Maybe it's because wilderness areas have been a big part of my life, and many of my most cherished memories occurred on backpacks, canoe trips, rock climbing, or just hiking in protected areas where the land exists much as it always has. Whatever the reason I find the assault on these protected areas by Trump and his zombie Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, particularly offensive.
Bruce Babbitt was the secretary of interior from 1993 to 2001 and the Democratic governor of Arizona from 1978 to 1987, and the hallmark of his career has been the protection of these wild areas. He knows whereof he speaks, and here is his view of these developments.
A reservoir in Blanding, Utah, just outside Bears Ears National Monument.
Credit: KC McGinnis/ The New York Times
America’s wild places survive by the grace of a human promise. For more than 150 years, it has been an article of collective faith and national pride that once we protect a wild place, it is to be safeguarded for all time.
But in the coming days, President Trump will try to shatter that promise.
The president is expected to travel to Utah on Monday to announce that he is repealing protections for as many as two million acres of public land in the American West, an area more than six times the size of Grand Teton National Park, including vast portions of two national monuments in the state, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
Mr. Trump’s plans add up to the largest elimination of protected areas in American history. He is a vandal in our midst, coming in person to lay waste […]
Deana Lucion, who lives in McDowell County, West Virginia. Life expectancy for men in McDowell County is 64 years old – the same as for men in Namibia.
Credit: Jeff Swensen
The United Nations monitor on extreme poverty and human rights has embarked on a coast-to-coast tour of the US to hold the world’s richest nation – and its president – to account for the hardships endured by America’s most vulnerable citizens.
The tour, which kicked off on Friday morning, will make stops in four states as well as Washington DC and the US territory of Puerto Rico. It will focus on several of the social and economic barriers that render the American dream merely a pipe dream to millions – from homelessness in California to racial discrimination in the Deep South, cumulative neglect in Puerto Rico and the decline of industrial jobs in West Virginia.
With 41 million Americans officially in poverty according to the US Census Bureau (other estimates put that figure much higher), one […]
Demonstrators hold a sign in support of net neutrality.
Credit: Backbone Campaign
After the FCC began its assault on net neutrality earlier this year, several cities and states began looking into ways to protect consumers on their own. Unfortunately, the FCC has decided that it won’t allow that to happen: as part of its proposal to repeal net neutrality, the commission is trying to use its authority to preempt any and all state and local net neutrality regulations.
The commission intends to block any local laws or regulations that “effectively impose rules or requirements that we have repealed or decided to refrain from imposing in this order or that would impose more stringent requirements for any aspect of broadband service that we address in this order.”
So to sum up: states can’t pass anything covered in the 2015 net neutrality order, they can’t pass anything the FCC mentioned but didn’t pass in this new order, and they can’t pass anything that would at all make life more difficult for ISPs. […]
Sexy cyborg woman posing on bed . Sci fiction and technology conceptual
Credit: Captblack76/Shutterstock
With the rise of technology, so too comes the rise of a new category of intimacy. Digisexuals, or people who primarily use technology for sexual satisfaction, could soon become more prolific in society, according to experts.
It is safe to say the era of immersive virtual sex has arrived,” said Neil McArthur, the director of the Center for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba and the author of a new scientific study on digisexuality.McArthur and a team from the university published a new report in the Journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy detailing the need to be prepared for a rise in digisexuality.“As these technologies advance, their adoption will grow and many people will come to identify themselves as ‘digisexuals’ – people whose primary sexual identity comes through the use of technology, McArthur said, according to the Telegraph. “Many people will find that their experiences with this technology become integral to their sexual identity and some will prefer them […]
Icy cliffs along the Antarctic coast tower over the Ross Sea.
Credit: John B. Weller
Antarctica and the Southern Ocean around it are awash in superlatives—the coldest and driest continent, the windiest seas. And now they add another: home to the largest protected area in the world. The Ross Sea Region Marine Protected Area (MPA), which covers 2.06 million square kilometers (almost 800,000 square miles) enters into force today, one year after the 25 member governments of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) agreed by consensus to designate the area. That decision showed that the commission takes its role as guardian of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean waters seriously.
By coincidence, Dec. 1 is also World Antarctica Day, and with the entry into force of this MPA, which includes the 500,000-square-kilometer (193,00-square-mile) Ross Ice Shelf, the region that scientists have called “the least altered marine ecosystem on Earth” has an excellent chance of remaining so.
The new protected area safeguards the foraging ranges of significant percentages of the world’s populations of […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
