Rapid Heating of Oceans Frightens Scientists: Threatens Marine Life, Coastal Areas
Informed Comment – April 26, 2023 – Juan Cole
https://www.juancole.com/2023/04/frightens-scientists-threatens.html
No one thought it would happen this fast and with this intensity. Moreover, some of the side effects we are seeing, like less oxygen in the oceans, are positively frightening. That is the conclusion of a paper published last week by Karina von Schuckmann et al., “Heat stored in the Earth system 1960–2020: where does the energy go?” in Earth System Science Data… The authors point out that ocean heating is a good proxy for global heating and the effects of the climate emergency in general. The authors observe, “The long atmospheric lifetime of carbon dioxide means that [extra heating and its effects] will remain positive for centuries, even with substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and lead to substantial sea-level rise, ocean warming, and ice shelf loss.”
Here’s Where Extreme Heat Could Be Devastating in Coming Years
NBC News – April 25, 2023 – Denise Chow
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/extreme-heat-devastating-upcoming-years-rcna81309
The research, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, identified places such as Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, Honduras and Guatemala as regions where heat waves intensified by climate change, combined with existing socioeconomic issues, will create potentially devastating vulnerabilities. The findings offer a timely warning on the dangers of extreme heat made worse by global warming, particularly as parts of Southeast Asia and China have been scorched by record-high temperatures in recent days and as much of the Northern Hemisphere heads into the warmest months of the year. The study focused on parts of the world that are likely to experience brutal heat waves but have not yet suffered through extreme temperatures, said study co-author Dann Mitchell, a professor of climate science at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom… “Climate change makes inequalities even more unequal,” he said. “And just because you haven’t seen something, our data has shown there are these regions where we are expecting to see a very extreme event. Don’t wait until it happens.”
The Supreme Court just unleashed a flood of lawsuits against Big Oil
Grist – April 26, 2023 – Kate Yoder
https://grist.org/accountability/supreme-court-unleashed-climate-lawsuits-against-big-oil/
Nearly two dozen lawsuits filed by cities and states aim to put fossil fuel companies on trial for deceiving the public about climate change. But they’ve been stuck in legal limbo for half a decade, with companies deploying several maneuvers to block them. Now a surprising source has unleashed those lawsuits: the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. On Monday, the justices rejected petitions from Chevron, Shell, BP, and other oil companies to move these cases from the state courts where they were filed to federal courts, an arena considered more friendly to the industry. The Supreme Court’s rejection brings an end to a long jurisdictional battle, meaning that cases in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and more can finally proceed — potentially toward jury trials. “It’s the industry’s worst nightmare to have to explain their lies in front of a jury,” said Richard Wiles, president of The Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental advocacy organization.
A seismic win went almost unnoticed amidst the Tuckerstrom
Bill McKibben’s blog – April 25, 2023
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-seismic-win-went-almost-unnoticed
To make a long story short: Eight years ago, journalists—led by Inside Climate News and the LA Times—began publishing stories proving that the big oil companies knew all there was to know about the dangers of global warming back in the 1980s. Among other consequences, this helped convince the legal departments of a number of cities and states to launch lawsuits against the oil giants, on the grounds that they’d done great and knowing damage to the taxpayers of these jurisdictions, who were having to clean up after the endless storms, fires, and floods. This freaked out the industry, because it could see one possible future: a series of judgments large enough to bring it, like the tobacco industry, to its knees, forced to make some kind of general settlement just to stay in business. (This would be karmic payback of a high order, since Big Oil had hired pr veterans from the cigarette companies to help build out their climate denial campaigns).
Philly’s ban has prevented 200 million plastic bags from being used
The Philadelphia Inquirer – April 27, 2023 – Frank Kummer
https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-plastic-bag-ban-study-20230427.html
“I would say that, overall, the ban had a huge, very positive impact,” said David Masur, executive director of the nonprofit environmental advocacy group PennEnvironment. “Municipalities all over Pennsylvania are now following Philadelphia and implementing their own plastic bag bans.”
Sudan Conflict and What Worries Neighbors, the US and Others
Informed Comment – April 26, 2023 – Middle East Monitor
https://www.juancole.com/2023/04/explainer-conflict-neighbors.html
A conflict raging in Sudan is rattling neighbouring countries and worrying the United States and others for reasons ranging from concern about shared Nile waters and oil pipelines, to the shape of a new government and a new humanitarian crisis in the making… What is at stake for regional states?… What are the concerns of world powers?
