Desdemona Despair – Page 101 – Blogging the End of the World™

Distribution of major tax cuts for the rich across OECD nations, 1965-2015. This figure visualizes the resulting binary variable that picks out years in which taxes on the rich were reduced substantially. In total, we identify 30 country-year observations where taxes on the rich were significantly reduced. Governments enacted major tax reforms in all countries in our sample and across the whole observation period. Many countries implemented major tax cuts for the rich in the late 1980s. Furthermore, the identification of tax cuts is also in line with previous studies that have focused on income tax progressivity (Rubolino and Waldenström, 2020) or on overall tax progressivity single specific countries (Saez and Zucman, 2019). For instance, echoing these authors’ findings, we find two major reforms that reduced taxes on the rich in the US: 1982 (First Reagan Tax Cut) and 1986/1987 (Second Reagan Tax Cut). Graphic: Hope and Limberg, 2020 / LSE

December 25, 2020

Tax breaks for the rich don’t boost the economy – “Our research shows that the economic case for keeping taxes on the rich low is weak”

16 December 2020 (LSE) – Major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality but do not have any significant effect on economic growth or unemployment, according to new research by LSE and King’s College London. Researchers say governments seeking to restore public finances following the COVID-19 crisis should therefore not be […]

Shifting composition of annual debt-service obligations that low-income countries owe to their bilateral creditors from 2020 through 2022. This animation shows the shifting composition of annual debt-service obligations that low-income countries owe to their bilateral creditors-from 2020 through 2022. It reflects projected debt service payments on external debt to official bilateral creditors (TDS, current US$, millions). Debt service to official bilateral creditors will impose a heavy burden for years to come. Graphic: World Bank Group

December 24, 2020

2020 Year in Review: The global economic impact of COVID-19 in 12 charts

By Paul Blake and Divyanshi Wadhwa 14 December 2020 (World Bank Group) – This time last year, concepts such as “lockdowns,” “mask mandates” and “social distancing” were unknown to most of us. Today they are part of our everyday language as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact all aspects of our lives. Through the following […]

Map showing highest-impact disasters in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic (over 250,000 people affected). The map shows only a snapshot of disasters that took place from the beginning of the month when the epidemic was declared (March 2020) for a six-month period. More than 100 disasters occurred during this period and affected over 50 million people. There were also a number of ongoing crises, including measles in DRC and droughts in parts of east and southern Africa. Graphic: IFRC

December 24, 2020

Red Cross faced record number of climate-related disasters in 2020 – “This year has tested the resilience of tens of millions of people to breaking point”

KUALA LUMPUR, 16 December 2020 (IFRC) – In a record-breaking year, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has responded to more climate-related disasters across Asia Pacific than any other time this century so far. The IFRC has already responded to 25 climate-related disasters in the Asia Pacific, including floods, typhoons, […]

Projected geographical shift of the human temperature niche. (Top) Geographical position of the human temperature niche projected on the current situation (A) and the RCP8.5 projected 2070 climate (B). Those maps represent relative human distributions (summed to unity) for the imaginary situation that humans would be distributed over temperatures following the stylized double Gaussian model fitted to the modern data (the blue dashed curve in Fig. 2A). (C) Difference between the maps, visualizing potential source (orange) and sink (green) areas for the coming decades if humans were to be relocated in a way that would maintain this historically stable distribution with respect to temperature. The dashed line in A and B indicates the 5% percentile of the probability distribution. Graphic: Xu, et al., 2020 / PNAS

December 17, 2020

Broken societies put people and planet on a collision course, says UNDP – “No country in the world has yet achieved very high human development without putting immense strain on the planet”

NEW YORK, 15 December 2020 (HDRO) – The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest crisis facing the world, but unless humans release their grip on nature, it won’t be the last, according to a new report [pdf] by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which includes a new experimental index on human progress that takes into account countries’ […]

GOES-17 satellite view of the largest known stratospheric smoke injection, from Australia wildfires, 2 January 2020. This photo shows the first phase (29-31 December 2019) of the Australian New Year Super Outbreak (Anyso), which had unprecedented fire and pyrocumulonimbus cloud (pyroCb) activity. this event was the first known pyroCb “super outbreak”, with 32 updrafts over ~45hrs (day and night). Previous events recorded less than 10 updrafts in less than 24 hours. Photo: CIRA

