Don’t waste your time recycling plastic
The Washington Post – April 22, 2024 – Eve O. Schaub
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/22/stop-recycling-plastic-earth-day/

The time has come for us to stop “recycling” plastic. Plastic as a material is not recyclable, and the very best thing we can do to celebrate Earth Day this year is to acknowledge that fact. This seems counterintuitive, I know. We’ve been told for decades that the answer to the plastic-waste crisis is more, better recycling: If only we sorted better! If only we had better access to recycling technologies! If only we washed and dried our plastics more adequately! This is all a smokescreen, designed to distract us from the truth that plastic recycling — if by “recycling” we mean converting a used material into a new material of similar value and function — is a myth… What passes for “recycling” plastic is costly, energy-intensive and toxic… Let’s treat plastic like the toxic waste it is and send it where it can hurt people the least… Let’s treat plastic like the toxic waste it is and send it where it can hurt people the least… We need to get to work on the real solution: making a whole lot less of it.

Survey finds that 60 firms are responsible for half of world’s plastic pollution
The Guardian – April 24, 2024 – Sofia Quaglia
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/24/survey-finds-that-60-firms-are-responsible-for-half-of-worlds-plastic-pollution

Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with six responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday. The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment. “Production really is pollution,” says one of the study’s authors, Lisa Erdle, director of science at the non-profit The 5 Gyres Institute… The world is in a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. But while there are agreements in place for the first two, we have no legislation, no global agreement on plastic pollution.”

Europe is warming up faster than any other continent, and the heat is deadly
NPR – April 22, 2024 – Rebecca Hersher
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/22/1244791280/europe-is-warming-up-faster-than-any-other-continent-and-the-heat-is-deadly

“Extreme heat causes the greatest mortality of all extreme weather,” says Chris Hewitt, the head of the World Meteorological Organization. Europe’s rapid warming is being driven by a trio of factors. The continent is close to the Arctic, which is the fastest-warming region on Earth. It is also naturally situated near warm ocean and atmospheric currents – that’s why London’s winters are so much more temperate than Chicago’s, even though London is farther north. But that also means Europe is getting dangerously hot more quickly than places at similar latitudes, explains Samantha Burgess, the deputy director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service. “We are continuing to see new records broken all the time,” Burgess says.

Indigenous peoples rush to stop ‘false climate solutions’ ahead of next international climate meeting
Grist – April 22, 2024 – Maria Parazo Rose
https://grist.org/global-indigenous-affairs-desk/indigenous-peoples-rush-to-stop-false-climate-solutions-ahead-of-next-international-climate-meeting/

On Wednesday, Goldtooth and the Indigenous Environmental Network, or IEN, called for a permanent end to carbon markets. Beyond being an ineffective tool for mitigating climate change, the organization argues; they harm, exploit, and divide Native communities around the world. The recommendation was delivered to a crowd of Indigenous activists, policymakers, and leaders at the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, or UNPFII, and is the most comprehensive moratorium on the issue the panel has ever heard… The heightened urgency stems from the COP29 gathering planned later this year, when provisions in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement on carbon market structures are expected to be finalized. “We are long overdue for a moratorium on false climate solutions like carbon markets,” said Goldtooth, who is Diné and Dakota and executive director of IEN. “It’s a life and death situation with our people related to the mitigation solutions that are being negotiated, especially under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Article 6 is all about carbon markets, which is a smokescreen, which is a loophole [that keeps] fossil fuel polluters from agreeing to phase out carbon.”

