Stephan: The Trump Republican administration seems to embody all the negative attributes of which humans are capable. Lust, greed, murder, lying, corruption, theft, I don't think Donald Trump and his zombies miss any negative. But it is their conscious and deliberate denial of climate change more than anything else that puts humanity as a species at risk. Here's the proof.
Credit: Ryan McBride/AFP
Moments after President Donald Trump took the oath of office last January, nearly all references to climate change disappeared from the White House official website. A page detailing former President Barack Obama’s plans to build a clean energy economy, address climate change, and protect the environment became a broken link (archived here). Instead, “An America First Energy Plan” appeared, which touted Trump’s commitment to eliminating “harmful and unnecessary policies,” such as the Climate Action Plan that proposed a reduction in carbon emissions. Now, the web address leads to a collection of energy and environment fact sheets, White House news, and remarks by the president.
Whenever a new administration takes charge, government websites are often revised. But during the Trump administration’s first year in office, a striking number of references to science, climate, energy, and the environment have all but disappeared from various governmental websites.
Individually, the changes might not seem like much. Indeed, spokespersons from several agencies noted that revisions are part of routine website updates. When asked about the removal of “Change” from […]
Gabriella Mulligan, Technology of Business Reporter - BBC
Stephan: Another alarm begins to ring.
Cape Town, South Africa Credit: Getty Images
Cape Town, home to Table Mountain, African penguins, sunshine and sea, is a world-renowned tourist destination. But it could also become famous for being the first major city in the world to run out of water.
Most recent projections suggest that its water could run out as early as March. The crisis has been caused by three years of very low rainfall, coupled with increasing consumption by a growing population.
The local government is racing to address the situation, with desalination plants to make sea water drinkable, groundwater collection projects, and water recycling programmes.
Bill McKibben, - Reader Supported News/The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is some good news. Perhaps it is worth noting that this development is the result of Democratic governance and social policy decisions.
Over the years, the capital of the fight against climate change has been Kyoto, or Paris – that’s where the symbolic political agreements to try and curb the earth’s greenhouse gas emissions have been negotiated and signed. But now, New York City vaulted to leadership in the battle.
On Wednesday, its leaders, at a press conference in a neighborhood damaged over five years ago by Hurricane Sandy, announced that the city was divesting its massive pension fund from fossil fuels, and added for good measure that they were suing the five biggest oil companies for damages. Our planet’s most important city was now at war with its richest industry. And overnight, the battle to save the planet shifted from largely political to largely financial.
That shift had been under way for a long time, of course. The divestment campaign, which my organization 350.org helped launch, has become the largest of its kind in history, with now more than $6tn in endowments and portfolios divesting in part or in […]
Stephan: To the rest of the world the United States is now the great war monger. We have military troops engaged in conflict in 76 countries, and we have been at continuous war for almost three decades with no sign of it ending anytime soon. We spend more than the next seven nations in the world combined on the military. In fiscal year 2015, military spending accounted for 54 percent of all federal discretionary spending, a total of $598.5 billion. And now, urged on by Trump, we are flirting with nuclear warfare. Here's the story.
Control centre Norad ( Cheyenne Mountain ) near Colorado Springs. The new nuclear policy is significantly more hawkish that the posture adopted by the Obama administration. Credit: Ulrich Baumgarten/U. Baumgarten
The Trump administration plans to loosen constraints on the use of nuclear weapons and develop a new low-yield nuclear warhead for US Trident missiles, according to a former official who has seen the most recent draft of a policy review.
Jon Wolfsthal, who was special assistant to Barack Obama on arms control and nonproliferation, said the new nuclear posture review prepared by the Pentagon, envisages a modified version of the Trident D5 submarine-launched missiles with only part of its normal warhead, with the intention of deterring Russia from using tactical warheads in a conflict in Eastern Europe.
Stephan: Remember Ronald Reagan's "shining city on the hill," as a metaphor for America? Well, a more apt metaphor under Trump might be a sleazy sweaty thug in an alley selling guns. Read this report.
Credit: specnaz / Shutterstock
The Trump administration will soon announce its next move in the ongoing assault on diplomacy and human rights currently taking place in the United States. Through a plan dubbed “Buy American,” the administration is calling for U.S. attachés and diplomats to play a larger role in the sale of U.S. weapons, effectively solidifying their role as lobbyists for the arms industry rather than agents of diplomacy.
This means the State Department, the agency that is meant to foster diplomatic relations and maintain peaceful engagement with other countries, will now openly operate as a weapons dealer. The administration is essentially forcing the State Department to undermine itself, as seeking out and expanding opportunities for increased weapons sales are certainly not conducive to fostering peaceful global relations.
The “Buy American” plan will increase U.S. officials’ involvement in facilitating weapons sales, while simultaneously easing rules that limit U.S. weapons sales to governments with poor human rights records. The move displays an increasingly undeniable truth—that the United States government views human rights not as […]
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Over the years, the capital of the fight against climate change has been Kyoto, or Paris – that’s where the symbolic political agreements to try and curb the earth’s greenhouse gas emissions have been negotiated and signed. But now, New York City vaulted to leadership in the battle.
