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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: Perhaps because we have just spent the last four years trapped in the Trumpian nightmare of a president who is a climate change denier, many Americans don't seem to realize what is coming. But coming it is. The video at the head of the article is not the most professional production, but the information it contains is worth your time, and I urge you to watch it.
Watch this video. The narration is annoying, but the information is critical, just look at Florida.
Over the past year, the advent of a professional economy powered by people working from home has quickened the conversation about where to live, particularly among millennials. “Is now the right time to buy property in Minnesota?” “Is Buffalo the new place to be?”
How important is proximity to fresh water? Should you risk moving somewhere that has fire seasons? How far north do you have to go to find liveable summers?
Americans have defied the norms of climate migration seen elsewhere in the world, flocking to cities like Phoenix, Houston and Miami that face some of the greatest risks from soaring temperatures and rising sea levels.
Those patterns seem likely to change.
New data from the Rhodium Group, analyzed by ProPublica, shows that climate damage will wreak havoc on the southern third of the country, erasing more than 8% of its economic output and likely turning migration from a choice to an imperative.
The data shows that the warming climate will alter everything from how we grow food to where people can plausibly live. Ultimately, millions of people will be […]
Stephan: This would be a horrifying article about any nation, but that America, the richest country in the world, is in such a decayed state that more than half of its households are worried about having enough to eat is preposterous. And yet that is the reality.
Volunteers help load food as vehicles arrive to pick up food supplies and essential items during a Feeding South Florida drive-through food distribution at Miramar Regional Park on November 19, 2020, in Miramar, Florida. Johnny Louis / Getty
More than half of households in the United States are not “very confident” that they can afford to put food on the table as the holidays approach, according to federal Census data. Meanwhile, what remains of federal pandemic relief programs is set to expire before the end of year.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has so far refused to take up a $2.2 trillion economic relief package passed by Democrats months ago, even after Democrats attempted to compromise with Republicans and lowered the price tag by $1.2 trillion. If Congress fails to act, an estimated 12 million workers will lose federal emergency unemployment benefits when they expire on December 26 — on top of the 4.6 million who will have exhausted their benefits before then, according to the Century Foundation.
The COVID-19 pandemic has entered a terrifying phase in recent weeks, forcing some state and local […]
Stephan: The meat industry is a disgusting business. It was made clear during the pandemic that these corporations care nothing for their workers, and even less for the animals and fowl upon which the industry is founded. Finally, it has gotten so bad that the courts have noted the vileness.
Pigs in a pen at a farm in Ayden, North Carolina. Credit: Callaghan O’Hare/Bloomberg/Getty
A US judge has issued a blistering condemnation of industrial farming practices. The judgment comes as one US meat giant finally settles after a six-year legal battle with plaintiffs who sued the company over the stench, flies, buzzards and truck traffic coming from its industrial swine farms in North Carolina.
J Harvie Wilkinson III, one of the judges in a case that pitted locals against the Smithfield subsidiary formerly known as Murphy-Brown, decried the “outrageous conditions” at Kinlaw Farms, the operation at the center of the lawsuit – “conditions that there is no reason to suppose were unique to that facility”.
“How did it come to this?” wrote Wilkinson, who was nominated to the fourth US circuit court of appeals by then president Ronald Reagan and has served since 1984. “What was missing from Kinlaw Farms – and from Murphy-Brown – was the recognition that treating animals better will benefit humans. What was neglected is that animal welfare and human welfare, far from advancing at cross-purposes, are actually integrally […]
Stephan: Very few people seem to understand, or even realize, that the Electoral College was a creature and an accommodation arising from the power struggle between the slave states and the free states. I have thought for decades that the college should be eliminated. And that may be the parting good news of the Trump administration. A majority of Americans now favor getting rid of it, and hopefully, we will see that happen in the Biden administration.
The apportionment of the Electoral College Credit: ADL
President Donald Trump is trying, and failing, to steal the 2020 presidential election won by Democratic rival Joe Biden by pressuring Republican state and local officials in states Biden won to override the will of the people, block the certification of their state’s election results and name Trump the winner.
In 2016, the Electoral College allowed Trump to win the presidency in spite of losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. Now Trump is attempting to use the system for a scheme to overturn his loss in the electoral vote and attack the bedrock of American democracy, the peaceful transfer of power.
The 2020 presidential election is not remotely close in the national popular vote. Biden leads Trump by nearly 6 million votes, or 3.8 percentage points. That percentage margin is the same as President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection victory and is expected to grow further […]
Stephan: Good news that can change a trend sometimes comes in unexpected ways and forms. This popular account of a new research study is such an example. The American cultural obsession with every person for himself, that has emerged instead of creating social wellbeing, something the Founders specifically organized the country to achieve, has produced a belief that the poor are lesser people. It distorts our entire society. But the study discussed in this report suggests that may be changing. I hope this is the case. Until we as a society collectively understand that wellbeing at every level must be our first priority we are doomed to pain, violence, and death.
