Op-Ed: How Much Corruption Will Democrat Voters Stomach Just To Defeat Trump? The Published Reporter
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Day: October 19, 2020
Young people’s faith in democratic politics is lower than any other age group, and millennials across the world are more disillusioned with democracy than Generation X or baby boomers were at the same stage of life.
This is according to a report from the Centre for the Future of Democracy at the University of Cambridge, which finds that in almost every global region it is among 18-34 year olds that satisfaction with democracy is in steepest decline.
Researchers also found that young people are most positive about democracy under populist leaders of both left and right, and millennials in advanced democracies are more likely to view political opponents as morally flawed.
The findings come from the largest-ever global dataset of democratic legitimacy. Cambridge researchers collaborated with the HUMAN Surveys Project to combine data from close to five million respondents in over 160 countries between 1973 and 2020 who were asked about their degree of satisfaction with democracy in their country.
“This is the first generation in living memory to have a global majority who are dissatisfied with the way democracy works while in their twenties and thirties,” said Dr Roberto Foa, lead author of the report from Cambridge’s Department of Politics and International Studies.
“By their mid-thirties, 55% of global millennials say they are dissatisfied with democracy, whereas under half of Generation X felt the same way at that age. The majority of baby boomers – now in their sixties and seventies – continue to report satisfaction with democracy, as did the interwar generation.”
In the UK of 1973, for example, 54% of 30-year-olds from the interwar generation reported satisfaction with British democracy. An even larger majority of UK baby boomers (57%) felt satisfied on turning 30 a decade later, and for 30-year-old Gen Xers in the 1990s and 2000s it reached 62%.
However, among UK millennials who turned 30 during the past decade, less than half (48%) felt satisfied with democracy on reaching that birthday.
Globally, as the first millennials began university at the turn of the century, satisfaction with democracy was higher than in their parents’ generation. It fell sharply following the financial crisis of 2008, with millennials losing faith harder and faster than older generations.
Foa points to the United States: almost two-thirds (63%) of US millennials were satisfied with American democracy in their early 20s, but by their mid-30s it had fallen to just a half (50%). Whereas three-quarters (74%) of US baby boomers were satisfied with democracy by their mid-30s and over two-thirds (68%) have remained so throughout their lives.
In fact, the idea that young malcontents soften in attitude as they age is now reversed the world over. Millennials and Gen Xers have grown steadily less satisfied with democracy as they have advanced in life.
Researchers argue that, in developed democracies, the biggest contributor to this trend is “economic exclusion” caused by high youth unemployment and wealth inequality: the strongest predictors of the satisfaction age gap.
Nations where wealth distribution is relatively flat, such as Iceland or Austria, see only minor generation gaps in attitudes to democracy, while those with persistent wealth inequality – such as the US – have large and growing divides.
“Higher debt burdens, lower odds of owning a home, greater challenges in starting a family, and reliance upon inherited wealth rather than hard work and talent to succeed are all contributors to youth discontent,” said Foa.
In the emerging democracies of Latin America, Africa and southern Europe, the team find “transition fatigue”: marked drops in satisfaction after 25 years of democracy, as generations come of age who lack the memory of previous dictatorships and fights for political freedom.
“Right across the world, we are seeing an ever widening gap between youth and older generations on how they perceive the functioning of democracy,” said Foa.
“This democratic disconnect is not a given, but the result of democracies failing to deliver outcomes that matter for young people in recent decades, from jobs and life chances to addressing inequality and climate change.”
While signs of millennial positivity towards democracy include an uptick in new EU member states, the most significant increase came from the “populist wave” of the last five years.
An average 16 percentage-point increase in satisfaction with democracy was detected among voters under 35 during the first two years of populist leaders. No comparable swell was seen when moderate politicians narrowly beat populists.
Whether the rise of leftwing Syriza and Podemos in Greece and Spain, or the populist right of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s Law and Justice party, all boosted pro-democracy attitudes among millennials, as did political realignment in countries from Brazil and Mexico to the Czech Republic.
“Countries electing populist leaders see sharp turnarounds in disenchantment, to the point where young people appear more satisfied with democracy under populists than under moderates,” said Daniella Wenger, one of the millennial team who co-authored the report.
Populism feeds on division, and the report shows that many millennials in today’s developed democracies see those on opposing sides of the political divide as morally flawed – a more “Manichaean” worldview, according to researchers.
In western democracies, 41% of millennials agree that you can “tell if a person is good or bad if you know their politics”, compared with 30% of voters over the age of 35. Very few elderly respondents hold this view in stable democracies such as Germany and Sweden. “This is not just an effect of individual life cycles, as we do not find these age gaps in emerging democracies,” said Foa.
“The prevalence of polarising attitudes among millennials may mean advanced democracies remain fertile ground for populist politics.”
“The populist challenge must shock moderate parties and leaders into action beyond cosmetic rebrands. If it does so, populism may still prompt democracy’s rebirth, rather than the onset of its gradual decay,” he said.
The article Democracy: Millennials Are The Most Disillusioned Generation ‘In Living Memory’ appeared first on Eurasia Review.
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The number of sea turtles spotted along the coasts of the UK and Ireland has declined in recent years, researchers say.
University of Exeter scientists studied records going back more than a century (1910-2018) and found almost 2,000 sea turtles had been sighted, stranded or captured. Recorded sightings increased dramatically in the 1980s and 1990s – possibly due to more public interest in conservation, and better reporting schemes. Numbers have dropped since 2000, but the reasons for this are unclear.
“Lots of factors could affect the changing of numbers of sea turtles sighted,” said Zara Botterell, of the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. “Climate change, prey availability and environmental disasters such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill could all influence turtle numbers and behaviour.