Do you need to worry about “forever chemicals”?
Vox – April 22, 2024 – Keren Landman, MD
https://www.vox.com/even-better/24135052/pfas-forever-chemicals-health-testing-exposure

PFAS isn’t just one chemical, but thousands of different chemicals used in a range of industrial processes, many of which involve making products slick, nonstick, or waterproof. Unlike some other synthetic chemicals, they’re extraordinarily hard to break apart: They degrade especially slowly in the environment and in human bodies, leading to the moniker “forever chemicals.” For decades, companies dumped PFAS directly into the natural environment, including rivers and aquifers, contaminating drinking water in many parts of the US. Additionally, consumer products shed the chemicals onto surfaces in our homes and into the food we eat. As a consequence, experts believe most people have some quantity of PFAS in their bodies… In a world where our environment’s safety is so closely tethered to capitalist interests, understanding how to manage and make decisions about environmental risks rests on patients and providers — even though it shouldn’t. Here’s what you need to know about assessing your PFAS exposure risk, getting tested, and working with a health care provider to find a way forward.

Is Washington’s Defense of Israel’s War destroying the Edifice of the Liberal International Order?
Informed Comment – April 22, 2024 – Ali Abootalebi
https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/washingtons-destroying-international.html

What indelibly marks these events, aside from the military and political calculations and implications for the region, is that they have occurred in violation of provisions of international law, including, but not exclusively, the breach of sovereignty, international humanitarian laws, laws of war, crimes against humanity, wars of aggression, and according to a preliminary ICJ ruling, possibly the articles of 1948 genocide convention. Israel’s ‘ironclad’ supporter, the United States, is construed, therefore, as an accomplice in the crime of genocide through its arms transfers to Israel, and vetoes in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to end Israel’s almost seven-month-old military operation in Gaza… The United States unconditional support for Israel and its lack of attention to the welfare of peoples in the MENA region, as well as elsewhere in the developing world, in pursuit of peace, human security, and good governance, is detrimental to the universal compliance and voluntary adherence to the norms and rules of international law

Remember: Christ was a Palestinian refugee
Aljazeera – December 26, 2018 – Hamid Dabashi
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/25/remember-christ-was-a-palestinian-refugee/

Jesus Christ stands as a towering figure of unity in the face of the divisions and hate being sown among us…. All of these may appear as strange and outlandish in a world plagued by religious bigotry and historical illiteracy. Generations of European depiction of Christ as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white man have made it difficult for European and North American Christians today to imagine him for what he was: a Jewish Palestinian refugee child who grew up to become a towering revolutionary figure… For years at Columbia [University], I have been teaching a book called Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from The Heart: The Story of Elvia Alvarado (1989) in which there is a splendid chapter called: Jesus was an Organizer… Remember Christ was a Palestinian refugee – a Jewish Palestinian refugee, who is the founding figure of Christianity, and a beloved prophet for Muslims. The rest is commentary.

West Bank Pogrom ‘Underscores Urgent Need to Dismantle Apartheid’: Amnesty
Common Dreams – April 22, 2024 – Brett Wilkins
https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-settler-attacks-west-bank

For more than a week now, Israeli settlers have been attacking West Bank Palestinians in towns and villages including Al-Mughayir, Duma, Deir Dibwan, Beitin, and Aqraba, killing at least four people including a child; wounding dozens of others; and destroying homes, vehicles, and other property. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have either stood and watched or participated in the settler attacks, which the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and others are calling a “pogrom.” Amnesty said the “alarming spike in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in recent days highlights the urgent need to dismantle illegal settlements, end Israel’s occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories, and its longstanding system of apartheid… The massive propaganda to cast the resistance of Palestinians to the colonial occupation and theft of their homeland as a battle between “Jews and Arabs” was so dominant in the la la land of the US and even Europe that the very idea that Palestinians are Christians, too, and that Jesus was, in fact, a Palestinian Jewish Rabbi scares and confuses the living daylight out of their slumbering ignorance.

