Mass Violence
Since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, Vox has counted 2,321 American mass shootings as of December 16. School shootings in particular had taken over 400 lives by February 2018 and have only continued to rise. October 2017 saw the most deadly mass shooting in American history on the Las Vegas Strip, with 58 dead and 413 injured. Other countries experience far fewer incidents of mass violence than America, but they haven’t been immune to acts of mass violence, such as the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 or the Paris terror attacks in 2015.
Environmental Crises
Various environmental crises, particularly climate change, have grown into some of the most pressing issues of the decade. NASA found that in 2010, the earth was approximately 1.13°F (0.63°C) warmer than the average global surface temperature from 1951 to 1980, and warnings from climate experts have only grown more dire since. The long-term effects they’ve predicted include more intense hurricanes, a 1-4 foot rise in sea level by 2100, more droughts and heat waves, and an ice-free Arctic by 2050. Biodiversity is also in danger; the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared 467 species extinct this decade. Several sweeping solutions, most famously the Green New Deal, have been proposed to deal with climate change, and populist movements such as Extinction Rebellion and the global climate strikes championed by Greta Thunberg have pressured leaders to deal with the issue.
LGBTQ+ Rights
LGBTQ+ rights and recognition gained major ground in the 2010s. 23 countries, including the United States, legalized same-sex marriage this decade. Barack Obama became the first sitting president to support gay marriage after decades of opposition from both parties, and in 2015, the Supreme Court struck down all gay marriage bans in Oberfegell vs. Hodges. Advancements have also happened in other areas: third-gender options on IDs, gay and lesbian adoption rights, and protections for transgender individuals have all seen advancement in the US. However, the Trump administration has tried to roll back protections and regulations helping LGBTQ+ people, and over half of states still allow employment or housing discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
#MeToo
While #MeToo started on social media in 2006, it exploded in prominence in 2017, when over 80 women accused film producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and rape. The consequences of the movement spread outside of Hollywood, becoming a global, intersectional movement. Weinstein himself was arrested in 2018 and charged with rape, and other people arrested or re-arrested in the wake of the movement included financier Jeffrey Epstein, comedian Bill Cosby, and musician R. Kelly. According to the New York Times on October 29, 2018, 201 powerful men lost jobs or major roles in the year following the Weinstein accusations, and the repercussions continue to resonate to this day.
Nationalism and Autocracy
Nativism and autocracy have surged around the world, with far-right parties and ideologies gaining ground in democratic countries and autocrats consolidating their power elsewhere in the world. In the United States, the election of President Donald Trump in 2016 coincided with a rise in nativist, white supremacist, and Christian nationalist sentiments, frequently grouped with other reactionary ideologies under the term “alt-right.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of American hate groups reached a record high of 1020 in 2018, and in the same three-year period, the FBI reported a 30% increase in hate crimes. Several other far-right leaders and parties have capitalized on political mistrust to gain power: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, the Vox party in Spain, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, to name a few. Many of these leaders have shown a willingness to show a blind eye to the atrocities of other autocrats, such as the killing of Jamal Khasshogi in Saudi Arabia and the persecution of the Muslim Uyghurs under Chinese President Xi Jinping.
By: Abby Adams-Smith and Ruthie Kesri