From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

[giovonni]

The Fate of Trees: How Climate Change May Alter Forests Worldwide



I do a lot of stories about changes in the world’s forests because the forests are like canaries in a mine. Ronlyn and I live on a heavily forested rural island off the coast of the Pacific Northwest and we are already seeing significant changes in our forests. When I was last in Colorado I saw the same, as I did when we drove to B.C. in Canada. All over North America this process is going on as the climate changes. The implications are profound and will affect everyone of us in unhappy ways.

When one sees these changes and at the same time hears candidates like Ted Cruz claim that believing in climate change is the equivalent of being a “flat earther” it is very hard not to feel depressed

Jeff Tietz - RollingStone

By the end of the century, the woodlands of the Southwest will likely be reduced to weeds and shrubs. And scientists worry that the rest of the planet may see similar effects

In May 2011, a postdoctoral student at Los Alamos National Laboratory named Park Williams set out to predict the future of the dominant iconic conifers of the American Southwest — the Douglas fir, the piñon pine and the ponderosa pine. As the planet warms, the Southwest is projected to dry out and heat up unusually fast — few places will be more punishing to trees. Williams couldn't rely on climate models, whose representations of terrestrial vegetation remain crudely unspecific. He needed a formula that could accurately weigh the variables of heat, aridity and precipitation, and translate atmospheric projections into a unified measure of forest health ... Read more

[giovonni]

California Water Wars: Another Form of Asset Stripping ?



California, as is to often the case, is leading the rest of the U.S. in its struggles over water. The privatization of water is a grave error that will increase the water crisis. Water should be seen as a public asset, not something to make a few people and corporations rich while leaving the majority at risk and scared.

Ellen Brown - Truthdig/Web of Debt

Wars over California’s limited water supply have been going on for at least a century. Water wars have been the subject of some vintage movies, including the 1958 hit The Big Country starring Gregory Peck, Clint Eastwood’s 1985 Pale Rider, 1995’s Waterworld with Kevin Costner, and the 2005 film Batman Begins. Most acclaimed was the 1975 Academy Award winner Chinatown with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway, involving a plot between a corrupt Los Angeles politician and land speculators to fabricate the 1937 drought in order to force farmers to sell their land at low prices. The plot was rooted in historical fact, reflecting battles between Owens Valley farmers and Los Angeles urbanites over water rights ... Read more

[giovonni]

Fracking Town’s Desperate Laid-off Workers: ‘They Don’t Tell You It’s All a Lie’



Here is the latest update on the impact of Fracking on the communities that give themselves over to it.

Alternet

The boom and bust in North Dakota has trapped people there, with little hope of work or escape.

WILLISTON, N.D.—From the looks of it, the nation’s boomtown is still booming. Big rigs, cement mixers and oil tankers still clog streets built for lighter loads. The air still smells like diesel fuel and looks like a dust bowl— all that traffic — and natural gas flares, wasted byproducts of the oil wells, still glare out at the night sky like bonfires.

Not to mention that Walmart, still the main game in town, can’t seem to get a handle on its very long lines and half­ empty shelves ... Read more

[giovonni]

Cash to burn? These vacations cost up to $250,000

I am speaking at a conference in Virginia Beach and while I was here a reader came up to me and asked me, when you say the 1% live life in a way so different that most people would find it hard to comprehend it what do you mean. Here’s an example. Book early, there is often a waiting list.

Susan B. Barnes - USA Today

Ever wonder how to vacation like the rich and famous? Here's a look at some of the priciest vacations in the USA, or at least originating on American soil, from dinosaur digs to jet setting across the globe. If that tax return's burning a hole in your pocket, why not put it towards one of these incredible vacations?

Read more

[giovonni]

Economic Inequality: It’s Far Worse Than You Think



Part of our social stability, I think, depends on the ignorance most people share about the true measure of economic inequality in the U.S. A definition of the one per cent: “they have median annual household income of $750,000, median assets of $7.5 million, and there are 1.2 million of them across the country.”

That’s a lot of money, but at that level you are still living in a universe that can be recognized by the 99 per cent. When you get above that by perhaps three times you to move into another realm.

