UN climate experts were unanimous in their latest report published in August: Unless we keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the earth will be racked by heatwaves, cyclones and storms, entire species will be wiped out, and large swathes of humanity will have to leave their homes when coastal settlements go underwater.
As despair growths about humanity’s ability to avoid this fateful threshold, researchers are looking at geoengineering as a potential means of reversing the damage.
“Geoengineering is a way of using various technological tools to cancel out the environmental effects of human actions,” explained Sofia Kabbej, a researcher in the Climate, Energy and Security Programme at France’s Institute of International and Strategic Relations.
Read nore at:
Could a technological fix save the planet from climate change?
Showing posts with label Success story. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Success story. Show all posts
4/12/15
USA - Health Care: Five years in, Obama taunts GOP over Obamacare's success
President Obama declared victory on the five-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act,
saying the law has lived up to its promises, and he poked at
Republicans for the doom and gloom predictions he says have failed to
live up to the hype.
"The bottom line is this for the American people: the Affordable Care Act, this law, is saving money for families and for businesses. This law is also saving lives," the president said. "It's working, despite countless attempts to repeal, undermine, defund and defame this law...it's not the fiscal disaster critics warned about for five years."
Mr. Obama spoke at the kickoff meeting of the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, a group that brings the public and private sector together to continue making improvements to the health care system that build upon the law.
The president ticked off a list of statistics he says prove the law's success: a reduction in hospital admission rates and preventable patient deaths, insurance for 16 million Americans who did not have it before and a slowdown in the growth of healthcare spending.
But for the president, one of the biggest successes has been Republicans' failure to undo the law despite dozens of attempts to challenge it in both Congress and the courts.
Read more: Five years in, Obama taunts GOP over Obamacare's success - CBS News
"The bottom line is this for the American people: the Affordable Care Act, this law, is saving money for families and for businesses. This law is also saving lives," the president said. "It's working, despite countless attempts to repeal, undermine, defund and defame this law...it's not the fiscal disaster critics warned about for five years."
Mr. Obama spoke at the kickoff meeting of the Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network, a group that brings the public and private sector together to continue making improvements to the health care system that build upon the law.
The president ticked off a list of statistics he says prove the law's success: a reduction in hospital admission rates and preventable patient deaths, insurance for 16 million Americans who did not have it before and a slowdown in the growth of healthcare spending.
But for the president, one of the biggest successes has been Republicans' failure to undo the law despite dozens of attempts to challenge it in both Congress and the courts.
Read more: Five years in, Obama taunts GOP over Obamacare's success - CBS News
12/29/14
US Economy: A good year for Obama - by Tom Keane
When it comes to the nation’s economy, 2014
was a very good year. Next year promises to be even better. Barack Obama
deserves credit, but many recoil at the idea.
A year ago at this time, it seemed that at long last the nation was poised to rebound from the devastating recession of 2008. The glimmers of hope were there: The unemployment rate was trending downwards, private-sector jobs were being created, the GDP looked ready to grow significantly, and many economic forecasters (admittedly, practitioners of an art, not a science) were optimistic.
The Dow Jones has just hit 18,000, a historic peak. The price of gasoline is down by more than a third from its $4 highs. The US economy grew at a 5 percent clip in the July-to-September third quarter — a startlingly high number — and 2015 looks to be strong, as well. Meanwhile, the inflation rate for the last 12 months is a barely discernible 1.3 percent. And the US budget deficit — remember the horrified cries from those who opposed Obama’s economic stimulus? — is now at its lowest level since 2008.
The 2008 Bush crisis threw millions out of work and was of such soul-wrenching consequence that many of those folks simply gave up. Yet there have been 2.65 million new jobs created so far this year and the unemployment rate has fallen from a high of 10 percent in October 2009 to 5.8 percent last month. And the drop in the labor participation rate (a measure of how many want to find a job) seems to have plateaued — at around 63 percent — and may be starting to rise.
So why not give the president his due? After all, he’s been in office for six years. When things are going badly (e.g., ISIS), there is no question we heap blame on the White House. George H. W., Bill Clinton and George W. may indeed have laid the groundwork for those troubles, but Obama’s been in the White House long enough to now bear responsibility.
To the Republican Obama haters, none of this matters. That, it seems, is the black-and-white nature of our political discourse: one is either all good or all bad. In truth Obama (and almost all politicians) are a mix. The president can be deservedly zinged on many fronts. But when it comes to the economy — a core responsibility for any nation’s chief executive — he fairly deserves a good grade: Not an A, perhaps, but certainly a solid B or B+.
Read more: A good year for Obama - Opinion - The Boston Gl
A year ago at this time, it seemed that at long last the nation was poised to rebound from the devastating recession of 2008. The glimmers of hope were there: The unemployment rate was trending downwards, private-sector jobs were being created, the GDP looked ready to grow significantly, and many economic forecasters (admittedly, practitioners of an art, not a science) were optimistic.
The Dow Jones has just hit 18,000, a historic peak. The price of gasoline is down by more than a third from its $4 highs. The US economy grew at a 5 percent clip in the July-to-September third quarter — a startlingly high number — and 2015 looks to be strong, as well. Meanwhile, the inflation rate for the last 12 months is a barely discernible 1.3 percent. And the US budget deficit — remember the horrified cries from those who opposed Obama’s economic stimulus? — is now at its lowest level since 2008.
The 2008 Bush crisis threw millions out of work and was of such soul-wrenching consequence that many of those folks simply gave up. Yet there have been 2.65 million new jobs created so far this year and the unemployment rate has fallen from a high of 10 percent in October 2009 to 5.8 percent last month. And the drop in the labor participation rate (a measure of how many want to find a job) seems to have plateaued — at around 63 percent — and may be starting to rise.
So why not give the president his due? After all, he’s been in office for six years. When things are going badly (e.g., ISIS), there is no question we heap blame on the White House. George H. W., Bill Clinton and George W. may indeed have laid the groundwork for those troubles, but Obama’s been in the White House long enough to now bear responsibility.
To the Republican Obama haters, none of this matters. That, it seems, is the black-and-white nature of our political discourse: one is either all good or all bad. In truth Obama (and almost all politicians) are a mix. The president can be deservedly zinged on many fronts. But when it comes to the economy — a core responsibility for any nation’s chief executive — he fairly deserves a good grade: Not an A, perhaps, but certainly a solid B or B+.
Read more: A good year for Obama - Opinion - The Boston Gl
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)