All-American Despair: For the past two decades, a suicide epidemic fueled by guns, poverty, and isolation has swept across the U.S. West, with middle-aged men dying in record numbers

Rise in U.S. suicide rates between 1999 and 2016, by state. Data: CDC National Vital Statistics System / CDC Vital Signs, June 2018. Graphic: CDC

June 30, 2019

All-American Despair: For the past two decades, a suicide epidemic fueled by guns, poverty, and isolation has swept across the U.S. West, with middle-aged men dying in record numbers

By Stephen Rodrick 30 May 2019 (Rolling Stone) – Toby Lingle was cremated in a 49ers cap, a Star Wars T-shirt and sunglasses shortly after his funeral at Highland Park Community Church in Casper, Wyoming. He was 43. The outfit was the daily wear for an aggressively coarse and casual man. Lingle was that guy, […]

Artist’s rendering of the proposed liquefied natural gas plant in Kitimat, B.C. Photo: LNG Canada / Flickr

June 30, 2019

Canada government announces “largest private sector investment in Canadian history” for B.C. natural gas project, two weeks after declaring climate emergency – “This is not what concerned citizens expect”

24 June 2019 (CBC News) – The federal government is pumping $275 million into LNG Canada’s $40 billion liquefied natural gas project in Kitimat, B.C. Finance Minister Bill Morneau made the announcement Monday in Kitimat, announcing the $220 million will be directed toward buying energy-efficient gas turbines for the project, with the additional $55 million […]

Deltoid spurge, shown here in 2005, is one of the endangered plants found only on pine rockland. The pine rockland found near Zoo Miami is the largest intact tract outside Everglades National Park. A 2015 study found 55 plant species in the tract, far more than botanists found in rockland in the park. Photo: Donna E. Natale Planas / Miami Herald

June 29, 2019

Activists lose last legal battle to protect rare Miami forest from Walmart development

By Adriana Brasileiro 19 June 2019 MIAMI (Miami Herald) – Activists fighting to preserve a slice of one of the world’s rarest forests lost what was likely the last legal battle to stop the imperiled ecosystem from turning into a Walmart-anchored development. One of the last remnants in Miami-Dade of pine rockland, a forest that […]

A TV reporter interviews self-employed logger Bridger Hasbrouck, of Dallas, Oregon, outside the Oregon State House in Salem, Oregon, on Thursday, 20 June 2019, the day the Senate is scheduled to take up a bill that would create the nation's second cap-and-trade program to curb carbon emissions. Senate Republicans, however, walked out so there wouldn't be enough lawmakers present for a vote on House Bill 2020, which is extremely unpopular among loggers, truckers and many rural voters. Photo: Gillian Flaccus / AP Photo

June 29, 2019

The insanity in Oregon over climate legislation is a glimpse of our very dark future – People with guns block carbon market bill with threats of violence

By Charles P. Pierce 24 June 2019 (Esquire) – In these times, everything looks like an ill omen. The capitol is crowded with crows. But it is not an exaggeration to say that if you’re not following the ongoing insanity in Oregon, you are missing a look into a very dark future. It begins with […]

Trump EPA official William Wehrum announced his resignation as the EPA's top air policy official on 26 June 2019, after the Energy and Commerce Committee launched an ethics inquiry. Wehrum served as one of the chief architects of the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the ambition and reach of the EPA, and to retreat from President Obama’s push to slash emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. He oversaw efforts to ease regulation of the coal industry, slow requirements that cars and trucks become more fuel efficient and overhaul how the agency calculates costs and benefits to favor industry. Photo: Eric Vance / USEPA

June 29, 2019

Trump EPA official resigns amid scrutiny over possible ethics violations – “William Wehrum was emblematic of the administration’s struggles to remain ethical”

By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis 26 June 2019 (The Washington Post) – Bill Wehrum spent only a year and a half as the Environmental Protection Agency’s top air official before announcing plans to resign Wednesday amid scrutiny over possible violations of federal ethics rules. But during that time, Wehrum served as one of the […]

Overdose deaths, by opioid category in the United States of America, 1999–2017. Data: Holly Hedegaard, Arialdi M. Miniño, and Margaret Warner, “Drug overdose deaths in the United States, 1999–2017”, NCHS Data Brief, No. 329 (Hyattsville, Maryland, United States, National Center for Health Statistics, November 2018). Graphic: UNODC

June 28, 2019

Two-thirds of global drug deaths now from opioids: UN drugs report – Cocaine production at all-time high

26 June 2019 (UN News) – Opioids, which include both heroin and legal pain relievers, were responsible for around two-thirds of drug-related deaths in 2017, the latest World Drug Report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) revealed on Wednesday. The study from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), also shows that the […]

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/22/us/extinction-rebellion-new-york-times-arrests/index.html

June 23, 2019

70 people arrested at climate protest outside The New York Times offices

By Madeleine Thompson and Dakin Andone 22 June 2019 (CNN) – Seventy people were arrested outside of The New York Times building in Manhattan on Saturday, according to a New York Police Department spokesman, during a protest to call attention to the way news outlets cover the climate crisis. Charges against the protesters are pending, […]

Immigration Customs and Enforcement dropped off more than 100 migrants mostly from Guatemala at the Phoenix Greyhound bus station at 2115 E. Buckeye Road. Roberto Ramirez, 6, was in ICE custody with his father, Gaspa Ramirez. He claims that treatment by officers was bad and children were getting sick because of cold weather. Photo: Nick Oza / The Arizona Republic

June 23, 2019

Flu, lice, and open toilets: What attorneys saw at migrant child processing centers in Texas – “In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity”

By Gaby del Valle 22 June 2019 (Vice News) – Attorneys who work with migrant children recently visited two Border Patrol processing centers along the U.S.-Mexico border — and what they saw paints a bleak picture of the Trump administration’s treatment of child migrants. [It seems Desdemona’s worst fears are being realized: Children of Men, […]

Permafrost forms a grid-like pattern in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in Alpine, Alaska, a 22.8 million acre region managed by the Bureau of Land Management on Alaska's North Slope. USGS has periodically assessed oil and gas resource potential there. Photo: David Houseknecht / USGS

June 22, 2019

Warming Arctic permafrost releasing 12 times more nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, than previously thought – “This needs to be taken more seriously than it is right now”

By Caitlin McDermott-Murphy 6 June 2019 (The Harvard Gazette) – About a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is covered in permafrost. Now, it turns out these permanently frozen beds of soil, rock, and sediment are actually not so permanent: They’re thawing at an increasing rate. Human-induced climate change is warming these lands, melting the ice […]

Total U.S. consumer debt, 2003-2019. Data are through the first quarter of 2019. Data: New York Fed Consumer Credit Panel / Equifax. Graphic: MarketWatch

June 22, 2019

U.S. consumer debt is now above levels hit during the 2008 financial crisis

By Mark DeCambre 21 June 2019 (MarketWatch) – Consumer debt is growing to worrisome levels. Ben Mohr, senior research analyst of fixed income at investment consultant Marquette Associates, calculated that total U.S. consumer debt hit $14 trillion in the first quarter of 2019, surpassing the roughly $13 trillion of leverage accumulated in credit cards, auto […]

Desdemona Despair

Category: North America