United States – Page 54 – Desdemona Despair

Life expectancy for United States and 50 States, grouped by census region, 1959-2016. Graphic: Woolf and Schoomaker, 2019 / JAMA

December 22, 2019

U.S. life expectancy continues to decline – Working-age Americans dying at higher rates, especially in economically hard-hit states – “This is a distinctly American phenomenon”

By Mary Kate Brogan 26 November 2019 (Virginia Commonwealth University) – Mortality rates among working-age Americans continue to climb, causing a decrease in U.S. life expectancy that is severely impacting certain regions of the United States, according to a Virginia Commonwealth University study set to publish Tuesday in JAMA. The report, “Life Expectancy and Mortality Rates in […]

The geographic breakdown of each percentile of the global distribution of income evolved, 1990-2016. In 1990, 33 percent of the population of the world’s top 0.001 percent income group were residents of the United States and Canada. In 2016, 5 percent of the population of the world’s top 0.001 percent income group were residents of the Russian Federation. Data: Alvaredo, et al., 2018, based on data from the World Inequality Database http://WID.world. Graphic: UNDP

December 18, 2019

2019 Human Development Report says unchecked inequality growth may trigger a “new great divergence” in society not seen since the Industrial Revolution – “This is the new face of inequality”

BOGOTÁ, 9 December 2019 – The demonstrations sweeping across the world today signal that, despite unprecedented progress against poverty, hunger, and disease, many societies are not working as they should. The connecting thread, argues a new report from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), is inequality. “Different triggers are bringing people onto the streets — […]

Alaska’s Columbia glacier began rapidly retreating around 1980, and its leading edge has moved more than 20 kilometers inland. These images, captured by the joint NASA / U.S. Geological Survey Landsat satellites, were stitched together into a video to show the glacier’s dynamic evolution from 1972 to 2019. Video: Mark Fahnestock / University of Alaska Fairbanks

December 14, 2019

Video: 47 years of satellite images show retreat of Alaskan’s Columbia glacier

By Carolyn Gramling 10 December 2019 SAN FRANCISCO (Science News) – A mesmerizing new series of images shows the retreat of Alaska’s Columbia glacier over the last 47 years in gorgeous, excruciating detail. The images were presented December 10 at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting. Landsat satellites operated by NASA and the U.S. Geological […]

Environmental activists rally outside of New York Supreme Court in October 2019 in Manhattan, on the first day of the trial accusing ExxonMobil of misleading shareholders about its climate change accounting. Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images

December 14, 2019

Exxon wins New York climate change fraud case

By Laurel Wamsley 10 December 2019 (NPR) – A judge has handed Exxon Mobil a victory in only the second climate change lawsuit to reach trial in the United States. The decision was a blow for the New York Attorney General’s Office, which brought the case. Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York State Supreme […]

Carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas, petroleum, coal, and land use changes, 1998-2017, in gigatons of CO2 per year. Graphic: GCP

December 9, 2019

Global carbon emissions growth slows, but still hits record high in 2019 – “Emissions cuts in wealthier nations must outpace increases in poorer countries where access to energy is still needed”

By Rob Jordan 3 December 2019 (Stanford News Service) – The runaway train that is climate change is about to blow past another milestone: global fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions will reach yet another record high. Driven by rising natural gas and oil consumption, levels of CO2 are expected to hit 37 billion metric tons this […]

Share of national wealth owned by each generation, by median cohort age. Baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — collectively owned 21 percent of the nation’s wealth by the time their generation hit a median age of 35 in 1990. Generation X (born from 1965 to 1980) came of age during the era of wage stagnation and growing inequality ushered in by the 1970s and ’80s. When the typical Gen Xer reached 35 in 2008, his or her share of the nation’s wealth was just 9 percent, less than half that of boomers at a comparable point in life. Millennials haven’t hit the 35 mark yet — that won’t happen until about 2023 — but their financial situation is relatively dire. They own just 3.2 percent of the nation’s wealth. To catch up to Gen Xers, they’d need to triple their wealth in just four years. To reach boomers, their net worth would need a sevenfold jump. Graphic: Gray Kimbrough / The Washington Post

December 8, 2019

Graph of the Day: The staggering millennial wealth deficit – “To catch up to Gen Xers, millennials would need to triple their wealth in just four years. To reach boomers, their net worth would need a sevenfold jump.”

By Christopher Ingraham 3 December 2019 (The Washington Post) – Few things capture the precariousness of life for today’s young adults like a visualization of their wealth. Economist Gray Kimbrough did just that, using Federal Reserve data to compare how generations fared financially at different points of their life cycles. Wealth is a measure of what people own: […]

Oil production from the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, 2012-2019. New drilling in Eagle Ford only replaces production declines from old wells. Data: BloombergNEF. Graphic: Bloomberg

December 7, 2019

Faded Texas oil field offers austerity lesson for U.S. shale – “There’s an inflection point coming here because production growth is going to slow down massively”

By Kevin Crowley 2 December 2019 (Bloomberg) – At EOG Resources Inc.’s Francisco lease in the heart of the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, a half dozen cows laze in the shade of a tree next to black oil-storage tanks. A small flare burns atop a steel pylon, like a memorial to the boom […]

Average weekly earnings of private services sector and goods producing sector jobs, 1964-2018. Graphic: Cornell Law School

December 7, 2019

Quality of U.S. jobs declining drastically – “The long-term loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs over the past thirty years has produced troubling ripple effects for many Americans”

WASHINGTON, 14 November 2019 (CPA) – The Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) today announced the launch of a comprehensive new economic indicator, the US Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI). CPA has partnered with Cornell University, the University of Missouri, and the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity (GISP) to unveil a new measure of America’s changing […]

The Rieckmann’s mantle in their home in Fremont, Wisconsin, on 20 November 2019. Photo: Jason Vaughn / TIME

December 2, 2019

Small American farmers are nearing extinction – “They’re trying to wipe us off the map”

By Alana Semuels 27 November 2019 FREMONT, Wisconsin (TIME) – For nearly two centuries, the Rieckmann family has raised cows for milk in this muddy patch of land in the middle of Wisconsin. Mary and John Rieckmann, who now run the farm and its 45 cows, have seen all manners of ups and downs — […]

Protesters block an intersection during the WTO protests in Seattle, 30 November 2019. Photo: The UW Daily

December 2, 2019

The Battle of Seattle: 20 years later

By James Galasyn 30 November 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – It was twenty years ago today: the protests against the third WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Seattle on 30 November 1999. The ongoing clashes between protesters and the Seattle Police Department came to be known as the Battle of Seattle, and they set the tone of […]