Scientists confirm record highs for three most important heat-trapping gases
The Guardian – April 6, 2024 – Oliver Milman
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/06/record-highs-heat-trapping-gases-climate-crisis

The levels of the three most important heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere reached new record highs again last year, US scientists have confirmed, underlining the escalating challenge posed by the climate crisis.

Climate Victory: Texas Solar Power Growing so Rapidly, it is Reducing demand for Fossil Gas
Informed Comment – April 11, 2024 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/climate-victory-reducing.html

The far right Texas legislature, dominated by Republicans in the back pocket of the fossil fuel industry, has done what it could to promote fossil gas as a power source for electricity generation… While government is powerful and economic incentives can affect economic activities, this pitiful effort to prop up the dying fossil fuel industries appears to resemble most the frenetic to and fro of a chicken that has been beheaded. A lot of energy expended just before a certain demise. Exhibit A is a new report by the Energy Information Agency that shows how rapidly solar power is overtaking fossil gas in the state. Wind farms produce the most renewable energy in Texas, but solar is making rapid strides, alongside vastly increased battery storage. Solar power generation in the Lone Star state has already overtaken that in California, which is saying something… How delicious that the market and technological innovation are allowing renewables companies to outflank the corporate welfare socialism of Texas’ conservative legislators.

As Amazon eliminates plastic packaging abroad, it’s using even more in the US
Grist – April 4, 2024 – Joseph Winters
https://grist.org/accountability/as-amazon-eliminates-plastic-packaging-abroad-its-using-even-more-in-the-us/

Miller and her co-authors are calling on Amazon to stop using plastic packaging in the U.S., citing phaseouts in some of the company’s biggest overseas markets as evidence that such a transition is possible. Amazon has done “some pretty impressive things in Europe and India, but in the U.S. they are not making the same sort of commitments,” Miller added. “The company has made great progress, but it’s just not enough.”… Amazon seems to have taken its biggest steps to reduce plastic packaging in response tostringent plastic regulations, or the threat of them.

Protesters slam gas group’s use of customers’ money to thwart climate efforts
The Guardian – April 10, 2024 – Dharna Noor
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/10/american-gas-association-lobby-protest

A group of advocates and Democratic senators gathered in Washington DC on Tuesday to decry utilities’ practice of spending customers’ money to advance a pro-fossil fuel agenda. “Americans are already paying the price of climate change,” said Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts at a gathering at the US Capitol. “They shouldn’t have to pay the salaries of those who are fueling it.” The event marked the launch of a campaign by the non-profit Gas Leaks Project targeting the American Gas Association, the largest trade group for gas companies which represents some 200 utilities.

What the Ohio Train Derailment Teaches Us About Poisoning Public Trust
Vox – April 9, 2024 – Benji Jones
https://www.vox.com/science/23624376/east-palestine-derailment-air-quality-safety

Following a disaster like this, it’s also important to give residents plenty of opportunities to voice their concerns and include them in the decision-making process, said Alison Adams, an environmental risk expert at the University of Florida. Communication should be flowing both ways, not just from public officials to residents, she said…. Ultimately, disaster response needs to extend beyond cleaning up chemicals, Slovic said. Officials should be more mindful about the communication of risk and the psychology of residents. “There’s a need to integrate the psychology and sociology here with the scientific analysis,” Slovic said. “You can’t divorce the two.”

The Coffee Apocalypse
Slate – April 10, 2024 – L.V. Anderson
https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/04/coffee-cup-best-bean-brand-climate.html

Climate change is expected to shift the areas where coffee can grow, with some researchers estimating that the most suitable land for coffee will shrink by more than half by 2050 and that hotter temperatures will make the plants more vulnerable to pests, blight, and other threats. At the same time, demand for coffee is growing, as upwardly mobile people in traditionally tea-drinking countries in Asia develop a taste for java. “The difference between demand and supply will go like that,” Kunz put it during a Zoom interview, crossing his arms in front of his chest to form an X, like the “no-good” emoji. Small farmers could face crop failures just as millions of new people develop a daily habit, potentially sending coffee prices soaring to levels that only the wealthy will be ableto afford.

Rebuilding Gaza was seen as a ‘Herculean’ task before Oct. 7; six months of bombing has led to crises that will long outlive the war
The Conversation – April 8, 2024 – Dima Nazzal
https://theconversation.com/rebuilding-gaza-was-seen-as-a-herculean-task-before-oct-7-six-months-of-bombing-has-led-to-crises-that-will-long-outlive-the-war-223076

What we are dealing with now in Gaza is on a different scale altogether. The enclave is facing cascading crises – a condition in which multiple interrelated crises occur sequentially or simultaneously, each triggering or exacerbating the next. And as hard as it is to look beyond the daily horrors of warfare in Gaza, there will be a time when the world starts to turn to recovery and reconstruction. The concern is that the cascading crises will make this process that much harder and moreover amplify the human costs of this conflict for years to come…. Rebuilding cities facing cascading crises the nature of which Gaza is confronted with is a daunting prospect. And while the task may seem insurmountable at the present, with cooperation, coordination and courage it is not unachievable. But it is a challenge that becomes that much more difficult with each day that the war in Gaza goes on.

