Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Trump administration completes plan to roll back safety rules inspired by Deepwater Horizon disaster – “These rollbacks allow offshore oil companies to self-police and prioritize industry profits over safety”

By Coral Davenport 27 September 2018 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The Trump administration has completed its plan to roll back major offshore-drilling safety regulations that were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in 2010 that killed 11 people and caused the worst oil spill in American history.The Interior Department’s […]

Duterte says, “My only sin is the extrajudicial killings”

By Felipe Villamor 27 September 2018 MANILA (The New York Times) – President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines on Thursday said for the first time that extrajudicial killings had happened under his government’s brutal war on drugs, an admission that could bolster two cases filed against him at the International Criminal Court.In a rambling speech […]

Typhoon Trami batters Japan, halting East Japan Railway trains in Tokyo for the first time ever – Typhoon Kong-rey looms as new threat

By Yuko Takeo and Kazumi Miura 29 September 2018 (Bloomberg) – A typhoon is bringing Tokyo to a standstill. East Japan Railway Co., which operates major rail lines in the Japanese capital, suspended all train services in the Tokyo area from 8 p.m. on Sunday in preparation for Typhoon Trami, which made landfall in the […]

Trump administration sees a 6°F rise in global temperatures by 2100 – “The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it.”

By Juliet Eilperin, Brady Dennis, and Chris Mooney 28 September 2018 (The Washington Post) – Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous six degrees by the end of this century.A rise of six degrees Fahrenheit, or […]

The costs of climate inaction – “The way in which society currently prices carbon is an order of magnitude too low”

25 September 2018 (Nature) – Politics, according to the nineteenth-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck, is the art of the next best. The global approach of politicians to tackling climate change is a sorry example of this. The problem: destructive storms that hit the United States and southeast Asia this month are the latest reminder […]

Hurricane Rosa rapidly intensifies into 7th Category 4 storm of eastern Pacific Hurricane Season, tying record set in 2015 – Will threaten U.S. Southwest with flooding next week

By Linda Lam 28 September 2018 (The Weather Channel) – Hurricane Rosa rapidly intensified in the eastern Pacific, but its greatest impact will likely be as a weak tropical storm or depression bringing a threat of flash flooding to the southwestern United States early next week. Rosa became a hurricane Wednesday morning in the eastern […]

Climate change and multilateralism figure high on first day of UN General Assembly debate – “Neglecting the effects of climate change will pass on to the next generation a world beyond repair”

25 September 2018 (UN News) – If there was one issue that was a recurrent theme on Tuesday on the first day of the United Nations General Assembly‘s annual general debate, it was the potentially catastrophic impact of climate change , from Secretary-General António Guterres’s opening address warning global Heads of State and Government  that […]

Powerful Typhoon Trami to slam Japan, with life-threatening impacts

By Eric Leister 27 September 2018 (AccuWeather) – Trami will threaten lives and property as it slams the Ryukyu Islands and barrels into mainland Japan with destructive winds, flooding rain and an inundating storm surge Friday night into Monday. The powerful typhoon is currently equal to a Category 3 major hurricane in the Atlantic or […]

Amazon deforestation in Brazil up 199 percent in August 2018

By Stefania Costa 24 September 2018(Imazon) – In August 2018, SAD detected 545 square kilometers of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, an increase of 199% in relation to August 2017, when deforestation totaled 182 square kilometers. In August 2018, deforestation occurred in Pará (37%), Mato Grosso (20%), Amazonas (19%), Rondônia (16%), Acre (7%), Roraima (1%) […]

Next financial crash will be “worse than the Great Depression” – “The U.S. economy is in so much worse shape than it was a decade ago”

By John Aidan Byrne 22 September 2018 (New York Post) – Ten years ago, it was too-easy credit that brought financial markets to their knees. Today, it could be a global debt of $247 trillion that causes the next crash. After a decade of escalating US household debt brought on by low wages and the national […]

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