Climate change: another week of a ratcheting up crisis

I’m writing this post in between a series of projects in various stages of deadlines. Publishing the June FTTE report, getting ready to head out to the Reclaim conference, organizing a stack of in-person and virtual speaking engagements into next March, getting Future Trends Forum sessions set up through September, more interviews and book talks for Universities on Fire, preparing fall classes, advancing the next book projects … there’s a lot in the air here. So this post may be shorter than usual.

Today’s topic: simply that the climate crisis is continuing to ratchet up.

ITEM: the state of Arizona called a halt to new housing in suburban Phoenix and its unincorporated areas. Why? Because water scarcity in that very arid land keeps growing as a problem and research indicates the situation will become more difficult.

ITEM: old libraries in a Mauritanian city are increasingly under threat from the expanding desert.

ITEM: major insurer State Farm announced it would not offer many new policies (“including all business and personal lines property and casualty insurance”) in the state of California. Why it is cutting back? Several reasons: “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market.”…