‘What Man Has Made of Man’
Steady – March 27, 2022 – Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
https://steady.substack.com/p/what-man-has-done-to-man?s=r
Amidst the beauty of our natural world, we see humans wreak death and destruction for no purpose but the misguided pursuit of glory and ego. We see good people attacked by those cynically using vitriol to gather political power. We see wealth hoarded while so many go hungry. And we see the balance of our Earth thrown off-kilter by our short-sighted actions to a degree Wordsworth never could have imagined. It is not only what man has made of man, but what we have made of our precious planet… Ultimately, I like to believe in a conspiracy of decent people… Time marches in one direction. We can’t stop it, but we can help shape it. Each human act of support to others is one that helps heal our world. Even now, with so much anxiety and chaos destabilizing our country and beyond, we can grip firmly onto what is good and just and use it to steady ourselves for the work to be done.
Wind and solar reach milestone as demand surges
BBC News – March 31, 2022 – Matt McGrath
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60917445
Fifty countries get more than a tenth of their power from wind and solar sources, according to research from Ember, a climate and energy think tank…. Solar and wind and other clean sources generated 38% of the world’s electricity in 2021. For the first time wind turbines and solar panels generated 10% of the total. The share coming from wind and sun has doubled since 2015, when the Paris climate agreement was signed. The fastest switching to wind and solar took place in the Netherlands, Australia, and Vietnam. All three have moved a tenth of their electricity demand from fossil fuels to green sources in the last two years. “The Netherlands is a great example of a more northern latitude country proving that it’s not just where the Sun shines, it’s also about having the right policy environment that makes the big difference in whether solar takes off,” said Hannah Broadbent from Ember… Scientists say that wind and solar need to grow at around 20% every year up to 2030. The authors of this latest analysis say this is now “eminently possible”.
The world’s forests do more than just store carbon, new research finds
The Guardian – March 24, 2022 – Nina Lakhani
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/mar/23/forests-climate-crisis-carbon-cooling-effect
The role of forests as carbon sponges is well established. But comprehensive new data suggests that forests deliver climate benefits well beyond just storing carbon, helping to keep air near and far cool and moist due to the way they physically transform energy and water. The study, which is the first to pinpoint the non-carbon dioxide benefits of different forests, found that the band of tropical rainforests spanning Latin America, central Africa and south-east Asia generate the most local and global benefits… Michael Coe, the tropics program director at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and a study co-author, said: “Without the forest cover we have now, the planet would be hotter and the weather more extreme. Forests provide us defense against the worst-case global warming scenarios.”
Indigenous Land Rights Are Critical to Realizing Goals of the Paris Climate Accord
Inside Climate News – April 1, 2022 – Katie Surma
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01042022/indigenous-land-rights-paris-agreement/
The land rights of Indigenous peoples across millions of acres of forests in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru must be protected and strengthened if the world has any hope of achieving the goals set forth in the 2015 Paris Agreement, a study released on Thursday found. The study, by the World Resources Institute and Climate Focus, two non-profit global research organizations focused on alleviating climate change, supports a growing body of research emphasizing the important role Indigenous peoples and other local communities play in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and protecting biodiversity.
‘We are unstoppable’: Youth climate strikes return in full force
The Guardian – March 28, 2022 – Julia Kane
https://grist.org/article/global-climate-strike-youth/
Hundreds of thousands of students skipped school on Friday, marching through the streets of more than 750 cities and towns to call for decisive action on climate change and to demand justice for the people most severely affected. Friday’s protests, the largest mass youth climate strike since 2019, show that the movement is rebounding from the setbacks posed by the pandemic, which forced young people to do most of their organizing remotely… Liv Schroeder, national coordinator and policy director for Fridays for Future U.S., told Inside Climate News, “We’ve been incredibly isolated and while the climate movement has continued during Covid, we need to reignite hope and strikes to push our leaders to act.”
Misinformation Is Derailing Renewable Energy Projects Across the United States
NPR – March 28, 2022 – Julia Simon
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1086790531/renewable-energy-projects-wind-energy-solar-energy-climate-change-misinformation
Every single rural utility-scale wind and solar project needs local or state approval to get built, says Sarah Mills, who researches rural renewable energy at the University of Michigan. And she says it’s in those often-fractious discussions about approval that misinformation is sometimes halting and stalling the installation of the renewables the climate needs. “At the end of the day, if local governments are not setting rules that allow for the infrastructure to be sited, those policies cannot be achieved,” Mills says…
3 Out of 4 People May Have Microplastics in Their Blood, New Study Says
Truthout – March 26, 2022 – Matthew Rozsa
https://truthout.org/articles/3-out-of-4-people-may-have-microplastics-in-their-blood-new-study-says/
Published in the journal Environment International, the researchers did not have a large cohort of patients — only 22. While this limits the widespread applicability of their findings, it is nevertheless “reasonable to be concerned” as Prof. Dick Vethaak, an ecotoxicologist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and co-author of the paper, told The Guardian. All of the donors were healthy adults and yet 17 of them (more than 75 percent) had plastic particles in their blood. Half of them had polyethylene terephthalate, ubiquitous in plastic drinking bottles, and one-third had polymers of styrene which is frequently used in food packaging.
