Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Another power outage hits Puerto Rico, leaving about 840,000 in the dark, officials say

By Marwa Eltagouri 12 April 2018 (The Washington Post) – About 840,000 people across Puerto Rico were without power Thursday as the U.S. territory continues to struggle after the damage caused by Hurricane Maria last fall, according to island’s Electric Power Authority.The power company, in tweets Thursday, said that a tree had fallen onto the […]

Scott Pruitt’s attack on science would paralyze the Environmental Protection Agency

By Gina McCarthy and Janet G. McCabe 26 March 2018 (The New York Times) – Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has announced that he alone will decide what is and isn’t acceptable science for the agency to use when developing policies that affect your health and the environment.It is his latest […]

‘SOS’: the rainforest distress call carved into Sumatra’s oil palms – “As more of the forests are lost, we lose a little bit of ourselves in the process”

By Kate Lamb 27 February 2018 (The Guardian) – Dramatically carved into the landscape of a Sumatran oil palm plantation that borders one of the world’s most unique rainforests are three ominous letters: SOS. The message stretches half a kilometre alongside a snaking river; a bird’s-eye view gives the eerie sense the land has been […]

Study finds warning signs for mass extinction do exist, contrary to previous assumptions – “We should take these signs very seriously”

14 March 2018 (FAU) – Mass extinctions throughout the history of the Earth have been well documented. Scientists believe that they occurred during a short period of time in geological terms. In a new study, FAU palaeobiologists and their research partners have now shown that signs that the largest mass extinction event in the Earth’s […]

Most expensive weather disaster of 2018: a $3.9 billion drought in Argentina and Uruguay

Dr. Jeff Masters 30 March 2018 (Weather Underground) – A severe lack of rainfall during over southern South America during the summer of 2017 – 2018 has led to the worst drought in decades over portions of Argentina and Uruguay. According to insurance broker Aon Benfield, total losses are near $3.9 billion, making the drought […]

At least seven countries break monthly records as heat wave hits Asia

By Andrew Freedman 3 April 2018 (Mashable) – It may be unusually cold in the eastern U.S. right now, but in parts of Asia, dangerous, scorching heat has been breaking records.At least seven countries set monthly high temperature records at the end of March, according to national weather authorities and tracking by Etienne Kapikian, a […]

No nation currently meets its citizens’ basic needs at a globally sustainable level of resource use – “The more social thresholds a country achieves, the more planetary boundaries it exceeds”

5 February 2018 (University of Leeds) – A study led by the University of Leeds has found that no country currently meets its citizens’ basic needs at a globally sustainable level of resource use. The research, published in Nature Sustainability, is the first to quantify the sustainability of national resource use associated with meeting basic […]

Sports sponsorships of unhealthy foods drive the childhood obesity epidemic

By Julia Belluz 28 March 2018(Vox) – There’s a reason sports heroes like Michael Jordan have been appearing on cereal boxes for decades. Food and beverage companies have learned that spending billions of dollars on marketing targeted at kids as young as 2 can sway the food choices they make for a lifetime. Yet we […]

Caravan of 1,200 migrants marching through Mexico to seek asylum in U.S. – “If we all protect each other we’ll get through this together”

By Adolfo Flores 31 March 2018 San Pedro Tapanatepec, Mexico (BuzzFeed) – Taking a drag from her cigarette, a Mexican immigration agent looked out toward a caravan of migrants that grew larger with each step they took on the two-lane highway.When the agent, who’d covered her uniform with an orange and white shawl, learned that […]

Leaked memo: EPA shows workers how to downplay global warming

By Alexander C. Kaufman 28 March 2018 (Huffington Post) – The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday evening sent employees a list of eight approved talking points on climate change from its Office of Public Affairs ― guidelines that promote a message of uncertainty about climate science and gloss over proposed cuts to key adaptation programs. […]

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