Analysis

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Sea levels rising fastest in big cities

It is well known that climate-induced sea level rise is a major threat. What is less well know is the threat of sinking land. And in many of the most populated coastal areas, the land is sinking even faster than the sea is rising. Parts of Tokyo for instance sank by 4 metres during the 20th century, with 2 metres or more of sinking reported in Shanghai, Bangkok, and New Orleans. This process is known as subsidence. Slow subsidence happens naturally in river deltas, and it can be accelerated by the extraction of groundwater, oil or gas which causes the soil to consolidate and the surface to lose elevation. Subsidence leads to relative sea level rise (sea level rise plus land sinking). It turns croplands salty, damages buildings, causes widespread flooding and can even mean the loss of entire coastal areas. Subsidence can threaten flooding in low-lying coastal areas, much more so than rising sea levels, yet scientists are only just realising the global implications of the threat with respect to coastal cities. In fact, while the average coastal area experiences relative sea level rise of less than 3mm per year, the average coastal resident experiences a rise of around 8mm to 10mm per year. This is because so many people live in deltas and especially cities on deltas that are subsiding. That’s the key finding of our new research, where we analysed how fast cities are sinking across the world and compared them with global subsidence data including less densely populated coastlines. People often choose to live in river deltas, floodplains and other areas that were already prone to sinking, and in doing so will further enhance subsidence. In particular, subsiding cities contain more than 150 million people in the coastal zone – that’s roughly 20% of people in […]

The Empty Shield

-by Giacomo Donis Michael Moorcock’s New Statesman Book of the Year. A people’s history and the horror of war: Howard Zinn meets Apocalypse Now. March 1972, about to graduate from NYU. A journey: two days and nights in the New York subway. Love it or leave it. A decision: become a Great Academic Marxist; blow up the Williamsburg Bridge; go into exile. Vietnam Veterans with placards, for and against the war. Seven placard-men at the seven gates of Thebes, brandishing their shields. A decision. Political or personal? Or pure Zen? Mind or no-mind? Kill for peace! Dylan, Hendrix, or the Fugs. The two Suzukis, or Dogen. Monk and Coltrane! The relation between Hegel’s logic of thinking as such and his logic of practice, which does not exist. The screech of the subway stops. A fork where three roads cross, the realm of shadows, what is to be done? A Chinese menu? Stab it! Stab it with your fork! But what I, myself, decide is not the point. The point is the question of ‘what a decision is and what making a decision means.’ The answer is ‘never stop asking.’ Ask yourself. Ask FDR, JFK, LBJ, McNamara and his band, John Kerry, or a Vietnam War veteran of your choice. Ask Nixon, Kissinger Trump! Ask Trump! Ye great decision-makers, have you ever asked yourselves what a decision is and what making a decision means! That is the question. The Empty Shield asks it. Repeatedly, repetitiously, abysally, and, possibly, once and for all. “The Empty Shield by Giacomo Donis is an extraordinary political biography. Donis describes how his Marxist politics developed and how renouncing his US citizenship (for Italian) proved harder than leaving the Mafia, with federal agents grilling him and warning how people like him could suffer. It’s a people’s history rather than a conventional memoir.

Nick

-by Michael Farris Smith Michael Farris Smith takes the narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, and imagines his life prior to the events of the classic novel. The first part of the story is set during WW1 and follows Nick’s fortunes on the front line in France – a long nightmare of bloody battles and constant fear. During short periods of leave in Paris he strikes up a relationship with Ella, a nomadic free spirit ….. an affair, that in his damaged state becomes all consuming. Psychologically broken, Nick can’t face going home as the war comes to an end. He detours, randomly to New Orleans and enters a sleazy, pre prohibition world of chancers, prostitutes, drugs and abject poverty. Nick falls in with some dangerous and desperate characters and a twisted drama plays out that has some strange echoes of the Great Gatsby storyline. In an introduction to the book MFS discusses his writing life, his bouts of depression and why he was drawn to Nick Carraway as a character (he too was a dislocated ex pat feeling his life was running away from him) and it’s interesting how these elements become important themes in the book. In The Great Gatsby Nick is an integral part of the plot but is also slightly detached, an honest outsider observing those around him, not quite connecting. In this novel his relationship to the story and characters felt similar. This was probably intended, but I wanted to know him more and really get under his skin. His PTSD, emotional background and family life were well described but I still felt he was an enigma. I never felt that I fully understood his actions. Michael Farris Smith is a very good writer and creates a convincing picture of post WW1 New Orleans. […]

