January, 15 2013, 01:51pm EDT
Extreme Weather Map Shows 3,527 Monthly Weather Records Shattered in 2012
Top Ten States with Greatest Percentage of Locations with Record-Breaking Heat: TN, WI, MN, IL, IN, NV, WV, ME, CO, MD
NEW YORK
In 2012, there were at least 3,527 monthly weather records for heat, rain and snow broken by extreme weather events that hit communities throughout the US, according to an updated interactive extreme weather mapping tool and year-end review released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The 2012 tally exceeds the 3,251 records smashed in 2011 and catalogues these record-breaking extreme events in all 50 states.
New this year, the interactive map at www.nrdc.org/extremeweather also ranks all 50 states for the percentage of weather stations reporting at least one monthly heat record broken in 2012. The ten states showing the highest percentage with new heat records are: Tennessee (36%), Wisconsin (31%), Minnesota (30%), Illinois (29%), Indiana (28%), Nevada (27%), West Virginia (26%), Maine (26%), Colorado (25%), and Maryland (24%). Especially hard-hit regions include the Upper Midwest, Northeast, northern Great Plains, and Rocky Mountain states.
"2012's unparalleled record-setting heat demonstrates what climate change looks like," said Kim Knowlton, NRDC Senior Scientist. "This extreme weather has awoken communities across the country to the need for preparedness and protection. We know how to reduce local risks, improve our lives and create more resilient communities. Now our leaders must act."
Because these monthly weather records compete against prior records set over at least the last 30 years at each location, the 3,527 monthly records-broken highlight notable patterns of extreme weather in the US. And in fact, from 1980 through 2011, the frequency of weather-related extreme events in North America nearly quintupled, rising more rapidly than anywhere else in the world, according to international insurance giant MunichRe.
In 2012, Americans experienced the hottest March on record in the contiguous US, and July was the hottest single month ever recorded in the lower 48 states. As a whole, 2012 was the warmest year ever recorded in the US, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) State of the Climate report released last week. NOAA has also estimated that 2012 will surpass 2011 in aggregate costs for U.S. annual billion-dollar disasters, and MunichRe also recently revealed that in 2012, more than 90 percent of the world's insured disaster costs occurred in the US.
Some of 2012's most significant weather disasters include:
- The summer of 2012 was the worst drought in 50 years across the nation's breadbasket, with over 1,300 US counties in 29 states declared drought disaster areas.
- Wildfires burned over 9.2 million acres in the US, and destroyed hundreds of homes. The average size of the fires set an all-time record of 165 acres per fire, exceeding the prior decade's 2001-2010 average of approximately 90 acres per fire.
- Hurricane Sandy's storm surge height, 13.88 feet, broke the all-time record in New York Harbor, and ravaged communities across New Jersey and New York with floodwaters and winds. The cost of Sandy reached an estimated $79 billion with at least 131 deaths reported.
There are proactive steps government decision-makers can take to minimize the impact on communities increasingly vulnerable to climate change. NRDC encourages all states to undertake the following key actions to protect public health:
- Enact plans to limit carbon emissions from power plants, vehicles and other major sources of heat-trapping pollution; coupled with increased investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy.
- Emergency planning must incorporate risks from climate change. States and local governments should develop, prioritize, support and implement comprehensive climate change mitigation plans to address climate risks.
- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) must also prioritize addressing and preparing for climate change by providing guidance and resources to state and local governments.
For more information about 2012's record-breaking extreme weather events, see:
- NRDC's 2012 Extreme Weather Mapping Tool
- Kim Knowlton's blog: https://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kknowlton/
- Frances Beinecke's blog: https://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/fbeinecke/
- Rocky Kistner's blog: https://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/
- NRDC's What Climate Change Looks Like
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
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Bernie Sanders Says US Must 'Fundamentally Rethink' Its Foreign Policy
"In this pivotal moment in human history, the United States must lead a new global movement based on human solidarity and the needs of struggling people."
