Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

EPA chief Pruitt overrules staff, gives Wisconsin’s Walker, Foxconn big break on smog

By Michael Hawthorne 2 May 2018 (Chicago Tribune) – The Trump administration on Tuesday exempted most of southeast Wisconsin from the latest federal limits on lung-damaging smog pollution, delivering a political victory to Gov. Scott Walker as he makes a new Foxconn Technology Group factory the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.By dramatically reducing the size […]

Video: Global warming eroding women’s status in Zanzibar

5 May 2018 (CBS News) – Warming ocean temperature is causing a severe decline in carrageenan production from the coastal waters of Zanzibar. Carrageenan aquaculture is traditionally an occupation for women, and without this income and the independence that comes with it, the status of women may decline.Dr. Flower Ezekiel Msuya and her team at […]

Only 40 red wolves remain in the wild in North Carolina as rising sea level reduces habitat

24 April 2018 (USFWS) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today released a five-year status review and Species Status Assessment [pdf] outlining the latest science and data supporting its recommendation for no change in the red wolf’s overall status as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. The status review is required every five years […]

“Climate gentrification” the latest threat to coastal cities, as upscale development replaces affordable housing – “There’s no place to live”

By Christopher Flavelle 23 April 2018 (Bloomberg) – When Hurricane Irma reached Florida’s Big Pine Key in September 2017, it caused the floor of Terry and Sharon Baron’s cream-colored mobile home to collapse. On Marathon Key, twenty miles north, the winds lifted Diane Gaffield’s mobile home off its concrete pad and smashed it against her […]

Environmental group wants to carve Trump’s face into a glacier to prove global warming is happening

By Christopher Brito 1 May 2018 (CBS News) – An environmental group wants to carve President Trump’s face into an arctic iceberg for one special purpose: To prove climate change is happening. “Melting Ice,” a Finnish non-governmental organization, aims to raise about $500,000 to build a 115-foot monument dedicated to Mr. Trump. Nicholas Prieto, chairman […]

In China and India, 50 million excess males under age 20 – “In the future, there will be millions of men who can’t marry, and that could pose a very big risk to society”

By Simon Denyer and Annie Gowen 18 April 2018 (The Washington Post) – Nothing like this has happened in human history. A combination of cultural preferences, government decree and modern medical technology in the world’s two largest countries has created a gender imbalance on a continental scale. Men outnumber women by 70 million in China […]

Last big group of caravan asylum seekers cross into U.S. – “Where is the wall? I want to climb Trump’s wall!”

By Delphine Schrank; editing by Julia Love and Phil Berlowitz 4 May 2018 (Reuters) – Seventy men, women and children poured through a U.S. port of entry early Friday to seek asylum, the largest single group yet accepted by U.S. officials from the caravan of Central American migrants that enraged President Donald Trump. Fleeing Honduras, […]

Video: Elephants wrecking a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh – “The elephant crushed him”

By Justin Rowlatt and Sanjay Ganguly. 4 May 2018 (BBC News) – Twelve Rohingya people in the refugee camp in Bangladesh have been killed by wild elephants in recent months. The camp has swollen in size since 700,000 members of the Muslim community fled religious persecution in their homeland of Myanmar in August last year. […]

Flooding hot spots: Why seas are rising faster on the U.S. East Coast – “These coastal areas are more vulnerable than they realize to short-term rapid acceleration of sea level rise”

By Jim Morrison 24 April 2018 (Yale E360) – Seen from a pedestrian footbridge overlooking Myrtle Park — a sliver of land that Norfolk, Virginia is allowing to revert to wetlands — the panorama of surrounding homes illustrates the accelerating sea level rise that has beleaguered this neighborhood along the Lafayette River. A grey house, […]

“Freak” dust storms in northern India kill at least 100 people – “Dust storms are usually not this intense nor do these systems cover such a large area”

By Michael Safi 3 May 2018 DELHI (The Guardian) – Severe dust storms across northern India have killed more than 100 people, destroyed homes and left hundreds without electricity.Billowing clouds of thick dust and sand frequently blow across the region during the dry season, but the death toll from this week’s storms has been unusually […]

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