Climate Crisis and Carbon: Six Positive Developments in 2019
Informed Comment – December 29, 2019 – Heather Alberro, Dénes Csala, Hannah Cloke, Marc Hudson, Mark Maslin, and Richard Hodgkins
https://www.juancole.com/2019/12/climate-positive-developments.html
Climate researchers have not given up hope. We asked a few Conversation authors to highlight some more positive stories from 2019… Countries like Costa Rica offer us promising examples of the “possible”. The Central American nation has implemented a refreshingly ambitious plan to completely decarbonise its economy by 2050. In the lead-up to this, last year with its economy still growing at 3%, Costa Rica was able to derive 98% of its electricity from renewable sources. Such an example demonstrates that with sufficient political will, it is possible to meet the daunting challenges ahead.
A glacier the size of Florida is on track to change the course of human civilization.
Daily Kos – April 1, 2019 – community
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/1/1841208/-A-glacier-the-size-of-Florida-is-on-track-to-change-the-course-of-human-civilization
Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica is enormous and is often referred to as the most dangerous glacier on Earth. It has also been dubbed the Doomsday glacier. The glacier holds two feet of sea level but, more importantly, it is the “backstop” for four other glaciers which holds an additional 10-13 feet of sea level rise. When Thwaites collapses it will take most of West Antarctica with it.
Statistic of the decade: The massive deforestation of the Amazon
The Conversation – December 23, 2019 – Liberty Vittert
http://theconversation.com/statistic-of-the-decade-the-massive-deforestation-of-the-amazon-128307
There are a number of reasons why this deforestation matters – financial, environmental and social. First of all, 20 million to 30 million people live in the Amazon rainforest and depend on it for survival. It’s also the home to thousands of species of plants and animals, many at risk of extinction. Second, one-fifth of the world’s fresh water is in the Amazon Basin, supplying water to the world by releasing water vapor into the atmosphere that can travel thousands of miles. But unprecedented droughts have plagued Brazil this decade, attributed to the deforestation of the Amazon.
How Disinformation Spreads, According to Chuck Todd
Rolling Stone – December 20. 2019 – Peter Wade
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-disinformation-spreads-according-to-chuck-todd-interview-929912/
Chuck Todd has had a front-row seat for the spread of disinformation while hosting NBC’s Meet the Press… The first Sunday of the Trump administration is when the phrase, “alternative facts” was debuted. It was on Meet the Press Rudy that Giuliani used the phrase “Truth isn’t truth.” So look, whether we’d liked it or not, our platform has been used, or they’ve attempted to use our platform to essentially disseminate, or to sort of, what I would say, is lay the groundwork for this… And it’s clearly an epidemic… My fear is the next news consumers: How will they know truth from fiction? How will they have the tools to discern from this?
Be Paranoid About Privacy
The New York Times – December 24, 2019 – Kara Swisher
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/24/opinion/location-privacy.html
We need to take back our privacy from tech companies — even if that means sacrificing convenience… Now, as the decade ends, tens of millions of Americans, including many children, find themselves carrying spies in their pockets during the day and leaving them beside their beds at night — even though the corporations that control their data are far less accountable than the government would be.
The Privacy Project
The New York Times – series starting in December, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/series/new-york-times-privacy-project
Check here for the latest in this series.
Big Money and America’s Lost Decade
The New York Times – December 26, 2019 – Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/opinion/warren-campaign-donors.html
The first thing you need to know about the very rich is that they are, politically, different from you and me… Systematic studies of the politics of the ultrawealthy show that they are very conservative, obsessed with tax cuts, opposed to environmental and financial regulation, eager to cut social programs… Why do a small number of rich people exert so much influence in what is supposed to be a democracy? Campaign contributions are only part of the story. Equally if not more important is the network of billionaire-financed think tanks, lobbying groups and so on that shapes public discourse.
Top 8 Ways the Massive Trump Tax Cut Made the Super-Rich Super-Richer and Failed Working Families
Informed Comment – January 4, 2020 – Frank Clemente
https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/massive-working-families.html
Two years after passage of this $1.9 trillion tax plan — officially named the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) — a new report by Americans for Tax Fairness catalogues the eight major GOP predictions about the benefits of the legislation and shows how each of those promises (ahem, lies) have proven false.
The ocean plastic we see is ‘the tip of the iceberg’. Where’s the other 99%?