Dalai Lama, Other Nobel Winners Demand Explicit Vow Not to Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine
Common Dreams – March 26, 2022 – Jon Queally
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/03/26/dalai-lama-other-nobel-winners-demand-explicit-vow-not-use-nuclear-weapons-ukraine
The Dalai Lama is among 16 Nobel Peace Prize laureates who jointly issued an open letter Saturday calling for the immediate end of the attack on Ukraine and an explicit vow from both Russia and NATO forces that nuclear weapons of any kind will not be used as part of this conflict or any other. “We reject war and nuclear weapons,” the letter declares. “We call on all our fellow citizens of the world to join us in protecting our planet, home for all of us, from those who threaten to destroy it.”… the open letter issued Saturday by the Nobel laureates calls for all countries of the world “to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to ensure that we never again face a similar moment of nuclear danger.” The letter concludes, “It is either the end of nuclear weapons, or the end of us.”
A Megaton of Waste
Slate – March 30, 2022 – Fred Kaplan
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/bidens-new-defense-budget-wastes-a-crazy-amount-of-money-on-new-nuclear-weapons.html
The White House’s new defense budget lavishes money on America’s nuclear weapons program in the name of competing with China and Russia. It’s totally unnecessary… A debate has raged for years among defense analysts over whether to revamp all three “legs” of America’s “strategic nuclear triad”—the land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-missile-carrying submarines, and long-range bomber aircraft. Some argue that all three elements of the arsenal are on the verge of obsolescence and need to be replaced. Others contend that, while this will be true for the submarines in the next decade or so, the missiles and bombers can be merely modified (as they have been a few times already); still others add that the land-based missiles should be eliminated or drastically reduced in number (say, from their current 400 to maybe 40). I’m among this last group. The Pentagon’s fact sheet on the budget makes clear that Biden has decided to replace all three legs and build a new long-range air-launched cruise missile, to boot… And what will we get for this massive military spending binge? Mostly theater. Nobody has come up with a persuasive scenario in which the U.S., armed with its current nuclear arsenal, is unable to deter Russia or China (or North Korea or some other foe) from aggression, but would be able to deter them, if we only had all these new missiles, bombers, and submarines now.
President’s Budget Would Support Children and Families, Strengthen the Economy
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – March 28,2022 – Rebecca Poutasse
https://www.cbpp.org/press/statements/parrott-presidents-budget-would-support-children-and-families-strengthen-the
President Biden’s 2023 budget calls for a range of policies that would boost opportunity and reduce poverty, improve health and well-being, and advance widely shared prosperity, funded by proposals to make the nation’s tax system stronger and fairer. The U.S. has long underinvested in our families and children; the President’s call to reverse that trend is both good economics and consistent with our nation’s values. The policies presented in the budget would help households with the costs that stretch their budgets and would provide more children with the supports and education they need to thrive. It would pay for these policies and reduce the deficit by requiring well-off households and profitable corporations to pay a fairer amount of taxes, putting forward creative solutions to the long-standing problem that many of the wealthiest households who have gained the most from the nation’s economy pay very little taxes, and sometimes none at all.
A month of Putin’s war: Ukrainians deserve not just to survive, but to win
New York Daily News – March 25, 2022 – Garry Kasparov
https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-a-month-of-putins-war-20220326-ikzh57ykuffr7ioweptgmlbejy-story.html
Almost exactly eight years ago, my op-ed on Putin was titled ”Stop this man.” Putin was not stopped and, as I’ve often said of dictators, they do not stop until they are stopped. We are now one month into his all-out war on Ukraine, an invasion and bombardment of a sovereign European nation of 44 million people… As I wrote in 2014, when Putin first invaded Ukraine, it was only the front line of his larger war against democracy and the liberal world order. Ukrainians are dying for the values of liberty and democracy the U.S. and other NATO nations profess to treasure. We must not let their sacrifice be in vain.
The United States should take more Ukrainian refugees
The Boston Globe – Marchb 29, 2022 – Scot Lehigh
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/03/29/opinion/united-states-should-take-more-ukrainian-refugees/
Chellie Pingree, Maine’s first district congresswoman, speaks an important truth about the United States: ‘We could do a lot more.’… This isn’t so much a situation of supply and demand as desire and need. What is good for the asylum seekers is good for this country’s employers and organizations as well. Sadly, in these polarized times, it’s become controversial in some quarters to say things that should be matters of common sense and decency. Good for Chellie Pingree for speaking up.