After six months of war, I fear we may lose Palestine completely
The Guardian – April 9, 2024 – Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and writer, and founder of the human rights organisation Al-Haq
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/09/50-years-mourned-palestine-parents-israel-gaza-hope

This war has exposed the profound weakness of the secular liberals in Israel and their near total rallying behind the supposed might of the Israeli army, while failing to consider the longer-term consequences of their army’s murderous excesses. There is a distressing lack of readiness among the Israeli Jewish population to pursue peace with its neighbours, and an almost unchallenged commitment to the use of force to destroy Palestinians regardless of the human cost. One Israeli friend told me despairingly, “I’m a minority in a minority of a minority.”… Then there is the bitterness that is sure to be felt on the part of the Israeli hostages and their families, whether or not they emerge alive. We will have to reckon with all that. After such horrors, how will we Palestinians and Israelis manage to live together in this sliver of land we both call home?

In the Gaza Strip, war crimes are multiplying with the help of artificial intelligence
Le Monde – April 9, 2024 – Benjamin Barthe
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/04/09/in-the-gaza-strip-war-crimes-are-multiplying-with-the-help-of-artificial-intelligence_6667874_23.html

After six months of war, as Israel begins to scale back its military presence in Gaza, the veil is being lifted on the mechanics of the cataclysm that befell the Palestinian enclave… What has become clearer in recent days is the modus operandi of this massacre – the making of what human rights defenders consider to be mass war crimes… In fact, two investigations published by the Israeli press at the same time suggest that the army’s negligence in the WCK case was not so much the product of individual lapses as of a systemic misuse of opening fire procedures. This is a significant departure in Israeli military history, which has turned the Gaza Strip into a gigantic mass grave.

‘Chronic traumatic stress disorder’: the Palestinian psychologist challenging western definitions of trauma
The Guardian – April 14, 2024 – Bethan McKernan
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/14/mental-health-palestine-children

Chair of the Palestinian ministry of health’s mental health unit says the clinical definition of PTSD does not fit the reality in Gaza… A study published last year in Middle East Current Psychiatry agreed with Jabr that PTSD and continuous traumatic stress disorder (CTSD) among Palestinians “cannot be changed unless the root of the problem is solved by ending 74 years of living under occupation”… Justice and solidarity, Jabr thinks, will be important correctives for the damage caused by this unprecedented war. “Giving people who lost their humanity, people were reduced to nothing, giving them their dignity back … Psychologists can’t do that alone. We need responses at state and international level. We need the rest of the world to stand with us.”

The Shoah after Gaza
Portside – The London Review of Books – March 7, 2024 – Pankaj Mishra
https://portside.org/2024-03-07/shoah-after-gaza

The dark meaning the Israeli state has drawn from the Shoah, and then institutionalized in a machinery of repression. Anyone calling attention to the spectacle of Washington’s blind commitment to Israel is accused of antisemitism, ignoring the Shoah…. Whether or not they know about the Shoah, they reject the crude social-Darwinist lesson Israel draws from it – the survival of one group of people at the expense of another. They are motivated by the simple wish to uphold the ideals that seemed so universally desirable after 1945: respect for freedom, tolerance for the otherness of beliefs and ways of life; solidarity with human suffering; and a sense of moral responsibility for the weak and persecuted. These men and women know that if there is any bumper sticker lesson to be drawn from the Shoah, it is ‘Never Again for Anyone’: the slogan of the brave young activists of Jewish Voice for Peace.”

Illegal real estate sales of Palestinian land are happening around the US
The Real News – April 9, 2024 – Marc Steiner
https://therealnews.com/illegal-real-estate-sales-of-palestinian-land-are-happening-around-the-us

Six months into the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, there is little use denying that what is taking place before our eyes is an intended land grab. Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich have called for Gaza to be “resettled” and for the Palestinian population to be expelled. And in the US, the likes of Ben Gvir and Smotrich have their allies and accomplices who hope to profit from the theft of Palestinian land. Across the US, real estate events advertising the sale of land parcels in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem have begun to appear. Activist, journalist, and filmmaker Eleanor Goldfield joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss the recent protests against one such real estate event in Baltimore.

