Saturday, June 15th, 2019
Phil Dzikiy, Editor - electrek
Stephan: In Europe we see electric cars and trucks, and a commitment that there be no carbon powered vehicles on European roads by 2040 -- 21 years from now. In the United States, at GM we have, "we can't do that." Read the article.
GM’s Chevy Truck
GM has already confirmed plans to make an electric pickup truck, but recent comments from GM president Mark Reuss don’t make it seem as if the automaker plans to produce such a vehicle any time soon.
Reuss spoke to Bloomberg on Wednesday (video), and a chunk of the interview was dedicated to GM’s electric pickup plans.
Asked when GM’s pickup trucks would become electric, Reuss said it’s “going to take a little time” and proceeded to give a number of excuses as to why.
Reuss cited charging time, charging infrastructure, and cost parity as challenges in making an electric pickup, mentioning that all three were things that “have to be really solved and very clear” for a customer to switch over from an ICE pickup. On that last point, he said,
“Thirdly, they have to be cost parity or less. No one’s going to pay more for an electric pickup truck for the work or primary use part of this.”
Reuss was also concerned about the high-volume potential of an electric pickup […]
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Stephan: This is an example of what I am beginning to see in the higher quality media; finally the implications of climate change are being noticed. Whether it will become understood by the American population is problematic. We will have to wait and see.
A sign on a trail in Austria marks how quickly glaciers are receding.
Credit: Sean Gallup/Getty
Is climate change going to end human civilization for good, and so soon that we may as well not bother saving for retirement?
That’s the theory put forward in a recent viral Vice post: “New Report Warns ‘High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End’ Within 30 Years.’”
The Vice story summed up a new report from the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, an Australian think tank, arguing that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change analysis of the impacts of climate change understates how much harm it’ll do, and that in reality we face something much worse, with runaway feedback effects amplifying the initial warming until the Earth is “largely uninhabitable.” It doesn’t actually argue that the world will end in 30 years, but it suggests we’ll reach the tipping point by then.
The story went up on Vice with an orange-tinged, haunting illustration of the Statue of Liberty submerged to the neck by rising seas. The post […]
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Ruth Milka , - Nation of Change
Stephan: The chemical industrial form of agriculture used in the United States is literally killing the soil where it is used, it is killing farmers and their families and, now, we can clearly see its effects extend far out to sea. We cannot continue in this way.
Gulf of Mexico dead zone
credit: Flickr
The infamous Gulf of Mexico ‘dead zone’ could swell this summer to a record 7,829 square miles, or roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts.
The hypoxic zone – or dead zone, an area of little or no oxygen that seriously threatens marine life – threatens to become the second largest in history. The previous record size was 8,776 square miles in 2017.
The Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone occurs every year. According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, it is caused by “excess nutrient pollution from human activities, such as urbanization and agriculture, occurring throughout the Mississippi River watershed.” Heavy spring rains led to high river flows and flooding this year, contributing to this year’s dead zone.
Researchers from Louisiana State University predict that this year’s dead zone could be even larger than the NOAA predicted, closer to 8,717 square miles.
“This past May, discharge in the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers was about 67 percent above the long-term average between 1980 and 2018. USGS estimates that this […]
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Jessica Mason Pieklo, - Rewire.News
Stephan: Ultra-religious conservatives are screwed up sexually. It can range from celibacy to polygamy, but it is always dysfunctional, often nasty, and frequently punishing. And beneath everything, for the Abrahamic religions, it has the added tone of subjugating women.
You may find it hard to believe that in the second decade of the 21st century in a modern high technology culture that people are still trying to deprive women of access to contraceptives, but it is true, as this report explains.
Conservative religious women think of women who do not share their views as hussies, or whores, and conservative religious men don't like working with women who are their equals or, even more threatening, their bosses. What to do? Why take away their right to choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and, even better, their access to contraception by deleting coverage for it from their healthcare.
A woman who can't get an abortion, or who can't even plan her pregnancies if she is sexually active in marriage or out, is at constant risk of becoming pregnant unexpectedly. And therefore unable to plan a career, or pursue anything uninterruptedly, or threaten any insecure man.
Under Trump, the Little Sisters became the public face of defending the administration’s birth control rules. Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty
Conservatives have spent the better part of a decade arguing the Affordable Care Act’s birth control benefit, which provides insurance coverage for a host of contraception without additional cost or co-pay, violates religious freedom principles. Those efforts have had mixed results. Despite two turns before the U.S. Supreme Court, dozens of lower court orders, and a handful of executive orders from President Trump, the benefit remains in place—but employers who object to it can avoid complying with it.
This week, the Roberts Court will consider taking up a case that could settle the birth control benefit’s fate once and for all.
The case is The Little Sisters of the Poor Jeanne Jugan Residence v. California. Yes, that’s right. The Sisters are at it again.
To understand how yet another case like this could end up before the Roberts Court, let’s revisit for a moment the history of the contraception mandate. Originally proposed in 2012, the […]
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Robert Walton, - Utility Dive
Stephan: Here is some good news coming in during a particularly disgusting and vile Trump tornado of criminality. New Jersey, freed from Chris Christie, has made a strong commitment to exit the carbon era and, as you can see in the chart that illustrates this story, New Jersey is not alone.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities on Monday 