Self-Destructive College Presidents
The American Prospect – April 22, 2024 – Robert Kuttner
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-04-22-self-destructive-college-presidents-antisemitism/

USC students and faculty should emulate the great African American contralto Marian Anderson, who gave a free concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being barred from the racist DAR’s Constitution Hall. They should hold their own counter-event off-site, inviting all of the disinvited speakers. The withdrawn invitations could be treated as badges of honor… USC students and faculty should emulate the great African American contralto Marian Anderson, who gave a free concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being barred from the racist DAR’s Constitution Hall. They should hold their own counter-event off-site, inviting all of the disinvited speakers. The withdrawn invitations could be treated as badges of honor… It doesn’t take a crystal ball to discern that events on these campuses will soon escalate… leaving in their wake a festering election-year mess to be further stoked and exploited by the Republican right and Bibi Netanyahu.

I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’
Zeteo – April 23, 2024 – Jonathan Ben-Menachem
https://zeteo.com/p/i-am-a-jewish-student-at-columbia

“Reprehensible and dangerous.” “Terrorist sympathizers.” “It’s not 1938 Berlin. It’s 2024, Columbia University, NYC.” The White House, Congressional Republicans, and cable news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the reality on the ground is very different. As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can’t quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives… the often off-campus actions of a few unaffiliated individuals simply do not characterize this disciplined student campaign. The efforts to connect these offensive but relatively isolated incidents to the broader pro-Palestinian protest movement mirror a wider strategy to delegitimize all criticism of Israel… As this national discourse over “campus antisemitism” reached a boiling point over the weekend, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment saw CUAD organizers lead joint Muslim and Jewish prayer sessions and honor each other’s dead. This is wholesome, human stuff.

Protesting against slaughter – as students in the US are doing – isn’t antisemitism
The Guardian – April 23, 2024 – Robert Reich
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/23/israel-gaza-campus-protests

The most important thing I teach my students is to seek out people who disagree with them. That’s because the essence of learning is testing one’s ideas, assumptions and values. And what better place to test ideas, assumptions and values than at a university?… Can we be clear about a few things? Protesting against this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus – taking a stand against a perceived wrong, thereby provoking discussion and debate. Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked – stirred, unsettled, goaded – even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks… universities should go out of their way to tolerate expression that may make some people uncomfortable. To tar all offensive speech “hate speech” and ban it removes a central pillar of education. Of course, it’s offensive. It is designed to offend.

Atlanta Police Violently Arrest Emory Students & Faculty to Clear Gaza Solidarity Encampment
Democracy Now! – April 26, 2024 – Noëlle McAfee, Emil’ Keme and Umaymah Mohammad
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/4/26/emory_protests

As a wave of student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza continues to spread from coast to coast, schools and law enforcement have responded with increasing brutality to campus encampments. One of the most violent police crackdowns took place at Emory University in Atlanta on Thursday, when local and state police swept onto the campus just hours after students had set up tents on the quad in protest against Israel’s war on Gaza as well as the planned police training center known as Cop City. Police used tear gas and stun guns to break up the encampment as they wrestled people to the ground, and are accused of using rubber bullets. Among those arrested were a few faculty members. We hear from two of the arrested professors: Noëlle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department, and Emil’ Keme, professor of English and Indigenous studies. We also speak with Palestinian American organizer and medical student Umaymah Mohammad, who describes how Emory has repeatedly suppressed activism on campus since the start of the war in October, and says law enforcement in Georgia work closely with Israeli authorities as part of a police training exchange. “We no longer accept our tuition dollars and our tax money going to fund an active genocide,” she says.

Why schools are calling the cops on student protesters
Slate – April 26, 2024 – Molly Olmstead
https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/04/protests-arrests-emerson-austin-columbia-emory-usc.html

To understand how universities got to a place of such open conflict with their students, Slate spoke with Katherine S. Cho, a professor of higher education at Loyola University in Chicago who studies university administrations’ relationship to social justice activism… I think colleges and universities feel like this is very complicated. There’s less of a desire to make a stance, and colleges and universities are wary of making statements; often, statements are 500 words or less, and there needs to be, like, a book. So, I think that that’s part of what makes universities nervous… So what that tells you is that Columbia is likely facing a lot of pressure from people who do not want students to be protesting. To the point where they’re making what seems like a very irrational decision.