“However, sea turtle populations in the North Atlantic are largely stable or increasing, and the apparent decrease may represent reduced reporting rather than fewer turtles in our seas. One reason for this could be that fewer fishing boats are at sea now than in the past – and fishers are the most likely people to see and report turtles.”
The most common turtles spotted off the UK and Ireland are leatherbacks – making up 1,683 of the 1,997 sightings since 1910. Leatherbacks are thought to be the only sea turtle species that “intentionally” visits these waters, with adults arriving in summer in search of their jellyfish prey.
Meanwhile, juvenile loggerheads (240 since 1910) and Kemp’s ridley turtles (61) are more often spotted in winter – likely carried on currents and finding themselves stranded in cold waters.
There are seven sea turtle species in total, and the others are much rarer in UK and Irish waters. Only 11 green turtle sightings were found in the records (all from 1980 to 2016), while just one hawksbill (Cork, Ireland in 1983) and one olive ridley (Anglesey, Wales in 2016) have been recorded. The only species never recorded in UK or Irish waters is the flatback, which is only found around Northern Australia, Southern Indonesia and Southern Papua New Guinea.
Most of the recorded sightings of turtles in the UK and Ireland were along western and southern coasts. Of the 1,997 turtles sighted, 143 were “bycatch” (caught accidentally) in fishing lines, nets and ropes – and the large majority of these were released alive.
The study used the TURTLE database, operated by Marine Environmental Monitoring.
The research team thanked the many members of the public who have reported turtle sightings and strandings, and noted the “pivotal role” of the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme (CSIP) and Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS), funded by UK governments.
“We have been lucky to analyse this unique dataset that exists because Britain and Ireland are a real hotbed of engaged citizen science, where members of the public report their sightings in schemes supported by conservation charities and government bodies,” said Professor Brendan Godley, who leads the Exeter Marine research group.
The article Mystery Over Decline In Sea Turtle Sightings appeared first on Eurasia Review.
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The Columbia River is home to one of the West Coast’s most important Chinook salmon runs. Through late spring and early summer, mature fish return from the sea and begin their arduous journey upriver to spawn. In recent years, these fish have faced an additional challenge: hungry California sea lions.
A new University of Washington and NOAA Fisheries study found that sea lions have the largest negative effect on early-arriving endangered Chinook salmon in the lower Columbia River. The results of this study are published in Journal of Applied Ecology.
Opportunistic sea lions have learned that by swimming as far as 145 miles upriver, they can easily feast on migrating salmon, including those hindered by the Bonneville Dam.
“We investigated whether mortality rates varied depending on the specific threatened Chinook salmon population, determined by when they arrive in the river,” said lead author Mark Sorel, a doctoral student at the UW School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. “We found that, based on their individual return timing and the abundance of sea lions in the river when they return, individual populations experience different levels of sea lion-associated mortality.”
Researchers learned that the earliest arriving populations of Chinook salmon experienced an additional 20% mortality over previous years, and the later arriving populations experienced an additional 10%. This increase in mortality was associated with increased sea lion abundance at those times of year in the period of 2013 to 2015 compared to the period of 2010 to 2012.
The numbers of California sea lions are highest at the mouth of the Columbia in early spring, before they depart for their breeding grounds in southern California. The researchers also discovered that the earliest arriving salmon migrate through the lower Columbia River more slowly than those arriving later in the season, thereby increasing their exposure to predation.
“This information on how different populations are affected by sea-lion associated mortality is key because recovery of endangered Chinook salmon requires multiple of the individual populations to be healthy,” said Sorel.
California sea lions have seen their numbers rebound along much of the U.S. West Coast since the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, which protects them from being killed, captured and harassed. The increased presence of sea lions is now at odds with the endangered salmon populations on which they feed, putting managers in a difficult position.
Researchers are concerned that something must be done quickly as these hunting behaviors are learned, and the problem could continue to grow exponentially. In August, the National Marine Fisheries Service granted approval for Washington, Idaho, Oregon and several Pacific Northwest tribes to capture and euthanize both problematic California and Steller sea lions within a larger area of the lower Columbia and Willamette Rivers. Previously, only California sea lions could be killed in these rivers if managers deemed them a threat to salmon.
This complicated decision was enacted after non-lethal methods, such relocation and hazing, to limit the impact sea lions have on salmon — plus some targeted lethal removal — were met with limited success.
“This is often a challenging management problem as both sea lions and salmon are of strong interest to the public, and both are protected under federal statutes,” said Sorel. “Management must consider multiple social values and operate within existing legal frameworks.”
Continued monitoring will help to reduce the remaining uncertainty about the effects of sea lions on salmon and the expected outcomes of alternative management actions.
The article Early-Arriving Endangered Chinook Salmon Take Brunt Of Sea Lion Predation appeared first on Eurasia Review.
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Forum, Oct. 20: The right to vote is the moral basis of America Valley News
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We haven’t heard much about Ghislaine Maxwell lately because she’s already been arrested and she’s awaiting trial, and prosecutors don’t usually say much until the trial happens. But as it turns out there’s also a separate yet related court battle playing out over Maxwell’s sealed testimony in a years-old civil case, and she just lost her appeals court attempt at blocking its release.
The timetable for the release will be up to the judge who made the original ruling. But we’re now facing the possibility that Ghislaine Maxwell’s transcript could be released before election day. This is a big deal, because while it’s not known precisely what the transcript says about Donald Trump, it is known that Jeffrey Epstein recruited Maxwell to do his criminal bidding while they were both at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
While we don’t know what will be specifically said about Donald Trump in the Ghislaine Maxwell transcript, there’s a good bet something will be in there about Trump. This is the last thing he needs right now. And depending on the specific timing, it could end up being an October surprise. But as always, we can’t count on this kind of variable to decide the outcome of the election; it still comes down to overwhelming voter turnout.
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