Stephan: As time goes on I think historians are going to realize how very close we came to a crisis from which we might not have recovered. Suppose, for instance, the Trumpers had captured Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi and held them hostage for several days and then killed them. They came very close to doing so. Read this report and think about what might have been. Even a Republican representative like John Katko recognizes this.
Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Subcommittee on Transportation Security, John Katko grills a panel of witnesses including U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations Executive Assistant Commissioner John Wagner on the potential security risks involved in the resumption of commercial aviation to and from Cuba. Credit: BP/Glenn Fawcett)
Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), the first Republican lawmaker to publicly support efforts to impeach former President Donald Trump, is speaking out about the deadly Capitol riots that erupted on Jan. 6 as lawmakers worked to complete the Electoral College certification.
Although the American public watched in shock and dismay as the disturbing series of events unfolded, Katko insists the riots were far worse than reported on television. During an interview with Syracuse.com, Katko shared details about the day of the deadly U.S. Capitol riots.
While he could not offer specific details about the classified briefings he has received, he did reveal that the incident was far worse than reported.
“I’ve had a lot of classified briefings on it, and it’s deeply troubling,” Katko told Syracuse.com. “I […]
Stephan: Now that we have ethical adults running the government again, particularly with John Kerry overseeing our climate change policies, I think the United States will begin dealing with this critical issue in a rational science-based manner. The European Union is clearly waking up to the reality of the challenge.
Europe needs to acknowledge that its future is no longer with fossil fuels, said the President of the European Investment Bank as he presented the bank’s 2020 results on Wednesday (20 January).
“To put it mildly, gas is over,” Dr Werner Hoyer said at a press conference on the EIB’s annual results.
“This is a serious departure from the past, but without the end to the use of unabated fossil fuels, we will not be able to reach the climate targets,” he added.
Under their climate bank roadmap published in 2020, the EIB plans to use 50% of its activity to support climate and environmental sustainability, unlocking €1 trillion for green funding by 2030. It will also ensure that all activity is aligned with the Paris Agreement.
Stephan: In 1961 I went to work with National Geographic, and my first assignment was a story on the migration of the Monarch butterflies. I was from Virginia and although I saw monarchs in my mother's gardens I was completely unprepared for what I learned when I did the research for this article and saw the pictures the photographers brought back. These migrations involving millions of butterflies have been going on for thousands of years, mostly down the West Coast of the United States.
Now 60 years later humans in their stupidity and uninterest in learning how the great matrix of life operates are on the verge of destroying this ancient cycle of life.
SAN FRANCISCO — The number of western monarch butterflies wintering along the California coast has plummeted precipitously to a record low, putting the orange-and-black insects closer to extinction, researchers announced Tuesday.
An annual winter count by the Xerces Society recorded fewer than 2,000 butterflies, a massive decline from the tens of thousands tallied in recent years and the millions that clustered in trees from Northern California’s Marin County to San Diego County in the south in the 1980s.
Western monarch butterflies head south from the Pacific Northwest to California each winter, returning to the same places and even the same trees, where they cluster to keep warm. The monarchs generally arrive in California at the beginning of November and spread across the country once warmer weather arrives in March.
On the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains, another monarch population travels from southern Canada and the northeastern United States across thousands of miles to spend the winter in central Mexico. Scientists estimate the monarch population in the eastern U.S. has fallen about 80% since the mid-1990s, but the drop-off in the […]
Stephan: Here is some good news. I hope this is just the beginning.
The Sherburne County (Sherco) Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant owned by Xcel Energy and located in Becker, Minnesota, shown in 2016. Credit: Tony Webster/Flickr
Climate campaigners welcomed a federal court’s decision Tuesday to strike down the Trump administration’s Affordable Clean Energy rule—dubbed by its critics the “Dirty Power” rule—which loosened restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants.
“A failure by Trump is a major win for the planet,” said Clare Lakewood, legal director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “The court has wisely struck down another effort by this administration to shred environmental protections in service of polluters.”
Finalized in 2019 and signed by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule was a replacement to the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. ACE was met with fierce outrage and lawsuits from environmental groups and dozens of states and cities who said it was an industry-friendly rule that rejected science to the detriment of public health and the climate crisis.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Stephan: I woke up very early this morning to see Trump depart, and Biden and Harris be inaugurated, and when it was over I felt an existential shift had taken place. My country was awakening from a long and debilitating illness and light was suddenly streaming through the window looking out into our future. Integrity, compassion, science, and fact-based governance have returned to the United States government.
Before evening had come Joe Biden has reinstated America in the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accord, and ended the virulent and nasty racism of Trump's immigration and internal policies. Particularly, Biden directed that the mothers and fathers who had been separated from their children must be reunited with them.
Biden has set the tone, and now each of us, no matter who we are, where we are, regardless of our race, gender, income, or education, has been called to resonate with that tone and do everything we can in every decision we make each day through those choices to foster wellbeing in our society.
I am an experimentalist, a historian, and a futurist, and for over half a century I have studied the nature of consciousness and how it operates in both individuals and societies. The main thing those decades of research have taught me is that all life is interconnected and interdependent and that when fostering wellbeing is the priority all the beings of the earth do better, feel better, are happier, and safer.
