Doomsday Clock hits 90 seconds to midnight, its most dire prediction ever
The Washington Post – January 24, 2023 – Ellen Francis and Scott Dance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/01/23/what-how-doomsday-clock/

The people who run the clock say that’s largely a reflection of Russia’s war in Ukraine — including of the potential use of nuclear weapons and because the conflict is encouraging continued dependence on fossil fuels in Europe. For the first time, the announcement of the clock’s movement toward catastrophe was released in Russian and Ukrainian as well as English, something Rachel Bronson, CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said the organization hopes brings the dire forecast “the attention it deserves.”… Here’s what to know about the metaphorical timepiece:

How India Became the Most Important Country in the Climate Fight
Time Magazine – January 12, 2023 – Justin Worland
https://time.com/6246057/india-coal-solar-power-climate-fight/

Jharkhand and Rajasthan, so different in appearance, are being shaped by the same fundamental force: India is growing so rapidly that its energy demand is effectively insatiable. But the two states present starkly different answers to that demand. Historically, fossil fuels from places like Jharkhand powered industrialization. But today, with climate concerns rising, many experts are calling for India to ditch coal as soon as possible and embrace the green-energy model so prevalent in Rajasthan… Analysts have portrayed the U.S., China, and Europe as the most critical targets for cutting pollution. But as the curve finally begins to bend in those places, it’s become clear that India will soon be the most important country in the climate change effort.

From a Militarized to a Decarbonized Economy
Watson Institute – January 26, 2023 – Miriam Pemberton
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/DecarbonizedEconomy

Looking at two case studies, HybriDrive and CALSTART, the paper illustrates how the military can redirect its weapons and technological production capacity towards civilian uses and decarbonize the U.S. economy, given the right policy environment. The report makes clear that significant military spending cuts must be made and those funds must be redirected to green civilian industrial activities in order to transition from a militarized to a decarbonized economy.

How pesticides intensify global warming
Grist – January 23, 2023 – Maria Parazo Rose
https://grist.org/agriculture/a-new-report-says-pesticides-intensify-climate-change/

That’s according to researchers at the Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), who say that while pesticides have been critical tools in agricultural production, their efficacy is on the decline while climate change exacerbates the need to use more. According to PANNA, the pesticide-climate change connection is a loop: Pesticides add emissions to the atmosphere that accelerate climate change, warming climates stress agricultural systems and increase the number of pests and insects, requiring more pesticides… Researchers say the solution is agroecology. Agroecological farming emphasizes conservation agriculture, ecological processes that adapt to local conditions, and practices like intercropping, where two or more crops grow together to increase biodiversity and promote plant health. It also prioritizes the health and decision-making power of farmers and agricultural workers, which has been shown to improve crop yields, profitability, and resilience against climate impacts.  

Biden restores roadless protection to the Tongass, North America’s largest rainforest
The Conversation – January 27, 2023 – Beverly Law
https://theconversation.com/biden-restores-roadless-protection-to-the-tongass-north-americas-largest-rainforest-164680

The Tongass is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world and the biggest U.S. national forest… For over 20 years, the Tongass has been at the center of political battles over two key conservation issues: old-growth logging and designating large forest zones as roadless areas to prevent development. As a scientist specializing in forest ecosystems, I see protecting the Tongass as the kind of bold action that’s needed to address climate change and biodiversity loss… New protection for the Tongass comes amid growing alarm over two converging environmental crises: climate change and accelerated extinctions of plant and animal species. In my view, protecting ecological treasures like the Tongass is a critical way to address both issues at once, as scientists have recommended.

U.S. mature forests are critical carbon repositories, but at risk
Mongabay – January 27, 2023 – John Cannon
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/01/u-s-mature-forests-are-critical-carbon-repositories-but-at-risk-study/

“You’re walking through these magnificent forests with these giant trees that are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old,” said DellaSala, chief scientist at the Earth Island Institute’s Wild Heritage Project. Protecting them is “a no-brainer.” But long-lived forests, even if they’ve been logged too recently to meet the strict definition of old growth, provide many of the same benefits. “It’s not just primary or old growth, but it’s that stage just before old growth that matters,” DellaSala said. “We need to get back to our old-growth forests that were degraded and lost over centuries of logging.”… These older forests are our best nature-based climate solution,” he said. “They buy us time, they give us hope, they give us a chance to turn the corner.