Who Else Has Harlan Crow Given Money To?
Slate – April 23, 2023 – Shirin Ali
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/harlan-crow-who-else-has-he-given-money-to.html
Though most of us probably didn’t even know Crow existed until recently, the 73-year-old Texan has been pouring his wealth into influencing American politics since the 1990s. Transparency group OpenSecrets identified $14.7 million that Crow and his wife Kathy have contributed to state and federal candidates, committees, and parties over the past three decades.
The conservative campaign to rewrite child labor laws
The Washington Post – April 23, 2023 – Jacob Bogage and María Luisa Paúl
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/23/child-labor-lobbying-fga/
The Florida-based think tank and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, have found remarkable success among Republicans to relax regulations that prevent children from working long hours in dangerous conditions. And they are gaining traction at a time the Biden administration is scrambling to enforce existing labor protections for children… The administration’s top labor lawyer called the proposed state child labor laws “irresponsible,” and said it could make it easier for employers to hire children for dangerous work.
McCarthy Bill Uses Debt Ceiling to Force Harmful Policies, Deep Cuts
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – April 24, 2023 – Sharon Parrott, Samantha Jacoby, Allison Orris, LaDonna Pavetti, Ph.D., David Reich and Dottie Rosenbaum
https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/mccarthy-bill-uses-debt-ceiling-to-force-harmful-policies-deep-cuts
Cutting a broad swath of public services — from schools, child care, and public health to environmental protection, and college aid — and making it harder for people to afford the basics while permitting more tax cheating and cutting taxes for the wealthy is failed trickle-down economics at its worst. This agenda would narrow opportunity, deepen inequality, and increase hardship.
Warning (if you needed it): Trump is nuts, and he’ll do anything — anything — to win
Robert Reich’s Substack – April 24, 2023
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/warning-if-you-needed-it-trump-is
Remember? Donald Trump lost reelection but refused to concede and instead claimed without basis that the election was stolen from him, then pushed state officials to change their tallies, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to persuade the vice president to refuse to certify Electoral College votes, sought access to voting machine data and software, got his allies in Congress to agree to question the electoral votes and thereby shift the decision to the House of Representatives, and summoned his supporters to Washington on the day electoral votes were to be counted and urged them to march on the U.S. Capitol, where they rioted. This, my friends, is treason.
What Should Christians Do About Guns?
Reader Supported News -The New York Times – April 23, 2023 – Tish Harrison Warren
https://www.rsn.org/001/what-should-christians-do-about-guns.html
The problem of guns in America is vast and complex. In a chilling 2022 piece, The Times named our age the “era of the gun,” with gun violence as the leading cause of death among children in the United States. This is a national crisis. Studies have shown comprehensively that more guns and easier access to guns leads, inevitably, to more gun deaths, which is why America is a global outlier when it comes to rates of gun violence. As German Lopez wrote for The Times last year: “In every country, people get into arguments, hold racist views or suffer from mental health issues. But in the U.S., it is easier for those people to pick up a gun and shoot someone.”
Semi-automatic rifle ban passes Washington Legislature, governor expected to sign
PBS News – April 19, 2023 – Lisa Baumann, Associated Press
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/semi-automatic-rifle-ban-passes-washington-legislature-governor-expected-to-sign
A ban on dozens of semi-automatic rifles cleared the Washington state Legislature on Wednesday and the governor is expected to sign it into law. The high-powered firearms — once banned nationwide — are now the weapon of choice among young men responsible for most of the country’s devastating mass shootings. The ban comes after multiple failed attempts in the Legislature and in a year that has seen the most mass shootings during the first 100 days of a calendar year since 2009. The law would cover more than 50 gun models, including AR-15s, AK-47s and similar style rifles, which fire one bullet per trigger pull and automatically reload for a subsequent shot.
Animals Can Save Us—If We Let Them
Time Magazine – April 22, 2023 – Keggie Carew
https://time.com/6272815/animals-can-save-us-earth-day/
Although we are tropical animals, we have used our big brains to outsmart our natural limitations to occupy every possible ecological niche. There is no ecosystem immune to us. And now we are in trouble. Yet our saviors are all around us. What’s more, they can do it for free… Life supports life. Animals are the key. Variety and abundance are the strengths. Animals could save us. The paradox is, now, only we can save them.
