Honolulu Star Advertiser
Devastating wildfires on Maui were still raging Wednesday night, making the assessment of damage, deaths and casualties difficult as thousands of residents lost homes, visitors were asked to leave the island, and historic Lahaina — the Hawaiian kingdom’s original seat of power and home to King Kamehameha’s palace — lay in ruins.
Officials fear the death toll and casualties will rise, but preliminary reports were that the fire that tore through Maui claimed at least 36 lives, wounded nearly 30, forced some at Lahaina Harbor into the ocean to escape flames, and destroyed or damaged at least 271 structures on the Valley Isle. At least three wildfires on Maui and three on Hawaii island were fueled by winds generated by Hurricane Dora as it passed to the south of Hawaii on Tuesday. […]
Maui knows wildfires, but nothing like the ones that left much of Lahaina destroyed. Without power to 12,400 customers and with no cellular or landline phone service, government officials were communicating primarily via radio.
The New York Times
[…] The story of this week’s blaze arguably began decades ago, when Hawaii started experiencing a long-term decline in average annual rainfall. Since 1990, rainfall at selected monitoring sites has been 31 percent lower in the wet season, and 6 percent lower in the dry season, according to work published in 2015 by researchers at the University of Hawaii and the University of Colorado.
There are multiple reasons for that change, according to Abby Frazier, a climatologist at Clark University who has researched Hawaii. […]
“There’s likely a climate change signal in everything we see,” she said.
The Atlantic
[…] Climate change is projected to make hurricanes and tropical storms worse in the coming years, creating the potential for cascading natural disasters—droughts, wildfires, storms—that bleed into one another. It has also been shown to worsen fires. The past five years have been littered with stories of unusual fire behavior: Canada burning at an unprecedented rate, Alaskan tundra going up in smoke like never before, Colorado’s giant December 2021 fire, California’s unthinkable 1-million-acre fire and its deadliest on record all happening within a few years of one another.
“You’ve got different kinds of climate disasters, all reinforcing each other,” Mark Lynas, the author of the book Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency, told me. “It’s all reflective of the fact that as the world heats up, there’s just more energy in the system. Water evaporates faster; winds blow stronger; fires get hotter.”
Lynas, for his part, told me he hadn’t thought about this particular dynamic: “A hurricane-wildfire connection had never occurred to me. It just shows, really, the kinds of surprises that climate warming can throw up.” The Maui fires might be a wake-up call for Hawaii. But perhaps they can also serve as a wake-up call for the rest of us, one of many in recent years. The fire age is raging all around us.
E&E News
Last summer, environmental advocates were despondent over the apparent death of a big climate law in the Senate, and White House officials considered a big gesture to show President Joe Biden’s dedication to curbing emissions: the declaration of a national climate emergency. […]
Then the climate law passed.
About a week after Biden’s big climate speech, the surprise revival of the behemoth climate bill in the Senate dramatically changed the landscape.
Biden’s signing last August of the law since dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act — the biggest climate law in history that funnels an estimated $370 billion into climate and renewable energy — largely put talks of an emergency declaration on the backburner.
But now it’s back.
Pew Research Center
As the Earth’s temperature continues to rise, fueling more intense storms and extreme weather, scientists are calling for immediate action to address climate change. However, climate change remains a lower priority for some Americans, and a subset of the public rejects that it’s happening at all. […]
Overall, 46% of Americans say human activity is the primary reason why the Earth is warming. By contrast, 26% say warming is mostly caused by natural patterns in the environment and another 14% do not believe there’s evidence the Earth is warming at all. […]
A common explanation across interviews was that any changes to Earth’s climate are a natural part of the planet’s cycles that humans cannot control. Extreme weather was explained in a similar way, with many saying these events are natural occurrences that have not become more frequent and severe because of climate change.
The Dallas Morning News
Karen Magruder used to think climate change was out of her realm of expertise as a social worker. Extreme weather like summer heat waves changed that.
Magruder saw her clients – low-income seniors – struggling more than others to deal with the heat. As temperatures rose, she kept seeing vulnerable communities suffering the most.
“Climate change is impacting [the] most overlooked communities first and worst,” she said. This is called environmental injustice, she said. And Magruder is trained to understand injustice. […]
She says it is important to listen to the people who are facing the brunt of eco-anxiety and environmental injustice – groups that often overlap. “We don’t always hear from… the people that are most impacted,” she said.