When Will We Hit Peak Fossil Fuels? Maybe We Already Have
Inside Climate News – January 26, 2023 – Dan Gearino
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26012023/inside-clean-energy-peak-fossil-fuels/

The report argues that the fossil fuel demand has peaked in the electricity market in part because the annual growth in global electricity demand—which is about 700 terawatt-hours—is less than the electricity generated in 2022 by newly built power plants that have zero emissions, most of which were wind and solar plants. The report cites forecasts for a continuing increase in wind and solar development that will outpace the growth in electricity demand, a dynamic that will squeeze out the most expensive and dirtiest energy sources.

No False Solutions! Citizens Rise Up to Resist Dangerous Carbon Pipelines in the Midwest
Common Dreams – January 28, 2023 – Andy Currier
https://www.commondreams.org/midwest-carbon-express-opposition

Iowa is the battle ground where the fate of world’s largest proposed carbon capture and storage pipeline is being decided. Summit Carbon Solutions intends to build a 2,000-mile pipeline to carry CO2 captured from ethanol plants across five states, to eventually inject and store it underground in North Dakota to supposedly reduce carbon emissions. But who truly stands to gain if the pipeline is built? A November 2022 report from the Oakland Institute, The Great Carbon Boondoggle, unmasked the billion-dollar financial interests and high-level political ties driving the project—despite opposition from a large and diverse coalition of Indigenous groups, farmers, and environmentalists.

‘The Definition of War Profiteering’: Chevron Posts Record $35.5 Billion in Profit for 2022
Common Dreams – January 27, 2023 – Jake Johnson
https://www.commondreams.org/news/chevron-war-profiteering

“Once oil prices spiked after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a government not compromised and captured by Big Oil would have done the commonsense thing of taxing Big Oil’s windfall profits and returning the proceeds to consumers,” said Weissman. “The failure to impose a windfall profits tax reflects Big Oil’s raw political power, not any principled policy dispute.” … Currently, the prospects of a windfall profits tax passing Congress are zero with the House controlled by Republicans, who have wasted no time placing oil and gas industry allies on key committees. The progressive watchdog group Accountable.US noted Friday that the chief of staff for Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the new chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, “is a longtime oil lobbyist.”

The Constitution Has a 155-Year-Old Answer to the Debt Ceiling
Portside – January 26, 2023 – Eric Foner
https://portside.org/node/30511/printable/print

The 14th Amendment, added to the Constitution in the wake of the Civil War, has been back in the news of late, mostly because the Supreme Court has taken aim at past decisions, notably Roe v. Wade, that employed it to protect Americans’ liberties. The amendment remains the most significant addition to the Constitution since the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Its magnificent first section established the principle of birthright citizenship and prohibited the states from denying to any person the equal protection of the laws, laying the foundation for many of the rights Americans prize… Then there is Section 4, which offers a way out of the current impasse over increasing the debt ceiling. “The validity of the public debt of the United States,” it declares, “shall not be questioned.”

You’re Not Negotiating “in Good Faith” When You’ve Got a Gun to the Economy’s Head
Esquire Magazine – January 20, 2023 – Charles P. Pierce
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a42594817/debt-ceiling-extortion/

The debt ceiling is an anachronism the way that lead paint is an anachronism. By now, we should know better than to eat paint chips, and the Congress should know better than to muck around with the debt ceiling. In fact, there is a strong argument to be made now to get rid of the debt ceiling entirely. Unfortunately, it has become such a political weapon against Democratic presidents that it’s impossible to imagine a Republican congressional majority of any kind unilaterally laying it down.

