United States present time. The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan research and education organization that conducts public opinion polls on a variety of topics, specializing in the quantitative and qualitative study of political issues as they relate to religious values, and their surveys have proven over time to be objective and reliable. You can see here, and in the much longer report how christofascism arose, and why I say that it has very little to do with traditional Christianity, except it cloaks itself in Biblical language and mannerisms.
Executive Summary
America encompasses a rich diversity of faith traditions, and “religious churning” is very common. In 2023, PRRI surveyed more than 5,600 adults across the United States about their experiences with religion. This report examines how well major faith traditions retain their members, the reasons people disaffiliate, and the reasons people attend religious services. Additionally, this report considers how atheists and agnostics differ from those who say they are “nothing in particular.” Finally, it analyzes the prevalence of charismatic elements as well as prophecy and prosperity theology in American churches and the role of charismatic Christianity in today’s Republican Party.
“Unaffiliated” is the only major religious category experiencing growth.
Around one-quarter of Americans (26%) identify as religiously unaffiliated in 2023, a 5 percentage point increase from 21% in 2013. Nearly one in five Americans (18%) left a religious tradition to become religiously unaffiliated, over one-third of whom were previously Catholic (35%) and mainline/non-evangelical Protestant (35%).
While the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as “nothing in particular” is similar to a decade ago (16% in 2013 to 17% in 2023), the numbers of both atheists and agnostics have doubled since 2013 […]
Heather Long, Editorial Writer and Ccolumnist - The Washington Post
Stephan:
Here is a good assessment explaining why the young no longer have much faith in the social structure the Boomers took for granted. It has not seemed to dawn on most politicians that there has been a major transformation in the relationship between workers and employers, nor do they seem to recognize the growing dislike the young have for capitalism. I think this should be seen as yet another sign of the declining wellbeing of American society. We are a country that by almost any measure one chooses to name, from healthcare to childcare, education, eldercare or retirement, is headed downward as a culture.
Demonstrators calling for Congress to take bold actions to fight global warming are seen outside the Capitol in February 2023. Credit: Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post
I was at an event recently where several top business executives were perplexed about whyAmericans under 40 are so disillusioned with capitalism. What could they do to restore trust in our economic system?
My suggestion was simple: Treat workers better. This wasn’t the answer they wanted. Many rushed to tell me how generous their pay raises have been, how easy it is to go from an entry-level job to management at their company, and how they have diversified their workforce. These are all welcome efforts, but they miss the bigger picture. Young people in America have come of age during the Great Recession, the sluggish recovery that followed and then the coronavirus pandemic. Unemployment has been 10 percent or higher twice in the past 15 years. Young workers have seen how expendable they are […]
I am seeing more and more signs like this report about women and alcohol of growing social stress. I think this is arising not just from immediate crises but also from a precognitive awareness of the devastation that is coming caused by climate change. There are already over 117 million climate refugees, as I noted the other day. We are also seeing an enormous increase in risiing authoritarianism. Since 1986 we have gone from 13 to 42 countries under authoritarian rule. This is a species wide crisis, and almost no one is talking about it in that context.
Credit: MedPage Today
She was 36 at the time and working as a physician liaison for a hospital system on the South Carolina coast, where she helped build relationships among doctors. Privately, she had struggled with heavy drinking since her early 20s, long believing that alcohol helped calm her anxieties. She understood that the yellowing of her eyes was evidence of jaundice. Even so, the prospect of being diagnosed with alcohol-related liver disease wasn’t her first concern.
“Honestly, the No. 1 fear for me was someone telling me I could never drink again,” said Adkins, who lives in Pawleys Island, a coastal town about 30 miles south of Myrtle Beach.
But the drinking had caught up with her: Within 48 hours of that moment in front of the rearview mirror, she was hospitalized, facing liver failure. “It was super fast,” Adkins said.
Historically, alcohol use disorder has disproportionately affected men. But recent dataopens in a new tab or window from the CDC on deaths from excessive drinking shows […]
Even when we try to help preserve the ecosystem we don’t think it through fully and properly, as this report about Right Whales describes. We need to reorder our societies so that fostering wellbeing of all the creatures in the matrix of life are included. If our civilization is to survive there is no other way. Will we do it? I’m not even sure we can preserve our democracy in November.
A North Atlantic right whale, entangled in fishing rope, next to her newborn, on December 2, 2021, near Cumberland Island, Georgia. Credit: Georgia Department of Natural Resources/NOAA Permit #20556 / AP
The story of the North Atlantic right whale, an icon of the East Coast, should be one of hope — a tale of recovery.
Humanity’s strongest tools have been mobilized for their protection. For centuries, whalers hunted these graceful giants, which were once found throughout the North Atlantic, for their baleen and oily blubber. By the early 20th century, they were nearly extinct. But in 1935, alarmed by the shrinking number of right whales, international authorities banned commercial hunting of these animals. Decades later, as North Atlantic right whales were starting to recover, the US gave them another lifeline, listing them as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. That made killing or harming them a federal crime.
On paper, these whales were — and still are — highly […]
