IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
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.
The human population of earth is getting older. Fewer children are being born. Cared for the aged and aging is going to become a growing issue, and the medical research is clear, as this research article describes. By 2050, because of the greed I described in the preceding report, as many as an additional 246 million adults age 69 and older could experience temperature extremes that exceed 37.5° Celsius, (99°F). Read what that will mean, and recognize we are a species destroying their own wellbeing.
An older man shields himself from the heat in Beijing in July of 2023. By mid-century, more adults age 69 and older will face extreme heat, especially those residing in Asia and Africa. Credit: Wang Zho / AP
Nearly a quarter of the global population of older adults at mid-century could face extreme heat, putting their health in danger.
By 2050, as many as an additional 246 million adults age 69 and older could experience temperature extremes that exceed 37.5° Celsius, (99°F) researchers report May 14 in Nature Communications. The new projection suggests that more than 23 percent of the global population of these older adults — largely concentrated in Africa and Asia — will encounter this intense heat, compared with 14 percent today.
“Protecting our older population will be increasingly critical in the years to come,” says cardiologist-epidemiologist Andrew Chang of Stanford University and the University of California, San Fransisco, who was not involved with the research. “Older adults can be exquisitely vulnerable to the impacts […]
The majority of voters in Florida elected a governor and state legislature that is openly and actively destroying their future. Large parts of Florida are going to disappear under the sea; it has already started. The rest of the state that stays above the sea will still face all kinds of temperature and water problems as well as other crises. Already there are parts of the coastal regions where homeowners cannot get property insurance.
Republican christofascist Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis speaks at the Governor’s Day luncheon, Feb. 8, 2024, in Tampa, Fla. Climate change will be a lesser priority in Florida and largely disappear from state statutes under legislation signed Wednesday, May 15 by Gov. DeSantis, which also bans power-generating wind turbines offshore or near the state’s lengthy coastlines. Credit: Chris O’Meara / AP
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — Climate change will be a lesser priority in Florida and largely disappear from state statutes under legislation signed Wednesday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that also bans power-generating wind turbines offshore or near the state’s lengthy coastline.
Critics said the measure made law by the former Republican presidential hopeful ignores the reality of climate change threats in Florida, including projections of rising seas, extreme heat and flooding and increasingly severe storms.
It takes effect July 1 and would also boost expansion of natural gas, reduce regulation on gas pipelines in the state and increase protections against bans on gas appliances such as stoves, according to a news release from the governor’s office.
As the climate changes and an increasing number of researchers look at the effects it is likely to produce the news that comes out of their work is ever more alarming. Here is the latest I have read about.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
Climate change, and its effects on weather patterns and adverse weather events, is likely to negatively affect the health of people with brain conditions, argues a UCL-led team of researchers.
In a Personal View article, published in The Lancet Neurology, the team emphasizes the urgent need to understand the impact of climate change on people with neurological conditions—in order to preserve their health and prevent worsening inequalities.
Following a review of 332 papers published across the world between 1968 and 2023, the researchers, led by Professor Sanjay Sisodiya (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology), said they expect the scale of the potential effects of climate change on neurological diseases to be substantial.
They considered 19 different nervous system conditions, chosen on the basis of the Global Burden of Disease 2016 study, including stroke, migraine, Alzheimer’s, meningitis, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.
The team also analyzed the impact of climate change on several serious but common psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, depression and schizophrenia.
Professor Sisodiya, who is also Director of Genomics at the Epilepsy Society and […]
Here is some way too late, but nonetheless still good news. Finally, the country is beginning to seriously restructure the electrical grid to prepare for the conversions to Renewables.
Electric power lines are attached to the transmission tower along the power grid in the Everglades, Florida on Sept. 28, 2023. Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty
The United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Monday approved the first overhaul of the country’s electric transmission policy in more than a decade.
The changes will make new interregional lines faster and bring more renewable energy to meet increasing demand.
“Our country is facing an unprecedented surge in demand for affordable electricity while confronting extreme weather threats to the reliability of our grid and trying to stay one step ahead of the massive technological changes we are seeing in our society,” said FERC Chairman Willie Phillips in a press release from FERC. “Our nation needs a new foundation to get badly needed new transmission planned, paid for and built. With this new rule, that starts today.”