Immigration Is Powering the U.S. Economy
Time Magazine – April 5, 2024 – Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson
https://time.com/6963553/immigration-u-s-economy/

The increase in immigration estimated by CBO helps to explain this unusual economic recovery and means the labor market may not need to slow much to bring down inflation… Immigration helps address our long-run fiscal challenge. A National Academies report looked at immigrants who arrived between 2006 and 2013 and projects that over 75 years, each will contribute an average of $330,000 more in taxes than they and their descendants will receive in benefits. Immigration brings other long-term economic benefits too, including innovation and a boost to the productivity of native-born workers… Decades of research have shown the value in significantly expanding immigration. To maximize the economic benefits, Congress will need to create more pathways for legal immigration, reimagine the enforcement system, and support communities that welcome large numbers of immigrants.

Republicans want to use an 1873 law to ban abortion. Congress must repeal it
The Guardian – April 8, 2024 – Moira Donegan
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/08/republicans-abortion-comstock-congress

So it is a bit puzzling why, in an election year that promises to be dominated by outrage over abortion bans and the erosion of women’s rights, Democrats have not done more to convey the dangers of Comstock to the public. Admittedly, the problem is somewhat complicated and obscure, not quite the kind of thing that can fit on a bumper sticker. But voters have shown that they are willing to pay prolonged attention to the abortion issue: the continued political salience of Dobbs almost two years after the decision has proved this… Comstock is a relic, and a relic is what the Republican right wants to turn America into. Democrats have a chance to make a case for it to be something else – something more like a democracy.

Conservative Christians just lost their scholarly trump card on same-sex relationships
Religion News Service – April 8, 2024 – Jonathan Merritt
https://religionnews.com/2024/04/08/conservative-christians-just-lost-their-scholarly-trump-card-on-same-sex-relationships/

Nearly 30 years ago, a revered New Testament professor at Duke Divinity School named Richard B. Hays published “The Moral Vision of the New Testament,” a sweeping 508-page meditation of Christian ethics in which Hays concluded that the Christian Bible condemns homosexual acts… The book made Hays a darling among conservative evangelical Christians who opposed LGBTQ acceptance in their churches and the broader culture and frequently cited Hays’ work in debates… In a book scheduled to be released in September, “The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story,” written with his son, Christopher B. Hays, the elder Hays makes an about-face that is already causing an uproar in evangelical circles… With his son, a professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, Hays argues, in a preview of the book posted on his publisher’s site, that a “dynamic and gracious God who is willing to change his mind … has already gone on ahead of our debates and expanded his grace to people of different sexualities” and includes “Richard Hays’s epilogue reflecting on his own change of heart and mind.”

The Right Has a New Playbook to Crush Unions and Enshrine Corporate Power
In These Times – April 3, 2024 – Juliana Broad
https://inthesetimes.com/article/alec-american-legislative-exchange-council-labor-unions-politics

State lawmakers seeking to dismantle unions and implement anti-worker laws have just been handed a new state-by-state roadmap by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate-funded bill mill popular with Republican legislators. Although ALEC claims that its proffered labor reforms are designed to protect “worker freedom and flexibility,” its attacks on workers over the past 50 years have made it harder for them to organize, harder for local governments to support decent-paying jobs, and easier on big business. Those attacks, bankrolled by Koch Industries and right-wing donors such as the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, are motivated as much by the desire to protect corporate bottom lines as by the determination to eviscerate a key supporter of the Democratic Party: labor unions… Since 2019, ALEC’s anti-labor priorities — including its state-level right-to-work and anti-union bills — have had a significant impact on workers and workplaces.

Average US Taxpayer Contributed More to Militarism Than Medicare in 2023
Common Dreams – April 9, 2024 – Jake Johnson
https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-taxpayers-funding-militarism

The average U.S. taxpayer was forced to contribute more to militarized programs than to Medicare and Medicaid combined in 2023, according to a new analysis released Tuesday by the National Priorities Project. Published ahead of Tax Day, the analysis sheds light on the extent to which the federal income tax dollars of ordinary Americans are fueling “militarism and its support systems” such as the Pentagon, which currently accounts for roughly half of the federal government’s total discretionary budget. “Overall, in 2023, the average taxpayer contributed $5,109 for militarism and its support systems—including war and the Pentagon, veterans’ programs, deportations and border militarization, and federal spending on policing and prisons,” according to NPP, which is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies… “If we put more funds into education, we’ll probably see kids and families better off. If we put more into Pentagon contracts, we’ll see their CEOs and shareholders better off—and we’ll see U.S. weapons used in conflicts around the world.”

