Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

Total Annual CO2-e emissions in Australia during the Labor and Liberal governments. Photo: The Juice Media

Honest Government Ad: COP26 Climate Summit – “Fuck you: we’ll keep digging, burning and exporting fossil fuels, let you to do the hard work, and then take all the credit”

27 October 2021 (The Juice Media) – I’m from the Australien Government with a message for the world as we gather in Glasgow for this crucial climate summit: Fuck you. Over the coming days our Prime Marketer will be there trying to shake a lot of hands and saying a lot of blah blah blah […]

Aerial view of JERA's Hekinan thermal coal power station in Hekinan, central Japan on 18 October 2021. Picture taken October 18, 2021. Photo: Yuka Obayashi / REUTERS

COP26 aims to banish coal. Asia is building hundreds of power plants to burn it – “You can have the cake of coal and an icing of solar”

By Sudarshan Varadhan and Aaron Sheldrick31 October 2021 UDANGUDI, India/TOKYO (Reuters) – On the coastline near India’s southern tip, workers toil on a pier carrying a conveyor belt that cuts a mile into the Indian Ocean where the azure waters are deep enough for ships to berth and unload huge cargoes of coal. The belt […]

A bumblebee in flight approaches a flower. Photo: Michael Durham / Minden Pictures / Getty Images

The American bumblebee has vanished from eight states – Bee population has plummeted by 89 percent over past 20 years – “Endangered species” listing could be imminent

By Elizabeth Gamillo 6 October 2021 (Smithsonian) – The American bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus)—once abundant and found lazily floating around in grasslands, open prairies, and some urban areas throughout the United States—now face a rapidly declining population. According to a proposed rule released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the species’ population has dropped nearly 90 percent […]

Percentage of wealth held by top 1 percent and middle 60 percent of U.S. earners, 1989-2020. After years of declines, America’s middle class now holds a smaller share of U.S. wealth than the top one percent. Data: Federal Reserve. Graphic: Bloomberg

Top one percent of U.S. earners now hold more wealth than all the middle class

By Alex Tanzi and Mike Dorning 8 October 2021 (Bloomberg) – After years of declines, America’s middle class now holds a smaller share of U.S. wealth than the top 1%. The middle 60% of U.S. households by income — a measure economists often use as a definition of the middle class — saw their combined […]

People walk along a dry arm of the Paraná River near Rosario, Argentina in 2021. Photo: Juan Mabromata / AFP / Getty Images

Dying crops, spiking energy bills, showers once a week: in South America, global warming brings new normal of water scarcity – “What we’re seeing today is as if the future has already arrived”

By Diego Laje, Anthony Faiola, and Ana Vanessa Herrero 24 September 2021 BUENOS AIRES (The Washington Post) – Sergio Koci’s sunflower farm in the lowlands of northern Argentina has survived decades of political upheaval, runaway inflation and the coronavirus outbreak. But as a series of historic droughts deadens vast expanses of South America, he fears […]

Map showing Gallup’s World Negative Experience Index in 2020. Iraq continued to lead the world in negative experiences. Graphic: Gallup

2020 set records for negative emotions, continuing world’s decade-long downward trajectory – Stress index jumped five percent after record highs in 2019

By Julie Ray 20 July 2021 WASHINGTON, D.C. (Gallup) – Nobody was alone in feeling more sad, angry, worried or stressed last year. Gallup’s latest Negative Experience Index, which annually tracks these experiences worldwide in more than 100 countries and areas, shows that collectively, the world was feeling the worst it had in 15 years. The […]

People cremate the bodies of COVID-19 victims at a crematorium ground in New Delhi, India, 24 April 2021. Photo: Danish Siddiqui / REUTERS

Global COVID-19 deaths hit 5 million as Delta variant sweeps the world – U.S. deaths top 700,000 as anti-vaccine disinformation lures thousands to the grave – “If we had been more effective in our vaccination, we could have prevented 90 percent of the deaths since mid-June”

By Kavya B and Roshan Abraham 1 October 2021 (Reuters) – Worldwide deaths related to COVID-19 surpassed 5 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, with unvaccinated people particularly exposed to the virulent Delta strain. The variant has exposed the wide disparities in vaccination rates between rich and poor nations, and the upshot of […]

Map showing the temperature difference from normal across North America on 28 September 2021, as simulated by the European weather model. Hazen, North Dakota was among numerous locations that endured record-breaking heat in the northern Plains on Tuesday. Bismarck rose to 98 degrees, while Dickinson, N.D., about 60 miles southwest of Hazen, also hit 100. In South Dakota, Rapid City and Aberdeen both soared to 94, setting records for 28 September 2021. Average high temperatures in interior North Dakota in late September are in the 60s, meaning the actual readings deviated about 30 degrees from the norm. Graphic: WeatherBell / The Washington Post

It’s nearly October 2021, and the temperature hit 100°F (37.7°C) in North Dakota – “A temp of 100F one week after the autumn equinox is an absolute insanity”

By Jason Samenow 29 September 2021 (The Washington Post) – It’s a week past the autumn equinox, and the first snows have fallen in the Rockies and the mountain peaks of New England. But in Hazen, N.D., the mercury soared to the century mark Tuesday afternoon. According to several climatologists, that 100-degree reading is the highest temperature observed […]

Satellite view of the Chinese fishing fleet crossing the Pacific ocean to the coast of Peru, June - September 2021. Data: NASA. Video: AP News

Great Wall of Lights: China’s sea power on Darwin’s doorstep – “It really is like the Wild West. Nobody is responsible for enforcement out there.”

By Joshua Goodman 24 September 2021 ABOARD THE OCEAN WARRIOR in the eastern Pacific Ocean (AP) – It’s 3 a.m., and after five days plying through the high seas, the Ocean Warrior is surrounded by an atoll of blazing lights that overtakes the nighttime sky. “Welcome to the party!” says third officer Filippo Marini as […]

A boy looks at the bodies of more than 1400 Atlantic White-Sided dolphins slaughtered on the Skálabotnur beach in the Danish Faroe Islands on 12 September 2021. Photo: Sea Shepherd

More than 1,400 dolphins slaughtered in one day in Faroe Islands – “Possibly the largest single hunt of cetaceans ever recorded worldwide”

By Joshua Nevett 14 September 2021 (BBC News) – The practice of dolphin hunting in the Faroe Islands has come under scrutiny after more than 1,400 of the mammals were killed in what was believed to be a record catch. The pod of white-sided dolphins was driven into the largest fjord in the North Atlantic […]

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