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

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: […]

Bubble chart showing opportunity vs. risk for low-carbon transition for international oil companies (IOCs) and national oil companies (NOCs) in 2017. Larger bubble size = stronger performance on climate governance and strategy. Graphic: CDP

Fossil fuel divestment will increase carbon emissions, not lower them – “The divestment movement will simply force international oil companies to cede market share to national oil companies”

By Stefan Andreasson 25 November 2019 (The Conversation) – A global campaign encouraging individuals, organisations and institutional investors to sell off investments in fossil fuel companies is gathering pace. According to 350.org, US$11 trillion has already been divested worldwide. But, while it may seem a logical strategy, divestment will not lower demand for fossil fuels, which […]

Firefighters are overwhelmed by flames at a bushfire in Orangeville, west of Campbelltown, 6 December 2019. Photo: Nick Moir / The Sydney Morning Herald

Video: Australia firefighters flee “explosion of fire” in Sydney’s south-west – “There will be no relief, not in the immediate future”

By Lucy Cormack, Nick Moir, and Megan Levy 6 December 2019 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Firefighters were forced to run from an “explosion of fire” in Sydney’s south-west on Thursday night, as the bushfire crisis again tightened its grip over the state. At the peak of the crisis, seven fires around NSW were classified as […]

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

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 […]

People gather for an anti-government protest in Santiago, Chile, Friday, 1 November 2019. Groups of Chileans continued to demonstrate as government and opposition leaders debated the response to weeks of protests that paralyzed much of the capital and forced the cancellation of two major international summits. Photo: AP Photo

From Algeria to Hong Kong, 2019 was a year of anti-establishment rage – “What unites the protests is that all are responding to a sense of exclusion, pessimism about the future, and a feeling of having lost control to unaccountable elites”

5 December 2019 (AFP) – Angry citizens have swelled the streets of cities across the globe this year, pushing back against a disparate range of policies but often expressing a common grievance — the establishment’s failure to heed their demands for a more equitable future. While street protests are nothing new, experts say the intense […]

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

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 […]

Fires burn in Pará state, Brazil, in September 2019. Jair Bolsonaro accused Leonardo DiCaprio of ‘giving money for the Amazon to be torched’. Photo: Nelson Almeida/ AFP / Getty Images

Brazil’s president Bolsonaro claims Leonardo DiCaprio paid for Amazon fires – “Our negligent and incompetent president, responsible for an environmental dismantling unprecedented in our country, wants to blame DiCaprio”

By Tom Phillips 29 November 2019 (The Guardian) – Brazil’s president has falsely accused the actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio of bankrolling the deliberate incineration of the Amazon rainforest. Jair Bolsonaro – a populist nationalist who has vowed to drive environmental NGOs from Brazil – made the claim on Friday, reportedly telling supporters: “This Leonardo DiCaprio’s […]

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

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 — […]

Rhone Glacier and Trient Glacier in Switzerland before and after melt caused by global warming. Photo: ReutersRhone Glacier and Trient Glacier in Switzerland before and after melt caused by global warming. Photo: Reuters

New photos vs old: comparisons show dramatic Swiss glacier retreat – “We have never seen such a fast rate of glacial decline since the measurements have started”

By Denis Balibouse 25 November 2019 THE FURKA PASS, Switzerland (Reuters) – On the hairpin bend of a Swiss mountain pass, a Victorian-era hotel built for tourists to admire the Rhone Glacier has been abandoned now that the ice has retreated nearly 2 km (1.2 miles) uphill. Where mighty glaciers once spilled into Swiss valleys […]

Animation showing the age of the Arctic sea ice between 2015 and 2019. Video: NASA

35 years of climate change in one video

By Johnny Wood 18 November 2019 (WEF) – Q: If you subtract 95 percent from something, what’s left? A: An environmental crisis. The “something” in question is the oldest and thickest solid layer of frozen water in the Arctic Ocean, which is melting so rapidly that just 5% of its original mass remains. Scientists from the […]

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