And when you are a hundred times that, as are the uber-rich, you may occupy tangential geography, but you live in another world. Why wouldn’t you want to avoid all the unpleasant inconvenience of modern air travel for instance if you could move through the world more effortlessly than the 99 per cent move through neighborhoods. It changes the scale of your thought, but it also blurs perception of what life is really like for most people.

Nicholas Fitz - Scientific American

In a candid conversation with Frank Rich last fall, Chris Rock said, "Oh, people don’t even know. If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets." The findings of three studies, published over the last several years in Perspectives on Psychological Science, suggest that Rock is right. We have no idea how unequal our society has become ... Read here

[giovonni]

Experts: Coming Demographic Shift Will Strengthen US Culture



This story is remarkable. Not because it describes the coming majority minority society in the U.S., which will be familiar to SR readers, but because it is posted on the government’s website. This is Voice of America. Government agencies have begun to think about this inevitable trend, and plan for it, and this is a good example of the establishment line of thinking. I feel it is quite positive, and that is good news.

Victor Morales - Voice of America

America’s demographics are changing like never before. In less than 30 years, whites will no longer be the racial majority in the United States. As VOA Senior Analyst Victor Morales explains in this first part of a two-part series, this population shift will have important implications for American culture and society ... Read more

[giovonni]

New Age Of Water Wars Portends ‘Bleak Future’ For The Middle East



The oldest human treaty for which we have a record is a water treaty involving Sumeria. Water has always been an issue and now, with the onset of climate change, which means increased drought in many areas, the conflict is growing. This report gives a good assessment of the geopolitics involved, which receives almost no media coverage. But that will change. Water is Destiny.

Nafeez Ahmed - Mint Press News

Behind the escalating violence in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, as well as the epidemic of civil unrest across the wider region, is a growing shortage of water.

New peer-reviewed research published by the American Water Works Association (AWWA) shows that water scarcity linked to climate change is now a global problem playing a direct role in aggravating major conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa.

Numerous cities in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia are facing “short and declining water supplies per capita,” which is impacting “worldwide” on food production, urban shortages, and even power generation.

In this month’s issue of the Journal of the AWWA, US water management expert Roger Patrick assesses the state of the scientific literature on water scarcity in all the world’s main regions, finding that local water shortages are now having “more globalised impacts”... Read more

[giovonni]

Portland bans insecticide to protect declining honey bees



Here is some excellent news. Portland is one of the most interesting cities in the U.S.. While many cities are decaying alarmingly, Portland is going “green,” and the positive results that will develop because of these life-affirming policies will become more and more obvious as time goes on.

Laura Zuckerman - Reuters

(Reuters) - Oregon's biggest city on Wednesday banned the use of an insecticide on city lands blamed by conservationists as a factor in the decline of honey bees in recent years.

Despite protests from farmers who argued the insecticide was crucial for crop production, the Portland City Commission voted unanimously to immediately suspend use of products that contain neonicotinoids.

Such pesticides are widely used on crops and on plants as well as trees in gardens, parks and commercial nurseries ... Read more

[giovonni]

Spain Got 47 Percent Of Its Electricity From Renewables In March



Like everywhere else Spain is making the transition out of carbon energy in fits and starts. But the starts outnumber the fits, and Spain is now well on the way to complete its conversion. This is good news.

Emily Atkin - Climate Progress

Spain is getting the vast majority of its electricity from carbon-free sources, the country’s grid operator reported on Tuesday.

According to Red Electrica de Espana (REE), the Spanish peninsula got 69 percent of its electricity generation in March from technologies that produce zero carbon emissions — that is to say, renewable energy plus some of its nuclear power. Nuclear as a whole provided 23.8 percent of the country’s electricity in March, while 47 percent came solely from renewable sources ... More here

[giovonni]

As Quakes Rattle Oklahoma, Fingers Point to Oil and Gas Industry


Just from a scientific point of view the laboratories of the states are fascinating to follow. It is so obvious that wellness oriented policies are more life-affirming, effective, efficient, and cheaper. And yet Red value states continue to pursue options that are not life-affirming but simply satisfy greed, prejudice or fear. Oklahoma is an example of this.