Gizmodo
Alarming heat and humidity killed hundreds of cows in Iowa last month. These losses have further decreased the size of the overall U.S. cattle herd, which has shrunk to a more than 50-year low. The Department of Natural Resources in Iowa told Reuters that it had received a much higher than normal number of body disposal requests, including one on July 31 “to dispose of approximately 370 cows that died due to heat in western Iowa recently.” […]
Extreme heat was the culprit behind other cattle death events last year, too. Last June, when the temperatures rose above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37 Celsius) in Kansas, thousands of cows died. A spokesperson from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said that the agency had received more than 2,000 reports of cattle deaths on just two days—June 11 to June 12, 2022.
CTV News
Canada is now halfway through its record-breaking wildfire season, which has seen more land than ever burned, the highest number of evacuations in a given year and several casualties.
Almost every province and territory in Canada has dealt with the forest fires that have displaced communities and touched Canadians from coast to coast with smoke and ash.
This year’s wildfire season is the worst Canada has ever seen and there are still months of blazes expected ahead — the season typically lasts from May through to the end of September. […]
Currently, there are 1,148 active fires in Canada, with 13.3 million hectares hectares — or 133,000 square kilometres — burned to date. […]
Reuters
[…] Roadblocks on major motorways in Britain have caused traffic chaos, protests at oil installations in Germany have disrupted supplies, and in France, thousands of activists and police clashed over water usage, leaving dozens injured.
Determined to prevent such protests from strengthening further, states in Germany and national authorities in France are invoking legal powers often used against organised crime and extremist groups to wiretap and track activists, Reuters found, based on conversations with four prosecutors, police in both countries and more than a dozen protesters. […]
Lawmakers passed new surveillance and detention laws in France in July and in Britain in May, with Britain making it illegal to lock, or glue, yourself to property. France has used an anti-terrorism unit to question some climate activists, the police confirmed to Reuters.
CNBC
Champagne has been a hallmark of celebrations and luxury living for centuries. But Europe’s soaring temperatures and increasingly volatile weather are sparking fears that France’s Champagne region could become unsuitable for its production. […]
The Champagne region’s exposure to physical risk caused by drought is set to almost triple by the 2050s, according to the S&P Global Sustainable1 report, posing serious problems for vineyards. […]
Drought isn’t the only factor that can hamper production. The weather is increasingly erratic, with fires, floods and frosts becoming more frequent in recent years.
Even if grapes are still able to grow in a changing climate, the conditions can alter the fruit’s development and cause damage.
Asia Times
Downpours in late May 2023 in northern China flooded wheat fields, stirring both domestic and international concern about China’s wheat supply and the potential impacts on food security. Chinese officials described the flooding as “the most destructive rain event” for wheat production in the past decade.
In 2022, southern China suffered the country’s driest and hottest summer in six decades. The severe heatwave resulted in a massive drought, affecting an estimated 2.2 million hectares of farmland. Chinese officials are now concerned that drought could hit the Yangtze River basin, China’s main rice-growing region.
Extreme weather such as drought and floods have become major threats to China’s agricultural and food supplies. Over the past 70 years, China’s average temperature has risen faster than the global average, making the country extremely vulnerable to floods, droughts and typhoons. Extreme rainfall has reduced China’s rice yields by 8% over the past two decades.
Politico
[…] The Persian Gulf region, already one of the hottest on Earth, could suffer temperatures so extreme that being outside becomes a literal death trap. This July — the hottest month in recorded history — the heat index in Iran hit 152 degrees Fahrenheit. (When heat and humidity are too high, the human body stops being able to cool itself, which can be dangerous or even deadly.)
It’s an example of how atmospheric pollution can turn an environment “from one that’s merely inhospitable to one that is actually intolerable,” Colin Raymond, a climate scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told Sara.
Preventing the worst of global warming requires cutting planet-warming emissions swiftly and aggressively, namely by phasing out oil and gas production. But many in the region, like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, plan to continue investing in fossil fuels, which remain central to their economies.
NBC News
Anti-abortion advocates scored a big win on June 24, 2022, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. But since then, their luck seems to have run out.
