jgo
jgo's JournalFossil fuels kill more people than Covid. Why are we so blind to the harms of oil and gas?
Excerpts from opinion article in the Guardian:
"Were we able to perceive afresh the sheer scale of fossil fuel impact we might be horrified, but because this is an old problem too many don’t see it as a problem
The fossil fuel industry through airborne particulate matter alone annually kills far more people every year than Covid-19 has in three years. Recent studies conclude that nearly 9 million people a year die from inhaling these particulates produced by burning fossil fuel. It’s only one of the many ways fossil fuel is deadly, from black lung among coal miners and cancer and respiratory problems among those near refineries to fatalities from climate-driven catastrophes such as wildfire, extreme heat and floods.
The way we befouled our water, air and land, allowed manufacturers to introduce dangerous materials – lead, PCBs, PFAs (sometimes called “forever chemicals”), dioxin, high-level radioactive waste, microplastics, pesticides and herbicides – may seem to later generations shocking, stupid and amoral. Often the deployment of these substances offered short-term and specific advantages while leaving long-term and widespread damage; often the few benefited and the many paid. But all this was normalized."
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/28/fossil-fuels-kill-more-people-than-covid-why-are-we-so-blind-to-the-harms-of-oil-and-gas
More than half of the world will be overweight or obese by 2035
Source: Reuters
The World Obesity Federation's 2023 atlas predicts that 51% of the world, or more than 4 billion people, will be obese or overweight within the next 12 years.
Rates of obesity are rising particularly quickly among children and in lower income countries, the report found.
The cost to society is significant as a result of the health conditions linked to being overweight, the federation said: more than $4 trillion annually by 2035, or 3% of global GDP.
However, the authors said they were not blaming individuals, but calling for a focus on the societal, environmental and biological factors involved in the conditions.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/more-than-half-world-will-be-overweight-or-obese-by-2035-report-2023-03-02/
At Gabon talks, a debate on who pays to save world's forests
Source: Associated Press
A summit on how to protect the world’s largest forests underway in Gabon is set to be dominated by the issue of who pays for the protection and reforesting of lands that are home to some of the world’s most diverse species and contribute to limiting planet-warming emissions.
French president Emmanuel Macron and officials and environment ministers from around the world are attending the One Forest Summit this week in the capital Libreville to discuss maintaining the world’s major rainforests.
But absence of leaders from key nations like presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Congo’s Félix Tshisekedi is likely to dampen the summit’s momentum.
Macron and his Gabonese counterpart Ali Bongo Ondimba hope the summit will nevertheless encourage solidarity between the world’s three major tropical forests in the Amazon, the Congo Basin and in southeast Asia, where some countries say that protecting the forests needs to be profitable.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/one-forest-summit-gabon-climate-biodiversity-6e1736512b0e4e38b354f9e5841eb482
China leading US in technology race in all but a few fields, thinktank finds
Source: The Guardian
The United States and other western countries are losing the race with China to develop advanced technologies and retain talent, with Beijing potentially establishing a monopoly in some areas, a new report has said.
China leads in 37 of 44 technologies tracked in a year-long project by thinktank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. The fields include electric batteries, hypersonics and advanced radio-frequency communications such as 5G and 6G.
The report, published on Thursday, said the US was the leader in just the remaining seven technologies such as vaccines, quantum computing and space launch systems.
“Our research reveals that China has built the foundations to position itself as the world’s leading science and technology superpower, by establishing a sometimes stunning lead in high-impact research across the majority of critical and emerging technology domains,” the report said.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/02/china-leading-us-in-technology-race-in-all-but-a-few-fields-thinktank-finds
Japan births fall to record low as population crisis deepens
From CNN:
The number of births registered in Japan plummeted to another record low last year – the latest worrying statistic in a decades-long decline that the country’s authorities have failed to reverse despite their extensive efforts.
These concerning trends prompted a warning in January from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida that Japan is “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions.”
It’s a familiar story in East Asia, where South Korea’s fertility rate – already the world’s lowest – dropped yet again last year in the latest setback to the country’s efforts to boost its declining population.
Meanwhile, China is inching closer to officially losing its title as the world’s most populous country to India after its population shrank in 2022 for the first time since the 1960s.
Read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/asia/japan-births-2022-record-low-intl-hnk/index.html
Finland starts construction of Russia border fence
Source: BBC News
Finland has begun constructing a 200km (124 mile) fence on its border with Russia to boost security.
The Border Guard said it will be 3m (10ft) tall with barbed wire on top.