The Guardian – December 31, 2019 – Stephen Buranyi
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/31/ocean-plastic-we-cant-see
for at least a decade, the biggest question among scientists who study marine plastic hasn’t been why plastic in the ocean is so abundant, but why it isn’t. What scientists can see and measure, in the garbage patches and on beaches, accounts for only a tiny fraction of the total plastic entering the water. So where is the other 99% of ocean plastic? Unsettling answers have recently begun to emerge… What we commonly see accumulating at the sea surface is “less than the tip of the iceberg, maybe a half of 1% of the total,” says Erik Van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.
As more developing countries reject plastic waste exports, wealthy nations seek solutions at home
The Conversation – June 5, 2019 – Kate O’Neill
http://theconversation.com/as-more-developing-countries-reject-plastic-waste-exports-wealthy-nations-seek-solutions-at-home-117163
At a meeting in Geneva in May 2019, 186 countries agreed to dramatically restrict international trade in scrap plastics to prevent plastics dumping… As one Asian country after another shuts the door on scrap exports, it is becoming increasingly clear that business as usual will not solve the plastic pollution challenge.
Eliminating Waste in US Health Care
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) – April, 2012 – Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP; Andrew D. Hackbarth, MPhil
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/1148376
The need is urgent to bring US health care costs into a sustainable range for both public and private payers… The savings potentially achievable from systematic, comprehensive, and cooperative pursuit of even a fractional reduction in waste are far higher than from more direct and blunter cuts in care and coverage. The potential economic dislocations, however, are severe and require mitigation through careful transition strategies.
“Bedlam”: Film Shows How Decades of Healthcare Underfunding Made Jails “De Facto Mental Asylums”
Democract Now! – December 27, 2019 – interview with Ken Rosenberg and Patrisse Cullors
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/12/27/bedlam_documentary_mental_health_criminal_justice
A new documentary looks at how a disproportionate number of underserved people facing mental health challenges have been swept into the criminal justice system, where they lack adequate treatment. Nearly 15% of men and more than 30% of women in jails have a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder. For many of them, jail is their first point of entry into mental health treatment. The documentary “Bedlam” was filmed over five years in Los Angeles County’s overwhelmed and vastly under-resourced Emergency Psychiatry Services, a jail warehousing thousands of psychiatric patients, and the homes — and homeless encampments — of people who are living with severe mental illness.
The Dark History of New Year’s Day in American Slavery
Time Magazine – December 27, 2019 – Olivia B. Waxman
https://time.com/5750833/new-years-day-slavery-history/
Americans are likely to think of New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day as a time to celebrate the fresh start that a new year represents, but there is also a troubling side to the holiday’s history. In the years before the Civil War, the first day of the new year was often a heartbreaking one for enslaved people in the United States. In the African-American community, New Year’s Day used to be widely known as “Hiring Day” — or “Heartbreak Day,” as the African-American abolitionist journalist William Cooper Nell described it — because enslaved people spent New Year’s Eve waiting, wondering if their owners were going to rent them out to someone else, thus potentially splitting up their families. The renting out of slave labor was a relatively common practice in the antebellum South, and a profitable practice for white slave owners and hirers.
Why Trump may win in 2020
NPR- WHYY – January 1, 2020 – Dan Charles
https://whyy.org/npr_story_post/farmers-got-billions-from-taxpayers-in-2019-and-hardly-anyone-objected/
“They’ve already given out $19 billion to farmers, but they’re cutting $5 billion from people in need!” says Congresswoman Marcia Fudge (D-OH), who sits on the House Agriculture Committee. “I don’t even know how to describe it except to say that it is cruel, it is unfair, and it is clearly designed to support the president’s base, as he sees it, as opposed to those whom he sees as being undeserving.”
First Lady of the World: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Impact on New Deal to U.N. Declaration of Human Rights
Democracy Now! – January 1, 2020 – Blanche Wiesen Cook interviewed
https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/1/eleanor_roosevelt
We speak with the prize-winning historian Blanche Wiesen Cook, distinguished professor of history and women’s studies at John Jay College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of the definitive three-part biography of the former first lady.