Abortion has been on the ballot in seven states since that landmark court decision one year ago and in each instance, in red states and blue states, anti-abortion advocates have lost.
In some instances, voters have approved state constitutional amendments protecting abortion rights. In others, they've rejected measures that would weaken protections or make explicit in the state constitution that abortion rights are not protected.
Montana Free Press
[…] Most recently, Ohio voters on Aug. 8 rejected a Republican-led effort to make it more difficult to change that state’s constitution, which would have set a higher bar for an abortion rights ballot initiative this fall.
But the will of the electorate didn’t stop Republican lawmakers in Montana from passing a version of the anti-abortion proposal that voters rejected only months earlier. When Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the bill in May, Montana became the only state to pass a law that directly contravened voters who said “no” to an anti-abortion ballot measure in 2022.
Last fall, 53% of Montana voters rejected a referendum that said care could not be denied to any infant or fetus that draws breath, has a heartbeat, or has voluntary muscle movement after an attempted abortion or any other delivery. Under the proposal, any health care provider violating the law would be committing a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
But while Montana voters rejected the so-called “born-alive” measure, they also expanded big GOP majorities in the state legislature, which promptly passed a similar bill.
USA Today
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., accused Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., on Tuesday of “being prepared to burn the military down” over Tuberville’s hold of military promotions that began in February.
Tuberville has held up more than 200 military promotions for senior military jobs that require Senate confirmation, arguing that some Department of Defense abortion policies − such as provisions on paid leave and traveling expenses − violate federal law.
“I think everybody’s been hoping that Sen. Tuberville would back down, and I think we have to come to the conclusion that that is not happening and that he is prepared to burn the military down,” Murphy told reporters at the Capitol, according to The Hill.
The Washington Post
In late June, Tommy Tuberville traveled to the Wiregrass region of Alabama, which borders Florida. “The Wiregrass is one of the best-kept secrets in Alabama,” Tuberville told a gathering of local leaders in Dothan. “Everyone is seeing the growth in Florida, but that will only last so long because you can only take so many people in the Florida area.” […]
Three weeks after his Wiregrass appearance, Tuberville sold, for nearly $1.1 million, the last properties that he owned in Alabama, according to real estate records. The properties, known as Tiger Farms LLC, are in Macon and Tallapoosa counties, on the outskirts of Auburn. That same month, he also sold one Florida condo for $850,000 and bought another for $825,000.
Tuberville’s office says his primary residence is an Auburn house that records show is owned by his wife and son. But campaign finance reports and his signature on property documents indicate that his home is actually a $3 million, 4,000-square-foot beach house he has lived in for nearly two decades in Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., located in the Florida Panhandle about 90 miles south of Dothan.
The Guardian
Ukrainian forces have recaptured the heights over Bakhmut and are successfully encircling Russian troops in the city, a defence minister in Kyiv has said.
Hanna Maliar also warned of a “nightmare” situation farther north after 12,000 civilians in the Kharkiv region were ordered to evacuate.
In an interview with the Guardian, Maliar said Russian soldiers could no longer move around Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region and progress was being made in outflanking enemy forces after months of deadly battle.
Deutsche Welle
The "Angry Mavka" movement is proof Moscow-backed forces are not welcome in occupied southern Ukraine territories. The group's actions are multi-faceted and unpredictable.
I don't tell my family about my underground activities. I do everything in my power so they don't see a single leaflet or can of spray paint," says Tetyana, whose name has been changed to protect her identity. She is from Simferopol, the capital of the Crimean Peninsula, which was annexed by Russia is 2014. It is also home to the "Angry Mavka" resistance movement. "Mavka," a creature from Ukrainian folklore and mythology, is the guardian of the forest, a virtuous nymph who protects nature from evil influences.
The women-run underground organization is active in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine and is coordinated via the Telegram messaging app. The group distributes pro-Ukrainian flyers, does graffiti, destroys Russian symbols and gathers information about the Russian military.
NPR News
The Biden administration is asking Congress to approve $40 billion in emergency funding, including $24 billion for Ukraine as part of security, economic and humanitarian assistance for the country as it defends its borders against a Russian invasion.
The money is being broken down into three tranches. Ukraine, disaster relief and border security.