Why Do Putin, Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the GOP Sound So Much Alike?
Robert Reich’s Substack website – March 28, 2022
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/why-do-putin-trump-tucker-carlson?s=r
Remember, Putin was put into power by a Russian oligarchy made fabulously rich by siphoning off the wealth of the former Soviet Union. Likewise, Trump and the radical right in America have been bankrolled by an American oligarchy — Rupert Murdoch, Charles Koch, Rebekah Mercer (daughter of hedge fund tycoon Robert Mercer), Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, and other billionaires. What do these two sets of oligarchs get in return? Strongmen divert the public’s attention away from the oligarchs’ hijacking of their economies toward cultural fears of being overwhelmed by the “other.” Putin’s MO has been to fuel Russian ethnic pride and nationalism. The Trump-Carlson-radical right’s MO has been to fuel white American nationalism. In both cases, strongmen and their allies have mythologized a “superior” culture (replete with creation stories of blood ties, motherlands, and religion) supposedly endangered by decadent forces intent on attacking and overwhelming it… Reduced to basics, today’s oligarchs and strongmen (along with their mouthpieces and lackeys) are trying to justify their wealth and power by attacking liberal values that have shaped the West, beginning with the enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – the values of tolerance, openness, democracy, self-government, equal rights, and the rule of law. These values are incompatible with a society of oligarchs and strongmen.
Putin and the Myths of Western Decadence
The New York Times – March 28, 2022 – Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/28/opinion/putin-western-decadence.html
In less than five weeks Putin has destroyed Russia’s military reputation, battered his nation’s economy and strengthened the democratic alliances he hoped to undermine. How could he have made such a catastrophic mistake? Part of the answer, surely, is strongman syndrome… There’s also reason to think Putin, like many of his admirers in the West, thought modern democracies were too decadent to offer effective resistance. And here’s the thing: When I look at the United States, I worry that the West is, in fact, being made weaker by decadence — but not the kind that obsesses Putin and those who think like him. Our vulnerability comes not from the decline of traditional family values, but from the decline of traditional democratic values, such as a belief in the rule of law and a willingness to accept the results of elections that don’t go your way… Why is that relevant to Ukraine? Putin effectively bet that an effete West would stand by as he carried out his conquest. Instead, President Biden very effectively mobilized a democratic alliance that has rushed aid to Ukraine and helped humiliate the aggressor. But the next time something like this happens, America might not lead an effective alliance of democracies, because we ourselves will have given up on democratic values. And that, if you ask me, is what real decadence looks like.
Democrats’ fight over bail reform might be a fight for the party’s direction
Politico – March 27, 2022 – Anna Gronewold and Erin Durkin
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/27/democrats-bail-reform-partys-progressive-moderate-00020455
Three years after New York bail reform changes were hailed as a national victory to address unfair detainment, the state law and its effects are now a political grenade being lobbed from both the right and left amid surging crime. The debate has become a growing symbol of rifts among progressive and moderate Democrats that is playing out in statehouses across the U.S… One of the primary goals of the reforms was to ensure that poor communities and people of color would not be disproportionately penalized by their inability to pay bail, especially for low-level crimes… “These bills are some of the most significant civil rights reforms in New York’s history,” Trujillo said. “After every civil rights victory in this country, there has been pushback to it. After Reconstruction, we got Jim Crow. After the civil rights movement of the 1960s, we got the Rockefeller drug era and we got mass incarceration. ”The people that capitulated during all those movements, they are not heroes. It got them no electoral wins. It did not help them,” he said.
1,000+ Professors Endorse Call to Cancel All Federal Student Loan Debt
Common Dreams – March 29, 2022 – Jake Johnson
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/03/29/1000-professors-endorse-call-cancel-all-federal-student-loan-debt
More than 1,000 professors from colleges and universities across the country—including prominent institutions such as Columbia, Yale, and Berkeley—released a letter Tuesday endorsing calls for President Joe Biden to use his executive power to cancel all outstanding federal student loan debt… We see universal debt cancellation as a powerful ?rst step in the process of reinvestment in quality public education… “Universal debt cancellation,” the letter adds, “would be the ?rst serious step toward the goal of College for All that we have seen in our lifetime.”… “In other industrialized countries, higher education, like healthcare, is regarded as a public good and as a right, but in the U.S., it has been turned into an expensive commodity. Now is the time to reclaim the vocation of learning to which we have devoted our careers.”
