Stephan: This is what a country centered on fostering wellbeing looks and acts like. I think New Zealand is one of the most interesting nations in the world. These are people who are taking climate change seriously. This is good news.
LONDON – New Zealand is set to consider legislation that would require banks, insurers and asset managers to disclose the impacts of climate change on their businesses as the country tries to slash its carbon emissions.The government said in a statement Tuesday that the bill is the first of its kind to be proposed anywhere in the world. It will receive its first reading in parliament this week, and it would make climate-related disclosures mandatory for around 200 organizations.”We simply cannot get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 unless the financial sector knows what impact their investments are having on the climate,” Climate Change Minister James Shaw said in a statement. “This law will bring climate risks and resilience into the heart of financial and business decision making.”The legislation would require financial firms to disclose how climate change affects their business, and explain how they will manage climate-related risks and opportunities. If the bill is passed, the first disclosure reports would be published by companies as soon as 2023.”Requiring the financial sector to […]
Stephan: The judicial legacy left by Trump is going to haunt America for decades. Here's an example.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivers remarks during her swearing-in ceremony as Supreme Court Associate Justice Monday, Oct. 26, 2020, on the South Lawn of the White House. Credit: Official White House/Andrea Hanks)
A perfect example of how much Justice Amy Coney Barrett has moved the U.S. Supreme Court even more to the right came late Friday night, when the High Court blocked California’s pandemic-related ban on religious gatherings in private homes. The decision in Tandon v. Newsom was a 5-4 ruling, and Barrett was part of the majority in a case that might have had a different outcome if the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg were still alive.
After Ginsburg’s death in 2020, then-President Donald Trump nominated Barrett — and when the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed her, a liberal was replaced by a far-right social conservative along the lines of Justice Clarence Thomas and the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Barrett was expected to make socially conservative rulings, and she did that with her decision in Tandon v. Newsom.
Journalist Mark Joseph Stern, analyzing the ruling in Slate, explains, “Chief […]
Robert O'Harrow Jr., Andrew Ba Tran and Derek Hawkins, - The Washington Post
Stephan: The linkage of White supremacy and America's gun psychosis constitutes the most threatening enemy we face. A much bigger problem than Russia.
Credit: Washington Post
Domestic terrorism incidents have soared to new highs in the United States, driven chiefly by white-supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government extremists on the far right, according to a Washington Post analysis of data compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The surge reflects a growing threat from homegrown terrorism not seen in a quarter-century, with right-wing extremist attacks and plots greatly eclipsing those from the far left and causing more deaths, the analysis shows.
The number of all domestic terrorism incidents in the data peaked in 2020.
Since 2015, right-wing extremists have been involved in 267 plots or attacks and 91 fatalities, the data shows. At the same time, attacks and plots ascribed to far-left views accounted for 66 incidents leading to 19 deaths.
“What is most concerning is that the number of domestic terror plots and attacks are at the highest they have been in decades,” said Seth Jones, director of the database project at CSIS, a nonpartisan Washington-based nonprofit that specializes in national security issues. “It’s so important for Americans to understand the gravity of the threat before it gets worse.”
Stephan: The Minority-rule-doom-loop. Now that's turning a phrase, and it is a very real threat to American democracy.
Republican Senator Mitch Connell
Knowing that they are a shrinking party and that changing demographics do not work in their favor, Republicans all over the United States are aggressively pushing voter suppression bills in state legislatures. Journalist/author Adam Jentleson, in an article published by The Atlantic on April 12, stresses that Republicans enjoy great “structural” advantages despite becoming more and more of a “minority” party.
“President Joe Biden came into office facing four ‘converging crises’: COVID-19, climate change, racial justice and the economy,” Jentleson explains. “But after a few weeks of fast action on a pandemic relief plan, a fifth crisis will determine the fate of the rest of his administration, and perhaps that of American democracy itself: the minority-rule doom loop, by which predominantly White conservatives gain more and more power, even as they represent fewer Americans.”
The GOP has lost the popular vote in seven of the United States’ last eight presidential elections, and Republicans are coping with that reality by making it more difficult to vote. Another GOP tactic is ruthlessly […]
Stephan: This is an absolutely horrifying dose of facts. I will let it speak for itself.
A man shovels coal at a mine in Shanxi, China, in 2016. China has pledged carbon neutrality by 2060, but its new coalspree is the latest sign it’s putting off the immediate actions needed to meet that goal. Credit: Qilai Shen/In Pictures/Getty
The world is still barreling in the wrong direction on coal power plant construction, and China — despite its pledges to scale down fossil fuels to avert climate catastrophe — continues to drive that trend.
China built the majority of the coal plants completed in 2020, and also accounted for 85 percent of the world’s new coal plant proposals, according to a report out Monday by Global Energy Monitor, an environmental research and advocacy group. That means instead of transitioning away from coal power — the source of nearly 40 percent of China’s carbon emissions — it is doubling down.
And due in large part to China, global coal power capacity under development increased for the first time since 2015.
At the same time, the EU and US are retiring coal plants rapidly as renewables, natural gas, and climate […]