Funding for Ukraine includes $9.5 billion for equipment and to replenish Defense Department equipment already in the country; $7.3 billion for economic humanitarian and security assistance; and $200 million to counter Wagner group and other Russian actors in Africa.
The request also includes money for the southern border with Mexico. It includes more than $3 billion targeted for border and migration, including $2.2 billion for shelter and services for migrants released from DHS custody, and nearly $800 million to reduce the influx of fentanyl and counter its impact on public health; and $59 million for immigration judges and other immigration-court needs.
Al Jazeera
West African heads of state have said all options including the use of force remained on the table to restore constitutional order in Niger after the July 26 coup, and ordered the activation of its standby force.
The remarks came as the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met in Nigeria’s Abuja on Thursday for an emergency summit to discuss responses to last month’s military takeover in Niger, after the coup leaders defied their earlier threat to use force to restore democracy.
In closing remarks, the bloc pledged to enforce sanctions and travel bans on those preventing the return to power of democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum.
Radio Free Europe
Washington has halted some aid to Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, while 11 members of the West African community have imposed tough financial sanctions and cut deliveries of electricity. ECOWAS has also threatened to invade Niger. […]
By contrast, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin-connected entrepreneur and founder of the notorious Wagner mercenary group, which is active in Africa, has offered support to the Nigerien coup leaders, although experts question whether his group can do much in the short term.
“The junta needs support and recognition if they're not going to step down,” Daniel Eizenga, a research fellow at the Washington-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies, told RFE/RL. “And that's what Wagner potentially offers them – a big complication to anything that looks like a military intervention [by ECOWAS] to push them out.”
Houston Chronicle
More than 20 members of Congress want to join a federal lawsuit to help protect Gov. Greg Abbott’s buoy barrier in the Rio Grande, referencing Noah's Ark and questioning if the river can be considered a “navigable waterway” despite being the fourth largest river in North America.
In a motion filed on behalf of U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, and other GOP members, lawyers for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation have asked to be part of the case and targeted how a key law is interpreted in it. […]
They argue that the Rivers and Harbors Act should only apply when there is evidence showing that the waters can be navigated as that case described: “generally and commonly useful to some purpose of trade or agriculture.” […]
“Indeed, if one takes the Book of Genesis literally, then the entire world was once navigable by boats large enough to carry significant amounts of livestock,” they wrote, specifically citing the passage from the Bible in their legal filing. “Under the federal government’s theory, these anecdotes would render any structure built anywhere in Texas an obstruction to navigation subject to federal regulation.”
ProPublica
During his three decades on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has enjoyed steady access to a lifestyle most Americans can only imagine. A cadre of industry titans and ultrawealthy executives have treated him to far-flung vacations aboard their yachts, ushered him into the premium suites at sporting events and sent their private jets to fetch him — including, on more than one occasion, an entire 737. It’s a stream of luxury that is both more extensive and from a wider circle than has been previously understood.
Like clockwork, Thomas’ leisure activities have been underwritten by benefactors who share the ideology that drives his jurisprudence. Their gifts include:
At least 38 destination vacations, including a previously unreported voyage on a yacht around the Bahamas; 26 private jet flights, plus an additional eight by helicopter; a dozen VIP passes to professional and college sporting events, typically perched in the skybox; two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica; and one standing invitation to an uber-exclusive golf club overlooking the Atlantic coast.
CNN
The Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Purdue Pharma from going forward with bankruptcy proceedings, which the Biden administration has called an “unprecedented” arrangement that would ultimately offer the Sackler family broad protection from opioid-related civil claims.
In agreeing to pause the settlement, the court also said it would take up the case and hear arguments this December.
The case arose after the reorganization in bankruptcy of OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma – stemming from litigation arising from claims over its role in fueling the opioid addiction crisis.
Los Angeles Times
Critics call it a “sweetheart deal” between the Trump administration and the Central Valley’s largest agricultural water district, and they claim it unfairly lines the pockets of major farm owners while imperiling California salmon and other fish species.
For the last three years, environmentalists, tribal activists and fishing groups have been battling in court to reverse a contract between the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the Westlands Water District. Among other provisions, the 2020 agreement grants Westlands permanent access to as much as 1.15 million acre-feet of water per year, more than double the amount of water that Los Angeles’ 3.9 million residents use annually.
