French President Emmanuel Macron
French President Emmanuel Macron is giving millions of euros in grant money to 13 American climate scientists so that they can do their work in his country for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.
Dubbed the “Make Our Planet Great Again” grants, they were announced by Macron in June, shortly after Trump made it clear that America would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, according to The Guardian. Although more than 5,000 scientists from more than 100 countries applied for the grants, they were ultimately given to just 18 scientists — 13 of whom hailed from the United States.
As Macron told the winners in Paris on Monday, he views it as his government’s role to “be there to replace” the American funding for climate change research that has been lost as a result of Trump’s anti-environmentalist policies. He added, “If we want to prepare for the changes of tomorrow, we need science.”
The candidates who were chosen needed to meet a number of requirements: They had to be known for […]
“I think they’re buying it.”
Credit: Kevin Dietsch-Pool
Donald Trump campaigned for president with intense support from coal miners and coal mining communities. He promised them the moon: mines would reopen, their jobs would come back, and their communities would thrive.
Like many of Trump’s promises, these are impossible to keep, but he’s been making a real effort (more than you can say about his other promises). Part of that effort was instructing Rick Perry, head of the Department of Energy, to figure out a way to stop so many coal-fired power plants from closing.
Perry dutifully came up with a plan (albeit a bonkers plan), but it requires the cooperation of federal regulators. Specifically, Perry asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to pass a new rule that would bail out coal plants.
Now the deadline is approaching, and FERC faces a fateful decision: whether to go along or not. FERC is within its rights to say no, to ignore Perry’s proposal or pass a different rule […]
Republican leadership 2017
Credit: The Christian Science Monitor
I am not the only observer who was surprised that the Republicans managed to get out of their own way and actually pass two versions of a relatively large change to the U.S. tax system. (What will happen as they try to agree on a final version is, of course, anyone’s guess.)
I was not, however, especially surprised by the added degrees of shamelessness and dishonesty that the Republicans were willing to bring to their effort.
After all, anyone who has been paying attention — and who is not either a partisan Republican or a diehard believer that both parties are always equally to blame — has seen this coming.
Each time a big policy debate has erupted over the past generation, the Republicans have outdone themselves and degraded our political system in ways that were once unthinkable.
Consider how well all of the Republicans stuck to their talking points during the current debate about taxes — and also consider just how delusional those talking points were.
Yet […]
The Kubuqi Desert is the seventh largest desert in China. It lies to the north of Ordos Plateau in Inner Mongolia, covering 18,600 square kilometres. In the 1980s, over 100,000 herdsmen and farmers suffered from Kubuqiís harsh weather. The desert was one of the three major sources of sandstorms that would engulf the Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei areas. Many communities in Kubuqi lacked access to basic public services like schools, hospitals, electricity and roads. The desert was locally known as the Dune of Death.
Today Kubuqi has been transformed into a scene of greenery, home to around 100 species of plants and wild animals. Far from being a degraded ëDune of Deathí, Kubuqi Desert Park itself now attracts 200,000 visitors annually.
This spectacular change was driven by the vision of self-made industrial billionaire and locally- born Mr Wang Wenbiao, then a salt factory manager in Kubuqi. He established Elion Resources Group in 1988, a diversified company that deals in desertification prevention and control, coal exploitation, clean energy, and […]
Before and after: the National Forest has given new life to a landscape ravaged by coal mining.
Composite: Courtesy of National Forest
Former miner Graham Knight puts his cup of tea down on the cafe table and looks out through the large glass windows. Trees frame every view; a small herd of cows meander through a copse of silver birch towards a distance lake.
“It is quite difficult to put into words what’s happened here and the impact it has had on people,” says the 73-year-old. “Perhaps the best way to think about it is that people seem … well, more happy somehow.”
The cafe is in the heart of the first new forest to be created in the UK for 1,000 years, with 8 million new trees stretching over 200 sq miles of rolling Midlands countryside.
Knight, who worked in one of the area’s many coalmines before they were shut in the late 1980s, says the forest project has transformed an area ravaged by the loss of the mines into an […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