When Haiti’s gangs shop for guns, the United States is their store
The Washington Post – April 5, 2024 – Widlore Mérancourt and Amanda Coletta
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/05/haiti-gangs-american-guns/

The semiautomatic rifles that have wrought human carnage from an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., to a Walmart in El Paso are also being used to menace the Haitian government and terrorize the population.,, Firearms, purchased in part with ransom money, slipped into Haiti undetected. That’s the most common outcome, analysts say, owing to access in the United States, corruption in Haiti and insufficient screening in both countries… Exasperated Caribbean leaders last year declared the flood of U.S. weapons “a direct threat to our democracy” and urged Washington to join their “war on guns.” “The right to bear arms is still a raging debate in the United States,” said Philip Davis, prime minister of the Bahamas. “We don’t intend to get involved,” but “their right to bear arms … ought not to give them the right to traffic [them].”

Retired military leaders warn of the threat to democracy if Trump is found to be immune
MSNBC – April 8, 2024 – Jordan Rubin
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/trump-supreme-court-immunity-military-leaders-rcna146885

Former military leaders are sounding the alarm ahead of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court immunity hearing later this month. Retired four-star admirals and generals, along with former secretaries of the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force, want to warn the justices about the dangers of his presidential immunity claim. Unless Trump’s theory is rejected, they wrote in an amicus brief, “we risk jeopardizing America’s standing as a guardian of democracy in the world and further feeding the spread of authoritarianism, thereby threatening the national security of the United States and democracies around the world.”

Chess Captures Life Lessons for Argentinian Youth
Yes! Magazine – April 8, 2024 – Eva Marabotto
https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/04/08/children-chess-argentina-poverty

Bottle caps transform into queens, knights, and pawns that help kids learn how to regulate emotions, socialize, and resolve conflicts… Teglia emphasizes the advantages of chess as “a playful activity that develops active attention.” He mentions working with children diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, highlighting that sometimes it’s not a flaw but a strategy to navigate the world… “The best part is making the board and taking it home to play,” says one of the kids. “Since he started playing chess, it not only helped him concentrate, but also he started doing better in school. I can’t explain why, but it’s true,” says one of the participant’s fathers, while the teacher listens more than satisfied.

The Green New Deal: From Below or From Above?
Portside – April 13, 2024 – Jeremy Brecher
https://portside.org/2024-04-13/green-new-deal-below-or-above

The original Green New Deal resolution took as its models not only the original New Deal but also the home front mobilization for World War II. A fully developed Green New Deal will need both the kind of federal initiative and strong federal agencies that transformed the American economy during World War II and the popular participation and decentralized creativity represented by the Green New Deal from Below… Local Green New Deals offer a radically different approach to urban planning. They aim to put human needs, rather than developer profit, at the center of planning… Green New Deals are providing a genuine and effective path for climate protection and restoration. The Green New Deal from Below shows what real climate protection looks like. The question, “should Green New Deal policies by implemented from above or from below” is rather like the question, “Should I wash my hands or my feet?” The obvious answer is, “both!” And for both it is essential that the Green New Deals implement planning, resource mobilization, and genuine solutions.

We Need an Alternative to Nuclear-Armed Nationalism
Common Dreams – April 13, 2024 – Robert C. Koehler
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/nuclear-armed-nationalism

Nuclear weapons won’t go away, the cynics—the souls in despair—tell us. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You can’t, as Gen. James E. Cartwright, former head of U.S. Strategic Command, once put it, “un-invent nuclear weapons.” So apparently we’re stuck with them until the “big oops” happens and humanity becomes extinct… David Barash and Ward Wilson make the case that this is completely false: We’re not “stuck” with nuclear weapons any more than we’re stuck with obsolete and ineffective technology of any sort, bluntly pointing out: “Crappy ideas don’t have to be forgotten in order to be abandoned.” “Useless, dangerous, or outmoded technology needn’t be forced out of existence. Once a thing is no longer useful, it unceremoniously and deservedly gets ignored.”… If Tilly [Social scientist Charles Tilly] is right—if “war made the state and the state made war”—then the state, as currently perceived, at least by those besotted with military power, is the problem. Knowing this is the beginning… but of what? Survival means finding an answer.

Survival of the Nicest: Have We Got Evolution the Wrong Way Round?
Portside – April 12, 2024 – Jonathan R. Goodman
https://portside.org/2024-04-12/survival-nicest-have-we-got-evolution-wrong-way-round

If ‘survival of the fittest’ is the key to evolution, are humans hardwired for conflict with one another? Not at all, says evolutionary biologist Jonathan Silvertown in his latest book, “Selfish Genes to Social Beings”. On the contrary, he argues, many phenomena in the natural world, from certain types of predation to parasitism, rely on cooperation. Thus “we need no longer fret that human nature is sinful or fear that the milk of human kindness will run dry”. Silvertown uses examples from genes, bacteria, fungi, plants and animals to emphasize that cooperation is ubiquitous in nature.