US nuclear taxes — the true costs
The Hill – April 19, 2023 – Robert Dodge, M.D.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3958919-us-nuclear-taxes-the-true-costs/
Ultimately, “Budgets are moral documents,” as theologian Rev. Jim Wallis has noted. What role do nuclear weapons play in that morality? We find ourselves as a nation grappling with economic, environmental, social and racial justice issues, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the very existence of nuclear weapons — and all that they entail, from mining, production, testing, stockpiling, dismantling and potential for their use — are among the greatest perpetrators of these injustices. Nuclear weapons threaten us every moment of every day.
Chernobyl Is My Inheritance, but It Has Lessons for Us All
Yes! Magazine – April 26, 2023 – Nataliya Braginsky
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2020/04/26/coronavirus-chernobyl-survive
Perhaps the most obvious echo of Chernobyl in the current pandemic is the failure of almighty governments to protect their people… This is what happens when you layer a public health crisis on top of the crisis of late-stage capitalism… For my parents, Chernobyl was a gateway to the U.S., the Soviet Union collapsing behind them. For me, Chernobyl is an inheritance, a handbook for surviving apocalypse. We have entered this portal together, and while we can look to our past, there is no going back there. This is the moment when we allow ourselves to imagine our world anew. Can you envision it? My parents could not imagine outliving empire, and yet they did. Perhaps we can too.
A dying Daniel Ellsberg talks about Discord and the power of leaks
The Washington Post – Aptil 25, 2023 – Devlin Barrett
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/25/ellsberg-discord-pentagon-papers-cancer/
Daniel Ellsberg, the person responsible for perhaps the biggest leak in U.S. government history — the Pentagon Papers — said the latest disclosures of classified information show that the world still faces some of the same dangers that spurred him to act more than 50 years ago. Ellsberg, who is 92 and dying of pancreatic cancer, said he is struck by the similarities between the Vietnam War and the current war in Ukraine — two conflicts in which a superpower, he argued, could be tempted to use nuclear weapons.
How The New York Times Sat on a Story Daniel Ellsberg Gave Them
Project Censored – Marchb 27, 2023 – Kevin Gosztola
https://www.projectcensored.org/how-the-new-york-times-sat-on-a-story-daniel-ellsberg-gave-them/
In 2021, Pentagon Papers’ whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg shared a copy of a top-secret study with New York Times reporter Charlie Savage on the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958. It was presented by the newspaper as “another unauthorized disclosure” by the “famed source.” The study from 1966 showed the United States military had drawn up plans for nuclear strikes against mainland China after Chinese military forces attacked Taiwan. “American military leaders pushed for a first-use nuclear strike on China, accepting the risk that the Soviet Union would retaliate in kind on behalf of its ally and millions of people would die,” Savage wrote.
50 Years After Vietnam War’s End, It’s Time to See Its Role in Spawning MAGA
Truthout – April 26, 2023 – Jerry Lembcke
https://truthout.org/articles/50-years-after-vietnam-wars-end-its-time-to-see-its-role-in-spawning-maga/
Lost-war angst quietly pooled into a political resource that white nationalist and militarist movements would tap decades later. Yet, when Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement escalated racist and authoritarian sentiments in 2015, many efforts to explain its popularity failed to address the role of the war in Vietnam. Continued inattention to the fountainhead of Trumpism cradled in the Vietnam War’s wake portends a post-Trump life for the MAGA movement.
Collapsing Roofs, Broken Toilets, Flooded Classrooms: Inside the Worst-Funded Schools in the Nation
Propublica – April 13, 2023 – Becca Savransky
https://www.propublica.org/article/idaho-deteriorating-schools-repair-bonds
Idaho spends less on schools per student than any other state. Kids are sweating, freezing and struggling to learn.
Is the Metropolitan Museum of Art Displaying Objects That Belong to Native American Tribes?
