Institutional Investor (November 27)
“Retail beef prices hit a record in July, as base demand across all grades, from prime to select, remained ‘incredibly good’…. Cattle supplies are tight and are likely to stay that way for the next few years as drought and high input prices will limit herd expansion.”
Tags: Beef prices, Cattle supplies, Demand, Drought, Grades, Herd expansion, High, Input prices, July, Prime, Record, Retail, Select, Tight
Earth.Org (August 25)
“Southwest China is battling the worst drought in more than half a century. Rainfall in the Yangtze River Basin is at its lowest since 1961, down 45% from last July.” Some places “have not seen rain in more than two months” and Yangtze water levels “have halved, affecting trade, limiting drinking water supplies, and causing rolling blackouts.”
Tags: 1961, Drinking water, Drought, Halved, Lowest, Rainfall, Rolling blackouts, Southwest China, Trade, Water levels, Worst, Yangtze River Basin
Forbes (August 24)
“Europe’s worst drought and heatwave in half a millennium is also a disaster in the realm of energy.” Though unspeakable suffering has followed in its wake, “it is the drought, especially the drying of European rivers, which should worry everyone the most…. Rivers are Europe’s economic and transportation backbone, and their drying will drive up energy and commodity prices” and stifle logistics and energy production. “Rivers form an invisible but vital infrastructure to every part of the European economy, and energy is no exception.”
Tags: Backbone, Commodity prices, Disaster, Drought, Drying, Energy, Europe, Heatwave, Logistics, Millennium, Rivers, Suffering, Transportation, Worst
Moscow Times (August 9)
“Smoke from wildfires burning across Russia’s largest and coldest region has reached the North Pole for what is believed to be the first time in known history.” The forest fires have been “fueled by hot weather and a 150-year record drought” and “already emitted a record 505 megatons of carbon dioxide.”
Tags: Burning, CO2, Drought, First time, Forest fires, Fueled, History, Hot, North Pole, Record, Russia, Smoke, Weather, Wildfires
Los Angeles Times (April 22)
“California has entered another drought.” But some researchers now suspect “the last one may never have really ended.” They posit “California and other Western states are actually more than two decades into an emerging ‘megadrought’—a hydrological event on par with the worst dry spells of the last millennium. Except this time, they say, human-caused climate change is driving its severity—and will make it that much harder to climb back out of.”
Tags: California, Climate change, Drought, Emerging, Human-caused, Megadrought, Millennium, Researchers
Reuters (December 24)
“A financing drought may crack farmers’ loyalty to Donald Trump. The U.S. president’s trade war has evaporated export markets for a number of crops, leaving growers struggling even more than before.”
Tags: Crops, Drought, Export markets, Farmers, Financing, Growers, Loyalty, Struggling, Trade war, Trump, U.S.
LA Times (December 19)
While the Trump administration is busy removing references to issues it would rather not acknowledge and covering them up with doublespeak, “the reality is that…the burning of fossil fuels by humans, spewing carbon and other greenhouse gases into the air… has increased the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans. And unless we take quick and radical steps… the world as we know it will change, with species die-offs, coastline changes, more intense major storms and altered drought and rain patterns. And it will happen whether Trump uses the words ‘climate change’ or not.”
Tags: Carbon, Climate change, Die-offs, Doublespeak, Drought, Fossil fuels, Greenhouse gases, Reality, Storms, Trump
Chicago Tribune (November 3)
“The most epic drought in sports history is over, and the Cubs are world champions. After 108 years of waiting, the Cubs won the 2016 World Series with a wild 8-7, 10-inning Game 7 victory over the Indians. The nearly five-hour roller-coaster game “was a perfect ending for a franchise that had waited forever for just one championship, and your stomach never will be the same. This is not a dream. The Cubs did it.”
Tags: Baseball, Champions, Chicago, Cleveland, Cubs, Drought, Epic, Indians, Roller coaster, World Series
Financial Times (July 27)
“Ending the tyranny of quarterly earnings is an idea that is on the march. The case for reforming shareholder capitalism is strong.” An “investment drought” is resulting from the focus on short-termism. “With healthy profits and a near zero cost of capital, now ought to be the time to lay down plans for the future. Today’s investments yield tomorrow’s dividends. But listed companies are almost uniformly opting for dividends today.” In the U.S., leading listed companies are, on average, investing only one dollar for every $8-$9 they return to shareholders.
Tags: Cost of capital, Drought, Future. Dividends, Investment, Profits, Quarterly earnings, Shareholder capitalism, Shareholders, Short-termism, U.S.
LA Times (March 20)
Last year “Californians responded initially with big water savings but let the hoses and sprinklers run again toward the end of last year, as the Sierra snow began to fall and it was easier to hope — to pretend — that the dry times were behind us. It’s clear now that’s not the case.” With the drought in its fourth year, “Californians must begin using water as though they are still at the front end of…cataclysm.”
Tags: California, Cataclysm, Drought, Snow, Water savings