Here is a state that by the nature of its geology is prone to earthquakes when fracking fluid is injected. And yet fracking is very profitable for the few people that own the industry although, as this reports lays out, quite harmful to society as a whole. The usual claim is that fracking creates jobs. But one can’t brag that fracking creates jobs when more jobs would be created converting to non-carbon energy.

So why do Oklahomans vote into office politicians who support a process that destructively shakes their world? That to me is the interesting research question. One sees this paradox play out, in Kansas, Wisconsin, Florida and other states controlled by Republicans. So it is something very fundamental in the human psyché, and neuroscience therefore is an invaluable tool for exploring an answer.

RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and MICHAEL WINES - The New York Times

PRAGUE, Okla. — Yanked without warning from a deep sleep, Jennifer Lin Cooper, whose family has lived near here for more than a half-century, could think only that the clamor enveloping her house was coming from a helicopter landing on her roof. She was wrong.

A 5.0-magnitude earthquake — the first of three as strong or stronger over several days in November 2011 — had peeled the brick facade from the $117,000 home she bought the year before. Ms. Cooper, 36, could not get out until her father pried a stuck storm door off the front entrance. Repairs have so far cost $12,000 and forced her to take a second job, at night, to pay the bill ... Read more

[giovonni]

EPA issues moratorium on new pesticides that kill birds and bees



This is the current state of neonicotinoid regulation in the U.S., and it is rather pathetic. Like DDT even skeptics now have to deal with the research on neonicotinoids, because the evidence for the harm they do is overwhelming. But it is easy to see the hand of special interests in this moratorium. Products already on the market are exempted, so the impact for good will be greatly compromised.

Through corruption and greed we are tipping into a real crisis in agriculture, a double whammy: drought in the food basket counties in California, and the demise of the bees, essential agents for pollination.

I think it is important to note that this regulation only occurred because of citizen action. Enough people were willing to stand up for the life-affirming option to compel this EPA action. We must continue to exert our intention to create non-toxic agriculture and humane husbandry policies that work with the meta-systems of Earth. This is a first step.

RT (Russia)

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a moratorium that will restrict the use of new pesticides that have been blamed for declining bee populations, though the policy does not apply to products currently on the market.

The chemicals in question, neonicotinoids, are a new class of insecticides that affect the central nervous system of insects and result in paralysis and death ... Read more

[giovonni]

A tale of two killings: what happened when Idaho police
shot a dog and a pregnant woman in one day


Shane and Jeanetta Riley on their wedding day
Credit: Riley family


Arfee, in a photo posted to the Facebook page ‘Justice for Arfee’.
Credit: Facebook

I have been thinking about this article for two days. After you read it you will see why. First, of course, the difference in attention each killing attracted, how much more awareness was focused on the dog than the woman. It says something about us as a society. Second, what this story tells us about how we value impaired human life. And, third, How very poorly trained American police are. This is a nation of 319 million people. It follows that a certain percentage are mentally, physically, or addictively off the rails. Why, then, doesn’t it follow that our police are trained to deal with this?

The woman discussed here was sadly impaired, no question. But her knife was what used to be called pocket knife size. I don’t have the sense people carry pocket knives anymore. But two police should have been able to handle a deranged woman with a pocket knife sized blade without killing here.

Paul Lewis - The Guardian (U.K.)

Two fatal police shootings unfolded within 14 hours, both in lakeside towns in the same corner of north-west Idaho.

The first victim was Jeanetta Riley, a troubled 35-year-old pregnant woman, shot dead by police as she brandished a knife outside a hospital in the town of Sandpoint. Her death barely ruffled the tight-knit rural community, which mostly backed the officers, who were cleared of wrongdoing before the case was closed.

