Scientists say Arctic warming could be to blame for blasts of extreme cold
The Washington Post – December 23, 2022 – Scott Dance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/23/climate-change-impact-cold-weather/
global warming may be altering atmospheric patterns and pushing harsh outbreaks of polar air to normally moderate climates, according to scientists who are actively debating the link.Drastic changes in the Arctic, which is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, are at the center of the discussion. Shifts in Arctic ice and snow cover are triggering atmospheric patterns that allow polar air to spread southward more often, according to recent research…
Want to Save The Planet? Saving Whales Could Help, Scientists Say.
The Washington Post – December 15, 2022 – Rachel Pannett
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/12/15/whales-carbon-sink-climate-change-sequestration/
Many nature-based solutions to fighting climate change have focused on the ability of trees and wetlands to capture and store atmospheric carbon dioxide. But in a paper published Thursday in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, a group of biologists explores the idea that whales can influence the amount of carbon in the air and in the ocean, potentially contributing to the overall reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide. “Understanding the role of whales in the carbon cycle is a dynamic and emerging field that may benefit both marine conservation and climate-change strategies,” wrote the authors, led by Heidi Pearson, a biologist from the University of Alaska Southeast.
Clean Energy or Weapons? What the ‘Breakthrough’ in Nuclear Fusion Really Means
The Wire – December 15, 2022 – M.V. Ramana
https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/clean-energy-weapons-breakthrough-nuclear-fusion-explained/
This experiment will contribute far more to US efforts to further develop its terrifyingly destructive nuclear weapons arsenal…. As the history of nuclear fusion since the 1950s shows, this complicated technology is not going to produce cheap and reliable electricity to light bulbs or power computers anytime in the foreseeable future. But nuclear fusion falls even shorter when we consider climate change, and the need to cut carbon emissions drastically and rapidly. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that to stop irreversible damage from climate change, the world will have to achieve zero net emissions by 2050. Given this relatively short timeline to turn around our economies and ways of living, spending billions of dollars on this sure-to-fail attempt to develop fusion power only amounts to diverting money and resources away from proven and safer renewable energy sources and associated technologies. Investment in research and development into fusion is bad news for the climate.
Socially Conscious Investing Antagonizes All Sides
The New York Times – December 23, 2022 – Matthew Goldstein and Maureen Farrell
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/23/business/blackrock-esg-investing.html
Republicans are accusing the firm of “woke capitalism.” Progressives are calling BlackRock out for “greenwashing,” saying its message to companies doesn’t go far enough. In recent months, more than half a dozen Republican state treasurers and comptrollers have stepped up their attacks on BlackRock, which manages $8 trillion in assets and invests on behalf of hundreds of public pensions. On Dec. 1, Florida’s chief financial officer said the state was pulling $2 billion from BlackRock because it was “undemocratic” for a big asset manager to try to change society. Eight days later, North Carolina’s treasurer called for Mr. Fink to resign because he had pushed corporations to cut carbon emissions. At the same time, progressive critics are asking whether the E.S.G. mutual funds and exchange-traded funds pushed by BlackRock and other asset managers are any different from decades-old investment products given a green makeover.
The Dirty Game Republicans are Playing with Desperate People’s Lives
The Hartmann Report – December 20, 2022 – Thom Hartmann
https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-dirty-game-republicans-are-playing
Whenever there’s a Democrat in the White House, literally hundreds of Republican politicians step up to the microphone or tell their local newspapers and radio stations about how the president has suddenly “opened up America’s southern border!!!” It’s a lie, but they amplify it as hard as they can. Those news stories and press releases make their way via social media and the internet to desperate people in Venezuela, Central America, and Mexico. Impoverished people there aren’t knowledgeable enough about American politics to see the message for the cynical political ploy it is, so they abandon home and family to begin the dangerous and often deadly trek to the US.
A Forgotten Paul McCartney Music Video From 39 Years Ago Reminds Us Of The 1914 Christmas Truce
Forbes – December – December 19, 2022 – Peter Suciu
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2022/12/19/a-forgotten-paul-mccartney-music-video-from-39-years-ago-reminds-us-of-the-1914-christmas-truce/?sh=4bdb4de846ac
Many Americans likely may not remember the song or even its music video that depicted the now-famous 1914 Christmas truce between British and German troops during the First World War. McCartney actually portrayed both a German and British soldier who greet one another in No Man’s land and exchange photos of their loved ones.