Mar 18, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday called for a "revolution in American foreign policy" that replaces "greed, militarism, and hypocrisy" with "solidarity, diplomacy, and human rights."
In a lengthy piece published in Foreign Affairs, Sanders (I-Vt.) asserted that "it is long past time to fundamentally reorient American foreign policy," a shift that starts with "acknowledging the failures of the post–World War II bipartisan consensus and charting a new vision that centers human rights, multilateralism, and global solidarity."
"If the goal of foreign policy is to help create a peaceful and prosperous world, the foreign policy establishment needs to fundamentally rethink its assumptions," the democratic socialist senator wrote. "Spending trillions of dollars on endless wars and defense contracts is not going to address the existential threat of climate change or the likelihood of future pandemics. It is not going to feed hungry children, reduce hatred, educate the illiterate, or cure diseases. It is not going to help create a shared global community and diminish the likelihood of war."
"In this pivotal moment in human history, the United States must lead a new global movement based on human solidarity and the needs of struggling people," Sanders argued. "This movement must have the courage to take on the greed of the international oligarchy, in which a few thousand billionaires exercise enormous economic and political power."
Sanders' article examines U.S. foreign policy since World War II, underscoring commonalities between the many wars and acts of aggression perpetrated by Washington over the decades.
"Dating back to the Cold War, politicians in both major parties have used fear and outright lies to entangle the United States in disastrous and unwinnable foreign military conflicts," the senator wrote, noting the U.S.-led war in Southeast Asia in which as many as 3 million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians and more than 58,000 American troops were killed.
Sanders also highlighted the U.S. record of perpetrating or backing coups in Iran, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Chile, and other countries, "often in support of authoritarian regimes that brutally repressed their own people and exacerbated corruption, violence, and poverty."
"Washington is still dealing with the fallout from such meddling today, confronting deep suspicion and hostility in many of these countries, which complicates U.S. foreign policy and undermines American interests," he wrote.
Sanders then moved on to the 21st century, when the George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attacks by committing "nearly 2 million U.S. troops and over $8 trillion to a 'Global War on Terror' and catastrophic wars in Afghanistan and Iraq"—the latter "built on an outright lie."
The senator continued:
The Iraq War was not an aberration. In the name of the Global War on Terror, the United States carried out torture, illegal detention, and "extraordinary renditions," snatching suspects around the world and holding them for long periods at the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba and CIA "black sites" around the world. The U.S. government implemented the Patriot Act, which resulted in mass surveillance domestically and internationally. The two decades of fighting in Afghanistan left thousands of U.S. troops dead or wounded and caused many hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilian casualties. Today, despite all that suffering and expenditure, the Taliban is back in power.
"I wish I could say that the foreign policy establishment in Washington learned its lesson after the failures of the Cold War and the Global War on Terror," Sanders wrote. "But, with a few notable exceptions, it has not."
"In the past decade alone, the United States has been involved in military operations in Afghanistan, Cameroon, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen," he noted. "The U.S. military maintains around 750 military bases in 80 countries and is increasing its presence abroad as Washington ramps up tensions with Beijing. Meanwhile, the United States is supplying [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's Israel with billions of dollars in military funding while he annihilates Gaza."
"U.S. policy on China is another illustration of failed foreign policy groupthink, which frames the U.S.-Chinese relationship as a zero-sum struggle," Sanders said. "For many in Washington, China is the new foreign policy bogeyman—an existential threat that justifies higher and higher Pentagon budgets."
Revisiting a major theme from his two Democratic presidential runs, Sanders contended that "economic policy is foreign policy."
"As long as wealthy corporations and billionaires have a stranglehold on our economic and political systems, foreign policy decisions will be guided by their material interests, not those of the vast majority of the world’s population," he said. "That is why the United States must address the moral and economic outrage of unprecedented income and wealth inequality, in which the richest 1% of the planet owns more wealth than the bottom 99%—an inequality that allows some people to own dozens of homes, private airplanes, and even entire islands, while millions of children go hungry or die of easily prevented diseases."