The Ghost of the 1968 Antiwar Movement Has Returned
Reader Supported News – The New York Times – April 25, 2024 – Charles M. Blom
https://www.rsn.org/001/the-ghost-of-the-1968-antiwar-movement-has-returned.html

Young people, in particular, are following the Israel-Hamas war on social media and many are horrified by what they see. They’ve also grown up with protest movements — Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, the Parkland, Fla., students’ gun control campaign — as the backdrop of their lives. Over 1,000 Black pastors have called on President Biden to press for a cease-fire in Gaza. And we’re seeing antiwar protests spread across college campuses. As in 1968, the semester will soon end and those students will leave for the summer, allowing more time and energy for their efforts to be focused on the D.N.C. in Chicago in August… The numbers are staggering. The level of suffering is unacceptable. Young people will make that point clear this summer in Chicago.

The War Games of Israel and Iran
The New Yorker – April 19, 2024 – David Remnick
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-war-games-of-israel-and-iran

While Netanyahu and the Islamic Republic exchange ballistic “messages,” the question of Palestine demands the moral and strategic courage of actual statesmen… On Friday, I spoke to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iranian American analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace… “In my view, these two countries are unnatural adversaries,” Sadjadpour told me. “This isn’t like Russia-Ukraine or China-Taiwan or Israel-Palestine with their territorial, bilateral disputes. This is not a conflict that is geopolitical but ideological.”… In Sadjadpour’s view, which is echoed by polling results in Iran, there is a distinct gulf between the mullahs and the general population. “The Iranian government is more dedicated to abolishing one nation than advancing its own,” he said… Perhaps there is something ugly about trying to search for a hopeful historic parallel after all the cruelty that’s been committed from October 7th onward. And yet such an example comes not from a Biblical episode but from a diplomatic one… We can go on shedding blood and deepening hatreds forever. But what is the choice? Is there any sane path other than beginning again?

How the US Media Failed to Tell the Story of the Occupation of Palestine
The Nation – April 26, 2024 – Dave Zirin
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/occupation-of-the-american-mind-documentary/

[The film] “The Occupation of the American Mind” and its trenchant media analysis [is] a vital tool for understanding the current situation. That’s also why it’s been attacked by politicians and policed by college administrators and compared to Birth of a Nation and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Such responses are similar to Netanyahu’s comparison of the sit-ins at Columbia to the Nazi rallies in the 1930s. I reached out to the film’s executive producer, Sut Jhally, and directors Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp to discuss the film and the public reaction… The film is really a history of how US news media have failed to tell the story of Israel’s brutal, decades-long military occupation of Palestinian land. It also details how pro-Palestinian voices have been marginalized and routinely vilified as antisemites and terrorist sympathizers… It’s about clearing away all the distortions and myths and ideological filters that have warped people’s understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And it’s about leveling the playing field for Palestinian voices so we have the context and information we need to make up our own minds about US support for Israel.

Zionism’s Expired Shelf-Life: Why Naomi Klein is right that it has become Pharaoh
Informed Comment – April 26, 2024 – H. Scott Prosterman
https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/zionisms-expired-pharaoh.html

Zionism is abused as a social and religious cudgel by the Evangelical movement, and has become another tool of divisiveness for the American far-right. Evangelicals, not Jews, comprise a greater plurality of Israeli tourism now, as more American and European Jews reject this narrative of a “false idol,” in the words of author and activist Naomi Klein. She wrote in a recent ‘Street Seder Address’ published in The Guardian, that Zionism “is a false idol that takes our most profound biblical stories of justice and emancipation from slavery – the story of Passover itself – and turns them into brutalist weapons of colonial land theft, roadmaps for ethnic cleansing and genocide . . . a metaphor for human liberation that has traveled across multiple faiths to every corner of this globe – and dared to turn it into a deed of sale for a militaristic ethnostate.” Netanyahu’s virulent Likud form of Zionism, which he has now allied with the openly racist and even genocidal Religious Zionism and Jewish Power blocs, has created an image of the movement that is anathema to many progressive and leftist activists, and it fuels anti-Semitism as less informed people on the right and left conflate this ruthless ultra-nationalism with Judaism.