Now, Westlands opponents are celebrating a legal victory they say puts them one step closer to invalidating the contract. A state Court of Appeal this week upheld a Fresno County Superior Court decision to deny Westlands’ request that a judge validate the contract.
Law & Crime
Special counsel Jack Smith requested on Thursday that … Donald Trump face trial on Jan. 2, 2024 in Washington, D.C., for charges alleging that he conspired to overturn the results of 2020 election.
Trump’s attorneys, John Lauro and Todd Blanche, could file a response before the parties meet in court on Friday at 10 a.m. to hash out terms of a protective order the government has sought over evidence in discovery.
In Thursday’s 8-page motion, Smith proposed a timeline for the trial: By Sept. 25, the parties would need to provide their pre-trial defense motions in writing, any opposition would be filed by October 16 and within another week, replies would be due. A motions hearing would then be set, though Smith did not specify that date though he did scope out time for a series of additional motion hearings to follow, specifically those in limine. (These are motions requesting certain evidence be excluded.)
Business Insider
A veteran FBI counterintelligence agent says his supervisor told him to stop investigating Rudy Giuliani and to cut off contact with any sources who reported on corruption by associates of … Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower complaint obtained by Insider.
The agent, who served 14 years as a special agent for the bureau, including a long stint in Russia-focussed counterintelligence, claimed in a 22-page statement that his bosses interfered with his work in "a highly suspicious suppression of investigations and intelligence-gathering" aimed at protecting "certain politically active figures and possibly also FBI agents" who were connected to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.
Those figures, the statement claims, explicitly included "anyone in the White House and any former or current associates of … Trump."
The statement, which was prepared for staffers of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was apparently leaked and posted in mid-July to a Substack newsletter. Insider has independently obtained a copy of the complaint and verified its authenticity but has not corroborated all of its claims.
Climatewire via Scientific American
For nearly 400 million years, the world’s oldest moss has survived the shifting landscapes of planet Earth.
Takakia, as the genus is known by scientists, has lived through ice ages and mass extinctions, and endured age after age of natural warming and cooling. It outlasted the dinosaurs, and it was there when the first mammals walked the Earth.
The moss even survived the violent birth of the Himalayas 50 million years ago, when the then-island of India crashed into Asia and raised the mountains out of the ground. It still grows there today, high on the mountain peaks, in one of the coldest and harshest environments on Earth.
Yet Takakia may have finally met its match. Human-caused climate change is raising global temperatures faster than it can adapt, threatening the soft, green moss with extinction.
Science
While the presidents of eight South American nations met this week to discuss an alliance to protect the world’s largest forest, thousands of activists took to the streets outside the convention center in Belém do Pará, Brazil. Holding up signs that read “Amazon free of oil,” and “Our future is not for sale,” they demanded a joint pledge to end deforestation and fossil fuel extraction in the Amazon. But those hopes didn’t come to pass: When the heads of state released their Amazon Summit declaration on Tuesday, it was devoid of any firm commitment or quantifiable goals.
“Given the urgency of the climate crisis, it is surprising that the final declaration does not include a plan or any concrete directive on the main issues the Amazon faces,” says ecologist Paulo Moutinho, who studies deforestation at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute.
Instead, the Belém Declaration, signed by the countries that make up the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO)—Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela—listed 113 general objectives. Some were as vague as stating a general goal to “avoid the point of no return in the Amazon.” But others were more specific, such as the intention to create a pan-Amazonian deforestation monitoring system and an “Amazon IPCC,” a scientific panel modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that would generate annual reports on deforestation and sustainable development in the region.
Bonnie Waring at The Conversation
[…] Our society asks so much of these fragile ecosystems, which control freshwater availability for millions of people and are home to two thirds of the planet’s terrestrial biodiversity. And increasingly, we have placed a new demand on these forests – to save us from human-caused climate change.
Plants absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere, transforming it into leaves, wood and roots. This everyday miracle has spurred hopes that plants – particularly fast growing tropical trees – can act as a natural brake on climate change, capturing much of the CO₂ emitted by fossil fuel burning. Across the world, governments, companies and conservation charities have pledged to conserve or plant massive numbers of trees.
