Robert Reich, Former US Secretary of Labor now Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Robert Reich raises issues that I think many believed would be the tone of the 21st century, but sadly, is not.
Trump and Putin, one an aspiring autocrat the other an achieved autocratCredit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty
I used to believe several things about the 21st century that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Donald Trump’s election in 2016 have shown me are false. I assumed:
Nationalism is disappearing.
I expected globalization would blur borders, create economic interdependence among nations and regions and extend a modern consumer and artistic culture worldwide.
I was wrong. Both Putin and Trump have exploited xenophobic nationalism to build their power. (Putin’s aggression has also ignited an inspiring patriotism in Ukraine.)
Nations can no longer control what their citizens know.
I assumed that emerging digital technologies, including the internet, would make it impossible to control worldwide flows of information and knowledge. Tyrants could no longer keep their people in the dark or hoodwink them with propaganda.
Wrong again. Trump filled the media with lies, as has Putin. Putin has also cut off Russian citizens from the truth about what’s occurring in Ukraine.
Advanced nations will no longer war over geographic territory.
I bought the conventional wisdom that nuclear war was unthinkable. […]
Stephan: One of the largest trends shaping the future of the United States is the Republican christofascist attempt to gut American democracy, and the Great Schism Trend. This article gives a good sense of what is happening. I cannot overemphasize how fragile our democracy is, and how important the November election is. Its outcome will determine our future.
Christofascist Trump wannabee Republican Governor Ron DeSantis Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty
The red-state drive to roll back civil rights is entering a new phase, perhaps best symbolized by Florida’s passage this week of the “Don’t Say ‘Gay’” bill censoring how schools discuss sexual orientation. President Joe Biden’s administration is leaning more heavily into the fight, even as business leaders are retreating from the battlefield.
In multiple states, prominent companies that regularly tout their commitment to diversity and inclusion have largely stood aside as GOP-controlled legislatures and governors have approved laws that restrict voting access, curtail abortion rights and LGBTQ freedoms, and limit how teachers can discuss race, gender, and sexual orientation in public schools. The refusal of the Walt Disney Company, one of Florida’s most powerful employers, to publicly criticize Florida’s “Don’t Say ‘Gay’” bill as it moved through the legislature has quickly come to symbolize a retreat from the loud public opposition that many companies expressed to earlier state initiatives restricting civil liberties, such as the “bathroom bill” North Carolina Republicans approved in 2016.
Stephan: For those capable of assessing facts. For those not lost in partisanship and disinformation. This report should be seen as a major alarm bell. Our world is changing very quickly, and yet no government is taking this seriously enough to focus on it properly.
A chiffchaff on a flowering apple branch in Germany. Climate change is causing the birds to lay their eggs earlier in the year. Credit: Broker / Ottfried Schreiter / Getty
A new study has found that the climate crisis is causing major disruptions to European birds, from shifting their nesting dates to decreasing their chick numbers to even changing their general body sizes.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that rising temperatures and non-temperature effects of climate change are transforming European birds, such as garden warblers, chiffchaffs, and crested tits.
The authors focused on data collected on 60 species in Britain since the mid-1960s, reviewing changes in egg-laying, body form, and number of offspring. From there, researchers determined what impacts were caused by higher temperatures and what other factors played a role in these transformations.
More than half, about 57%, of the effects were linked to increasing temperatures, but other factors, like habitat loss, pollution, invasive species, and diseases, also contributed. About 32% of the 60 species studied experienced body […]
David Suzuki, Professor Emeritus, the University of British Columbia - Common Dreams
Stephan: David Suzuki makes the right point in this essay. If we are going to survive as a species we need to change our values so that fostering wellbeing at every level of the matrix of life becomes our first concern. Greed and war will not get us through climate change and what is going to be a series of pandemics.
The words “peace” together with a peace sign can be read on the poster of a demonstrator at a demonstration against Russia’s attack on Ukraine on 03 March 2022 in Lower Saxony, Hanover: Credit: Moritz Frankenberg/picture alliance/Getty
It’s a tragic truth that some people are willing to inflict unfathomable suffering and death for the sake of power and wealth. From Russia’s aggression in Ukraine to the push for continued climate-altering fossil fuel expansion, selfish gain means more to some than the health and well-being of our children and grandchildren and those yet to be born.
Those with power often exploit the uneducated and uninformed to further their own ends—and in many cases work to degrade education systems to prevent people from acquiring critical thinking and logic skills.
Take the decades-spanning efforts to downplay and deny the evidence of human-caused climate disruption—efforts that have accelerated in recent days, as the fossil fuel industry and its political and media allies cynically use the Russia-Ukraine crisis to advocate for increased development and expansion of the products […]
Stephan: Greed. Greed. Greed. It is the evil that shapes every aspect of American society. The question is: Can we find the wisdom to recognize what it is doing to us, and can we change?
Richard Glick, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, testifies on Capitol Hill. Credit: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has attracted headlines and congressional attention in recent days for its new guidance on considering the climate effects of pipelines.
But the commission’s work on another important climate-related issue has largely flown under the radar, despite its potential to affect anyone who pays a utility bill.
What’s happening: The five-member commission is weighing whether utility companies should be allowed to continue charging customers for their trade association dues.
Under the current accounting system, utilities are allowed to pass on these costs to customers, even if the trade associations are fighting climate policies and the customers oppose these activities.
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, submitted a petition in March urging the commission to reconsider this system. The petition argued that customers have a First Amendment right not to bankroll anti-environment activities that they oppose.
FERC issued a notice of inquiry on the matter in December, asking the public and trade groups […]
