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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.
Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Boston, Massachusetts - JAMA
Stephan: What the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us in the starkest possible terms is the complete inadequacy of the American Illness Profit System arguably, on the basis of objectively verifiable data, the least successful healthcare system in the developed world. It is not just a technical failure, or structural failure, it is a moral failure.
And, indeed, I think what we are seeing, not only in healthcare but across the board is the moral failure of America as a country. Why are millions out in the streets? Why do our children fail to get an adequate education or even enough food to thrive? Why do we have a law enforcement system that murders 1000 Black people a year? Why are 40% of American families unable to write a $400 check in a crisis. We demonstrate each day to ourselves and everyone else in the world that we are a nation of moral failure.
A women sits with her son for dinner in their new sparsely furnished apartment, Thursday, Aug. 13, 2015, in New York. After leaving her husband who beat her for years, she and her little boy spent the next three years homeless because she couldn’t afford New York City rents. About one third of American children are now living in poverty.
Credit: AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
The source of what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called “the moral law within” may be mysterious, but its role in the social order is not. In any nation short of dictatorship some form of moral compact, implicit or explicit, should be the basis of a just society. Without a common sense of what is “right,” groups fracture and the fragments wander. Science and knowledge can guide action; they do not cause action.
No scientific doubt exists that, mostly, circumstances outside health care nurture or impair health. Except for a few clinical preventive services, most hospitals and physician offices are repair shops, trying to correct the damage of causes collectively denoted “social determinants of health.” Marmot1 has […]
Stephan A. Schwartz, Columnist - Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
Stephan: I wrote this, so I will let it speak for itself.
Perhaps it is because I research and publish the daily Schwartzreport. The many stories I have done on climate change have certainly sensitized me to what is happening. Maybe it’s just curiosity, or maybe it’s fear. Whatever the reason, as I travel now I find myself looking around and thinking: what will be the impact of climate change on this community? I notice how they are dealing with the homeless, because migration is going to be a big deal, so this trend is only going to get worse. What’s the food situation like? How good are the bridges? How do they handle sanitation demands at large events? It is going to be a huge problem. And all of it impacts, most particularly, health care.
In the United States on 30 January 2020, a Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control confirmed the first human-to-human transmission of the virus in the country, a 60 year old man returning from Wuhan, China, the center of the outbreak.1 A few hours later The World Health Organization declared the fast-spreading outbreak a […]
Stephan: Have you noticed how many of the Trump people end up becoming involved in legal actions against them for corruption? Well, here is another one. Andrew Wheeler was a known scumbag and lobbyist parasite when Trump appointed him. Pretty much your standard Trump appointee. And now this is where Wheeler finds himself.
Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), testifies during a hearing titled “Oversight of the Environmental Protection Agency” in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on May 20, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Al Drago/Pool/AFP via Getty
A coalition of farming and conservation groups is calling on a federal appeals court to hold EPA chief Andrew Wheeler in contempt for defying an order to immediately suspend use of dicamba, a poisonous weed-killer that is notorious for its tendency to drift and destroy nearby crops.
“Trump’s EPA is so rogue it thinks it can blow off a federal court ruling that stops the damaging dicamba spraying in an administrative order,” George Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety, lead counsel in the case, said in a statement late Thursday night. “EPA needs a lesson in separation of powers and we’re asking the court to give it to them.”
“It’s mind-boggling to see the EPA blatantly ignore a court ruling, especially one that provides such important protections for farmers and the environment.” —Stephanie Parent, Center for Biological Diversity
Stephan: I have been waiting for this to happen, and actually, am surprised there haven't been more such confrontations.
Trumpers facing off against civil rights demonstrators
A small-town solidarity rally with Black Lives Matter ended in chaos after some of President Donald Trump’s supporters showed up with guns to berate demonstrators.
Alicia Gee, a 36-year-old substitute teacher, was inspired by demonstrations in Hazard, Kentucky, to hold a protest in her hometown of Bethel, Ohio, to show support for equal rights, reported the Cincinnati Enquirer.
“I guess in my mind, we only think about protests happening in the city,” Gee told the newspaper. “I’ve always gone to cities to protest, and then to see that something was happening in Hazard — I was like, if Hazard, Kentucky, can have a protest, Bethel can have something.”
Gee, a former children’s minister and a member of the village’s arts collective, set up a Facebook page for the event Tuesday, hoping to draw about 50 supporters, and she drew chalk marks on the sidewalk Saturday night to allow demonstrators to remain socially distant from one another.
