Bearing Witness to Climate Change February 2023
Global warming is melting glaciers across the globe more rapidly with two-thirds of all glaciers expected to be lost by the end of the century. A new study predicts that 15 million people live in danger of glacial flooding, with a majority of those in just four countries of India, Pakistan, Peru and China.
A new study published in the American Geophysical Union journal finds that sea level rise is speeding up and rising ocean waters will flood more areas sooner than originally thought. Some climate scientists now think that more than twice as much land will be impacted, forcing the migration of millions of people, mostly in developing nations. Read More
Bearing Witness to Climate Change January 2023
This month’s Bearing Witness to Climate Change provides a summary of news from around the world during January 2023 about the changing climate and its impact on people and the planet.
Organizations from across the world have released preliminary findings that 2022 was one of the Earth’s hottest years. As CO2 in the atmosphere is now 50% higher than it was in preindustrial times, temperatures have risen 2 degrees F on average.
Bearing Witness to Climate Change December 2022
This month’s Bearing Witness to Climate Change provides a summary of news from around the world during December 2022 about the changing climate and its impact on people and the planet.
The Global Carbon Project predicts that emissions from fossil fuels in 2022 will end up surpassing a record 37 billion tons. After the pandemic, scientists hoped that emissions would start falling into a continual decline. That sadly will not be the case. While emissions are relatively stable or declining in the US and EU, they are still rising in India and China.
Bearing Witness to the Pandemic December 2022
Approaching three years into the pandemic, some 300-400 Americans are still dying each and every day across the country from COVID-related illnesses. More than 25,000 are hospitalized. This year’s death toll has exceeded 200,000 with a total death count of nearly 1.1 million. The good news is that now only 1 in 200,000 infections leads to death compared to 1 in 200 at the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Read More
Bearing Witness to Climate Change November 2022
This month’s Bearing Witness to Climate Change provides a summary of news from November 2022 related to the changing climate and its impact on people and the planet.
World leaders met this month in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the 27th meeting of the Conference of the Parties, better known as COP27. The United Nation’s host Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the world is accelerating on a highway to hell but that humanity has a choice, either cooperate or perish. Read More
Bearing Witness to the Pandemic November 2022
Approaching three years into the pandemic, some 300-400 Americans are still dying each and every day across the country from COVID-related illnesses. More than 25,000 are hospitalized. This year’s death toll has exceeded 200,000. The good news is that now only 1 in 200,000 infections leads to death compared to 1 in 200 at the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Read More
Is Inflation Here to Stay?
Many people with good reason worry that inflation may be here to stay, as if we have moved into a new economy that is untethered from the behavioral norms, history, and rules of previous decades. There are many contributing factors to consider.
For years, Americans have not paid the true cost of the goods and services they consume, allowing inflation to appear nonexistent. Those costs were often hidden, externalized, or subsidized by frothy stock valuations, venture capitalists, or the exploitation of people and natural resources around the world. Read More
Witnessing an Artificial Economy
I am one of many older adults who feels like we are now living in an unreal, artificial economy. It especially feels so when compared to the economy many of us grew up in, got educated in, worked in, and had hoped to retire in. Read More
Bearing Witness to Climate Change October 2022
Bearing Witness to Climate Change provides a monthly summary of news related to the changing climate and its impact on people and the planet.
At the start of the month, category 4 Hurricane Ian struck the southeast Florida coast killing over 100 and inflicting over $50B of damages in a devastating path of destruction. Like in many other extreme weather events, most of those who died were old, disabled, retired, or poor and unable to move fast enough to avoid the carnage. Millions across the state were left without power, water, cell phone coverage, and navigable roads for days. Hospitals and nursing homes seemed unprepared for a changing climate of more extreme storms as many evacuated patients after, not before, the storm’s record surge and flooding.
Ian may become the most visible sanity test of whether low-lying communities will rebuild where they were, in denial of climate change, or make smarter choices. Unfortunately, many conservative climate deniers refuse to admit climate change is real and only talk about rebuilding. However, insurance companies and financial markets may have the last word as building costs and insurance premiums becomes progressively more expensive. Read More
Bearing Witness to the Pandemic October 2022
More things continue to return to normal across the US, almost as if the pandemic never happened. That is with the exception of economic pain from a raging inflation that owes its origins to disruptions during the pandemic.
But things are definitely not back to normal elsewhere. China continues to believe in and enforce a no-Covid policy with a mass testing strategy. Street-side testing booths are located all across major cities to provide weekly testing for residents. Some jobs and cities require testing every 72 hours. Read More
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