Archive for July, 2019
Why So Little Gets Done About the Climate Crisis
Jul 21st
Why So Little Gets Done
“The planetary future is hostage to myopic national self-interest. Action is delayed on the assumption that as yet unproven technologies will save the day, decades hence. The risks are existential, but it is “alarmist” to say so.”
What Lies Beneath Breakthroughline.org.au
A Nationwide Scandal
Jul 21st
The Nationwide Scandal Hiding in Plain Sight
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-nationwide-crisis-hiding-in-plain-sight/
“While the investigation mostly focused on California care homes, what Gollan discovered is a nationwide problem hiding in plain sight, “blend[ing] in to neighborhoods. What’s worse is that the proliferation of these homes, made possible through lax regulations is leading people to join what many see as a get-rich-quick scheme by opening and operating an elderly care facility.
“[Operators] know they can suppress workers’ wages, and then take in $4,000 a month from seniors and make up the difference,” the journalist tells Scheer on the latest installment of his podcast. “There are many, many entrepreneurs on YouTube promoting this business in particular as a money-making machine, and a place where you can get into the business, the real estate end of the business, flip a house, make a few adjustments, and care for a bunch of seniors, open a care home and make a lot of money.”
“JG: Well, so that’s the median cost per resident to stay in one of these care homes per month. So these care homes can often make, from six residents, about $250,000 a year. And so you can see why it would be quite lucrative. And they’re basically promising to provide all of the care that many, you know, working parents cannot provide to their parents, because they’re caring for their children, for example. So they’re filling a need, and the industry has grown incredibly over the last decade, and they’re taking on these increasingly ill patients.”
This reminds me of the “Grapes of Wrath” John Steinbeck, 1939. Could it really be that these kinds of exploitative practices have been going on for centuries? Capitalism has matured and become the most exploitative institution the world has ever known. Married to materialism, this union has established a worldview that will take this civilisation down.
Ban Chlorpyrifos
Jul 20th
E.P.A. Won’t Ban Chlorpyrifos, Pesticide Tied to Children’s Health Problems
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/climate/epa-chlorpyrifos-pesticide-ban.html
July 18, 2019
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration took a major step to weaken the regulation of toxic chemicals on Thursday when the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would not ban a widely used pesticide that its own experts have linked to serious health problems in children.
Chlorpyrifos
Chlorpyrifos (CPS) is an organophosphate pesticide used on crops, animals, and buildings, and in other settings, to kill a number of pests, including insects and worms. It acts on the nervous systems of insects by inhibiting the acetylcholinesterase enzyme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpyrifos
Researchers studied the blood of women who were exposed to chlorpyrifos and the blood of their children from birth for three years. Children who had chlorpyrifos in their blood had more developmental delays and disorders than children who did not have chlorpyrifos in their blood. Exposed children also had more attention deficit disorders and hyperactivity disorders.
In general children may be more sensitive to pesticides than adults. One reason for this is that their bodies may break down pesticides differently. Children are also more likely to be exposed to pesticides when playing and may put their hands in their mouths more often than adults. Children may also be more sensitive to exposures because they have more surface area of skin for their body size than adults.
http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/chlorpgen.html
Millions raised for climate activists
Jul 13th
US philanthropists vow to raise millions for climate activists
Matthew Taylor, The Guardian
“The Guardian reports that “a group of wealthy US philanthropists and investors have donated almost half a million pounds to support the grassroots movement Extinction Rebellion and school strike groups – with the promise of tens of millions more in the months ahead”. It adds: “Trevor Neilson, an investor and philanthropist who has worked with some of the world’s richest families, has teamed up with Rory Kennedy – daughter of Robert Kennedy – and Aileen Getty, whose family wealth comes from the oil industry, to launch the Climate Emergency Fund. Neilson, who has worked with figures such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, said the fund was inspired by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion protesters in the UK in April.” The report continues: “Neilson said the three founders were using their contacts among the global mega-rich to get ‘a hundred times’ more in the weeks and months ahead. ‘This might be the single best chance we have to stop the greatest emergency we have ever faced,’ he told the Guardian.”
Carbon Brief Daily | 12/07/2019 Leo Hickman
The Next Downturn
Jul 8th
Only 6 minutes and twenty four seconds “Human Population Through Time”
“It took 200,000 years for our population to reach 1 Billion and only 200 years to reach 7 Billion!!!! As our population has grown, so has our use of Earth’s resources. Choices we make today affect the future of our species and all life on Earth.”
If you don’t look at anything else today, please take the six minutes to view this video produced by the American Museum of Natural History. It doesn’t say who funded it!.
Next Downturn
Why The Next Downturn Will Be The Most Destructive In Modern History — And The
Why You Must Act Now In Order To Preserve Your Wealth (and the Planet!)
by Adam Taggart
Tuesday, May 7, 2019, 2:37 PM
Peak Prosperity
“Our society’s pursuit of endless economic growth is unsustainable.
We’re at the point where we’ve sabotaged our future by taking on too much debt, while at the same moment, we’ve started to run dangerously low on the resources necessary to run our modern way of living, straining key ecosystems in the process.
But rather than change our behavior, we’re doubling down on our faith in growth, creating dangerous financial bubbles that threaten to ruin our economy when they burst.
And worse than that, we’re depleting our remaining precious resources — such as energy deposits, rich topsoils, underground aquifers, ocean fisheries, key commercial minerals — at rates that can never recover in our lifetime.
At this stage, it’s unrealistic to expect our government to ride the rescue in time, if at all — even if it weren’t dysfunctionally focused on protecting the very status quo that’s killing us.
Instead, we need to become our own heroes.”