Trump Has Turned His Back on the Working Class
Newsweek – December 26, 2019 – Robert Reich
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-has-turned-his-back-working-class-opinion-1478952
Keeping the GOP the Party of Big Money while making it over into the Party of the Working Class is a tricky maneuver, especially at a time when capital and labor are engaged in the most intense economic contest in more than a century because so much wealth and power are going to the top… Almost nothing has trickled down to ordinary workers. Corporations have used most of their tax savings to buy back their shares, giving the stock market a sugar high. The typical American household remains poorer today than it was before the financial crisis began in 2007… Democrats have an historic chance to do what they should have done years ago: create a multi-racial coalition of the working class, middle class and poor, dedicated to reclaiming the economy for the vast majority and making democracy work for all.
Hunting Season on Voters Opens with Georgia and Wisconsin Purges and Registration Cancellation
The Palast Investigative Fund – December 29, 2019 – Greg Palast and Zach D. Roberts
https://www.gregpalast.com/hunting-season-on-voters-opens-with-georgia-wisconsin-purges/
Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brad Ratffensperger, was using a method of vote suppression, “Purge by Postcard,” created by the Trump’s “vote fraud” advisor, Kris Kobach of Kansas. Under the guise of “voter list maintenance,” Georgia sent out postcards, designed by Kobach, that look like cheap junk mail. When a voter fails to return the card, they lose their vote. Yes, the cancelled voter can re-register. But, as we have uncovered in our film, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, most people won’t know they were pulled from the list until it’s too late.
Here’s What It Would Look Like if Trump Starts a War With Iran
Mother Jones – June 26, 2019 (updated January 2, 2020) – Dan Spinelli
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/heres-what-it-would-look-like-if-trump-starts-a-war-with-iran/
While tensions have risen dramatically since this story was first published in June 2019, the below scenario of what shape a war with Iran would take remains worrisomely plausible.
Trump, Troll-in-Chief, Wags the Impeachment Dog by Going to War With Iran
Informed Comment – January 3, 2020 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2020/01/trump-troll-impeachment.html
My title is a reference to the 1997 Barry Levinson film, “Wag the Dog,” starring Anne Heche, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert De Niro. Its story line at IMDB is, “After being caught in a scandalous situation days before the election, the president does not seem to have much of a chance of being re-elected. One of his advisers contacts a top Hollywood producer in order to manufacture a war in Albania that the president can heroically end, all through mass media.” Only, Iran is not Albania… The economic strangulation of Iran was bound to lead to pushback, as with encouraging Iraqi Shiite militias to target Americans, and to an escalation between the two countries. If the Middle East now spins out of control, it is on Trump and his desperation to undo every good thing Barack Obama ever accomplished.
With Suleimani Assassination, Trump Is Doing the Bidding of Washington’s Most Vile Cabal
The Intercept – January 3, 2020 – Jeremy Scahill
https://theintercept.com/2020/01/03/qassim-suleimani-assassination-trump-administration-war/
While the media focus for three years of the Trump presidency has centered around “Russia collusion” and impeachment, the most dangerous collusion of all was happening right out in the open — the Trump/Saudi/Israel/UAE drive to war with Iran.
Suleimani killing the latest in a long, grim line of US assassination efforts
The Guardian – January 4, 2020 – Ed Pilkington
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/04/us-political-assassinations-history-iran-suleimani
“Since Obama there has been a steady dilution of international law,” O’Connell said. “Suleimani’s death marks the next dilution – we are moving down a slope towards a completely lawless situation.” O’Connell added that there was only one step left for the US now to take. “To completely ignore the law. Frankly, I think President Trump is there already – his only argument has been that Suleimani was a bad guy and so he had to be killed.”
Justification for Soleimani Assassination ‘Razor Thin’
Portside – Common Dreams – January 4, 2020 – Jake Johnson
https://www.portside.org/2020-01-04/justification-soleimani-assassination-razor-thin
Ezra Levin, co-executive director of progressive advocacy group Indivisible, put it more bluntly: “They’re lying to distract from impeachment. They’re lying to get us to war. They’re lying to shore up reelection. Don’t buy any of it.”
The Uninhabitable Earth
Portside – The Berkshire Edge – January 1, 2020 – Dook Snyder
https://www.portside.org/2020-01-01/uninhabitable-earth
“It is worse, much worse, than you think,” writes the author of this study. “The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all.” …David Wallace-Wells has pried open our eyes, forced us to see the living nightmare ahead, in his words “The mass extinction we are now living through has only just begun; so much more dying is coming.”… I’m going to end where David Wallace-Wells begins: “It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all …” You’ve been warned.