"The benefits of making this shift in foreign policy would far outweigh the costs," Sanders wrote. "The United States must recognize that our greatest strength as a nation comes not from our wealth or our military might but from our values of freedom and democracy."
"The biggest challenges of our times, from climate change to global pandemics, will require cooperation, solidarity, and collective action," he added, "not militarism."
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Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee filed a petition Monday with National Labor Relations Board formally requesting an election to join the United Auto Workers, which is campaigning aggressively to organize nonunion plants in the U.S. South and across the country.
The UAW tried and narrowly failed to organize Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant in 2014 and 2019, but the union's historic strike and contract victories at the Big Three automakers last year emboldened its unionization efforts.
"We want to be heard," Crystal Jenkins, a logistics worker at the Chattanooga plant, says in a video released by the UAW on Monday. "The reason I'm voting yes for the union is to have a voice."
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"A reckoning is coming," Chris Brooks, a strategist for UAW president Shawn Fain, wrote on social media. "Workers are standing up—and they are going to win.
The UAW said Monday that "a supermajority" of the more than 1,000 workers at the Chattanooga plant—Volkswagen's only assembly facility in the U.S.—signed union cards in just 100 days, a sign of broad support for the organizing effort.
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Lawmakers warned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that keeping interest rates high "needlessly worsens housing market imbalances" and "could threaten" workers' jobs and wages.
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Progressive lawmakers in the House and Senate urged the Federal Reserve on Monday to begin slashing interest rates in the near future, warning that the increasingly tight monetary conditions the central bank has imposed over the past two years risk imperiling strong post-pandemic job and
wage growth.
In a
letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined 19 House Democrats in calling for a "prompt timeline for future rate reductions," noting that the central bank has hiked rates 11 times since March 2022 and that inflation has nearly fallen "into line with the Federal Reserve's target."
"Today's excessively contractionary monetary policy needlessly worsens housing market imbalances and the unaffordability of home ownership, creates risks for banking stability, and could threaten the achievements of strong employment and wage growth and its attendant reductions in economic and racial inequalities," reads the letter, which was sent a day ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee's (FOMC) March 19-20 meeting.
If the Fed waits too long to begin cutting rates, the lawmakers cautioned, overly restrictive monetary policy could "reduce employment and real wage growth."
"We worry that higher unemployment and a harmful economic slowdown could result from a lagged effect of the prior 11 interest rate hikes since March 2022," the lawmakers added. "We believe it is critical for the FOMC to present the public with a clear and rapid timetable for reducing interest rates, ideally beginning at the May FOMC meeting in order to ensure a strong labor market and full employment for working Americans."
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates 11 times in the last 2 years, keeping working people from being able to get a raise, a mortgage, or car.
Today, @SenSanders, @SenWarren, and House progressives call on the Fed to finally lower interest rates.https://t.co/VvFNPwZ8lS
— Progressive Caucus (@USProgressives) March 18, 2024
Since the Fed started raising interest rates for the first time since 2018 just over two years ago, progressive lawmakers, advocates, and economists have been arguing that jacking up borrowing was not the solution to inflation fueled in large part by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and corporate price gouging. According to one recent study by the Groundwork Collaborative, corporate profiteering drove more than half of inflation between April and September 2023.
Last month, following a strong jobs report, Groundwork's Bilal Baydoun called for rate cuts, arguing that "the data is very clear that we never had to sacrifice jobs for lower prices."
"High interest rates will only slow our clean energy transition and put families in more debt," said Baydoun. "Chair Powell must change his tune and cut rates in March."
But the Fed is not expected to announce rate cuts following the two-day FOMC meeting that begins on Tuesday. The Associated Pressreported Monday that "Powell and his fellow Fed officials are expected to play it safe when they meet his week, keeping their rate unchanged for a fifth straight time and signaling that they still need further evidence that inflation is returning sustainably to their 2% target."
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released last week showed that overall inflation was 3.2% year-over-year—a slight uptick from January's reading but far below the 9.1% peak in 2022.
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