Damian Carrington, Environment editor - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: As I tell my readers regularly, New Zealand is the most interesting country in the world. why is this? Because in contrast to the United States with its corruption and failing democracy, New Zealand, in contrast, has explicitly committed that all its social policies must foster wellbeing and that the state be run honorably. Now comes this, and I think this is an accurate assessment.
Bunker repurposed for a US ‘doomsday’ community. A study proposes that countries able to grow food for their populations, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration and maintain an electrical grid, are best placed to withstand severe shocks. Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA
New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.
The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused.
A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said.
To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top.
Stephan: I have been noticing that the Supreme Court although definitely and deliberately skewed to the right, has become more nuanced than was originally understood or intended. Sarah Isgur does a good job of laying this out, and these are important distinctions.
Supreme Court Building, Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite
After Amy Coney Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg onthe Supreme Court last fall, plenty of court watchers assumed that the bench would start churning out an endless line of conservative opinions. But that didn’t happen. While there were some conservative wins—most notably on the limits of the Voting Rights Act and unionizing—this past term was far more notable for all the sweeping conservative opinions that never came.
With six Republican appointees on the court, why aren’t we seeing the consistent conservative outcomes that the right cheered for and the left warned of?
The answer lies with the two-dimensional nature of the Supreme Court. Many court watchers are still plotting the justices along a single, horizontal axis of legally conservative to legally liberal. And they are left reaching for increasingly head-scratching explanations for why a justice like Brett Kavanaugh—with a long history of conservative opinions from his days as a lower court judge—can find himself often siding with someone who is quite liberal, or against another justice just as conservative.
Georg Bieker, - The International Council on Clean Transportation
Stephan: Can we please stop arguing about this? Here are facts, from a rigorous well-designed study. Electric cars are more supportive of wellbeing than petroleum ones.
EVs are the future. Biden is correct, and all the data shows that. It also shows this transition will have an enormous and positive effect on the Matrix of Consciousness and, thus, our lives since all life is interconnected and interdependent.
This wide-ranging life-cycle assessment (LCA) examines the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of passenger cars, including SUVs. Performed separately and in-depth for Europe, the United States, China, and India, the analysis captures the differences among those markets, which are home to about 70% of global new passenger car sales. It considers present and projected future GHG emissions attributable to every stage in the life cycles of both vehicles and fuels, from extracting and processing raw materials through refining and manufacture to operation and eventual recycling or disposal.
In addition to its global scope, the study is methodologically comprehensive in considering all relevant powertrain types, including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and an array of fuel types including biofuels, electrofuels, hydrogen, and electricity. The life-cycle GHG emissions of cars registered in 2021 are compared with those of cars expected to be registered in 2030. In addition, this study is distinct from earlier LCA literature in four key aspects:
It considers the lifetime average carbon intensity of the fuel and electricity mixes, including biofuels and biogas. Based on stated policies, it accounts for […]
Stephan: I don't always agree with Naomi Klein, but she thinks about these issues, and that happens so rarely that it is notable. We are not prepared for what is coming.
A helicopter prepares to make a water drop as smoke billows along the Fraser River Valley near Lytton, British Columbia, Canada, on July 2, 2021. Credit: James MacDonald/Bloomberg /Getty
Many people here think they are safe from climate change, the journalist from a German newspaper explained to me. They don’t see it as an immediate threat, like Covid-19. They see the Greens as scolds who want to take away their cheap holidays. “What do you have to say to them?”
The question came via video call in late June, and I was, at that very moment, pickled in my non-air-conditioned home, gripped by a heatwave that would, before the week was done, kill about 500 people in British Columbia, Canada, and cook perhaps a billion marine creatures on scorching shorelines. Over the years, I have faced many such “why should I care” questions, and I usually try to reach for some kind of moral argument about our responsibility to fellow humans even when we aren’t immediately impacted. But because I was far too hot and angry for high-mindedness, what I had to […]
Stephan: I see this as a combination of willful ignorance amongst persons many of whom have overactive right amygdalas and a deliberate political disinformation campaign designed to manipulate them. What makes it so weird is that these people are doing this stupid thing even though many of them will get sick with Covid, and some will die.
At 412 Murrieta, an evangelical church in Southern California, the pastor has frequently preached against Covid-19 vaccines. Credit: WILL LESTER/SCNG/ZUMA PRESS
More than six months into the country’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign, evangelical Christians are more resistant to getting the vaccine than other major religious groups, according to newly released data.
Some 24% of white evangelicals said in June they wouldn’t be vaccinated, down from 26% in March, according to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonpartisan group that studies the intersection of religion and public life, and Interfaith Youth Core, a nonprofit focused on interfaith cooperation.
Evangelicals of all races make up about one-quarter of the U.S. population, and health officials say persuading them to get the shot is crucial to slowing the spread of the Delta variant fueling recent increases in Covid-19 cases.
The percentage of white evangelicals who say they have been vaccinated or plan to get the shot as soon as possible was 56% in June, up from 45% in March. That is tied for the lowest figure among groups included in the survey, along with Hispanic […]