The study, “Recognizing the Impact of COVID-19 on the Poor Alters Attitudes Towards Poverty and Inequality“, was authored by Dylan Wiwad, Brett Mercier, Paul K. Piff, Azim Shariff, and Lara B. Aknin.TrendMD v2.4.8
The coronavirus pandemic may have altered how many people in the United States view the poor, according to new research published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The study indicates that people became more likely to blame external factors for poverty and less likely to blame personal failings after the outbreak of the virus.
Based on their previous research, the authors of the new study had reason to believe that the pandemic might alter attitudes about the poor and inequality.
“My co-authors and I recently published a paper in Nature Human Behavior in which we found that one reason driving American’s relatively low concern about economic inequality is that people don’t readily recognize the situational causes of poverty (e.g., discrimination, luck), and instead assume that poverty is caused by dispositional factors (e.g., laziness),” explained study author Dylan Wiwad, a postdoctoral fellow at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
“We also showed that a simple intervention (a 10-minute poverty simulation, www.playspent.org) successfully increased recognition of these uncontrollable causes of […]
Stephan: In spite of the chaos of the last four years, the momentum of the transportation trend all over the world is the transition to electric vehicles, and that is good news. Here is a good status report on where this trend stands.
Tesla semi. Credit: Tesla
There’s a growing consensus in the climate change community that the key to transitioning the US economy from fossil fuels is to electrify everything — shift the electricity grid over to carbon-free power and shift other big polluting sectors like transportation and heating over to electricity.
When it comes to transportation, electrification is going to be tricky. Not long ago, the consensus was that the cost and power limitations of batteries would make it difficult to fully electrify anything larger than passenger vehicles.
But batteries have been progressing in leaps and bounds. Full electrification is still beyond the reach of huge vehicles, the long-distance airliners and container ships, but recently it has become a possibility for a large and significant category of vehicles in the middle: medium- and heavy-duty trucks and buses.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, just 6 percent of the registered vehicles on US roads in 2018 were medium- and heavy-duty, but they were responsible for 23 percent of transportation-sector greenhouse gas emissions (about 7 percent of total US emissions).
Stephan: This is why it is so important that we voted the orange psychopath out of the presidency. But in the remaining days of his administration, there is still a great deal of damage he can, and wants to do. This is a man with a long history of, and deep commitment to, revenge.
Despite being the world’s biggest contributors to plastic pollution, the U.S. and U.K. have sofar declined to join a global treaty pledging to tackle the problem. Credit: Laura Lezza/Getty
Despite being one of the world’s biggest contributors to plastic pollution, the U.S. has so far shown no signs of joining an international treaty aimed at stopping plastics from flowing into the world’s oceans and other natural habitats—leaving the country in a small minority as more than two-thirds of United Nations member states signal that a treaty is forthcoming.
At a virtual conference attended last week by the U.N.’s working group on ocean pollution and microplastics, countries in Africa, the Pacific, the Baltic region, and throughout Europe confirmed that they are open to signing a treaty aimed at sharply reducing marine plastic pollution and potentially all plastic waste.
The U.S. was joined by the United Kingdom in declining to participate in the treaty, although the two countries are the biggest per capita plastic polluters in the world. British environmental minister Zac Goldsmith is expected to announce soon whether the country is open to […]
Stephan: What we are seeing in this weird transition period between administrations is a full display of Trump's vindictiveness and utter lack of interest concerning the wellbeing of the country he is sworn to serve. And the silence of the Congressional Republicans should also be noted.
Michael Kuperberg, scientist removed by Trump in order to cripple America’s ability to deal with climate change. Credit: The New York Times
The White House has removed the head of the program that produces the federal government’s most definitive scientific report on climate change, according to three sources with knowledge of the move.
Michael Kuperberg had worked as executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the National Climate Assessment. The move comes just days after the White House tapped Betsy Weatherhead to lead the sweeping climate study. Weatherhead joined the U.S. Geological Survey after working at climate analytics firm Jupiter Intelligence.
POLITICO received an automatic reply from Kuperberg’s USGCRP email address that indicated his detail there ended Nov. 6 and that he was heading back to the Energy Department.
Context: Kuperberg’s reassignment is the latest in a string of high-level personnel moves to remove officials deemed insufficiently loyal to President Donald Trump after his reelection loss. Earlier on Monday, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper. On Friday, Neil Chatterjee was removed as FERC chair on Friday after advocating for opening […]
