Best printers for Home

Best Mixer Grinder

Best wired Earphones

Best 43 Inch TV in India

Best Wi Fi Routers

Best Home Theatre in India

Smart Watch under 5000

Best Laptops for Education

Best Laptop for Students

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The Washington Post said Friday it wouldn't endorse a presidential candidate.</li><li>The paper has since lost 8% of paid subscriptions, NPR reported. Some staffers have resigned.</li></ul><a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/washington-post-staff-revolt-presidential-endorsement-2024-10">The Washington Post's</a> decision not to endorse a candidate in the presidential election may have cost it hundreds of thousands of subscribers. More than 200,000 people have canceled their Post subscriptions since Friday, NPR's David Folkenflik <a target="_blank" href="https://www.npr.org/2024/10/28/nx-s1-5168416/washington-post-bezos-endorsement-president-cancellations-resignations">reported</a> Monday, citing two knowledgeable sources.It's not unusual for people to cancel news subscriptions over controversial content or decisions, but such protests are rarely significant or long-lasting.In the case of the Post, the reported numbers represent about 8% of its paid circulation of 2.5 million print and digital subscribers.That would be a significant setback for Will Lewis, the Post's president and CEO, who recently <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/business/media/washington-post-dealmaking-will-lewis.html">trumpeted</a> that the paper was growing digital subs for the first time since 2021. A Washington Post spokesperson declined to comment.Like most other legacy media, the Post has struggled to make up for the loss of print-based revenue and capture subscriber revenue as readers have migrated online.Lewis, who is nearing his first year in the role, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/05/22/washington-post-will-lewis-subscriptions/">said</a> in May that the Post lost $77 million in the previous year and had been losing digital readers for years. "To speak candidly: We are in a hole, and we have been for some time," he told employees at the time.The newsroom is also now grappling with some staff protests and resignations. David Hoffman, who last week accepted a Pulitzer Prize, has quit the editorial board, according to a resignation note shared on X. Molly Roberts, an editorial writer, posted to X over the weekend that she quit. Columnist Michele Norris and editor at large Robert Kagan have left the paper. Nineteen opinion columnists signed a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/25/post-columnist-no-endorsement-2024-trump-harris/">column</a> protesting the decision.The decision has stoked fears that news outlets are censoring themselves in fear of former President Donald Trump, who has publicly called for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-said-hed-be-entitled-to-a-revenge-tour-if-reelected-2023-2">revenge against his enemies</a>. The Los Angeles Times endorsed statewide candidates but declined to endorse a presidential candidate this year, prompting three staff <a target="_blank" href="https://www.npr.org/2024/10/24/nx-s1-5163293/la-times-editor-resigns-trump-msnbc-washington-post">resignations</a>.The New York Times <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/27/business/media/washington-post-president-endorsement.html">reported</a> on Sunday that Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post's owner since 2013, voiced reservations in late September about running an endorsement. The Times also reported that the Post's opinion editor, David Shipley, told staffers Monday he had "tried hard to dissuade Mr. Bezos" and that Shipley "did not explain what rationale, if any, Mr. Bezos gave for his decision."Representatives for Bezos did not respond to requests for comment.The Post had previously shared a statement from Lewis calling reporting around Bezos' role in the situation inaccurate, saying: "He was not sent, did not read and did not opine on any draft. As Publisher, I do not believe in presidential endorsements. We are an independent newspaper and should support our readers' ability to make up their own minds."

The Bezos-Washington Post crisis is getting worse

Paloma Canseco has applied to 250 jobs since July. She's tweaked cover letters and filled out long, monotonous forms on different companies' internal <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jobseekers-recruiters-hiring-broken-ai-bots-resumes-interviews-spam-bias-2024-5">job postings</a>. And last week, she got a call back from a recruiter about a graphic-design job. Robin was polite and friendly on the phone, asking Canseco open-ended questions, like, "Tell me about your last project and what you liked about it." But Robin wasn't a person. It was an <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-power-list-2024">AI recruiter</a>.Canseco hung up. "This is meant to be a conversation," she tells me. "I'm not going to spend my time with this recruiting company if they don't hire actual recruiters." It takes her half an hour to apply to each job on average, she says, and putting that effort in only to be met with an automated response feels like an insult.Job hunting has never been fun, but the process "feels broken," says Rohan Rajiv, the head of career products at<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/americas-hottest-comedy-club-linkedin-satire-unhinged-ceos-2024-10"> LinkedIn</a>. According to the company's data, job applications are up 20% since last year. It's an intense and frustrating process. And LinkedIn wants to fix the disconnect, in part by fighting AI … with AI.Earlier this year, the company rolled out new AI tools to premium subscribers. People could open a chat window and ask a chatbot whether they were a good fit for a job based on their profile and the job description. Then, this summer, LinkedIn unveiled an update that would use <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-using-ai-bain-survey-roi-2024-6">generative AI</a> to quickly write cover letters based on job descriptions and a user's profile. I tried it and found the results weren't bad — a cover letter may just need a few tweaks or extra personalization before it sounded like me.In the coming weeks, LinkedIn will begin making its AI <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/careerist-corporate-ladder-decline-promotions-work-ethic-american-dream-2024-10">job-matching</a> tools widely available to all users, Rajiv tells me. They can visit any job listing and ask LinkedIn to show how they match up, and generative AI will detail how well they fit the role and break down how a recruiter may evaluate their profile. The hope is that with more transparency, people will apply to fewer jobs — but ones that better fit their qualifications — and stop "swinging at every <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-fintech-reflexivity-pitch-deck-raise-30-million-series-b-2024-10">pitch</a>," Rajiv says, adding: "It's natural to make quantity and volume your friend. But the greater the volume, the tougher the match."The age-old career advice that there's no harm in trying, it turns out, has a limit that we've stretched past the point of insanity. Can LinkedIn save us from hiring hell?Only 30 years ago, most people largely found jobs through their networks, career fairs, and newspaper ads. Monster launched its job board in 1994, and <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-linkedin-got-weird-work-life-blurred-lines-of-oversharing-2023-9">LinkedIn</a> came around about a decade later. Recruiting software and AI, which seemed like opportunities to streamline the process, have in some ways further complicated the art of landing a good gig. Applicants are asked to fill out long forms that repeat the information already outlined on their résumés and LinkedIn profiles, in what seems like an endurance test of their ever-depleting sanity. Sites like LinkedIn are great for searching tons of relevant job openings in one place, but people can end up overapplying, casting a wide net to roles that might not be the best fit.That's particularly true for some using LinkedIn's Easy Apply feature or generative-AI tools that help them mass-apply. In a ZipRecruiter survey last year, 25% of respondents who had gotten new jobs said they used AI to help them. Following the peak of the pandemic, people were looking to quit and change jobs during the "<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/quiet-quitting-hustle-culture-coasting-viral-work-debate-2022-9">Great Resignation</a>" at the highest rates since the US Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the data in 2000. That means more people are entering this chaotic job market and dealing with the pain points over and over. All those hopeful (or half-assed) résumés also hit a wall of overwhelmed recruiters. Some use AI to try to reduce the noise. In a Society for Human Resource Management survey of companies that use AI in recruiting, nearly 65% of respondents said they used it for writing job descriptions, 34% said they used it to review and scan résumés, and 33% said they used it to communicate with applicants throughout the process. Other recruiters are wary of the tech because we still don't know enough about how those tools make the decisions they do. And automated human-resources tech has a history of favoring men over women, as well as down-ranking résumés with Black-sounding names or those with employment gaps.The fatigue has fully hit job seekers. This week, in a post that went viral on LinkedIn, Hayley Finegan, an HR professional, posted an "open but picky" banner on her LinkedIn profile, poking fun at the "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-open-to-work-banner-badge-job-pros-cons-2024-9">open to work</a>" LinkedIn banner, which some job seekers see as desperate and cringeworthy. "I've applied for exactly three jobs, and that's because I'm holding out for the right one," she wrote. "I'm not here to take just any job — I'm here for the right role." Capturing the overworked-job-seeker mentality, the post quickly went viral. (Finegan did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this story.)<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hiring-slump-professional-white-collar-jobs-recession-high-salary-2024-4">Job seekers</a> and recruiters are caught in what feels like a never-ending loop. The two may seem pitted against one another, with applicants trying to figure out how to get past the recruiter and get paid, and recruiters working to suss out who's fluffing up their résumé or even lying. Both are increasingly ghosting one another. In reality, they want the same thing: a good job match for the least amount of effort. There may be no perfect number of jobs to apply to: Indeed recommends people apply to about 15 jobs a week, or two to three each day. But the average recruiting time for a job is going up, hitting 44 days in early 2023, the human-capital advisory firm The Josh Bersin Co. found. And there's not enough transparency in what's driving the decision-making.For people who haven't updated their profiles, provided as many details about their skills, or posted to the feed, tools like LinkedIn's may not work as well to fully show their qualifications. But Rajiv says the company's AI tool will synthesize not just a person's highlighted skills but other data, like posts they share to the feed, which can include other skills they have. LinkedIn is also shaking things up on the recruiter side. Starting Tuesday, some recruiters can use the company's hiring assistant, a tool where they upload job descriptions and have generative AI synthesize qualifications for the role and build up a roster of candidates.The best tool for job hunters is speed. They need to see jobs soon after they're posted and apply, and that gives them a better chance than applying for hundreds or thousands of jobs. AI may help notify candidates when the right positions are posted. Find that perfect job quickly "can happen, and increasingly it will as these algorithms get smarter," says Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter's chief economist. ZipRecruiter also rolled out revamped AI tools to help job seekers find better matches this summer. And earlier this year, Indeed began offering an AI tool to better recommend job candidates to recruiters.Some recruiters say that AI isn't capturing the full picture of candidates. Millie Black, a principal technical recruiter at Techtrust, says she's passionate about AI's potential. But she says she's found that tools like <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/another-safety-researcher-is-leaving-openai-2024-10">ChatGPT</a> don't "read between the lines" and overlook some skills that may make a candidate a great fit, even if they aren't the ones directly listed. The same has happened for certain LinkedIn searches, she says. It's something she could figure out because she has in-depth knowledge of the specialized tech jobs she recruits for. When searching for the one person on the planet who can do the role, recruiters still have to pore over résumés.But Black also says she's seen an uptick in fake candidates lately. At times, she's had to ask candidates for identification documentation before even sending them through the process, or prescreen people on video calls "just to see a face," she adds. As she's recruiting for high-paying, US-based jobs that offer remote work, scammers are more common. "My whole job is to beat" down the fakers before they make their way to the hiring managers. She has also learned to add questions to try to weed out less serious applicants. "If you just throw a job up as Easy Apply and don't add pre-screening questions, you get way too many people," she says.Canseco has not yet tried LinkedIn's AI tools because she isn't a premium user, but she could get access to them soon. When she applies for jobs, she often uses LinkedIn and tries to reach the company directly, to stand out. One recruiter at a job she recently applied to told her she was among 3,000 applicants they had received in that week.<a target="_blank" rel="" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/amanda-hoover">Amanda Hoover</a> is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

LinkedIn thinks it has the solution to our hiring crisis

<ul class="summary-list"><li>President-elect Donald Trump has questioned the reality of the climate crisis.</li><li>He's expected to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement, which he also did in his first term.</li></ul>President-elect Donald Trump has long questioned the reality of the climate crisis, describing it as a "scam" and accusing policies to tackle the crisis of destroying US jobs.Many expect him to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement to limit emissions upon taking power in January, as he did in his first term.But his hostility to green policies conflicts with another of his priorities — challenging the rise of China."A second US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement would present a significant opportunity for China to expand its leadership role in multilateral climate issues," Herbert Crowther, an analyst with the Eurasia Group in New York told Business Insider.Trump's victory is overshadowing this week's UN climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where pledges from Biden administration officials are tempered by the fact they won't be around for long.And China is already positioning itself to fill the power vacuum and build its global influence."In the week since the election, we're already seeing China try to claim the mantle of global climate leadership and portray itself as the more "responsible" actor in this space," Lily McElwee, fellow in the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, told Business Insider."Beijing is out in force at COP29 calling for the United States under Trump to engage in 'constructive dialogue' and highlighting China's contributions to decarbonization through major investments in electric vehicles and other greentech industries."<div type="image" title="Chinese solar power station" height="576" width="1024" msid="115335201" hostid="261" sizebytes="137800"></div><h2 id="f89b9ca3-aa4a-4bb2-a5bf-27324f610f4d">The green tech superpower</h2>China has a curious position as both the world's largest polluter, and a powerhouse of green technology.It tops the <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/the-carbon-brief-profile-china/index.html#">rankings for greenhouse emissions</a>, which helped power its huge economic growth in recent decades. In 2020, President Xi Jinping pledged that China would become <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://chinaeucn.com/carbon-neutrality-china/#:~:text=In%20September%202020%2C%20president%20Xi,carbon%20neutrality%20to%20the%20world.">carbon neutral by 2060,</a> and it's on track this year to record its first drop in greenhouse <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-meeting-us-climate-solar-panels-coal-power-energy-security-2024-5">emissions since 2016.</a>At the same time, China has pushed harder to produce its own green technology — and sell it to the rest of the world.It is the world's largest producer of electric vehicles and solar panels, and the percentage of its energy coming from renewable sources <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.iea.org/reports/renewables-2023/executive-summary#">is rapidly growing.</a>That work brings practical and economic benefits. Analysts also point to other motives for Beijing's green push: influence and power."Where the Trump administration sees renewable energy as a threat to jobs, China is leveraging clean energy as part of a long-term strategic gambit," wrote <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-is-poised-to-transform-the-clean-energy-industry/">Daniel Araya of the Brookings Institute in Washington, DC, in 2018.</a>China, as part of its "Belt and Road" initiative to grow its global influence, has provided developing countries with renewable energy technologies, including wind farms."Green tech plays a critical role in Xi's economic vision. While China has spent a decade trying to catch up to the United States and other advanced economies in existing tech (like semiconductors), it is increasingly focused on securing leadership in emerging industries like cleantech," said McElwee.The strategy is paying off, with global demand for renewable energy production technologies predicted to surge, and China set to account for 60% of installed global renewable energy capacity by 2030, according to an <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.iea.org/news/massive-global-growth-of-renewables-to-2030-is-set-to-match-entire-power-capacity-of-major-economies-today-moving-world-closer-to-tripling-goal">October report by the International Energy Agency.</a>The US lags China as a clean tech economic power.Trump has been explicit about his plans to repeal and otherwise roll back climate policies from the Biden administration.That included <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/05/trump-inflation-reduction-act-00177493">a pledge</a> just before the election to "rescind all unspent funds" from President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which provided billions in funding for clean tech.<h2 id="d064aeb1-2497-4d9c-b893-7e2c1b98241d">Will China step up? </h2>There are also doubts over how much China is willing to take an international leadership role on climate issues.It's been wary of international agreements to tackle climate change in the past, and last year was accused by European officials of <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/china-denies-reports-it-obstructed-g20-climate-discussions-2023-08-02/#:~:text=China%20denies%20reports%20it%20obstructed%20G20%20climate%20discussions%20%7C%20Reuters">obstructing G20 efforts </a>to tackle the climate crisis, Reuters reported. Assuming a leadership role would likely require China to send money to other countries, said Crowther. "The key question for officials in Beijing will now turn to whether China wants to deepen its financial commitments to helping other countries—particularly emerging markets—accelerate their own energy transitions," he said.Crowther said the run up to next year's COP30 summit in Brazil would provide clues of China's intentions. Ultimately, Xi may be more interested in cementing China's economic advantages than in concrete diplomatic pledges. "Although Beijing will try to boost its image as a global leader on climate change, I don't know how much substance will follow," said McElwee.

Trump called the climate crisis a scam. It could prove a gift to China.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Saudi Arabia could flood the market with oil to regain control of prices.</li><li>This would create a difficult situation for Russia, which is reliant on higher crude prices. </li></ul>Russia's wartime economy could face a tougher time securing needed oil revenue if Saudi Arabia tanks global crude prices.The kingdom has reportedly signaled that crude <a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/saudi-arabia-opec-oil-production-cuts-crude-prices-middle-east-2024-10">could drop as low as $50 a barrel</a> if the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries does not commit to reducing oil output.In other words, Riyadh is hinting that it could flood the market with oil supply, analysts say. The move would slash prices and penalize OPEC members who have not cooperated in reducing oil flows — including Russia."With Russia already selling its oil at discounted rates and with higher production costs, a low-price environment in oil markets may impact its ability to finance its aggression in Ukraine," Luke Cooper, a research fellow at the London School of Economics, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/foreign-and-security-policy/will-oil-decide-the-fate-of-the-russia-ukraine-war-7836/">wrote for the IPS Journal</a>.Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of OPEC, has been trying to keep oil above $100 per barrel by pushing for member states to cut production.But with <a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/oil-price?utm_medium=ingest&amp;utm_source=markets">international crude</a> hovering below the $80 mark, this hasn't worked. To shift strategy sources told the Financial Times that <a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/saudi-arabia-oil-prices-brent-crude-outlook-opec-production-cuts-2024-9">Riyadh now plans to turn on its taps</a> by December."Saudi Arabia is fed up," Simon Henderson, director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute, told Business Insider. "Leadership of OPEC is a multifaceted responsibility. It can work well, but it's also like herding cats — pretty damn impossible, at least some of the time."<a target="_blank" href="https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/080824-opec-produces-437000-bd-above-quota-in-first-month-of-compensation-cuts">S&amp;P Global Ratings</a> data counts Russia among the overproducers in OPEC+. According to its last available data, Moscow produced 122,000 barrels above its daily quota in July. Iran and Kazakhstan also breached agreed-upon thresholds.<h3 id="60a31c17-d810-4adf-87a8-d604514ebe43">The Kremlin's dilemma</h3>Henderson suggested that some coalition members might be doing this to maximize profits.In Russia's case, Moscow is facing pressure to rake in as much as it can, as its war in Ukraine has ballooned defense and security spending in three years of war. These sectors will collectively account for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-outlook-defense-budget-spending-ukraine-war-putin-sanctions-2024-10">40% of all federal expenditures in Russia next year</a>.Russia's finances, meanwhile, are heavily dependent on oil revenue. A few years ago, gas and oil production made up <a target="_blank" href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-reducing-share-budget-revenue-gas-oil-minister-says-2024-10-10/">35%-40% of the nation's budget revenue</a>, the country's finance minister said this week.It's for this reason that the West has been so focused on curbing Russian oil profits. Consider the Group of Seven's $60 price cap on Moscow's crude: though the two-year initiative has <a target="_blank" href="https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2024/0514">not panned out as hoped</a>, it was considered to be a key to keeping oil supply stable while denying the Kremlin much needed revenue.Russia has been able to circumvent these caps <a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/russia-sanctions-oil-trade-shadow-fleet-tankers-ukraine-war-economy-2024-8">using unregistered "shadow" tankers</a>, but Riyadh's $50 per barrel threat might be harder to overcome.Things could turn sour if Saudia Arabia's supply dump reignites an oil price war between Russia and the kingdom. Henderson <a target="_blank" href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/saudi-arabia-signals-oil-policy-shift">suggested this could happen</a>, referring to a similar event that occurred in 2020.That year, production cut disagreements prompted both nations to unleash supply, testing who could survive this low-price environment longer.In these situations, foreign exchange reserves become essential, which is problematic for Russia. Since invading Ukraine, the country's insurance against low oil prices has dissipated. Russia's National Wealth fund was nearly <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-bleeding-money-liquid-reserves-national-wealth-fund-war-2024-1">halved at the start of this year,</a> and it is no longer able to source Western currencies to diversify its foreign exchange reserves.It remains to be seen whether President Vladimir Putin will want to engage in a price war with Riyadh, given his other, more immediate priorities, Henderson said.Predicting the Kremlin's moves is hard, he said, given many unknowns tied to Russia's oil sales.However, some kind of confrontation with Saudi Arabia may be stirring. This week, Russia's deputy prime minister Alexander Novak said it's <a target="_blank" href="https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-says-too-early-say-if-market-ready-extra-oil-dec-2024-10-09/">unclear whether OPEC should increase oil output at its December meeting</a>, as signaled by Saudi Arabia.If things do take a turn for the worst, Cooper sees a potential price war as bad news for Russia. "Unlike Saudi Arabia, its oil is not cheap to extract, making it poorly equipped to deal with low-price conditions. This drives a short-term escalatory logic for Russia's war on Ukraine, requiring rapid battlefield successes prior to the emergence of low-price oil market conditions."

How Saudi Arabia could create a crisis for Russia's economy

Our homes should make us feel safe. A decent home is a refuge from the outside world, a relatively fixed point where people can drop their vigilance. Most of us need the security of home to stay balanced in the face of an unstable, sometimes frightening world.But Americans are increasingly less safe in their own homes. This isn't because of a sudden surge in crime (<a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-murder-rate-dropped-by-13-percent-in-2023">which is actually declining in most places</a>) but because of climate and geography.Compared with much of the rest of the country, many of America's cities are well situated to weather the coming decades of the climate crisis. Their density makes them <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/passive-house-energy-efficient-lower-utility-bills-2023-7">more energy-efficient</a> — partly because residents tend to drive less and apartments are easier to keep cool than single-family homes. They also have more robust emergency-services infrastructure than rural areas and are situated further from fire-prone wooded areas.But as <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/yimbys-winning-lower-house-prices-rents-build-more-homes-neighborhoods-2023-9">local zoning and resident opposition</a> have made it nearly impossible to build housing in these cities, would-be residents are pushed into more treacherous areas. In some parts of the country, the only affordable homes for middle-class households are in areas prone to disasters. The people who move to those high-risk areas are being robbed of the security that everyone should be able to enjoy in their homes. Because of our collective refusal to build more housing where it is most needed, millions of people live with elevated climate risk.Until we act, more of those people are fated to lose their homes — or their lives.<h2>The heat is on</h2>As is increasingly routine, extreme heat has been roasting much of the United States this summer. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.azfamily.com/2024/07/05/heatwave-hell-phoenix-high-temp-soars-118-shattering-previous-record/">Phoenix hit a daily high of 118 degrees</a> in June, breaking a 40-year-old record. In Texas, a broiling July heat wave caused power outages for millions of people and clogged hospitals with patients who could not be safely discharged to homes that lacked air conditioning. These heat waves have deadly consequences: <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dangers-extreme-summer-heat-united-states-poverty-air-conditioning-access-2023-8">Extreme heat killed 2,302 Americans</a> in 2023 alone.While many parts of the country have faced high temperatures this year, the danger has not been evenly distributed. Where I live, across the bay from San Francisco, thermometers climbed into the mid-80s — not exactly pleasant for perspiration-prone Ashkenazi men such as myself, but tolerable. Further-inland locales like California's fast-growing Central Valley, on the other hand, have been getting positively scorched. On the West Coast, the safest place to be in a heat wave tends to be near the Pacific Ocean. But that's not where people are moving. Thanks to the city's anemic new-housing growth, the population of San Francisco (average daily high in July: 66 degrees) has stagnated for years while home prices have soared. Growth has been faster and more consistent in white-hot cities like Fresno (98 degrees), Sacramento (93 degrees), and Bakersfield (98 degrees), where housing is more abundant but deadly heat is far more common. The Golden State's land-use patterns are putting middle-class and working-class households at a higher risk of exposure to extreme, possibly fatal, heat. This split is a miniature version of the trend playing out across the US: Migration is pushing more people into harm's way. The fastest-growing states in the country are in the Sun Belt: Texas, Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. The Sun Belt also happens to be the part of the country <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-housing-market-prediction-sun-belt-climate-change-zelman-2024-7">most at risk of extreme heat</a> as the climate crisis gets worse. There were <a target="_blank" href="https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/12/texas-heat-deaths-2023-record-climate-change/">more than 300 heat-related deaths in Texas</a> last year. And that's to say nothing of the risk Gulf states face from hurricanes, which climate change has similarly exacerbated.The shift to the Sun Belt isn't part of some sublimated death drive or a desire to test the limits of modern sunscreen. The reason for the mass movement is pretty simple: People are going where they can afford housing. Compare homebuilding in Houston (average daily July high of 95 degrees) with homebuilding in San Francisco. I've found that <a target="_blank" href="https://cayimby.org/reports/housing-first/">Houston had roughly three times as many housing starts per capita in 2021 as San Francisco</a>, and even in parts of the past decade where Houston's housing starts dipped a bit, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/houston-building-cheap-new-starter-homes-real-estate-construction-lots-2024-1">they were still significantly higher than San Francisco's</a>. No wonder, then, that a one-bedroom apartment in <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/austin-real-estate-housing-market-prices-houston-zoning-affordable-2023-8">Houston costs half as much</a> as one in San Francisco, even though Houston has increased its population by more than 200,000 residents since 2010. Houston's ability to build more housing than San Francisco comes down to the rules the two cities impose on the construction of new housing. The same could be said of much of the rest of the Sun Belt. Houston is an extreme example because it literally does not have a zoning code, but in general, Sun Belt cities tend to have much looser zoning and permitting rules than high-cost California cities.Even within many states, new housing tends to get built in the areas most vulnerable to climate disasters. Once again, take California: San Francisco and other exclusionary coastal towns block new housing, so much of the state's homebuilding takes the form of single-family sprawl deep into extremely hot inland, low-lying areas or into what's called the <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=92a86309da8af9c28c10ca5b6aa5757a3e91f2f44f8b02e2d254a15f222499c9&amp;postID=66c33fc47d61a86c186c52d0&amp;postSlug=affordable-home-house-prices-americans-danger-death-climate-change-2024-8&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41598-022-09707-7">wildland-urban interface</a>: the part of the state where forest fires crash up against human habitation, with deadly results. Ironically, some of this allocation is done under the cover of environmentalism. The California Environmental Quality Act requires developers to go through a convoluted environmental-review process to get their projects approved. While California's legislature has spent the past few years expanding the types of projects that are exempt from the law, it's still a powerful tool that not-in-my-backyarders, or NIMBYs, can use to block development in their neighborhoods. Unsurprisingly, the threat of CEQA litigation tends to loom largest in affluent, exclusive communities; the risk of litigation is lowest in sparsely populated areas, where there are few residents to complain about new housing. Thus the law actually creates an incentive to concentrate development in the wildland-urban interface, away from the more densely populated areas that also happen to be more fire-resistant.To be sure, income and climate risk are not perfectly correlated; <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/million-nantucket-beach-house-sold-200k-after-erosion-swallows-land-2024-7">several wealthy enclaves</a> are at <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nantucket-homes-wealthy-falling-into-ocean-erosion-climate-2024-5">risk of coastal erosion</a>. And a fair amount of high-value real estate is nestled in the wildland-urban interface, as the San Francisco Bay Area learned during the 1991 Oakland Hills fires and as Los Angeles learned during the 2018 Woolsey fire that chewed up Malibu. But America's housing shortage tends to distribute climate-related suffering along class lines. Even if they manage to avoid sudden catastrophes, people who have been pushed out to the urban periphery may well face subtler long-term consequences. If living in a wildfire-prone area doesn't kill you or destroy your house, it can still increase your exposure to toxic smoke, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/symptoms-poor-air-quality-exposure-harms-health-wildfire-smoke">which can lead to serious respiratory and cardiovascular conditions</a>. Beyond the risks from heat, fire, and smoke inhalation are the more quotidian harms of being geographically cut off from the center of a metropolitan area. In 2010, nearly 10% of Americans lived in areas where it would take them more than an hour to reach a trauma-care center in the event of an emergency. For those who work in the central city, even the long commute from the exurbs can be dangerous. <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/public-transportation-commuting-health-driving-2015-2">Long car commutes</a> have been <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/commuting-by-car-is-hurting-peoples-mental-health-2023-7">associated with higher blood pressure</a>, and that's to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ways-your-commute-is-slowly-killing-you-2016-2">say nothing of the other risks</a> associated with a long ride in a country where traffic collisions <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/vehicle-related-deaths-increase-car-safety-pedestrians-cyclists-2023-9">kill more than 40,000 people each year</a>. If we could somehow wish away the large and growing risk of climate disasters, sprawl would still be bad for American public health.<h2>What makes a home</h2>In his book about Hurricane Katrina, the historian Andy Horowitz writes that "disasters are less discrete events than they are contingent processes." The true disaster is not the hurricane on its own but how the hurricane collides with society, politics, and infrastructure. A hurricane of a certain strength, speed, and rainfall can have drastically different effects depending on whether it makes landfall in an uninhabited area, a thoroughly prepared city, or a city with inadequate levees, entrenched patterns of residential segregation, and an ill-equipped emergency-response system.Similarly, the safety of our communities is directly tied to choices about where, how, and why we build them. Sure, small things like doing controlled burns, making air conditioning more widely available, and building better evacuation routes can reduce some of the dangers created by pushing people out to the periphery. But we have a moral imperative to allow more homebuilding in the parts of the country that are already well positioned to accept more people. While NIMBYs have cleverly cited environmental concerns to block housing development in these areas, making it possible for more people to live in them is essential to sustainably and safely growing our country for the next generation.<a target="_blank" rel="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/ned-resnikoff">Ned Resnikoff</a> is the policy director of California YIMBY and co-leader of the Metropolitan Abundance Project.

The deadly cost of America's housing crisis

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Russia faces a crisis whether it continues the war or not, economist Alexander Mertens says.</li><li>He pointed to signs of economic distress like high inflation and interest rates.</li></ul>Russia's overheated economy is almost certainly headed for a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-ukraine-war-outlook-moscow-sanctions-west-firms-uchicago-2024-10">crisis</a> no matter what Vladimir Putin does, according to a Ukrainian economist.Alexander Mertens, a professor of finance and economics at Kyiv's International Institute of Business, issued a grim forecast about Russia's economic future in the midst of the nation's third year of its war against Ukraine.If Russia continues the war, the economy looks on track for a "severe <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-collapse-recession-moscow-ukraine-war-us-dollar-energy-2024-7">recession</a>" and long-running stagnation, Mertens said. However, if the war stops, the economy is in trouble trouble, given how much war spending has pumped up growth amid a shortage of capital and workers, Mertens wrote in an <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/russias-economy-is-overheating-but-putin-cannot-change-course/">op-ed</a> for the Atlantic Council on Thursday."The current state of the Russian economy is far from critical but it does present Putin with a dilemma. He currently appears intent on continuing the war indefinitely while hoping to outlast the West and exhaust Ukraine. Alternatively, he could seek to move toward a settlement of some kind. However, there is a very real danger that either option could end up plunging Russia into a serious economic crisis," Merten said.Merten pointed to the field of red flags for Moscow's economy since it began its invasion of Ukraine.For one, while Putin has rebuffed the impact of Western sanctions, the restrictions are clearly having an impact on Russia's trade and finances, with the nation's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/russian-energy-revenue-crude-oil-prices-gas-exports-sanctions-ukraine-2024-1">energy revenue falling</a> by nearly a quarter 2023.Russia's <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-bleeding-money-liquid-reserves-national-wealth-fund-war-2024-1">sovereign wealth fund</a> is also shrinking. Around 44% of liquid assets in the Russian National Welfare Fund were depleted from the start of the invasion to December 2023, according to data from Russia's finance ministry.The nation is also suffering from a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-lacks-workers-ukraine-war-labor-crisis-worker-shortage-2023-12">severe worker shortage</a> and a <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-population-decline-worker-shortage-growth-outlook-ukraine-war-2024-8">looming demographic crisis</a>, which have been exacerbated by the one million Russians estimated to have fled the country in the early days of the war.Russia's central bank, meanwhile, <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-central-bank-raises-key-interest-rate-to-21-2024-10">raised interest rates to 21%</a> in October, a sign policymakers are scrambling to get inflation — which clocked in well above target at 8.6% — under control."While Kremlin officials and many international analysts insist that the Russian economy remains in remarkably good shape, the country's longer-term economic outlook is becoming increasingly precarious," Merten said. "Taken together, these negative factors are likely to contribute to a period of slower growth, if not <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-ukraine-war-moscow-west-sanctions-inflation-gdp-2024-10">stagnation</a>.And yet, Russia can't easily stop the war without shutting off one of the key engines of its economy: its hefty defense budget. The nation allotted a record 6% of GDP to defense spending in 2024.That's been a major factor behind Russia's solid economic growth, Merten said, with real GDP in the nation on track to expand another 3.6% this year, according to <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/RUS">International Monetary Fund</a> estimates."If Putin opts to maintain his uncompromising push for an historic victory in Ukraine, it is not clear that Russia has the resources to wage a prolonged war on the present scale. In this scenario, current warning signs such as rising inflation and labor shortages could eventually become major problems," Merten said.He continued: "If he seeks a settlement and withdraws the Keynesian crutch of today's vastly <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-outlook-defense-budget-spending-ukraine-war-putin-sanctions-2024-10">inflated military spending</a>, the economic repercussions could be dire. The Russian economy is not yet close to collapse, but it is increasingly dependent on wartime conditions and faces growing risks of overheating."Other experts have said Russia looks to be facing a Catch-22 situation, with the nation <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-ukraine-war-moscow-military-spending-inflation-worker-shortage-2024-2">neither being able to afford winning or losing</a> the war. Over the long-term, its economy could be <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-outlook-ukraine-war-worker-shortage-population-brain-drain-2024-8">de-industrialized</a> or face a long-term stagnation, economists previously told BI.

You Searched For "crisis" and got 6 results

The Bezos-Washington Post crisis is getting worse

Lucia Moses

LinkedIn thinks it has the solution to our hiring crisis

Amanda Hoover

Trump called the climate crisis a scam. It could prove a gift to China.

Tom Porter

How Saudi Arabia could create a crisis for Russia's economy

Filip De Mott

The deadly cost of America's housing crisis

Ned Resnikoff

Russia faces a crisis regardless if Putin ends or continues the war in Ukraine, economist says

Jennifer Sor

Popular Keywords

Buying Guides