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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Stephan: Increasing temperatures, rising seas, increasing wildfires, declining water resources. Almost every day now another alarm goes off about climate change. And yet 139 Republicans in Congress aren't prepared to say human activity plays a role in all this, and therefore the Congressional response to all this is pathetically inadequate.
Los Angeles County Firefighters put out hot spot on a brush fire, estimated at 24 acres, in Westlake Village, California, on April 29, 2021. Credit: Mel Melcon/ Los Angeles Times/ Getty
Federal meteorologists and climate experts say the potential for another devastating wildfire season is higher than normal for much of the western United States, where a brutal heat wave shattered temperature records across multiple states this week.
Nearly 90 percent of the West is experiencing drought, increasing the amount of “fuel” for fires, such as dead trees and brush that is drying out up to a month ahead of schedule in many places, according to the latest climate update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The past spring has been the warmest on record and the driest since 2006 in the lower 48 states.
Drought conditions have only intensified during the latest heat wave. More than 40 million people experienced triple-digit temperatures this week, straining power grids in Texas and California and prompting officials across the Southwest to warn the public against walking dogs on hot sidewalks and spending […]
Stephan: The Millennial Generation, those born between 1981 and 1999 as a group are not prospering. I see this report as another wake-up call of the deteriorating quality of life in America. And yet we cannot seem to wake up to what is happening to us. About a third of us don't even live in reality anymore. The only thing that is going to fix this, is that each of us who do live in reality must, with each choice we make, use the option that fosters wellbeing. At the end of the day, take a minute. Sit quietly and go through your day, and consider every choice you made; did it do that, did it foster wellbeing?
Credit: The Telegraph
Millennials are starting to enter their 40s without much to show for it, said Olivia Rockeman and Catarina Saraiva at Bloomberg. “In almost every way measurable,” those born between 1981 and 1999 are doing “worse financially than the generations that came before them.” At 40, Millennials’ average net worth is $91,000, compared with $113,000 (in today’s dollars) for Baby Boomers when they hit their fifth decade. Only 61 percent of these older Millennials own a home, versus 68 percent for members of Gen X and 66 percent for Boomers at the same age. The drop-off is no surprise: To buy a home, Millennials need to spend 50 percent more, after inflation, than their peers did three decades ago. Meanwhile, “more Millennials borrow to pay for college than previous generations, and the loans are bigger,” trailing these borrowers for longer. “If predictions of a long, post-COVID economic boom are to be believed,” hope is not lost for a recovery before retirement. But there should be a new sense of urgency.
Stephan: I see this report on Oakland County, Michigan as good news. Because it suggests to me that democracy may survive in both form and substance. There is enough vitality left in our society to heal the Trump years. Indeed, it is an opportunity to reinvigorate civil involvement on a mass scale. For people to take voting really seriously, as they should. This story gives me hope.
Oakland County, MIchigan Credit: Politico
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Republican National Committee opted not to order an autopsy into what exactly led to the party’s decline in suburban communities that were, until recently, considered deep red.
But if RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel wanted to understand what happened, she could do worse than to look back at the place she was raised: Oakland County, Michigan.
“Oakland County was kind of the quintessential suburban Republican stronghold over the postwar period,” says Jeff Timmer, a longtime GOP strategist who was executive director of the state party from 2005-2009. It was (and is) a huge source of campaign donations for the party and its candidates. It had massive influence in Lansing, and an influential bipartisan delegation in Washington. It was a must-visit locale for every aspiring Republican presidential candidate.
“When I ran the Michigan Republican Party, we always pointed to Oakland: ‘These guys have got their shit together,’” says Timmer.
To put it bluntly, the shit is no longer together.
Ten years ago, Republicans held two of the four GOP-drawn U.S. […]
Paul Hockenos, Berlin-based writer - Yale Environment 360
Stephan: Here is some very good news. You can augment this wellbeing fostering trend by reassessing your lifestyle and using the least amount of plastic that can't be recycled you can. And recycle everything you can. This is a trend in which an ordinary person can have real impact.
A beach in Naples, Italy covered in plastic waste following a storm in 2018. Credit: SALVATORE LAPORTA / KONTROLAB / LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY
In Europe, beachgoers have grown accustomed to the dispiriting sight of plastic garbage strewn along shorelines. Indeed, 85 percent of the continent’s saltwater beaches and seas exceed pollution standards on marine litter. The Mediterranean Sea is the most defiled of all, with researchers collecting an average of 274 pieces of plastic refuse per 100 meters of shoreline. And beneath the waves, microplastics have turned coastal waters into toxic “plastic soups.”
In an all-out push to clean up Europe’s beaches — one plank in the European Union’s trailblazing efforts to address the almost 28 million U.S. tons of plastic waste it generates annually — a ban comes into effect July 3 that halts the sale in EU markets of the 10 plastic products that most commonly wash up on the continent’s shores. These include, among other items, plastic bottle caps, cutlery, straws and plates, as well as Styrofoam food and beverage containers.
