Stephan: The anti-vaxxer death cult has become increasingly aggressive. We now have a situation where the anti-vaxxers not only are threatening the wellbeing of others, even as their own numbers sicken and die -- 2,000 people a day. Today, 95% of Covid hospital patients are unvaccinated and they are filling hospitals to a point of threatening their collapse. But even worse... well just read this fact-based report. This is an insane situation.
Anti-vaccine and pro-ivermectin Facebook groups have been imploring followers to stay away from emergency rooms and hospitals. Credit: Nathan Howard / Getty
Anti-vaccine Facebook groups have a new message for their community members: Don’t go to the emergency room, and get your loved ones out of intensive care units.
Consumed by conspiracy theories claiming that doctors are preventing unvaccinated patients from receiving miracle cures or are even killing them on purpose, some people in anti-vaccine and pro-ivermectin Facebook groups are telling those with Covid-19 to stay away from hospitals and instead try increasingly dangerous at-home treatments, according to posts seen by NBC News over the past few weeks.
The messages represent an escalation in the mistrust of medical professionals in groups that have sprung up in recent months on social media platforms, which have tried to crack down on Covid misinformation. And it’s something that some doctors say they’re seeing manifest in their hospitals as they have filled up because of the most recent delta variant wave.
“We were down to four Covid patients two months ago. In this surge, we’ve had 40 to […]
ABBY VESOULIS/COMPTON, CA and ABIGAIL ABRAMS, - Time Magazine
Stephan: Republicans become hysterical when anyone talks about the government providing a guaranteed income for the poor. But what actually happens when a city provides a modest guaranteed income for its citizens? Compton, California asked that question and decided to find out. Here's what happened.
Former Compton Mayor Aja Brown says guaranteed income “enables people to have breathing room.” Credit: Kovi Konowiecki /Time
One evening in early June, Leo and his family were able to enjoy a treat they hadn’t experienced in months: a sit-down meal at a restaurant.
At a fried chicken chain in a Compton, California strip mall, they splurged on a few plates of fried rice, each costing under $13.99. The money Leo, 39, makes as a mechanic never seems to satisfy the deluge of bills that pile up on his kitchen counter each month, so the modest meal felt like a luxury. “It made me very happy,” Leo says in Spanish through an interpreter.
The family was only able to afford the meal because Leo is part of a groundbreaking guaranteed income experiment in his city called the Compton Pledge. In regular installments between late 2020 and the end of 2022, Leo and 799 other individuals are receiving up to $7,200 annually to spend however they like. Leo, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who TIME has agreed to refer to by a pseudonym […]
Some 1,175 gigawatts of new coal projects have been canceled since 2015, an amount greater than the current coal capacity of China, according to a new report from climate think tank E3G.
Falling costs of renewables have made coal projects less competitive, the report said. Additionally, since 2015, the year the Paris Agreement was adopted, 44 governments have committed to no new coal power. Another 40 countries are well-positioned to make the same pledge as they have no new coal projects in pre-construction, the authors wrote.
“The collapse of the global coal pipeline and the rise of commitments to ‘no new coal’ are progressing hand in hand,” Chris Littlecott, associate director at E3G and lead author of the report, said in a statement. “Governments can now act with confidence to commit to ‘no new coal.’”
Those new coal projects that are still moving ahead are largely concentrated in Asia. China alone accounts for 53 percent of coal projects under construction and 55 percent of projects in pre-construction, and China is also continuing to […]
Stephan: The failure of the Boomer generation, and those even older, to deal properly with climate change is having a massive effect on how the young view the government and America's future, and the same is true around the globe, as the recent German election made clear. It is a mixture of fear, resentment, moral betrayal, and anger. This report, which is based on a research paper published in The Lancet, is just the latest study I have seen and published (See AR archive) on this trend. This could become the dispositive factor in the 2022 election favoring whichever candidates come out the strongest on preparing for climate change.
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg with fellow protesters outside the Swedish Parliament during a Fridays for Future demonstration, on August 20, 2021. Credit: Christine Olsson/TT NewAgency/AFP/Getty
The climate crisis is also a mental health crisis. Psychologists have known this for some time. But this week, preliminary findings from a massive new study have revealed that global warming’s impact on young people’s well-being is far more intense than anyone predicted. The worst part is that the kids’ distress isn’t irrational: The problem lies with their governments.
Climate distress has been a growing field of inquiry but, until now, low on quantitative research. This study’s scale was impressive: Researchers surveyed 10,000 people aged 16 to 25, in 10 countries (1,000 in each country) on their feelings about the climate crisis. The findings in the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed but will eventually be published in The Lancet, are harrowing: Over half the respondents think “humanity is doomed,” while more than 45 percent reported that distress over climate change affected their daily life and ability to function.
Stephan: Here is some good news about an emerging trend offering an alternative to industrial chemical monoculture agriculture which, it now is clear, destroys the land that is farmed using that process. I am following this closely and hope it catches on in a major way.
Credit: David Papazian
This summer, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, issued its sixth and most grave warning yet — a “code red” — on how bad the climate emergency could get if we don’t intervene immediately. While the jury is still out on how to rapidly draw down emissions in certain sectors, some solutions are crystal-clear, such as the power of the soil beneath our feet to sequester carbon dioxide — the most abundant human-generated greenhouse gas.
The burning of fossil fuels for electricity and transportation are the largest contributors to climate change, but agriculture-as-usual contributes a sizable slice of the pie as well, to the tune of ten percent of greenhouse gases annually in the United States.
Luckily, the shift to climate-smart farming and ranching is all the rage and brimming with possibility. Widespread adoption of sustainable practices — such as planting cover crops like squash to protect soil and ceasing to till the land — could halve agricultural […]