But her plans were upended when a group of armed motorcyclists and others showed up wearing […]
Stephan: This is a hopeful report on what could be possible if we can sweep the Republicans, and their absolute commitment to support carbon energy, from office at every level. I just don't know whether Americans can think that clearly, and vote decisively for their own self-interest.
Rainbow over San Gorgonio wind turbines in Palm Springs, California. Credit: Ruaridh Stewart/Zuma
Despite America’s continued reliance on fossil fuels as its primary source of energy, the plummeting costs of alternative energy sources—like power harnessed from the sun or wind—is making them an increasingly viable choice on the competitive market. So much so, that a UC Berkeley report released on Tuesday argues that by 2035, 90 percent of the US could be powered by renewables.
“Technically, it’s feasible,” says Billy Pizer, an expert in climate change who teaches at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and was not involved in the Berkeley research. “I think people have thought about this for awhile and, with a combination of renewables and storage, you can certainly reach those sorts of targets.”
Researchers took the available data on renewable energy and created two scenarios for the next 15 years. In one, energy policy remains the way it is now, without ambitious policy changes to encourage the growth of renewable energy. The other imagines what ambitious policy changes implemented over that time could yield. In […]
Stephan: Once science changes its perspective, and governments stop creating social policies in which only profit through the exploitation of the earth's eco-system are given priority there is so much that could be done.
Credit: Douglas Klug/Moment/Getty
Israeli scientists say they have produced hydrogen from plants in a development that they hope could eventually lead to using vegetation to produce electricity.
The discovery was made by using microscopic algae, an aquatic plant, in research carried out at a Tel Aviv University laboratory.
“To link a device to electricity, you just have to connect to a power point. In the case of a plant, we didn’t know where to connect,” said Iftach Yacoby, who heads the university’s renewable energy laboratory.
Researchers planted an enzyme into samples of the algae and observed it producing hydrogen, a source of energy already used to fuel vehicles.
“We didn’t know if this would work but we believed that it had potential,” said Yacoby during a laboratory visit.
Findings of the study, a collaborative project with Kevin Redding at the University of Arizona, were published in April in the Energy & Environmental Science journal.
”From the moment we found how to use plants to produce a source of energy, the options were open,” said Yacoby.
The nascent research shows that plants have the potential to produce […]
Stephan: This issue is only getting attention in the industry press but could cripple solar power in the United States, particularly since Trump has stacked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. I will be watching this very carefully.
Under a recent utility deal, solar power sold for under three cents per kilowatt hour, the lowest level on record in the U.S. Credit: Getty
While a regulatory battle over energy policy rages in Washington, D.C., the solar industry is raising alarms that the outcome has the potential to cripple rooftop solar in California and around the country.
A secretive, New Hampshire-based nonprofit called the New England Ratepayers Association petitioned the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in April to reevaluate the core tenets of net metering, a billing method that’s foundational to rooftop solar. While NERA argues the policy that many states have adopted unfairly benefits people who can afford solar panels, the solar industry claims NERA is simply hell-bent on wiping out competition to utilities.
“It feels very simple to me. This is just a complete, existential attack on solar,” said Dave Rosenfeld, executive director of the Solar Rights Alliance, which advocates for solar users in California. “And in just one fell swoop, it would devastate solar.”
For years, FERC has maintained that states have jurisdiction over net metering and that it would […]
Stephan: The carbon energy extraction industries are facing greater and greater challenges, and I believe, this is a dying industry. In about 18 months I would start thinking about "shorting" oil.
Oil tanker off coast of California Credit: National Geographic
Giant Ships lurked off the California coast for weeks in April and May, their bellies full of up to 20 million barrels of oil. This floating cache, enough to support the energy needs of the entire U.S. for a day, sat aboard an idling fleet that pumped out tons of pollutants, according to a new analysis performed by the University of College London and shared with National Geographic. These emissions could ultimately affect the long-term health of coastal communities—many of them already at risk and underserved—and they added tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
Despite U.S. energy demand plummeting to record lows due to the coronavirus crisis, oil kept getting pumped out of the ground. The resulting oversupply taxed the limits of U.S. storage capacity. Oil trade groups spoke of a scramble to fill up empty pipelines or rail cars, but the most popular option was to charter and fill giant oil tankers. These tankers and their sea-size loads of oil began idling a few miles offshore from […]
