Europe is an outsized indicator of the “shocking levels” of worldwide inequality. OXFAM’s September 2015 press release, “Increasing Inequality Plunging Millions More Europeans into Poverty”, makes a stark comparison between the “123 million people – almost a quarter of the EU’s population – at risk of living in poverty and its 342 billionaires”. Other reports show how, worldwide, the fortunes of the mega-rich have soared during the crisis, a situation summed up in the notorious statistic “Richest 1% Will Own More Than All the Rest by 2016”. The socioeconomic effects of this indecent inequality and how to deal with them are widely discussed and one product of the debate is a fast-expanding interest in the universal, unconditional basic income, which is usually presented as a measure for combatting poverty.
Keeping Our World Cooler for Now Will Make It Permanently Hotter
The following is taken from a presentation by Stan Cox to the New York Academy of Medicine and the Museum of the City of New York on August 11, 2016:
The headlines screamed, “Kerry says AC more dangerous than ISIS!”
The Secretary of State, at a conference in Vienna last month on reducing the use of the refrigerants – powerful greenhouse gases that are used in refrigeration and air conditioning – had actually said this: