Daily Pulse: Brazil on the Brink, US Coal Hurts, CO2 Emissions Have Plateaued

Brazilians are close to breaking point. The past 24 hours brought even more drama to the ongoing political and economic crisis. President Dilma Rousseff named former president Lula her chief of staff – a move widely seen as tactical to shield him from prosecution in a corruption investigation. That launched thousands of Brazilians onto the streets of Brasilia and Sao Paulo at nightfall, once again demanding the president's removal. Nobody knows what comes next when the sun rises today... Our Brazil editor Rodrigo Brancatelli has a fantastic explainer on what exactly is going on. 

Is it the last throws of US Big Coal? Peabody Energy warned Wednesday that it could go bankrupt. It'd be the latest in a wave of major coal miners going under. Commodity prices crashed, coal is dirty and unpopular, oil and natural gas are cheap competitors, and China is no longer eating steel for breakfast... "To be sure, this isn’t the end for coal. Just under one- third of the U.S. grid is still powered by coal, and hundreds of mines are still profitable and operating," writes John W. Miller in The Wall Street Journal. "What isn’t sustainable are the publicly traded coal powers built atop the recent China-driven commodity boom, and the corporate structures—headquarters, salaries, pensions—they maintained."  

CO2 emissions have plateaued. For the past two years, humanity's carbon footprint has not increased, according to the International Energy Agency, even though the global economy was expanding. Better yet, the two biggest polluters, the US and China, have reduced their emissions and 90% of new energy production came from renewable sources. We're nowhere near ending climate change – even keeping the temperature rise to 2°C requires actually cutting emissions. It's too early to say whether we're at peak CO2, but it's good news, and it hasn't been this good since the early 1980s. 

*Source: IEA

Another not-so-long-ago darling of the tech world is hitting hard times. LivingSocial is letting go half of its workforce, about 280 people; the group discount business was hot for about half a minute and both Living Social and Groupon grew fast before deflating. As such stories multiply, recruiting is getting harder for startups, Rachel Feintzeig writes in the Wall Street Journal. “People are anchoring ships in safe harbors,” one recruiting director tells her. Maybe Wall Street will start looking good again. 

Oct 21, 2015 came and went without self-lacing shoes. But Nike is only a few months late: the Hyperadapt 1.0 will come out next holiday season. Nike says it'll eventually adapt to an athlete's foot as they move. And while we're on Marty McFly accessories, the US just banned all imports of so-called "hoverboards" (they don't actually hover) not made by Segway. There's a bitter intellectual property dispute at play. 

Cover Art: Barry Geraghty falls from Campeador in The Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle Race, before both getting up unhurt, on March 16, 2016 in Cheltenham, England. (Photo by Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images)

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What you may have missed, and really should read:

• Who is Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland? "He is essentially the model, neutral judge."
• Spiritual entrepreneurship is a booming business. 
• What cities do for America

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Missed the last update? Catch up: Dead on Arrival — Obama Picks a Justice, Apple Quietly Closing 'iCloud Loophole,' The Happiest Place on Earth isn't Disneyland

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