Gaza’s 37m tonnes of bomb-filled debris could take 14 years to clear, says expert
The Guardian – April 26, 2024 – Emma Graham-Harrison
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/26/gazas-37m-tonnes-of-bomb-filled-debris-could-take-14-years-to-clear-says-expert

Israel’s war in Gaza has created 37m tonnes of debris, much of it laced with unexploded bombs, which could take more than a decade to remove, a top UN demining official said. Nearly seven months into the war, there is an average 300kg of rubble a square metre of land in Gaza, Pehr Lodhammar, the former United Nationals Mine Action Service chief for Iraq, told a news conference.

Lawmakers Should Spend a Night in a Homeless Shelter
Otherwords – April 17, 2024 – Tiffany Tagbo
https://otherwords.org/lawmakers-should-spend-a-night-in-a-homeless-shelter/

Maybe then they’d drop their opposition to even modest tax credits for low-income people like the ones I work with… I challenge lawmakers to live on the $6 a day that SNAP recipients do, or to come and spend just one night in a shelter. Once they experience these hardships, they’ll restore the expanded Child Tax Credit faster than they can say “expand it.” Perhaps this should be a requirement of the job. We must make our voices heard and speak for those who are silenced and often left out of policy discussion. We must restore the Child Tax Credit expansion and ensure the thriving of all children.

Why Do My Groceries Cost So Much?
Otherwords – April 17, 2024 – Sulma Arias
https://otherwords.org/why-do-my-groceries-cost-so-much/

Big corporations tell us that policies and supply chains are to blame for rising costs, but there’s a big part of the story they don’t want you to know: These giant corporations are themselves largely responsible for higher prices. According to a new report by the Federal Trade Commission, the largest grocery retailers — which include Walmart, Kroger, and Amazon, which owns Whole Foods — used the pandemic as an excuse to raise prices across the board. The same is true for big agribusinesses like Tyson Foods and DuPont, which sell the lion’s share of meat products and seeds. These giant companies wrote themselves a blank check during COVID, which they now expect us to pay for. What all of these corporations have in common is they always want to get bigger. Why? Because when consumers have fewer choices, corporations can force us to pay higher prices. This is especially true with food, which none of us can live without. And according to the FTC, a big reason for these higher prices is corporate greed… We want a world in which every one of us has what we need not only to live, but also to dream. Identifying who is behind the rising cost of everyday essentials is a necessary first step.

The FCC restores net neutrality – here’s what it means for the internet
ZD Net – April 26, 2024 – Steven Vaughan-Nichols
https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/networking/fcc-restores-net-neutrality-heres-what-it-means-for-the-internet/

Net neutrality seeks to ensure all internet traffic is treated equally, without discrimination. The policy means that ISPs shouldn’t be allowed to speed up, slow down, or block access to specific websites or online services. Net neutrality aims to ensure that the internet remains a level playing field for everyone. Net neutrality has been a vital component of the internet’s operation for decades. Indeed, the basic concept of all ISPs sharing bandwidth equally and equitably dates back to the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), which made way for today’s internet. Specifically, the return of net neutrality in the US means, according to the FCC, that ISPs “will again be prohibited from blocking, throttling, or engaging in paid prioritization of lawful content.” This is the formation of a national policy standard to “ensure that broadband internet service is treated as an essential service.”

Alabama House Passes Bill That Could Be ‘Used to Arrest Librarians’
Common Dreams – April 26, 2024 – Olivia Rosane
https://www.commondreams.org/news/alabama-house-bill-librarians

The Alabama House of Representatives voted 72-28 on Thursday in favor of a bill that would apply the state’s criminal obscenity laws to public libraries, public school libraries, and the people who work there. Critics, including the Alabama Library Association, have warned that the bill could see librarians jailed and argued that it violates the First Amendment.