The rule is the first time FERC has directly addressed the country’s need for long-term energy transmission planning and will help achieve President Joe Biden’s target of decarbonizing the U.S. […]
This is very sad news for those of us who worked so hard to end school segregation and bad news for the United States. We are going in the wrong direction in so many ways.
Racial segregation in schools across the country has increased dramatically over the last three decades, according to two new reports and an Axios review of federal data.
Decades after Brown and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the U.S. has moved toward policies that increased the isolation of Black and Latino students by race and poverty.
This month, Axios will commemorate the May 17, 1954, Supreme Court decision — that “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place” — by examining the state of public schools and how these new inequalities have emerged.
The big picture: The resegregation of America’s public schools coincides with the rise ofcharter schools and school choice options, and as civil rights groups have turned away from desegregation battles.
Segregated schools disproportionately hurt Black and […]
The perverse obsession MAGAts have about gender issues is one of their hallmarks. Part of it has to do with keeping women subordinate to men. But part of it, I think, is fear. MAGAt men, particularly White MAGAt men, are unclear about their own masculinity. When I look at media directed to women, especially White women, I see more and more comments from them about toxic masculinity. I think that is what is driving the kind of weird TCP Republican behavior reported on in this article.
Attorney General of Kansas Kris Kobach speaks to members of the press following arguments at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 26, 2024.
Four more Republican-led states sued the Biden administration Tuesday over new Title IX rules that bolster protections for LGBTQ students.
The Education Department in April unveiled a final set of sweeping changes to Title IX, the federal civil rights law preventing sex discrimination in schools and education programs that receive government funding. The new regulations, which are slated to take effect Aug. 1, cover discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity for the first time, angering some Republicans.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal district court in Topeka, Kan., attorneys general in Kansas, Utah, Wyoming and Alaska accused the Education Department and the Department of Justice of attempting to “politicize our country’s education system” by extending the law’s protections to transgender students.
The new Title IX rules could prevent schools from barring transgender students from using restrooms, locker rooms and pronouns that match their gender identity, a senior administration official said […]
FRED PEARCE , Contributing Writer - Yale Environment 360
Stephan:
Albania is on the verge of making a dreadfully bad decision about its environmental future because of greed stimulated by Jared Kushner and his partners. The Trump family has no ethics and no concern for the wellbeing of the Matrix of Life. As they show us again and again, they care only about profit and power. I increasingly see them as the personification of the worse aspects of human consciousness. That doesn’t excuse the Albanian leadership, but it is very revealing about the Trump family.
The outer edge of the Nartë lagoon in Vlorë, Albania. Credit: Yuriy Brykakylo / Alamy
It is the jewel of the Adriatic. Its shimmering waters feed a rare colony of Dalmatian pelicans, the world’s largest freshwater birds, sustain the endangered Albanian water frog, and host loggerhead turtles on its encircling dunes. The Nartë lagoon is at the heart of the extensive and largely unspoiled delta of Albania’s Vjosë River, which researchers consider Europe’s most intact large river delta.
But that accolade won’t save it. The Vjosë delta and its lagoon are under siege. They are set to become the victims of a series of massive coastal tourist developments, partly bankrolled by a company set up by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. The hotels and luxury villas will accommodate up to a million visitors arriving annually at a new international airport currently being built on salt marshes around the lagoon.
Until the fall of the Iron Curtain that walled off communist Eastern Europe from the capitalist West, Albania was the […]
Robert Reich, The Carmel P. Friesen Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. - AlterNet
Stephan:
Robert Reich has just published his version of The Great Schism Trend that I have been talking about for the last decade. We are essentially in complete agreement. Now the questions are: Will Americans awaken to what is happening by November? And, what is going to happen to the United States over the next decade as people wake up to the fact that we have become two countries?
Members of far-right groups marching in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017 Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Despite the popularity of the recent movie “Civil War,” we’re not on the verge of a second one. But we are separating into so-called “red” and “blue.” And if Trump is reelected president, he’ll hasten the separation.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade left the issue of abortion to the states, one out of three women of childbearing age now lives in a state that makes it nearly impossible to get an abortion.
And while red states are making it harder than ever to get abortions, they’re making it easier than ever to buy guns.
Red states are also banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in education. Florida’s Board of Education recently prohibited public colleges from using state and federal funds for DEI. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a law to require that all state-funded colleges and universities close their DEI offices.
Red states are suppressing votes. In Florida and Texas, teams of […]
