Top one percent of U.S. earners now hold more wealth than all the middle class

Percentage of wealth held by top 1 percent and middle 60 percent of U.S. earners, 1989-2020. After years of declines, America’s middle class now holds a smaller share of U.S. wealth than the top one percent. Data: Federal Reserve. Graphic: Bloomberg

October 10, 2021

Top one percent of U.S. earners now hold more wealth than all the middle class

By Alex Tanzi and Mike Dorning 8 October 2021 (Bloomberg) – After years of declines, America’s middle class now holds a smaller share of U.S. wealth than the top 1%. The middle 60% of U.S. households by income — a measure economists often use as a definition of the middle class — saw their combined […]

People walk along a dry arm of the Paraná River near Rosario, Argentina in 2021. Photo: Juan Mabromata / AFP / Getty Images

October 3, 2021

Dying crops, spiking energy bills, showers once a week: in South America, global warming brings new normal of water scarcity – “What we’re seeing today is as if the future has already arrived”

By Diego Laje, Anthony Faiola, and Ana Vanessa Herrero 24 September 2021 BUENOS AIRES (The Washington Post) – Sergio Koci’s sunflower farm in the lowlands of northern Argentina has survived decades of political upheaval, runaway inflation and the coronavirus outbreak. But as a series of historic droughts deadens vast expanses of South America, he fears […]

People cremate the bodies of COVID-19 victims at a crematorium ground in New Delhi, India, 24 April 2021. Photo: Danish Siddiqui / REUTERS

October 2, 2021

Global COVID-19 deaths hit 5 million as Delta variant sweeps the world – U.S. deaths top 700,000 as anti-vaccine disinformation lures thousands to the grave – “If we had been more effective in our vaccination, we could have prevented 90 percent of the deaths since mid-June”

By Kavya B and Roshan Abraham 1 October 2021 (Reuters) – Worldwide deaths related to COVID-19 surpassed 5 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, with unvaccinated people particularly exposed to the virulent Delta strain. The variant has exposed the wide disparities in vaccination rates between rich and poor nations, and the upshot of […]

Satellite view of the Chinese fishing fleet crossing the Pacific ocean to the coast of Peru, June - September 2021. Data: NASA. Video: AP News

September 27, 2021

Great Wall of Lights: China’s sea power on Darwin’s doorstep – “It really is like the Wild West. Nobody is responsible for enforcement out there.”

By Joshua Goodman 24 September 2021 ABOARD THE OCEAN WARRIOR in the eastern Pacific Ocean (AP) – It’s 3 a.m., and after five days plying through the high seas, the Ocean Warrior is surrounded by an atoll of blazing lights that overtakes the nighttime sky. “Welcome to the party!” says third officer Filippo Marini as […]

A boy looks at the bodies of more than 1400 Atlantic White-Sided dolphins slaughtered on the Skálabotnur beach in the Danish Faroe Islands on 12 September 2021. Photo: Sea Shepherd

September 14, 2021

More than 1,400 dolphins slaughtered in one day in Faroe Islands – “Possibly the largest single hunt of cetaceans ever recorded worldwide”

By Joshua Nevett 14 September 2021 (BBC News) – The practice of dolphin hunting in the Faroe Islands has come under scrutiny after more than 1,400 of the mammals were killed in what was believed to be a record catch. The pod of white-sided dolphins was driven into the largest fjord in the North Atlantic […]

South African environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was assassinated by four gunmen in her own home on 22 October 2020. “Mama” Ntshangase was a leading member of the Mfolozi Community Environmental Justice Organisation, which is taking legal action against the proposed expansion of an open-cast coal mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele, situated near Hluhluwe–Imfolozi park, the oldest nature reserve in Africa. Photo: Rob Symons / All Rise

September 13, 2021

Record number of environmental activists murdered in 2020 – “Fighting the climate crisis carries an unbearably heavy burden for some, who risk their lives to save the forests, rivers, and biospheres”

By Claire Marshall 13 September 2021 (BBC) – A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group. 227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from Global […]

