'Unseen' News and Views
13 March 2020 (UN Environment)* — For hundreds of millions of years, the web of life on land has been dependent on, and determined by, day and night, light and dark. Photosynthesis, the process by which plants grow, depends on light and dark. And all animals depend on plants for their survival.
Light pollution Photo by Lamiot, Wikimedia Commons
Farmers known as Sempre-vivas flower gatherers from Espinhaço Mountain Range won recognition for their crucial role in enhancing biodiversity and preserving traditional knowledge
(UN News)* — On Wednesday 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded the status of the COVID-19 outbreak from epidemic to pandemic.
– The US is currently still in a stock market bubble which, if history is any guide, is likely to end, perhaps soon due to Covid19. President Trump would, of course, like to sustain it to strengthen his November re-election prospects.
Meanwhile, US business investment has declined for many years. As shares of GDP, corporate profits or even market capitalization, such investment has been in decline for at least four decades. Clearly, ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies have failed to decades-long trend.
Financialization ‘unreal’
Although focused on the US, William Lazonick’s seminal 2014 Harvard Business Review article, Profits without Prosperity, and Lazonick and Shin’s new book, Predatory Value Extraction: How the Looting of the Business Corporation Became the US Norm and How Sustainable Prosperity Can Be Restored offer invaluable insights into investment trends with implications for much of the world.
Contrasting Rates of Change
John Scales Avery
Cultural evolution depends on the non-genetic storage, transmission, diffusion and utilization of information.
The development of human speech, the invention of writing, the development of paper and printing, and finally, in modern times, computers and the Internet: all these have been crucial steps in society’s explosive accumulation of information and knowledge.
Human cultural evolution proceeds at a constantly-accelerating speed, so great in fact that it threatens to shake society to pieces.
The strong contrast between the slow rate of genetic change and the lightning-like, constantly accelerating rate of cultural change means that we face the serious problems of today with an emotional nature that has changed little since our ancestors lived in small tribes, competing for territory on the grasslands of Africa.
Image from Greenpeace International.
The 26 refrigerated cargo vessels (or ‘reefers’) recorded transferring catch from fishing boats in the Antarctic in the period 2017-2019 failed 70% – 119 out of 168 – of their environmental and workers’ safety inspections in the same period. [1] In one case, a reefer reportedly carrying heavy fuel oil in Antarctic waters, a substance forbidden in the area, crashed into an iceberg, before later sinking in the South Atlantic.
Global collaboration and goal setting are necessary for resolving the global problems facing our planet
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10 March 2020 (Wall Street International)* — Could our financial and managerial leaders be ahead of many of our politicians and governments in climate improvements?
6 March 2020 (UN Environment)* — Chemicals and waste are integral to our everyday life, but they also have major impacts on the environment and human health. As the world’s population approaches 8 billion, the sound management of chemicals and waste is becoming ever more important.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) works closely with governments, international organizations, industry and civil society organizations around the world to develop mainstream solutions for the sound management of chemicals and waste.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 