A Personal Point of Pride

In 2007, I founded OpenOceans Global, a nonprofit now focused on the ocean plastic crisis. On July 10, 2022, we announced the launch of an online app to map plastic-fouled beaches  around the world like the one below in Bali, Indonesia. Citizen scientists can use the app to submit images to populate our ocean plastic trash map. The map already has more than 50 entries, and we expect entries to be in the hundreds if not thousands. The map is intended to visually inform the public and policymakers of the scope of the crisis. More information can be found in a special edition of The Transition newsletter. Image: Maxim Blinkov // Shutterstock

The Political Divide

The comic below is not completely true, we have many good representatives. But the point is that the vast majority of us agree on what to do, but the majority views do not emerge, only the polarized ones.

 

 

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Why So Many People Are Rejecting Science

ScienceAlert on July 16, 2022, published an article describing the four factors that cause people to reject science. “While the current level of public acceptance of research can be disappointing, the good news is that trust in scientists has fallen it is still relatively high compared to other information authorities. As much as we pride ourselves on being logical beings, in reality, we humans are animals with messy minds that are just as governed by our social alliances, emotions, and instincts as our logic. Those of us involved with science, whether as supporters or practitioners, must understand and account for this.” Here are the four factors causing people to reject science:

1. Distrust in the information source. In addition, “legitimate and robust scientific debate can also confuse people who are not familiar with the scientific process, further damaging trust when it spills into the public domain.”
2. Tribal loyalty. “The way our thinking is wired as an obligatorily social species makes us very vulnerable to sometimes blindly believing those we identify with as part of our own cultural group – no matter how much education we have had. This phenomenon is called cultural cognition … Political polarization and social media have only enhanced this. For example, conservatives are more likely to believe scientists that appear on Fox News, and liberals are more likely to trust those on CNN."
3. Information goes against personal beliefs. “The internal conflicts created by information that challenges our social or personal beliefs such as morals and religion, lead to logical fallacies and cognitive biases such as cognitive dissonance ... key strategies to counter this include showing an understanding of the other person's viewpoint.”
4. Information is not being presented in the right learning style. “This problem is the most straightforward of the four bases – a simple mismatch in how information is being presented, and the style best suited to the receiver. This includes things like preferring abstract compared to concrete information, or being promotion or prevention-focused.”

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Facts Are No Longer Convincing. Research Suggests You Should Say This Instead

Another article in ScienceAlert on July 5, 2022, says that acts are “rather less certain in people's minds than they once were.” The article suggests “if you really want to stand a chance of changing somebody's mind on a serious topic, you should tell them your own personal experiences … Furnishing perceptions of truth within moral disagreements is better accomplished by sharing subjective experiences, not by providing facts."

Climate Change

Utah’s Great Salt Lake is drying out

As a result of climate change, drought, and water that has been diverted for agriculture, the Great Salt Lake has dropped to its lowest recorded level according to a July 14, 2022, story in Reuters. Nearby Salt Lake City is already being subject to dust storms that “experts fear could get worse.” Already the lake only has one-fourth of the water it had in it in 1987. The dust from the receding lake bed is contaminated with calcium, sulfur, and arsenic, and with residue from copper and silver mining. This is similar to a scenario in California’s Salton Sea.

Future of Work / The Economy

“The U.S. economy continues to grow and both the job market and consumer spending, and their ability to spend, remain healthy. But geopolitical tension, high inflation, waning consumer confidence, the uncertainty about how high rates have to go, and the never-before-seen quantitative tightening and their effects on global liquidity, combined with the war in Ukraine and its harmful effect on global energy and food prices are very likely to have negative consequences on the global economy sometime down the road.” Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan CEO, at the firm’s latest quarterly release.

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Why a U.S. recession might not look like any other

The U.S. economy is showing signs that a U.S. recession might not be like any other. There are three circular elements that drive a recession: jobs, spending, and economic output. According to a short video by the Wall Street Journal, “recessions usually come with a dip in economic output and a rise in unemployment. Right now, economic output is falling. But so is unemployment.”

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Does a 50% decline in lumber prices foretell a recession?

Lumber prices have declined 50% from the price in March when the cost per thousand board feet fell from $1,464 to $648. A July 7, 2022, story in Fortune says that high lumber prices in 2020 and 2021 were an early indicator that construction—and the economy in general—was set to go through some profound inflationary changes. Today’s slumping prices could be an equally important indicator that inflation has peaked.

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A gas tax accounting for the social and environmental cost of driving would upend life as we know it

I hate higher gasoline prices like most Americans. However, I remember attending the Eye on Earth Conference in Abu Dhabi in 2015 and hearing the vice president of Masdar City, a city of the future, say that the U.S. subsidizes gas prices. I challenged him on that point after his talk. He said that American fuel prices are kept down artificially by low gas taxes that fail to address the true social and environmental cost of driving. Something to think about when looking at the infographic below and complaining about the recent spikes in U.S. gasoline prices. A January 5, 2015, article in Bloomberg said that “a gas tax that fully corrected for the social impact of car reliance would upend life as we know it.”

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Gasoline prices around the world: June 7, 2022

Covid-19

The worst virus variant just arrived

According to an Opinion by the Washington Post Editorial Board on July 7, 2022, the pandemic is not over and the worst virus variant has just arrived. The piece quotes Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research in La Jolla, who says that BA.5 “is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen. It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond earlier versions of omicron.

Another article, this one in Fortune on July 5, 2022, repeated Topol’s assertions and added that BA.5 is estimated to have caused nearly 54% of Covid infections in the U.S. in the previous week, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It would not be at all surprising to me to see a further decline of protection against hospitalizations and deaths,” Topol said.