governance – Page 20 – Desdemona Despair

A layer of dense smoke spread through much of Alberta during the week of 14 May 2023, caused by forest fires. The smoke that enveloped Calgary briefly gave the city one of the worst air-quality ratings in the world, as the fires to the north and west led to the evacuation of roughly 29,000 people across the province. Photo: Jen Osborne / The New York Times

May 21, 2023

Alberta is on fire, but discussing climate change is taboo during 2023 election – “It’s very tough to talk about oil and gas in Alberta because it’s sort of the goose that lays the golden egg”

By Ian Austen 20 May 2023 (The New York Times) – When I arrived in Alberta recently to report an upcoming political story, there was no shortage of people wanting to talk about politics and the provincial election on May 29. But, even as wildfires flared earlier than usual and raged across an unusually wide […]

An abusive tweet from a climate science denialist on 7 March 2023 directed at academic Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Sciences at University College London. Graphic: Global Witness / Twitter

May 21, 2023

Global warming deniers target scientists for vicious abuse on Musk’s Twitter – “I got to the point where it was definitely affecting my mental health”

By Anna Fazackerley 14 May 2023 (The Guardian) – Some of the UK’s top scientists are struggling to deal with what they describe as a huge rise in abuse from climate crisis deniers on Twitter since the social media platform was taken over by Elon Musk last year. Since then, key figures who ensured “trusted” content was […]

People jostle each other to buy subsidized sacks of wheat flour in Quetta, Pakistan, Thursday, 12 January 2023, after a recent price hike of flour in the country. An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China - including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia and Laos - found the debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel. Photo: Arshad Butt / AP Photo

May 21, 2023

China’s loans pushing world’s poorest countries to brink of collapse – “In a lot of the world, the clock has hit midnight”

By Bernard Condon 18 May 2023 (AP News) – A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world’s biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China. An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted […]

Satellite view of end-of-winter snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada mountain range from 2020 through 2023. The snowpack in 2023 was one of the biggest in recorded history. Photo: NASA

May 21, 2023

Striking satellite photos show the dramatic scale of California’s 2023 snowpack – “This melt really is still just getting started”

By Terry Castleman 10 May 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – After a series of atmospheric rivers and cold weather hit California, this year’s snowpack was one of the biggest in history. “This year’s result will go down as one of the largest snowpack years on record in California,” Sean de Guzman, manager of the Department of Water Resources’ snow surveys, said […]

Houses abandoned at Al-Bouzayad village in Iraq’s Diwaniya province due to climate change-driven drought. Photo: AFP

May 21, 2023

Iraq’s climate migrants flee parched land for crowded cities – “Thousands of hectares have been abandoned”

KARBALA, Iraq, 9 May 2023 (AFP) – Mr Haydar Mohamed once grew wheat and barley, but Iraq’s relentless drought has forced him off the land and into the city where he now works in construction and drives a taxi. “The transition is difficult,” said Mr Mohamed, 42, who abandoned village life several years ago for […]

U. S. Black population excess age-adjusted mortality and years of potential life lost rates, 1999-2020. To assess trends over time, the relationship between each metric and study year was graphically assessed, and time was modeled as a linear spline with knots that reflected the observed inflection points from 1999 to 2019. For excess mortality rates, these inflection points were from 2007 to 2011 for males and 2015 for females. For excess rates of years of potential life lost, the knots were 2007 and 2011 for males and 2012 for females. Rates that fall above the dotted line indicate rates higher than the White population and those that fall below, rates lower than the White population. Autoregressive integrated moving average models using a 1-year correlation were implemented to account for the serial correlation of annual rates. The 2019-2020 change was estimated using a z test. Graphic: Caraballo, et al., 2023 / JAMA

May 21, 2023

Black Americans experienced 1.6 million excess deaths compared to White population over 22-year period, study finds – “It led us back to a situation where we were no better than we were 20 years ago”

By Sara Moniuszko and Danya Bacchus 16 May 2023 (CBS News) – Despite years of efforts to reduce health disparities, a new study is calling attention to the drastic differences in mortality that continue to take a toll among Black Americans. Researchers found the Black population in the United States experienced more than 1.63 million excess […]

Lifetime and current depression rates in the United States, 2015-2023. The percentage of U.S. adults who reported having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime reached 29.0 percent in 2023, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who had or were being treated for depression also increased, to 17.8 percent, up about seven points over the same period. Both rates were the highest recorded by Gallup since it began measuring depression using the current form of data collection in 2015. Graphic: Gallup

May 17, 2023

U.S. depression rates reach new highs in 2023

By Dan Witters 17 May 2023 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Gallup) – The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime has reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015. The percentage of Americans who currently have or are being treated for depression has also increased, […]

State of press freedom worldwide 2013-2023. Changes in 180 countries and territories evaluated by RSF since 2013. In 2023, the situation was “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42, “problematic” in 55, and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52 countries. In other words, the environment for journalism was “bad” in seven out of ten countries, and satisfactory in only three out of ten. Graphic: RSF

May 9, 2023

2023 World Press Freedom Index – Journalism threatened by fake content industry – The environment for journalism is “bad” in seven out of ten countries, satisfactory in only three out of ten

3 May 2023 (RSF) – According to the 2023 World Press Freedom Index – which evaluates the environment for journalism in 180 countries and territories and is published on World Press Freedom Day (3 May) – the situation is “very serious” in 31 countries, “difficult” in 42, “problematic” in 55, and “good” or “satisfactory” in 52 countries. In […]

Trucks transport bauxite on a red-dirt mining road in the Boké region of Guinea. Photo: Chloe Sharrock / MYOP / The Washington Post

May 9, 2023

On frontier of new “gold rush” quest for coveted EV metals yields misery – “I am frustrated. But even more than that, I have lost hope.”

By Rachel Chason and Chloe Sharrock 27 April 2023 KAGBANI, Guinea (The Washington Post) – One of the poorest countries on Earth has become a crucial player in the world’s green-energy transition. Guinea, a West African nation of more than 13 million people, is home to the world’s biggest reserves of bauxite — a reddish-brown […]

Lake Tulare in California on 1 February 2023 and 30 April 2023, as seen from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite, and the Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) on the Landsat 9 satellite. In the spring of 2023, the long-dried basin of Lake Tulare rapidly refilled in the wake of intense rainfall and snowmelt. Photo: NASA

May 6, 2023

Tulare Lake flooding due to snowpack melt seen from space – “The state has both too much water and not enough”

By Jess Thomson 5 May 2023 (Newsweek) – The long-dried basin of Lake Tulare in California has rapidly refilled in the wake of intense rainfall and snowmelt. The speed and scale of the southern San Joaquin Valley lake’s return can be seen in images taken from space by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA‘s Landsat […]