Communal living – the biggest benefit

It’s thought 70% of people will live in cities by 2050. Co-living could offer sustainable, affordable housing options for many. The world’s loneliness and mental health crisis is being exacerbated by the pandemic. Communal living can provide companionship for those who don’t want to live alone. Studies suggest living with others can help anxiety and improve mental wellbeing. The coronavirus pandemic has shone a light on a trend that’s catching the eye of more and more city dwellers – co-living. Accommodation designed for multiple individuals with shared facilities, such as work and cooking spaces, has been on the increase for the best part of a decade. When rising property values priced a lot of young professionals out of the real estate market, many turned to sharing the cost burden with strangers. Now, as the pandemic prompts governments around the world to issue stay-at-home orders, could communal living help lessen the side-effects of lockdowns, especially anxiety and loneliness? “Co-living is an opportunity to live in your own private place but still be part of a ‘family’,” says Jaimee Williams of SPACE10, IKEA’s “research and design lab” and co-organizer of a survey on perceptions of communal living. “Urbanization has led to unaffordable housing and, paradoxically, increasing loneliness.” Sharing the load Respondents to the One Shared House 2030 survey said the ability to socialise was the biggest benefit of co-living. The survey also had something to say about the notion that the trend is only for the young: elderly respondents identified the concept as a good means of staying close to people who could help them in an emergency, among other things. “Communal living has moved on from communes and sharing meals,” says Irene Pereyra, co-founder of New York-based design agency Anton & Irene, another co-ordinator of the survey. “What’s nice is that everyone who answered our […]

Technologies-of-control-figure The Mirror website

Break up big tech, make it fairer

With billions of people now members of social media networks such as Facebook and the all-pervasiveness of big tech throughout many aspects of our lives, conversations about digital citizenship have never been more important. Seeta Peña Gangadharan writes that despite efforts by the Obama administration in the late 2000s to improve digital citizenship, the US information economy has now become one characterised by surveillance, targeting, nudging, and manipulation so that digital technologies represent a control rather than an opportunity. For people to be able to exercise a right to refuse these technologies, she argues, we need to reinvent what it means to practice civil disobedience in the digital era. Watch Professor Gangadharan’s recent TEDxLondon talk. It’s about time that we renewed a conversation about what it means an active digital citizen in the 21stcentury. The current conditions of our data-driven economy demand that we explore ways to deny technologies the possibility to control us. Unfortunately, Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, which was the Obama Administration’s signature digital inclusion policy effort, marks the last time the US government paid close attention to digital citizenship. Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (2009), the program channeled $4.7 billion aimed to drive economic prosperity, drive educational attainment, and create a more inclusive digital citizenry. But the history of the program reveals a cruel irony. While many—myself included—celebrated this policy as a means to meaningful participation in digital society (see here and here for examples), the toxic subprime loan industry and the historic financial crisis—which led to the Recovery Act and subsequent establishment of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program—provided a clue of what was to come in the country’s next chapter of the information economy: surveillance, targeting, nudging, and manipulation. As I’ve written elsewhere, the toxic subprime financial crisis relied on a thriving network of actors who helped enable demand for an inherently […]

The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy

The leading thinker and most visible public advocate of modern monetary theory — the freshest and most important idea about economics in decades — delivers a radically different, bold, new understanding for how to build a just and prosperous society. Stephanie Kelton’s brilliant exploration of modern monetary theory (MMT) dramatically changes our understanding of how we can best deal with crucial issues ranging from poverty and inequality to creating jobs, expanding health care coverage, climate change, and building resilient infrastructure. Any ambitious proposal, however, inevitably runs into the buzz saw of how to find the money to pay for it, rooted in myths about deficits that are hobbling us as a country. Kelton busts through the myths that prevent us from taking action: that the federal government should budget like a household, that deficits will harm the next generation, crowd out private investment, and undermine long-term growth, and that entitlements are propelling us toward a grave fiscal crisis. MMT, as Kelton shows, shifts the terrain from narrow budgetary questions to one of broader economic and social benefits. With its important new ways of understanding money, taxes, and the critical role of deficit spending, MMT redefines how to responsibly use our resources so that we can maximise our potential as a society. MMT gives us the power to imagine a new politics and a new economy and move from a narrative of scarcity to one of opportunity.