For Many Workers, the Holiday Season Is the Most Exploitative Time of the Year
Truthout – December 16, 2022 – Susan Kang
https://truthout.org/articles/for-many-workers-the-holiday-season-is-the-most-exploitative-time-of-the-year/
The conditions faced by workers in the retail, retail support and logistics industries are harsh and often punishing during the holidays, as they are expected to work long shifts, extra hours and face expectations of fast turnaround. Public facing retail workers are also at risk of abuse and even assault from customers, who find themselves frustrated when problems with supply chains and understaffing lead to less-than-optimal customer service.
Why Petulant Oligarchs Rule Our World
The New York Times – December 19, 2022 – Paul Krugman
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/opinion/columnists/elon-musk-twitter-oligarchs.html
Privilege corrupts, that it very easily breeds a sense of entitlement. And surely, to paraphrase Lord Acton, enormous privilege corrupts enormously, in part because the very privileged are normally surrounded by people who would never dare tell them that they’re behaving badly. That’s why I’m not shocked by the spectacle of Elon Musk’s reputational self-immolation. Fascinated, yes; who isn’t? But when an immensely rich man, accustomed not just to getting whatever he wants but also to being a much-admired icon, finds himself not just losing his aura but becoming a subject of widespread ridicule, of course he lashes out erratically, and in so doing makes his problems even worse. The more interesting question is why we’re now ruled by such people. For we’re clearly living in the age of the petulant oligarch.
“If We Make It Through December”
Steady – December 20, 2022 – Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
https://steady.substack.com/p/if-we-make-it-through-december
Remember that this is a time when many are struggling and the joy of the season feels very distant. We live in a world where much of our news is concentrated on our divisions; it is too easy to lose track of our common humanity. We forget to think of the sick, the lonely, the destitute, the homeless, and the scared… Today, we wanted to share a favorite song from the late, great Merle Haggard that epitomizes the combination of pain and yearning of this time of year. Too many are just barely holding on, hoping to make it to the year ahead. “If We Make It Through December” captures this anxiety. It is a poignant reminder to those of us who know we can make it through to lend a helping hand to those who worry about what the end of the year holds in store.
Send cash, not goods, and other suggestions for giving
The Harvard Gazette – December 19, 2022 – Alvin Powell
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/12/send-cash-not-goods-and-other-suggestions-for-giving/
Ukraine has become, obviously, very important and a spotlight event. To institutional donors like the U.S. government, it’s become a conflict that has drawn a lot of attention, a lot of media, and a lot of resources. But we have crises around the world that have far more need than Ukraine. So, while there are people who suffer from displacement and attack in Ukraine — 14 million are refugees or displaced inside Ukraine — the number of people under threat of dying and requiring urgent food aid in the Sahel famine, for example, is orders of magnitude larger. The conflict in Yemen and the drought and famine in Somalia are truly desperate situations. But these areas get far less attention because they’re protracted crises, and there’s donor fatigue when it comes to funding them. But they are by far the biggest humanitarian emergencies.
America’s best Christmas Present would be Real Democracy where even the Poor Vote
Informed Comment – December 21, 2022 – Liz Theoharis
https://www.juancole.com/2022/12/americas-christmas-democracy.html
Today, the rise in outright authoritarianism and white Christian nationalism in our body politic poses a genuine danger to the future health and well-being of our society. At the same time, a revived pro-democracy movement has also begun to emerge, committed to fighting for free and fair elections, the rule of law, and the peaceful transfer of power. But let’s be honest: if we stop there, we cheapen the noble urge for a truly decent democracy… in how our lives are lived and workplaces organized. It’s a society in which the homeless aren’t criminalized, the health of workers is protected, and people are treated with dignity by a government of their choice. And I truly believe that, when you strip away the partisan rhetoric and political spin, this is a vision shared by a majority of Americans.
Do Humans Owe Animals Equal Rights? Martha Nussbaum Thinks So.
The New York Times – December 6, 2022 – David Marchese
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/05/magazine/martha-nussbaum-interview.html
In “Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility,” which will be published on Jan. 3, Nussbaum, who is 75, argues for, among other things, increased legal standing for animals as well as an ethical framework in which animals’ right to pursue flourishing lives is not subordinate to our own — a quietly radical proposition. (The book is dedicated to her daughter Rachel, an animal rights lawyer who died in 2019 at 47 from an infection following transplant surgery.) “Each individual animal of each kind should have a decent shot at living a life that’s characteristic of that creature,” Nussbaum says. “But so many problems stand in the way.”