The second shooting, in nearby Coeur d’Alene, sparked uproar. There were rallies, protests, sinister threats against the officer responsible, and a viral campaign that spread well beyond the town and drew an apology from the mayor. The killing was ruled unjustified, and the police chief introduced new training for his officers ... Read more

[giovonni]

Organic Nearly as Productive as Industrial Farming, New Study Says



One of the selling points for industrial chemical agriculture is that nothing can equal its productivity. As this report explains, this is not true, and when the pollution and toxicity costs and effects are factored in there really is no contest. We need to completely reassess our agricultural practices, from the subsidies to the actual farming. We are on the wrong track.

Doug Gurian-Sherman - The Food Revolution Network

Industrial agriculture has huge, unsustainable impacts on our environment. And while organic and other ecologically based farming systems (agroecology) have huge benefits, some have suggested that it will never produce enough food. Production is only one of the challenges for food security. But, according to new research, even by this measure, critics seem to have substantially underestimated the productivity of organic farming.

Impressive research from Iowa State University has already begun to show that agroecological systems that don’t completely eliminate synthetic chemicals can match or exceed yields from U.S. industrial grain production and provide equal or higher profits to farmers. Now, new research by a team of U.C. Berkeley scientists shows that organic systems can also be highly productive ... Read more

[giovonni]

U.S. Legalization of Marijuana Has Hit Mexican Cartels’ Cross-Border Trade



I am amazed that people are surprised that ending Marijuana Prohibition would undercut the power and profits of of the drug cartels. We have a historical precedent in the end of alcohol prohibition: bootlegger is not much of a career path anymore. And note the number of people killed in Mexico by the cartels.

Ioan Grillo - Time

The cartels are still smuggling harder drugs but advocates point out the success of legalization in cutting illegal trade

In the midst of this seething mountain capital, Mexico’s security ministry houses a bizarre museum — a collection of what the army seizes from drug traffickers. The Museo de Enervantes, often referred to as the Narco Museum, has drug samples themselves (including the rare black cocaine), diamond-studded guns, gold-coated cell phones, rocket-propelled grenades and medals that cartels award their most productive smugglers. It also shows off the narcos’ ingenuity for getting their drugs into the United States, including “trap cars” with secret compartments, catapults to hurl packages over the border fence and even false buttocks, to hide drugs in ... Read more

[giovonni]

Can We End the Privatization of Seeds ?



SR has been covering the Seed Trend for over a decade watching six companies basically take over the seed business. If you don’t garden or farm seeds are probably not a big issue in your life. Maybe they should be, because controlling seeds is one way to control what you eat. Seeds are one of civilization’s leverage points. Here is the latest.

Elizabeth Fraser and Anuradha Mittal - Truthout

"For most of history, farmers have had control over their seeds: saving, sharing, and replanting them with freedom. Developments in the course of the 20th century, however, have greatly eroded this autonomy. Legal changes, ranging from the Plant Variety Protection Act (1970) in the United States to the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), have systematically eroded farmers' rights to save seeds for future use. By the end of 2012, Monsanto had sued 410 farmers and 56 small farm businesses in the United States for patent infringement, winning over $23 million in settlements. Here, we describe some of the key developments further intensifying corporate control over the food system. It is not, however, all bleak news. Civil society groups are using everything from grassroots protest to open-source licensing to ensure that the enclosure and privatization of seeds comes to an end" ... Read more

[giovonni]

While the superbug crisis grows, the meat industry
is using more human antibiotics than ever



This is what happens when industries take over and own the regulatory agencies that are supposed to oversee them. It is also what happens when wellness is not a consideration in the business model used.

Anyone who bothers to look at the superbug issue and the collapse of antibiotic medicine knows what is going on. Maybe we are just too weak or stupid to make choices that will allow our culture to survive.

Lindsay Abrams - Salon

"The meat industry is buying up more and more medically important antibiotics, threatening human health in its quest to ramp up the factory farm model to meet the demand for pork, chicken and beef.

New FDA data shows that sales of human antibiotics for use in livestock jumped 20 percent between 2009 and 2013, in keeping with past trends.