Here’s How We Beat Amazon
Jacobin – April 2, 2022 – Interview with Angelika Maldonado
https://jacobinmag.com/2022/04/amazon-labor-union-alu-staten-island-organizing
After decades of union decline, Amazon workers in Staten Island have achieved the most important labor victory in the United States since the 1930s. Taking on and defeating Amazon would be a David versus Goliath story no matter who led the effort, but it is especially stunning that the successful unionization drive at the JFK8 warehouse was initiated by the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), an upstart, independent, worker-led effort… Few people are better placed to tell this story than Angelika Maldonado, the twenty-seven-year-old chair of ALU’s Workers Committee. One of the key leaders responsible for yesterday’s historic victory, Maldonado works as a packer in the outbound department on the night shift at JFK8. After yesterday’s vote, she sat down with Jacobin’s Eric Blanc to discuss how they accomplished the seemingly impossible — and what organizing lessons workers across the country can take from their efforts.
How a bunch of Starbucks baristas built a labor movement
Vox – April 2, 2022 – Rani Molla
https://www.vox.com/recode/22993509/starbucks-successful-union-drive
While the unionizing Starbucks stores so far only represent a small portion of the chain’s roughly 9,000 company-run locations, its number belies its importance. It’s a spark of optimism in a union movement that has been in decline for decades. And as unions have become less prevalent in the American workforce, so have the worker benefits and protections unions afforded, including health care, pensions, and paid time off. Along with several other high-profile union efforts at a range of companies, including Amazon, John Deere, and the New York Times, Starbucks workers could help stanch or even reverse that decline… For now, the actions at Starbucks provide a case study for how other Americans might try to organize and where the union movement might go from here. “The scale, the energy, the pace,” said Richard Minter, vice president of the Workers United union. “There’s nothing like it in labor history.”
Gordon Plaza was sold as a dream for Black home buyers. It was a toxic nightmare.
The Washington Post – April 1, 2022 – Darryl Fears
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/04/01/new-orleans-gordon-plaza-epa/
New Orleans city officials allowed developers to build homes on land contaminated with chemicals linked to cancer. They didn’t tell the people who moved in… The saga of 57 families living on the former Agriculture Street Landfill in the Gordon Plaza housing subdivision is considered by many to be one of the worst examples of environmental injustice in the United States.
A three-step plan for ending war in Ukraine and averting World War III
The Hill – March 31, 2022 – Shamil Idriss
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3255507-a-three-step-plan-for-ending-war-in-ukraine-and-averting-world-war-iii/
First, nothing positive can be achieved until the bloodshed stops… Second, violence today lays the groundwork for future violence, unless we break the cycle. Leaders must chart a path to reverse the momentum toward greater isolation and militarization that this war has triggered. And this points to the most sobering lesson… Third, if this crisis does not shock us sufficiently to generate a better way to prevent war, then it is likely that only World War III will… Increasingly, leaders recognize that in a globalized world, war is more senseless and self-defeating than ever… A global peace movement intent on breaking the logic of war and reorienting global priorities toward combating climate change, preventing future pandemics and tackling other shared threats is gathering force. The largest youth cohort in history is more connected and better able to mobilize collective action than ever and is justifiably furious about the monumental challenges that are being left to them to sort out while today’s political leaders fight yesterday’s wars. Major social and political changes often appear to come suddenly, through watershed moments. In reality, the pressure for them builds over years until triggered, often by tragedy. As we embrace every effort to end the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine today, we must seize this moment for what it is: our last best chance to prevent even greater tragedy tomorrow.
‘Everything Has Changed Except Our Thinking’ – Ukraine Is a Wake Up Call About Today’s World
Portside – Convergence – March 31, 2022 – Max Elbaum
https://www.portside.org/2022-03-31/everything-has-changed-except-our-thinking-ukraine-wake-call-about-todays-world
The Russian invasion of Ukraine spotlights the whole interconnected package of dangers to humanity. The bombs and missiles massacring Ukrainian civilians fill TV screens with evidence of the destructiveness of modern warfare. How to keep the flow of oil and gas into Western Europe emerges as a preoccupation of Western governments, underscoring how little government policies have changed even after decades of urgent warnings about the perils of dependence upon fossil fuels. President Putin putting Russia’s nuclear forces on alert has again made the danger of nuclear war a topline political concern. Unfortunately, but predictably, the U.S. and most of its allies are responding with increases in the military budget combined with blatant racist hypocrisy… The forces arrayed against militarism are still far, far weaker than we need them to be. But the movements that have emerged in numerous countries––and the prospect of links among them––gives us something to build on. So does the increasing recognition on all sides that movements against war and climate change and those fighting for democracy and economic, racial and gender justice need to be closely linked to one another… It will take a new synergy between grassroots global movements and states that think in new ways about international relations to defeat the exploiting classes and reactionary movements that “would hurt all mankind just to save their own.”