After the Fukushima Disaster, Japan Swore to Phase Out Nuclear Power. But Not Anymore
NPR – December 22, 2022
https://www.npr.org/2022/12/22/1144990722/japan-nuclear-power-change-fukushima
In the face of global fuel shortages, rising prices and pressure to reduce carbon emissions, Japan’s leaders have begun to turn back toward nuclear energy, but the announcement was their clearest commitment yet after keeping mum on delicate topics like the possibility of building new reactors. Under the new policy, Japan will maximize the use of existing reactors by restarting as many of them as possible and prolonging the operating life of aging ones beyond a 60-year limit. The government also pledged to develop next-generation reactors. Most nuclear reactors in Japan are more than 30 years old. Four reactors that have operated for more than 40 years have received permission to operate, and one is currently online.
Keystone pipeline raises concerns after third major spill in five years
The Guardian – December 21, 2022 – Michael Sainato
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/21/oil-spills-keystone-pipeline-seem-worse-kansas
“Waterways and land should not be put at risk so Canada and big oil can get their product to market,” said Jane Kleeb, founder and president of the Nebraska non-profit Bold Alliance, which helps communities fight fossil fuel projects… “Oil spills pose both short and long-term risks to ecological communities,” said Dr Diane Orihel, an assistant professor in aquatic ecotoxicology at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. “In the days following a spill, oil exposure can cause acute toxicity in wildlife from oil ingestion, inhalation, smothering, drowning or hypothermia. However, scientists now know that the ecological impacts of oil spills can be far more wide-reaching and persist for decades after the spill.”
David Remnick on the January 6th Committee’s Final Report
The New Yorker – December 21, 2022 – Tyler Foggatt and David Remnick
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/david-remnick-on-the-january-6th-committees-final-report
In his foreword, Remnick writes, “January 6th was a phenomenon rooted both in the degraded era of Trump and in the radicalization of a major political party during the past generation. The very power of these developments explains why many people may approach this congressional report with a sense of fatigue, even denial. Part of Trump’s dark achievement has been to bludgeon the political attention of the country into submission… the prospect of engaging with this congressional inquiry into Trump’s attempt to delegitimatize the machinery of electoral democracy is sometimes a challenge to the spirit. That is both understandable and a public danger. And yet a citizenry that can no longer bring itself to pay attention to such an investigation or to absorb its astonishing findings risks moving even farther toward a disturbing ‘new normal’: a post-truth, post-democratic America.”
My Fellow Members of the Jan. 6 Committee and I Don’t Want You to Forget About ‘the Republican Congressmen’
The New York Times – December 22, 2022 – Adam B. Schiff
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/opinion/adam-schiff-jan-6-committee-report-referrals.html
Mr. Trump, exasperated that his own handpicked top appointees at the Justice Department would not affirm his baseless allegations, responded: “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”… There is a growing disdain for the law and for our country’s institutions, and a frightening acceptance of the use of violence to resolve political disputes. Mr. Trump’s big lie has been one of the most powerful instigators of political violence, since it persuaded millions of people that the election they lost must have been rigged or fraudulent. If people can be convinced of that, what is left but violence to decide who should govern? The attack on the Capitol was an all too foreseeable consequence of Mr. Trump’s relentless effort to alienate the people from their government and from the most important foundation of governance: their right to vote.
Why America’s Railroads Refuse to Give Their Workers Paid Leave
New York Magazine – November 30, 2022 – Eric Levitz
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/11/rail-strike-why-the-railroads-wont-give-in-on-paid-leave-psr-precision-scheduled-railroading.html
Why do these rail barons hate paid leave so much? Why would a company have no problem handing out 24 percent raises, $1,000 bonuses, and caps on health-care premiums but draw the line on providing a benefit as standard and ubiquitous throughout modern industry as paid sick days? The answer, in short, is “P.S.R.” — or precision-scheduled railroading. P.S.R. is an operational strategy that aims to minimize the ratio between railroads’ operating costs and their revenues through various cost-cutting and (ostensibly) efficiency-increasing measures. The basic idea is to transport more freight using fewer workers and railcars.
Jewish Groups Say GOP, Not Ilhan Omar, Is Pushing Antisemitism
Truthout – December 15, 2022 – Mike Ludwig
https://truthout.org/articles/jewish-groups-say-gop-not-ilhan-omar-is-pushing-antisemitism/
Omar was accused by right-wing groups of antisemitism for calling attention to the human cost of U.S. wars in the Middle East and the Israeli security state’s illegal occupation of Palestine. A coalition of liberal and reform Jewish nonprofits, including Habonim Dror North America, J Street, New Israel Fund, said this week that the accusations against Omar are “false.”… For McCarthy and the GOP, nixing committee assignments for prominent Democrats, especially Omar, a progressive from Minnesota and the first Black Muslim woman elected to Congress, is red meat for a MAGA base that regularly shares racist memes of the lawmaker on social media.