It’s in keeping, too, with projections for global antibiotic use by the meat sector, which experts say could increase by as much as 67 percent by 2030. It’s a problem, because industry abuse of the drugs is understood to contribute to the antibiotic resistance crisis — superbugs formed on the feedlot are capable of spreading to human populations" ... Read more

[giovonni]

Seattle Restaurant Data Demolishes Conservative Argument
Against $15 Minimum Wage



Like marijuana prohibition the objections to raising the minimum wage are shibboleths and myths. As this report details raising the minimum wage in Seattle to $15 has had no bad effect on the restaurant business as the Rightists maintained must inevitably come to pass. Rather the contrary.

Republican economic policies the data shows live in a fact free world along with its cousins, climate change denial, evolution denial, and young- Earthers.

Alan Pyke - Think Progress

"Weeks before the first gradual increase in Seattle’s minimum wage kicked in, conservative pundits decided that the city’s vibrant restaurant scene was shuddering to a halt. Numerous prominent outlets on the right touted a thin report in a local magazine that a handful of well-liked restaurants were closing down to avoid the wage law.

High-profile writers confidently proclaimed that Seattle’s once-proud restaurant scene was in retreat and that the wage hike was already chilling business activity and killing jobs, based on one anecdotal report. None of that was true. When the Seattle Times asked them about the story, the restaurant owners in question laughed off the claim that their decisions were motivated by the wage law. But even that direct testimony didn’t stop the media wave all the way. The conservative National Federation of Independent Business ran a post parroting the disproven restaurant closures claim days after the Times debunked the anecdote underlying the narrative" ... Read more

[giovonni]

Nestlé’s California Water Permit Expired 27 Years Ago



You have probably already heard that in the midst of California’s drought, Nestlé is making millions bottling and selling California’s water in little plastic bottles. It turns out the story is even more startling than that, as this report describes.

Zoë Schlanger - Newsweek

Last month, California newspaper The Desert Sun published an investigation revealing that Nestlé Water’s permit to transport water across the San Bernardino National Forest for bottling has been expired since 1988. On Friday, the California Forest Service announced it would make it “a priority” to reassess the permit, and that it might impose as-of-yet unspecified “interim conditions” on the bottling operation in light of the severe drought, The Desert Sun reports ...

The fact that Nestlé has continued its massive water-bottling operation while the state struggles with crippling water shortages has become a sticking point for activists. A petition demanding Nestlé immediately stop bottling and profiting off California water has drawn 27,000 online signatures and counting, and last month activists reportedly blocked the entrances to Nestlé’s bottling plant in Sacramento ... Read more

[giovonni]

Congress Passes Measure to Allow Selling off National Forests and Other Public Lands


Cleveland National Forest,
Credit: National Forest Service

It is the intention of the Republican Party to see that America’s heritage of national forests be sold for a pittance, or just given away to a small group of corporations. This is so shameful I am amazed that that is not the lead story of the news cycle. But the corporate media doesn’t really seem to think the issue is of much importance, so it doesn’t get much coverage.

As someone who has had some of his most lovely and moving memories happen in national parks and forests, while backpacking, hiking, and rock climbing, the idea that my children and grandchildren might be denied access to these wilderness lands, or would have to pay large fees to gain entrance to them is very upsetting. Perhaps you feel the same. This is entirely a Republican effort. Here is a good description of what is going on.

Miriam Raftery - East County Magazine

"April 6, 2015 (San Diego’s East County)—The Republican-controlled House and Senate have passed measures that would allow the sale or outright giveaway of most public lands –including national forests, federal wildernesses and wildlife preserves and Bureau of Land Management properties. Only Republicans voted for the language slipped into a non-binding budget resolution—which passed without a single Democratic vote.

The shocking news is revealed in a New York Times editorial by Will Rogers, president of the Trust for Public Lands, titled “Our Land, Up for Grabs.”

While it’s unlikely that President Barack Obama would support such an extreme measure, if a Republican president is elected in 2016 and Republicans maintains control of both houses of Congress, losing our cherished public lands such could be a very real possibility ... Read more

[ThePythonicCow]

Posted by giovonni (here)
Congress Passes Measure to Allow Selling off National Forests and Other Public Lands

A sign of the times. Martin Armstrong has been telling us for a while that we have reached "peak government" ... now corporate power will ascend over the next few decades.

The government selling immense land tracks to corporations would be one small indicator of this shift.