Finland shares the longest European Union border with Russia, at 1,340km (832 miles). At present, Finland's borders are secured primarily by light wooden fences.
Finland decided to build the fence due to a rise in Russians seeking to escape conscription to fight in Ukraine.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64802457?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA
Oregon overturns 'second amendment sanctuary' law in blow to gun movement
Source: The Guardian
Local governments cannot ban police from enforcing certain gun laws in ruling that could have national ramifications.
An Oregon court dealt a blow to the state’s “second amendment sanctuary” movement, deciding on Wednesday that local governments cannot ban police from enforcing certain gun laws in a ruling that could hold national ramifications for anti-gun control efforts.
At the center of the lawsuit was a 2020 measure passed in Columbia county, a conservative area in the Democratic state, that argued state and federal gun laws did not apply in the county and banned local officials from enforcing the regulations. The rural region was one of some 1,200 in the US, from Virginia to New Mexico to Florida, to pass a second amendment sanctuary resolution.
The Oregon state court of appeals ruled the law, which included fines for officials who enforce most federal and state gun laws, violated a law granting the state the authority to regulate firearms. The ordinance would effectively “create a ‘patchwork quilt’ of firearms laws in Oregon”, the court found.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/16/oregon-second-amendment-sanctuary-decision
The Covid wave in China may have killed far more people than Beijing's official death count
Source: New York Times
After China relaxed the world’s most stringent Covid-19 restrictions in December, the virus exploded there. Four separate academic teams have come up with broadly similar estimates suggesting that one million to 1.5 million people died during the surge, far more than China’s official count.
Researchers believe that the country’s official figure, as of Feb. 9, of 83,150 deaths during the entire pandemic is a vast undercount. That number would give China the lowest death rate per capita of any major country over the whole of the pandemic.
But at the researchers’ estimated levels of mortality, China would already have surpassed the toll in many Asian countries that never clamped down as long or as aggressively. The estimates also align more closely with the evidence of overwhelmed hospitals and crematories than the official figures do.
Two of the estimates were in papers published in academic journals or posted for peer review. Two others were shared by epidemiologists in response to queries from The Times. All of the researchers consulted by The Times cautioned that without reliable data from China, the estimates should be understood as informed guesses.
Read more: https://deal.town/the-new-york-times/your-thursday-briefing-15-million-covid-deaths-in-china-P3C6THEE8
Guaranteed income embraced by leaders of some of largest US counties
Source: ABC News
Some of the largest counties in the U.S. are joining forces to provide guaranteed income to residents in need.
County leaders from Los Angeles County, Chicago's Cook County, Houston's Harris County and more help make up Counties for Guaranteed Income, a coalition of local leaders hoping to collect research to try to expand no-strings-attached cash assistance programs nationwide.
Research suggests that guaranteed income can provide a path to financial stability and address poverty as well as racial, wealth or income inequalities.
"It's not just the morally right thing to do. It's actually pragmatic and economically a smart strategy as well," Will Jawando, a Montgomery County, Maryland, councilmember at-large, told ABC News. "We saw with the child tax credit, we saw with the stimulus."
Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/US/guaranteed-income-embraced-leaders-largest-us-counties/story?id=97190018
First infant in Kentucky surrendered anonymously at fire station Safe Haven 'baby box'
Source: USA Today
Kentucky has seen its first infant anonymously dropped off at one of its "baby box" safe surrender locations.
At a news conference Friday, Safe Haven Baby Boxes founder and CEO Monica Kelsey said the child was dropped off within the last seven days at a Bowling Green Fire Department location, declining to be more specific to protect anonymity. She said fire department staff was able to tend to the child in less than 90 seconds.
The child is the 24th in the country to be surrendered at one of more than 130 baby boxes and drawers the organization has established across nine states.
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/02/12/safe-haven-baby-box-kentucky/11242752002/
This is from an old article on NPR:
U.N. Committee Calls For An End To Centuries-Old Practice Of 'Baby Boxes'
...
But in a meeting last month, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child decided that baby boxes only encourage parents to give away babies, and is now advocating for a complete ban on the practice.
Maria Herczog, a child welfare advocate and member of the committee, argued that the boxes are a bad message for society, and that children may be abandoned by male relatives or pimps, against a mother's wishes.
"These boxes violate children's rights and also the rights of parents to get help from the state to raise their families," she says.
Read more:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/11/26/165942545/u-n-committee-calls-for-an-end-to-centuries-old-practice-of-baby-boxes
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