December 16, 2020

Towering pyrocumulonimbus clouds can spew as much aerosol as volcanic eruptions – The Australian 2019-2020 outbreak exceeded previously unprecedented events “on almost every level”

By Carolyn Gramling 15 December 2020 (Science News) – A massive tower of smoke generated by Australian wildfires in late 2019 set a new record for the loftiest and largest fire-spawned thunderstorms ever measured. It also may represent a new class of volcanic-scale “pyrocumulonimbus” events, scientists said in an online news conference 11 December 2020 at […]

Screenshot from a video showing Greta Thunberg commenting on the world’s climate progress nearly five years after the Paris agreement, 10 December 2020. The world is in a ‘state of complete denial’. Photo: Guardian News

December 16, 2020

Greta Thunberg: We are still in denial despite Paris climate deal – “We are still speeding in the wrong direction”

11 December 2020 (AFP) – The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has condemned the “empty words” of world leaders in a video message released ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Paris climate accord on Saturday. Since world leaders pledged to limit global temperature rises to 2 degrees Celsius in 2015, “a lot has happened, […]

Map showing the age of sea ice in the Arctic at winter maximum in 2000 (left, week of March 18) and 2020 (right, week of March 21). Ice older than 5 years (white) is very rare today; only a small ribbon remains along the islands of the Canadian Arctic. Age is a stand-in for ice thickness and durability; young ice is thinner and more likely to melt in the summer. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Graphic: NOAA

December 14, 2020

Sea ice loss and extreme wildfires mark another year of Arctic change – “The transformation of the Arctic to a warmer, less frozen, and biologically changed region is well underway”

8 December 2020 (NOAA) – NOAA’s 15th Arctic Report Card catalogs for 2020 the numerous ways that climate change continues to disrupt the polar region, with second-highest air temperatures and second-lowest summer sea ice driving a cascade of impacts, including the loss of snow and extraordinary wildfires in northern Russia. The Arctic Report Card is […]

Screenshot from “Honest Government Ad: Kyoto Carryover Credits” by The Juice Media. Photo: The Juice Media

December 13, 2020

Honest Government Ad: Australia’s Kyoto Carryover Credits

By Giordano Nanni 11 December 2020 (The Juice Media) – This is a special double-length Honest Government Ad, featuring our first-ever time-travel historical sequence, because there’s just so much shitfuckery to cover. Hence why it took us a little longer than usual to research, write, and make this one. I had of course heard about […]

The global COVID-19 lockdowns caused fossil carbon dioxide emissions to decline by an estimated 2.4 billion tonnes in 2020 - a record drop according to researchers at the University of East Anglia, University of Exeter and the Global Carbon Project. It means that in 2020 fossil CO2 emissions are predicted to be approximately 34 GtCO2, seven per cent lower than in 2019. Emissions from transport account for the largest share of the global decrease. Those from surface transport, such as car journeys, fell by approximately half at the peak of the COVID lockdowns. Total CO2 emissions from human activities - from fossil CO2 and land-use change - are set to be around 39 GtCO2 in 2020. Video: UEA

December 12, 2020

COVID lockdown causes record drop in carbon dioxide emissions for 2020

11 December 2020 (UEA) – The global COVID-19 lockdowns caused fossil carbon dioxide emissions to decline by an estimated 2.4 billion tonnes in 2020 – a record drop according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA), University of Exeter, and the Global Carbon Project. The fall is considerably larger than previous significant decreases […]

Income inequality in the United States, 1913-2019. The U.S. shows a rise in the concentration of incomes unseen in other rich nations. The top 10% increase from 34% to 45% between 1980 and 2019. Half of the American population was shut from pretax economic growth. Graphic: World Inequality Database

December 11, 2020

Global inequality data update shows rise in concentration of U.S. incomes unseen in other rich nations – Latin America and the Middle East stand as the world’s most unequal regions

10 November 2020 (WIL) – The World Inequality Lab releases today a major update of global inequality data for 173 countries, making up 97% of the world population and 7.5 billion people. The data published distributes economic growth within each country making it possible to track inequality and poverty over time, countries and regions. These […]