Climate change will displace millions
Wildfires tearing across Southern California have forced thousands of residents to evacuate from their homes. Even more people fled ahead of the hurricanes that slammed into Texas and Florida earlier this year, jamming highways and filling hotels. A viral social media post showed a flight-radar picture of people trying to escape Florida and posed a provocative question: What if the adjoining states were countries and didn’t grant escaping migrants refuge? By the middle of this century, experts estimate that climate change is likely to displace between 150 and 300 million people. If this group formed a country, it would be the fourth-largest in the world, with a population nearly as large as that of the United States. Yet neither individual countries nor the global community are completely prepared to support a whole new class of “climate migrants.”
Republicans rigged our democracy. Here's how Democrats can fight back
Donald Trump wasn’t elected because Democrats lost a policy fight in 2016. What Democrats did was lose a procedural fight that has been going on since the early 1990s, when Republicans began waging a relentless, brutal, and completely one-sided war, systematically using their lawmaking power to disadvantage their adversaries in elections and political mobilization. Gerrymandering, the Citizens United atrocity that declared money is speech, blocking US supreme court nominations and obstructing legislation are some of the Republican party’s tactics. Depraved, racist voter ID laws that obviously target people who are likely to vote Democratic, and the cruel way that many states prevent current or former felons from voting are others. Indeed, one has to grudgingly respect the single-mindedness with which the Republican party has pursued its advantage, even as we condemn the damage it has wreaked on our democracy.
Big Oil’s decades of deception: Report reveals that Exxon’s known the truth about climate science since 1981
While evaluating the potential impact of developing a gas field it was interested in off Indonesia, ExxonMobil found one major reason for concern: the field in question was 70 percent carbon dioxide. If the field were developed, and that gas vented into the atmosphere, it could become the “largest point source of CO2 in the world,” accounting for a full one percent of climate change-causing emissions. According to Leonard S. Bernstein, a former chemical engineer at the company, Exxon recognized the potential for global warming concerns to lead to regulations that would impact the project and others like it. The year was 1981.
There's No Scientific Basis for Race—It's a Made-Up Label
This story is part of The Race Issue, a special issue of National Geographic that explores how race defines, separates, and unites us. In the first half of the 19th century, one of America’s most prominent scientists was a doctor named Samuel Morton. Morton lived in Philadelphia, and he collected skulls. He wasn’t choosy about his suppliers.
Some States Spend Billions on Economic Tax Incentives for Little or No Return
By one estimate, state and local governments spend at least $45 billion a year on tax breaks and other incentives to lure or keep job-producing businesses and plants in their jurisdictions. New York, for example, plows billions of dollars into the Empire State Development Corp. and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s signature Start-Up NY program.
GAO: Climate change already costing US billions in losses
WASHINGTON (AP) — A non-partisan federal watchdog says climate change is already costing U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year, with those costs expected to rise as devastating storms, floods, wildfires and droughts become more frequent in the coming decades. A Government Accountability Office report released Monday said the federal government has spent more than $350 billion over the last decade on disaster assistance programs and losses from flood and crop insurance. That tally does not include the massive toll from this year's wildfires and three major hurricanes, expected to be among the most costly in the nation's history.
Climate change: 'Hothouse Earth' risks even if CO2 emissions slashed
Image copyright Getty Images It may sound like the title of a low budget sci-fi movie, but for planetary scientists, "Hothouse Earth" is a deadly serious concept. Researchers believe we could soon cross a threshold leading to boiling hot temperatures and towering seas in the centuries to come. Even if countries succeed in meeting their CO2 targets, we could still lurch on to this "irreversible pathway". Their study shows it could happen if global temperatures rise by 2C.
Donald Trump: The Dress Rehearsal for Fascism
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at an event hosted by the Republican Hindu Coalition in Edison, N.J., on Saturday. (Julio Cortez / AP) Americans are not offered major-party candidates who have opposing political ideologies or ideas. We are presented only with manufactured political personalities. We vote for the candidate who makes us “feel” good about him or her.
Americans Will Pay Billions More For Climate Change, and That’s the Best Case
Photographer: The Washington Post/The Washington Post The Trump administration just published a major report documenting the advance of climate change, weeks earlier than expected and on a day many Americans are occupied with family and holiday shopping. The news is predictably bad, but this time the tally comes with a pricetag—one significantly larger than you’ll find at the mall. The report catalogs the observed damage and accelerating losses projected from a climate now unmoored from a 12,000-year period of relative stability.