A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths
The New York Times – January 24, 2023 – Nicholas Kristof
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/opinion/gun-death-health.html

For decades, we’ve treated gun violence as a battle to be won rather than a problem to be solved — and this has gotten us worse than nowhere. In 2021 a record 48,000 Americans were killed by firearms, including suicides, homicides and accidents. So let’s try to bypass the culture wars and try a harm-reduction model familiar from public health efforts to reduce deaths from other dangerous products such as cars and cigarettes. Harm reduction for guns would start by acknowledging the blunt reality that we’re not going to eliminate guns any more than we have eliminated vehicles or tobacco, not in a country that already has more guns than people… one lesson learned is that if we can’t eliminate a dangerous product, we can reduce the toll by regulating who gets access to it.

Tyre Nichols’s Death Is America’s Shame
The New York Times – January 27, 2023 – Charles M. Blow
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/opinion/tyre-nichols-video.html

I am stuck on the fact that there should have been federal legislation to prevent such killings. But there wasn’t, and there isn’t, because America has once again failed Black people who were pleading for help and demanding it. America should be ashamed. It abandoned the issue of police reform… Tyre Nichols’s death isn’t only an individual tragedy; he is now a marquee victim of a predacious system that America has lost its willingness to confront. The untreated wound, still festering, bled through the gauze.

The Atlanta Police Shooting Is a Warning Sign for the Safety of Environmental Activists
The New Republic – January 24, 2023 – Kate Aronoff
https://newrepublic.com/article/170142/atlanta-police-shooting-warning-sign-safety-environmental-activists

Last week, a Georgia State Patrol officer shot and killed 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, who was camped out in the South Woods Forest to block the construction there of a sprawling, $90 million police and fire training facility known as “Cop City.”… The snowballing militarization of police in the United States has coincided with a heightened criminalization of protests. Both efforts share the generous backing of corporate funders. If both phenomena continue to proceed apace, it’s easy to imagine more protesters may soon, like Terán, be hurt or killed… The same interests looking to criminalize protests against fossil fuel infrastructure are also looking to build out an ever more muscular police force capable of enforcing those laws—including against developments like Cop City. The broader logic here isn’t hard to interpret: If protecting corporate profits and priorities is the goal, nothing should be able to get in the way—no matter the cost in human life.

Atlanta Activists at ‘Stop Cop City’ Aren’t Backing Down After Police Kill Protester
Vice – January 26, 2023 – Aja Arnold
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7m3a/atlanta-activists-at-stop-cop-city-arent-backing-down-after-police-kill-protester

Mariah Parker, a local organizer and hip-hop artist, says that the Stop Cop City movement brings together multiple spheres of collective struggles being fought around the world. “There can be no guessing that with this facility, they will be bringing in folks from police departments from across the country, other armed groups, and state agents around the world,” Parker told Motherboard, detailing how Stop Cop City is no longer just an Atlanta issue. “The money and support coming in [for Cop City] is coming from outside of Georgia. The offense is coming from all over the country. The city and police foundation had been mobilizing national forces, and so are we now, because we have to.”

The Crackdown on Cop City Protesters Is So Brutal Because of the Movement’s Success
The Intercept – January 27, 2023 – Natasha Lennard
https://theintercept.com/2023/01/27/cop-city-atlanta-forest/

The Atlanta-based movement should be seen as an example of rare staying power, thoughtful strategizing, and the crucial articulation of environmentalist politics situated in anti-racist, Indigenous, and abolitionist struggle. Unsurprisingly, however, significant national attention has only been drawn to the forest defenders in the last week thanks to the extreme law enforcement repression they are now facing… “It’s evident the Atlanta-area law enforcement, including prosecutors, believe heavy charges will crush dissent. Instead, the movement seems to have only grown with every attack from the police,” said Sara [32-year-old service worker who lives by the imperiled forest and has been part of Stop Cop City since the movement began].