Stephan: Any world leader who has an IQ bigger than their waist size, ought to realize that migrations due to climate change, the wars they are going to produce over water, social disruption, and unliveable poverty, must be prepared for now. When they happen it will be too late. I have been writing about this for over a decade (see SR archive), and if I can see this in the data, why don't they? But they don't or don't act on it. Short-term greed, "it won't happen on my watch," are the obvious answers to why they don't but there is more to it than that. Right now we have more than 82 million people forced on the move. By 2050 the best estimates I have seen suggest that number will grow to over 350 million, many will be Americans. The effect will be worldwide and civilization-altering.
climate change migrants
A report released Friday by the United Nations Refugee Agency finds that more than 82 million people across the globe were forcibly displaced by war, persecution, the climate crisis, and other factors by the end of 2020, a record high that one international aid group called “an epic failure of humanity.”
“Behind each number is a person forced from their home and a story of displacement, dispossession, and suffering.” —Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
The U.N.’s annual Global Trends in Forced Displacement (pdf) assessment estimates that girls and boys under the age of 18 account for 42% of the 82.4 million people who have fled their homes in search of safety and basic human dignity. Nearly a million children were born as refugees between 2018 and 2020, the report shows.
“Behind each number is a person forced from their home and a story of displacement, dispossession, and suffering. They merit our attention and support not just with humanitarian aid, but in finding solutions to their plight,” said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR). “The tragedy of so many […]
Glenn Thrush and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Reporters - The New York Times
Stephan: Tonight I watched a gunman in New York City terrorize several young children who fell to the ground writhing in fear as he shot at them again and again before running off. Luckily, this creep was such a bad shot he did not injury the children although he did shoot one man in the back. As of 4 days ago there had been 272 mass shootings so far this year. The American gun psychosis is completely out of control, a lethal social insanity. And the Republican Party is doing everything in its power to make it worse; this report proves what I am saying.
Missouri Republican Governor Mike Parson, supporter of gun insanity and mass death
Missouri has become the latest state to throw down a broad challenge to the enforcement of federal firearms laws, as Republican-controlled state legislatures intensify their fierce political counterattack against President Biden’s gun control proposals.
A bill signed by Gov. Mike Parson over the weekend — at a gun store called Frontier Justice — threatens a penalty of $50,000 against any local police agency that enforces certain federal gun laws and regulations that constitute “infringements” of Second Amendment gun rights.
At least eight other states — Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia — have taken similar action this year, passing laws of varying strength that discourage or prohibit the enforcement of federal gun statutes by state and local agents and officers.
The new law “is about protecting law-abiding Missourians against government overreach and unconstitutional federal mandates,” Mr. Parson and the attorney general, Eric Schmitt, said in a letter defending the law on Thursday to the U.S. Justice Department. They said the state would “reject […]
Stephan: If urban human habitation is to continue in the American Southwest, there is going to have to be a major redesign and construction of an infrastructure suited to the climate reality. Within five years, if temperatures continue as projected, I think there will be mass movement out cities like Phoenix which will have maybe a third of the days with temperatures 100°F or above. Added to that will be the water problems. This report gives a good description of that.
Lake Mead
The Hoover Dam is seeing record-low water levels, a significant and scary development with major implications for water and climate in the entire American Southwest.
Amid drought conditions, Lake Mead’s level last week reached an all-time low of 1,071.56 feet above sea level, leaving it just 37 percent full.
The body of water’s level has been declining since 2000, and has fallen about 140 feet over the past two decades. It comes amid a drought in the Southwest that is the worst in two decades, according to a New York Times analysis.
Long-standing water issues in the West are heightening the challenges posed by more recent effects of climate change.
The Colorado River, which feeds the reservoir, is severely over-allocated, with the demand for its water exceeding the actual flow of the river, according to Kathryn Sorensen, a member of the board of advisors at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Morrison Institute. Scientists have projected the river’s flow may diminish by up to 25 percent in the future, she noted.
Seven states are located in the river’s basin and affected by the […]
Stephan: This is a very strange and stupid trend. Even though Pope Francis has told them not to do it, the U.S. bishops, a right-wing group of men who did not stop the molestation catastrophe that has plagued the church, but who want to make a political statement by denying President Biden a devout catholic from communion because he supports a woman's right to choose. If they do this, there will be an enormous pushback, including from Roman Catholics as the church becomes increasingly divided. Church attendance is already dropping sharply, and it will be interesting to see how the Pope responds.
President and Dr. Biden during a Roman Catholic church service
The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States, flouting a warning from the Vatican, have overwhelmingly voted to draft guidance on the sacrament of the Eucharist, advancing a push by conservative bishops to deny President Biden communion because of his support of abortion rights.
The decision, made public on Friday afternoon, is aimed at the nation’s second Catholic president, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief since Jimmy Carter, and exposes bitter divisions in American Catholicism. It capped three days of contentious debate at a virtual June meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The measure was approved by a vote of 73 percent in favor and 24 percent opposed.
The Eucharist, or holy communion, is one of the most sacred rituals in Christianity, and bishops have grown worried in recent years about declining Mass attendance and misunderstanding of the importance of the sacrament to Catholic life.
But the move to target a president, who regularly attends Mass and has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian […]
