Credit: Margaret Johnson/Eyeem/Getty

BURLINGTON, VERMONT – Confronting the question most commonly asked of the growing number of Americans who support replacing America’s uniquely inefficient and immoral for-profit healthcare system with Medicare for All—”How do we pay for it?”—a new paper released Friday by researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) shows that financing a single-payer system would actually be quite simple, given that it would cost significantly less than the status quo.

“It’s easy to pay for something that costs less,” Robert Pollin, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and lead author of the new analysis, declared during a panel discussion at The Sanders Institute Gathering in Burlingon, Vermont, where Pollin unveiled the paper for the first time.

According to the 200-page analysis of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) Medicare for All Act of 2017, the researchers found that “based on 2017 US healthcare expenditure figures, the cumulative savings for the first decade operating under Medicare for All would be $5.1 trillion, equal to 2.1 percent of cumulative GDP, without accounting for broader macroeconomic […]

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  An estimated 41% of global insect species are at risk.
  Credit: Hillary Kladke/Getty

  During the winter, about 40% of honey bee colonies in the US perished.

• Honey bees pollinate $15 billion worth of US crops every year. Their decline has a major impact on our food production and supply.
• But the honey bee is just one of many insects in decline — 40% of the world’s insect species are in decline, according to a February 2019 study.
• The die-offs are happening primarily because insects are losing their habitats to farming and urbanization. The use of pesticidesand fertilizers is also to blame, and so is climate change.
• The rapid shrinking of insect populations is a sign that the planet is in the midst of a sixth mass extinction.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Phillip Stephen Stallings

A fundamentalist Christian man who is the self-proclaimed founder of the “Biblical Flat Earth Society” was arrested this week and charged with 56 counts of child sexual exploitation.

Local news station WTVD reports that Durham, North Carolina resident Phillip Stephen Stallings is facing dozens of charges of sexually exploiting minors after he allegedly “downloaded media that involved minors engaging in sexual activities.”

Wind turbines near Palm Springs, Calif. Several states, including New York and California, are pushing ambitious green-energy policies to fight global warming. Credit: Beth Coller for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — At a time when the country is already deeply fractured along partisan lines, individual states are starting to pursue vastly different policies on climate change with the potential to cement an economic and social divide for years to come.

A growing number of blue states are adopting sweeping new climate laws — such as New York’s bill, passed this week, to zero out net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 — that aim to reorient their entire economies around clean energy, transforming the way people get their electricity, heat their homes and commute to work.

But these laws are passing almost exclusively in states controlled by Democrats, while Republican-led states have largely resisted enacting aggressive new climate policies in recent years. At the same time, the Trump administration is rolling back federal climate regulations, which means many […]

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Proposed Utah nuclear power plant

SALT LAKE CITY — A group opposed to a new type of nuclear plant being developed said Thursday the price of power produced there would be more than other carbon-free energy sources, making it a bad investment for Utah’s municipal utilities.

“We feel the numbers are independent and speak for themselves,” Michael Shea, a senior policy associate for the Healthy Environmental Alliance of Utah, told reporters at a news conference discussing the findings in a new study.

The study, by Salt Lake City-based Energy Strategies, found power produced by the small modular nuclear reactors to be built in Idaho would cost more than $66 per megawatt hour, compared to as low as just over $38 for wind and solar power.

“It does not make economic sense from a market perspective for a group like (the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) to be investing in what is essentially a subsidized science project that has not ever been proven,” Shea said.

A statement issued […]

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