Stephan: First Commanding General, then President, Dwight Eisenhower, warned us. The military industrial complex is out of control. Nearly 4% of the American GDP is consumed by this complex, and climate change is hardly, you will pardon the expression, on their radar. But things are shifting, and that is good news.
U.S. servicemen stand on humvees as they take part in a military drill in western Ukraine on July 22, 2015. Credit: Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP/Getty
In the fall of 2018, Neta C. Crawford, a political science professor at Boston University, prepared to teach a class on climate change designed to help students think about the issue in a big-picture way. Crawford’s research expertise is in war, so she wanted to include a statistic on the military’s contribution to greenhouse gases.
“I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should just tell them what the emissions are for the U.S. military,’” Crawford says. “It was meant to be a line on a slide in a lecture.”
But when she went to look up the figure, she couldn’t find anything reliable. Instead, she found scattered and incomplete data on how much fuel the military consumed and how much carbon it emitted. The information that did exist largely didn’t include overseas operations, even though the United States had been at war for nearly two decades. Major categories […]
Stephan: The corruption in the United States political system as a result of the legalized bribery made possible by the Citizens United decision has reached a level unseen in any other developed democracy. Basically, varying combinations of the 724 billionaires, the 28 million millionaires, and the corporations they control, rent the Congress to get what they want and the other 305 million Americans have to live with what they decide. That is why we have no family leave, the shortest vacation leave, the smallest childcare, the worst maternal healthcare, low minimum wage, voter suppression, absurdly low corporate taxation, and the list goes on and on. The whole system is rigged, and the only thing that is ever going to change it is every citizen voting for Democrats -- the only party that still cares about preserving democracy -- and then pressuring them to create a government based on fostering wellbeing first in all policies. Is that going to happen? It is up to you.
Senatorial candidate Mike Gibbons speaks to supporters during a campaign rally in Maineville, Ohio. Credit: Jeff Dean/AP
Months before the first Senate primary vote will be cast this year, there’s a spending spree unrivaled by any election cycle in history.
In Ohio, where a handful of millionaires are chasing the GOP nomination, two Senate hopefuls have each already plowed $10 million into their campaigns — and the primary isn’t until May. In neighboring Pennsylvania, a political strategist involved in the open Senate race anticipates $110 to $130 million in spending on TV advertisements in the Republican primary alone — nearly as much as both parties combined spent on ads during the state’s entire 2016 Senate election.
Together, Senate candidates from both parties have already bought $131 million worth of television advertisements. That’s more than double what was spent on Senate races at this point in 2020 or 2018, according to a POLITICO analysis of data from AdImpact, an ad tracking service.
It’s a sign of the fierce trench warfare ahead in an election year where the loss of a […]
Stephan: There are so many aspects of life that will be profoundly impacted negatively by climate change, and we know so few of them. And yet, day after day on the television channels, and in the mainstream newspapers hardly a word of this is discussed. We are so desperately unprepared for what is happening.
Credit: Jenny Evans / Getty
The climate crisis is damaging the health of fetuses, babies, and infants across the world, six new studies have found.
Scientists discovered increased heat was linked to fast weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity in later life. Higher temperatures were also linked to premature birth, which can have lifelong health effects, and to increased hospital admissions of young children.
Other studies found exposure to smoke from wildfires doubled the risk of severe birth defects, while reduced fertility was linked to air pollution from fossil fuel burning, even at low levels. The studies, published in a special issue of the journal Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, spanned the globe from the United States to Denmark, Israel, and Australia.
“From the very beginning, from preconception, through early childhood into adolescence, we’re starting to see important impacts of climate hazards on health,” said Gregory Wellenius, who edited the issue with Amelia Wesselink, both professors at the Boston University School of Public Health.
“This is a problem that affects everybody, everywhere. […]
Greg Walters and Jamie Leventhal, Staff Writers - Vice News
Stephan: Here is yet another little consider effect of climate change. The world of recreational drugs, legal and illegal is going to change radically.
Climate change will unleash havoc on the world of drugs. Illustration by Hunter French
You might have to experience the end of the world sober, after all.
That’s because climate change will unleash havoc on the world of drugs. And it may be a whole lot tougher on the most mainstream stimulants—grocery store stuff like coffee, beer, and wine—than on hardcore illicit narcotics like heroin, cocaine, and meth.
Some of those more-powerful, more-addictive, mind-altering substances appear relatively better prepared to survive the oncoming climate crisis than the vulnerable plants responsible for producing traditionally legal recreational highs, according to a review of recent scientific studies and interviews with experts on climate and agriculture by VICE News.
Heroin, for example, is already getting a boost from climate change. One study shows that rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have doubled the potency of poppies, the plant used to make the drug. Wine, by contrast, is under serious threat, as changing weather patterns and raging wildfires put celebrated vineyards in jeopardy.
Louise Boyle, Senior Climate Correspondent, New York - The Independent (U.K.)
Stephan: The British press is covering events occurring in the United States that American mainstream media can't be bothered with. I have backpacked through much of the Appalachian Trail that winds its way through the forest discussed in this article, and this is a terrible story. After you read it, please call or write the Forrest Service [https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/contact-us] and let them know you do not approve of their plan.
The Appalachian Trail Credit: Appalachian Trail Conservancy
A federal blueprint for the long-term future of America’s most popular national forest proposes cutting down more trees and reducing protections of old-growth areas, critical “carbon sinks” in battling the climate crisis.
Logging would be set to quadruple in North Carolina’s Pisgah-Nantahala National Forest with more than half of the public land – half a million acres – opened up, environmentalists have warned.
The new logging zones contain more than 12,000 acres of existing old-growth forests. Significant portions of world-famous hiking routes, like the Appalachian Trail, also will be opened to logging.
The USFS Final Environmental Impact Statement lays out how Pisgah-Nantahala will be used and protected for up to three decades. It is the most popular national forest in the country, with nearly 5.2 million visitors last year, and a key source of drinking water across the southeast.
The plan appears to fly in the face of the global deforestation pledge formally unveiled by President Joe Biden at Cop26 this past November.
At the Glasgow summit, world leaders, representing 85 per […]