Global Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) capacity, 2010-2020. Twenty years ago, the fossil fuel industry told you that by today, CCS would capture 5,000 million tons of CO2 per year. Today, the world can barely capture 10. Which is so far off target you can’t even see it on this graph. And when you remember that our global emissions are 36 BILLION tonnes each year, even if it had met its target, it would contribute approximately FUCK ALL. Data: IEA. Graphic: The Juice Media

September 3, 2021

Honest Government Ad: Carbon Capture and Storage – “CCS is a complex mining process whereby fossil fuel companies inject donations into the arseholes of politicians to delay climate action”

1 September 2021 (The Juice Media) – Hello, I’m from the Australien Government with an important announcement as we enter the next stage of the climate crisis: MASSIVE FIRES, MASSIVE FLOODS, MASSIVE BULLSHIT. As things fall apart and calls grow for us to urgently reduce our emissions we’ve come up with a PR campaign – […]

Package of ivermectin paste for deworming horses. One dose treats a horse with a body weight up to 1,250 pounds. In August 2021, poison centers across unvaccinated America saw huge increases in poisoning calls for ivermectin. Photo: Tractor Supply Company / Med-Pharmex

August 26, 2021

Texas sees 550 percent spike in poison calls for horse and cow dewormer, despite FDA warning – “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

By William Joy 25 August 2021 BURLESON, Texas (WFAA) – Inside 731 Farm Store in Burleson, Matt Meredith has taped up a warning from the FDA about ivermectin. “Not for human consumption. It says it on the bottle,” Meredith said. “It’s for deworming cattle, deworming horses.” Many people have started taking it to treat or […]

Flood gates on Trump’s border wall blown open by monsoon rains near San Bernardino Ranch in Arizona on 16 July 2021. Much of the West is suffering through a deep megadrought, but the monsoon rains that have swept across parts of the Southwest this summer have doused the southern half of Arizona with record-setting rains. Douglas has seen nearly double its average monsoon season rainfall so far, including a blast that came through on Monday and unleashed flooding on the Arizona-Sonora border. The National Weather Service data shows 2.15 inches (5.5 centimeters) of rain fell, which in turn funneled into washes and drove flooding. Photo: Fernando Sobrazo

August 22, 2021

Trump’s border wall torn apart by Arizona monsoon rains – “It’s not often that an ecologist can actually put a time stamp on the day that the evolutionary history of an area was sealed off”

By Brian Kahn 22 August 2021 (Gizmodo) – It turns out ignoring bedrock environmental laws may not have been the best choice for a multibillion-dollar construction project. Photos show former President Donald Trump’s border wall in deep disrepair after summer monsoon rains literally blew floodgates off their hinges. The damage took place near San Bernardino Ranch, a […]

Projections of annual counts of high-tide flooding (HTF) days for the NOAA Intermediate Sea Level Rise (SLR) scenario. The NOAA minor flooding threshold is used for Honolulu, San Diego and St. Petersburg. The NOAA moderate flooding threshold is used for Boston to highlight a threshold that is not yet routinely exceeded, which is not the case for the Boston minor threshold. The 50th percentile from the ensemble of projections (blue line) and the 10th–90th percentile range (blue shading, with the 90th percentile highlighted in orange) show increasing numbers of HTF days per year. The year of inflection (YOI, open black circle) for each projection corresponds to abrupt increases in the frequency of HTF days, which are highlighted by comparing the projected increases (Δ) over two adjacent ten-year periods (dashed and solid black lines). Graphic: Thompson, et al., 2021 / Nature Climate Change

August 16, 2021

Sunny-day flooding is about to become more than a nuisance – “What’s scary about this paper is the idea of the inflection point. Can we adapt fast enough to keep pace?”

By Jim Morrison 2 August 2021 (WIRED) – During the summer of 2017, the tide rose to historic heights again and again in Honolulu, higher than at any time in the 112 years that records had been kept. Philip Thompson, director of the Sea Level Center at the University of Hawaii, wanted to know why. […]

Desdemona Despair

Category: governance