Propublica – april 25, 2023 – Kathleen Sharp
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-met-museum-native-american-collections
A ProPublica review of records the museum has posted online found that only 15% of the 139 works donated or loaned by the Dikers over the years have solid or complete ownership histories, with some lacking any provenance at all. Most either have no histories listed, leave gaps in ownership ranging from 200 to 2,000 years or identify previous owners in such vague terms as an “English gentleman” and “a family in Scotland.” Experts say a lack of documented histories is a red flag that objects could have been stolen or may be fake.
Sweeping new narratives of Native history are reorienting the American story
The Boston Globe – April 27, 2023 – Craig Fehrman
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/27/opinion/ned-blackhawk-rediscovery-of-america/
Where are the big and accessible books that narrate Native history in a new way? It’s a puzzling gap in America’s pop history — so puzzling, in fact, that two acclaimed professors, Yale’s Ned Blackhawk and Oxford’s Pekka Hämäläinen, have decided to fill it themselves. In their ambitious popular histories, readers will find what even Washington knew was missing: the other side of the American story.
The Toxic Legacy of U.S. Foreign Policy in Vieques, Puerto Rico
Informed Comment – April 27, 2023 – Monisha Rios
https://www.juancole.com/2023/04/legacy-foreign-vieques.html
The plight of Vieques is a prime example of why U.S. foreign policy must be critically analyzed, called into question, and restrained by the people of the United States in whose name unspeakable harm is being done–abroad and within their own communities. U.S. citizens should be asking who profits from U.S. interventionism, who develops U.S. foreign policy, whose interests are served and who pays the price, who wins when the very earth that sustains us is contaminated by unnecessary military activity and can’t produce food. After 200 years, the time has come to do away with the colonial law of the past that has plagued our communities in Latin America and the Caribbean for far too long. It’s time for the abolition of the Monroe Doctrine, the Jones Act, and the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act.
15,000 attend controversial joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day event
The Times of Israel – April 25, 2023 – Carrie Keller-Lynn
https://www.timesofisrael.com/15000-attend-controversial-joint-israeli-palestinian-memorial-day-event/
The annual Memorial Day event hosted by the left-wing group Combatants for Peace is a unique remembrance event designed to bring together Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones in the conflict, and is considered a symbol of hope to some. It has been deeply controversial since its inception, though, particularly among the Israeli public, with critics accusing it of legitimizing terrorism and equating Israel’s fallen soldiers with those who attacked them. To Palestinian detractors, the event, now in its 17th year, represents unwanted normalization with Israel… At the event, in speeches delivered in both Hebrew and Arabic, activists and bereaved families denounced the West Bank occupation and urged others to work toward peace.
Young Voters Will Transform Even the Reddest States
Portside – April 27, 2023 – Ed Kilgore
https://portside.org/2023-04-27/young-voters-will-transform-even-reddest-states
there’s a new demographic wave — a tsunami, really — forming in the not-so-distant future that could finally break the recent pattern of partisan gridlock. The youth cohorts growing up right now are just dramatically different from their predecessors… There’s not much question which side of the generational barricades will eventually have to give way. As the youth tsunami grows nearer, Republicans may find ways to compensate for a while and/or to nibble at the edges of the future majority coalition. But their freedom to maneuver could be drastically restricted by the need to motivate the existing old-conservative base to turn out in a fear-and-hate frenzy to hold the tide, and then to utilize the political power they have to thwart democracy wherever possible. It’s a dynamic in which the extreme methods Republicans are using right now to stay in charge will eventually boomerang, perhaps suddenly and with terrible force. Suffice it to say that Republicans would be smarter to turn down the temperature of partisan and ideological conflict to cushion their inevitable fall when today’s kids grow up and start voting for change.
Harry Belafonte’s Legacy of Social Change
Yes! Magazine – April 26, 2023 – Aram Goudsouzian
https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2023/04/26/harry-belafonte-civil-rights
Belafonte, who died on Apr. 25, 2023, at the age of 96, was a unique figure in the history of the Black freedom struggle in the U.S. No other entertainer immersed themselves so deeply in the Civil Rights Movement; no other activist occupied a niche at so many levels of American politics. If he was a powerful voice for justice, it was because he leveraged his celebrity… For more than a half-century, Belafonte carried on the legacy of the 1960s, often taking provocative positions from the far-left edge of the political spectrum. Like few others, he blended the worlds of culture and politics, singing a song of justice.