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Myanmar’s military reverts to its old strong-arm behaviour

Just before the newly elected members of Myanmar’s parliament were due to be sworn in today, the military detained the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi; the president, Win Myint; and other key figures from the elected ruling party, the National League for Democracy. The military later announced it had taken control of the country for 12 months and declared a state of emergency. This is a coup d’etat, whether the military calls it that or not. A disputed election and claims of fraud In November, the NLD and Suu Kyi won a landslide victory in national elections, with the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) faring poorly in its key strongholds. Humiliated by the result, the USDP alleged the election was subject to widespread fraud. However, international observers, including the Carter Center, the Asian Network for Free Elections and the European Union’s Election Observation Mission, all declared the elections a success. The EU’s preliminary statement noted that 95% of observers had rated the process “good” or “very good. Yet, taking a page out of former US President Donald Trump’s book, the USDP pressed its claims of fraud despite the absence of any substantial evidence — a move designed to undermine the legitimacy of the elections. The military did not initially back the USDP’s claims, but it has gradually begun to provide the party with more support, with the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, refusing to rule out a coup last week. The following day, the country’s election authorities broke weeks of silence and firmly rejected the USDP’s claims of widespread fraud. [Myanmar’s] most acute constitutional crisis since the abolition of the old junta in 2010. The civilian-military power-sharing arrangement It is difficult to see how the military will benefit from today’s actions, since the power-sharing arrangement it had struck with the NLD under the 2008 constitution had already allowed […]

Making a difference

The killing of George Floyd at the hands of police officers on May 25, 2020, caused a surge in anti-racist activism across the world. From Tokyo to Cape Town to Stockholm to Rio de Janeiro, Black Lives Matter protests advocating the basic principles of social justice – equity, rights and participation – have taken place in more than 60 countries. The social unrest has also ignited the debate about the role and responsibility of business as trustees of society to accelerate social progress. Racism is manifested in current social, economic and political disenfranchisement of historically marginalised and underrepresented ethnic groups such as the lack of opportunities, lower socio-economic status, higher unemployment and the racial wealth gap. Between Floyd’s death and the end of October, about one-third of Fortune 1000 companies responded by making a public statement on or commitment to racial equity, and the private sector pledged a total of $66 billion towards racial justice initiatives. Yet companies have been repeatedly reckoning with the gap between intentions and progress. There have only been 15 Black CEOs over the course of the 62 years of the Fortune 500’s existence, and currently, only 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Black. There are no Black female CEOs of the Fortune 500 and only three women of colour. Too often, company programmes take a broad-brush approach to diversity and offer uniform policies and training. These strategies fail to address norms and practices that are rooted in specific historical and societal patterns of exclusion, marginalisation and disadvantage. In addition, varying national laws and regulations, demographic compositions and societal norms across the world also mean organisations struggle to design common indicators and strategies. A global coalition to boost effectiveness To address these challenges and drive systemic and sustainable change towards racial justice, the World Economic Forum is creating a global coalition […]

Will 2021 be the year of living dangerously?

As the third decade of the 21st century gets under way, we will look back on 2021 as a year when the future of our life on earth balanced on a fulcrum. But which way will we lean? Will we grind out a post-COVID-19 recovery along the lines of the recovery from the last great global financial crisis in 2009 towards a more dangerous future of higher consumption and emissions? Or will policy-makers, politicians, business leaders and civil society summon their collective imaginations, cooperative spirit and willpower to craft stimulus packages and investments that lead to a more sustainable, nature-friendly future? Last year broke yet more of the wrong kinds of environmental records. A peak temperature of 38°C inside the Arctic Circle. Wildfires in the Amazon that spread to the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, driving a drought that cost Brazil’s agriculture sector $3 billion. Historic levels of flooding along the Yangtze, affecting 63 million people. More Californian fires to add to the $148 billion of losses from 2018’s fires. A record number of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall. 300mThe estimate of the number of people who live in places where climate-triggered flooding will likely occur by 2050 5xGreenland’s loss of ice when compared with the melt rate 25 years ago 23%The percentage of global climate change emissions that the degradation of ecosystems is responsible for $44tnOr one-half of all global GDP depends on nature and is threatened by its loss 1mThe number of species at risk from extinction Yet amid the storm clouds of grim statistics are some sunbeams of hope. Last year saw a doubling in the number of companies committing to net-zero targets. The election of Joe Biden means the three largest carbon emitters in the world – China, the EU and the US – have all committed […]

Review: Figuring by Maria Popova

Figuring, by Maria Popova, publisher of Brain Pickings, explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries – beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalysed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists – mostly women, mostly queer – whose public contribution has risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman – and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

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