Movement Grows to Abolish US Prison Labor System That Treats Workers as ‘Less Than Human’
The Guardian – December 24, 2022 – Edwin Rios
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/24/us-prison-labor-workers-slavery-13th-amendment-constitution
Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people work in US prisons as part of their sentences, often without basic protections and for little to no pay… “That is tied directly into the same type of practices from slavery,” Brown, who is co-founder of the Anti-Violence Safety and Accountability Project, says. “That’s the same practice, the same energy, the same spirit that you see in this prison setting. A person can be on one plantation, and then they’ll be moved to another plantation, and you’ll never see the people who you were with ever again. They can separate you from your wife, separate you from your children, from your family. It’s the same way in the modern-day carceral setting.”
NYC’s Mayor Has No Answer for Homelessness – He Should Ask Frontline Workers
Portside – December 24, 2022 – Bob Hennelly, Work-Bites
https://portside.org/2022-12-24/nycs-mayor-has-no-answer-homelessness-he-should-ask-frontline-workers
On Nov. 29, New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared at a press conference that his “compassion” driven response to the city’s homeless crisis would be to enhance the state’s existing authority to involuntary commit the mentally ill in their ranks to ensure people “in desperate need” were no longer allowed “to slip through the cracks.”… Not highlighted in the mayor’s City Hall rollout was reference to New York State’s decades-old decision to close mental health facilities and neighborhood hospitals — nor the ongoing choices, made amid the pandemic, by the city’s wealthiest private hospitals to close their inpatient psychiatric units. Nor was there a recognition of how the increasing scarcity of psychiatric care and beds came as tens of thousands of affordable housing units disappeared while city housing increasingly became a luxury good.
The Road to Fascism
Portside – December 17, 2022 – Joseph E. Stiglitz
https://portside.org/2022-12-17/road-fascism
Across every dimension, including the economy, the greatest threat to well-being today is political. Over half the world’s population lives under authoritarian regimes. Even in the US, one of the two major parties has become a personality cult that increasingly rejects democracy and continues to lie about the outcome of the 2020 election. Its modus operandi is to attack the press, science, and institutions of higher learning, while pumping as much mis- and disinformation into the culture as it can. The aim, apparently, is to roll back much of the progress of the past 250 years… We are still living with the legacy of the extremist policies that he and Milton Friedman pushed into the mainstream. Those ideas have put us on a truly dangerous course: the road to a twenty-first-century version of fascism.
Varoufakis Details Vision for Ending ‘Global Empire of Capital’ To Avert Catastrophe
Common Dreams – December 12, 2022 – Kenny Stancil
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/12/12/varoufakis-details-vision-ending-global-empire-capital-avert-catastrophe
Creating a new international economic order “sounds like an impossible dream,” said the former Greek finance minister, but “not more impossible than the principle of one person, one vote, or of the end of the divine right of kings once sounded.”… Varoufakis began by noting that “we have never been closer to a nuclear holocaust than today,” as the doomsday clock that scientists invented in the 1940s quickly approaches midnight. Meanwhile, there is another clock “counting down to the moment humanity will have passed the point of no return from climate catastrophe.” “What is the global ruling class doing to avert these twin calamities?” asked Varoufakis. “Their best to push humanity over both cliffs at once.”
Green Banks Catalyze Green Energy Projects
Yes! Magazine – December 23, 2022 – Ashley Stimpson
https://www.yesmagazine.org/economy/2022/12/23/green-banks-energy-projects
Founded in 2011, the Connecticut Green Bank is a quasi-public fund (chartered by the state but run by a board) created to invest in green energy projects that traditional lenders might shy away from. It has financed more than $120 million in green updates—solar panel installation, weatherization, appliance replacements, and asbestos remediation—in 63,000 homes across the state, and it is one of 22 such funds across the country. These funds are about to get a major windfall. The Inflation Reduction Act set aside $27 billion to create a national green bank, expanding access to funds like the CGB’s… The idea for a national green bank isn’t new; advocates have been pushing the idea in Congress since 2009. Japan, Australia, and South Africa already have national green banks. In the U.K., a green bank helped catalyze that country’s offshore wind boom. In the United States, local green banks have been quietly investing in green energy projects in their communities for more than a decade.