Everything’s a cult now
Vox – April 28, 2024 – Sean Illing
https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/24133960/america-cult-internet-culture-end-monoculture-communication-tribalism

Derek Thompson on what the end of monoculture could mean for American democracy… You can start with the late 19th century when the concept of a national reality was first possible, at least in America. You had technologies like the telephone and the telegraph that allowed newspapers to share information and report on information that truly was national… And so you move from the 19th century with the birth of this possibility of a shared reality, to the 20th century, where you really have the rise of a kind of monoculture, which was never really possible for the vast majority of human history. What I’m interested in is the possibility that the internet has forever shattered that reality, that we are in a way going back to the pre-20th century where culture is actually just a bunch of cults stacked on top of each other, a bunch of mini local realities stacked on top of each other… The fragmentation of media that we’re seeing and the rise of this anti-institutional, somewhat paranoid style of understanding reality, I see these things as rising together in a way that I find very interesting.

What the Student Movement for a Free Palestine Teaches Us
Common Dreams – April 28, 2024 – Howard Winant
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/student-movement-free-palestine-teaches

Efforts to repress the student movement for a free Palestine will never succeed. It is too big and too broad. It is part of a worldwide struggle for justice. It is a working-class and poor people’s movement. It is an anti-racist movement and a feminist movement. It is an anti-colonialist movement, connected to the long struggle against European empires and the U.S. empire. It closely resembles the movements against South African apartheid and the Black Lives Matter movement, among many others. It is not an accident that attacks on the movement have concentrated on repressing student voices. As they have so many times before, students have shown that they are our leaders in struggles for freedom, equality, and democracy.

A Land Back Victory on Haida Gwaii
Yes! Magazine – April 25, 2024 – Serena Renner
https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2024/04/25/canada-native-haida-land-back

In April 2024, the Haida Nation and the province of British Columbia announced the Gaayhllxid/Gíihlagalgang “Rising Tide” Haida Title Lands Agreement. In it, the British Columbia government formally recognizes Haida ownership of all the lands of Haida Gwaii. This is the first time in Canadian history that the colonial government has recognized Indigenous title across an entire terrestrial territory, and it’s the first time this kind of recognition has occurred outside of the courts. Experts say it marks a new path toward Indigenous reconciliation. “It’s groundbreaking, really,” says John Borrows, a member of the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation and an expert in Indigenous law at the University of Toronto in Ontario… Indigenous leaders in Canada and around the world have helped society reckon with the injustices Indigenous communities have faced, and power, public opinion, and legal precedent have all shifted in response. “We should see that, collectively, as an opportunity to build a better society,” Plant says. “Let’s figure out how to work constructively within that world rather than pretend that it doesn’t exist.”

We might be closer to changing course on climate change than we realized
Vox – April 25, 2024 – Umair Irfan
https://www.vox.com/climate/24139383/climate-change-peak-greenhouse-gas-emissions-action

Climate Analytics, a think tank, published a report last November that raised the intriguing possibility that the worst of our impact on the climate might be behind us. “We find there is a 70% chance that emissions start falling in 2024 if current clean technology growth trends continue and some progress is made to cut non-CO2 emissions,” authors wrote. “This would make 2023 the year of peak emissions.” “It was actually a result that surprised us as well,” said Neil Grant, a climate and energy analyst at Climate Analytics and a co-author of the report. “It’s rare in the climate space that you get good news like this.” The inertia behind this trend toward lower emissions is so immense that even politics can only slow it down, not stop it. Many of the worst-case climate scenarios imagined in past decades are now much less likely… The next few years will shape the warming trajectory for much of the rest of the century, but obstacles ranging from political turmoil to international conflict to higher interest rates could slow progress against climate change just as decarbonization needs to accelerate. “We should be humble,” Grant said. “The future is yet unwritten and is in our hands.”