High schoolers threaten to sue DeSantis over ban of African American studies course
NPR – January 25, 2023 – Giulia Heyward
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/25/1151376707/advanced-placement-african-american-studies-desantis-crump-lawsuit

“By rejecting the African American history pilot program, Ron DeSantis has clearly demonstrated that he wants to dictate whose history does — and doesn’t — belong,” Democratic state Rep. Fentrice Driskell said at a news conference in Tallahassee, announcing the lawsuit, on Wednesday. Ben Crump, a high-profile civil rights attorney, said he will file the lawsuit on behalf of the three students if DeSantis does not allow the course to be taught in the state. The course is the latest addition to the AP program, which helps high school students earn college credit… In the rally announcing the lawsuit, Driskell commented on the slew of legislation passed in the state, under the leadership of the governor, that limits how race and other topics are discussed in the classroom. “He wants to say that I do not belong,” said Driskell, who is Black. “He wants to say that you don’t belong and whose story does — and doesn’t — get to count. But we are here to tell him: We are America.” Three AP honors high school students, who were present at the conference, will serve as the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Roe Was Never Roe After All
Atlantic Magazine – January 21, 2023 – Mary Ziegler
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/roe-50-anniversary-abortion-casey/672794/

Since Dobbs came down, constitutional conflicts about abortion have only multiplied. Abortion-rights supporters have pursued what reporters call “mini Roes” in state supreme courts, asking for the recognition of state constitutional rights… All of these efforts make explicit something that had been clear to anyone looking closely enough while Roe was good law: Americans’ rights don’t come just from the Supreme Court. Even when the Court intervenes, it often—as in Dobbs—responds to political pressures and decades of fighting between grassroots groups and political parties… Roe’s legacy is complex, and its aftereffects—on partisan politics, on fights about the separation of powers, and on battles about gender—will be felt for years to come… The Court does not get the final word, even on the meaning of its own most important decisions.

Two Supreme Court Cases That Could Break the Internet
The New Yorker – January 25, 2023 – Isaac Chotiner
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/two-supreme-court-cases-that-could-break-the-internet

Both cases concern Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which grants legal immunity to Internet platforms for content posted by users… Until now, Internet platforms could allow users to share speech pretty freely, for better or for worse, and they had immunity from liability for a lot of things that their users said. This is the law colloquially known as Section 230, which is probably the most misunderstood, misreported, and hated law on the Internet. It provides immunity from some kinds of claims for platform liability based on user speech… We could be looking at a world where suddenly platforms do face liability for everything that’s in a ranked news feed, for example, on Facebook or Twitter, or for everything that’s recommended on YouTube… If they lost the immunity that they have for those features, we would suddenly find that the most used parts of Internet platforms or places where people actually go and see other users’ speech are suddenly very locked down, or very constrained to only the very safest content… We could see a very big change in the kinds of online speech that are available on basically what is the front page of the Internet.

The Supreme Court Is About to Make It Even Riskier to Strike
The Nation – January 11, 2023 – Elie Mystal
https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/supreme-court-strike-glacier-v-teamsters/

If you are a worker or a union whose case ends up before his court, you’ve already lost. The only question is how much collateral damage that court will do to organized labor en route to ruling in favor of corporations and paymasters. This week, it was the Teamsters’ turn to get whacked. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Glacier Northwest Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters. While the Teamsters are sure to lose, an extremist ruling from Roberts and the jackboots could seriously weaken the right to strike in this country.

McGonigal, Trump, and the Truth about America
Timothy Snyder’s substack blog – January 26, 2023
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-specter-of-2016

We are on the edge of a spy scandal with major implications for how we understand the Trump administration, our national security, and ourselves.,, On 23 January, we learned that a former FBI special agent, Charles McGonigal, was arrested on charges involving taking money to serve foreign interests… The reporting on this so far seems to miss the larger implications. One of them is that Trump’s historical position looks far cloudier… The Russian operation to get Trump elected in 2016 was real. We are still living under the specter of 2016, and we are closer to the beginning of the process or learning about it than we are to the end. Denying that it happened, or acting as though it did not happen, makes the United States vulnerable to Russian influence operations that are still ongoing, sometimes organized by the same people. It is easy to forget about 2016, and human to want to do so. But democracy is about learning from mistakes, and this arrest makes it very clear that we still have much to learn.