But the fact is that there aren’t enough trees to offset society’s carbon emissions – and there never will be. I recently conducted a review of the available scientific literature to assess how much carbon forests could feasibly absorb. If we absolutely maximised the amount of vegetation all land on Earth could hold, we’d sequester enough carbon to offset about ten years of greenhouse gas emissions at current rates. After that, there could be no further increase in carbon capture.
Mongabay
Asian elephants have long been described as forest “cleaners” by the Orang Asli people of Peninsular Malaysia who have lived alongside the giant mammals for tens of thousands of years. A new study looking closely at the foraging behavior of free-roaming elephants backs up this ancestral understanding, demonstrating that through their feeding habits, Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) do indeed shape, or “clean,” their environment by keeping certain types of understory plants in check.
The findings, published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, show that by selectively feeding on their preferred food plants, such as grasses, palms, liana vines and fast-growing trees, elephants influence plant and tree diversity and ultimately shape the structure of their forest home.
BBC News
Scientists near Chicago say they may be getting closer to discovering the existence of a new force of nature.
They have found more evidence that sub-atomic particles, called muons, are not behaving in the way predicted by the current theory of sub-atomic physics.
Scientists believe that an unknown force could be acting on the muons. More data will be needed to confirm these results, but if they are verified, it could mark the beginning of a revolution in physics.
All of the forces we experience every day can be reduced to just four categories: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force and the weak force. These four fundamental forces govern how all the objects and particles in the Universe interact with each other.
Nature
The muon’s magnetism is still strong. Its most precise measurement yet is in line with a series of earlier results — and seals an embarrassing discrepancy with decades of theoretical calculations that had predicted a slightly weaker magnetism for the elementary particle.
But although the odd behaviour of the muon — a heavier cousin of the electron — was once seen as a possible omen of new physics, results in the past two years suggest that the theory side might not need major amendments after all.
The Economist
It can sometimes be difficult to wrap one’s head around the world’s second biggest economy. But three headlines in the space of two days—August 8th and 9th—captured the predicament that China now faces. Exports fell by more than 14% in dollar terms. Country Garden, one of the country’s biggest property developers, missed two coupon payments on its dollar bonds. And annual consumer-price inflation turned negative. In sum: China’s export boom is long over. Its property slump is not. And, therefore, deflation beckons. […]
China is now struggling to meet the government’s modest growth target of 5% for 2023 (“modest” because last year provides such a low base for comparison). Far from becoming an inflationary force in the global economy, the country is now flirting with falling prices.
Energy Portal
Many proposed solutions to civilizational threats like climate change and antibiotic resistance address isolated issues and are based on unrealistic assumptions. Current ideas such as fusion energy, vertical farming, and iron burning, while innovative, rely heavily on stable geopolitical environments and vast resources. Addressing the root of the problem requires accepting and acting on the concept of degrowth, ensuring a sustainable and steady-state economy before nature forces us into one. […]
Most of the proposed solutions to civilizational collapse assume stable geopolitical environments and access to large amounts of capital and resources. However, they fail to address the heart of the matter, which is ever-rising consumption. Dramatically reducing consumption is not included in these plans, except by a few advocating for degrowth. […]
Reducing consumption is the unpopular but necessary answer to global crises. It requires rethinking our current way of life and acting in ways that prioritize sustainability and long-term stability.
Vox
[…] There is a simple explanation, once you really look into it: people’s pay hasn’t been keeping pace with inflation. People’s dissatisfaction with the economy reflects this decline in purchasing power. What’s causing that is the real mystery. […]
Workers are in notably worse shape than they were two years ago, despite low unemployment. Measuring this accurately — and most people don’t — is tricky. You can’t just look at wages in dollars. You must account for inflation, which erodes the purchasing power of pay, and also for worker skill. A pay rate of $25 per hour is great for busboys in high school but not for engineers 20 years out of college. […]
Though tight labor markets make it hard to find workers, firms are slow to provide the pay increase needed to get them. […]
Switching jobs takes time and effort, and many workers are reluctant to give up the devil they know for the devil they don’t. Employers capitalize on this situation by adjusting wages slowly, if at all. […]
Inflation has raised prices a lot, reducing purchasing power. As a result, the public is not happy about the economy.