Nina Lakhani , The 11th Hour Project - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: It doesn't get much coverage except in the professional literature but climate change is impacting agriculture in ways that threaten humanity's wellbeing, may impact your family's wellbeing. Here is a good explanation of what is going on.
A dozen or so farm workers perched on wooden stools carefully emasculate wheat spikes using nail scissors and tweezers – the first step in a years-long breeding process to develop climate-resilient varieties.
It’s late afternoon, and the farmhands are shaded by wide-brimmed sun hats as they work in an experimental wheat field in northern Mexico, preparing the wheat flowers to be cross-pollinated in a couple of days. For each pollination, both wheat parents have been selected by crop scientists for desirable traits such as fungus resistance, photosynthesis efficiency, and yield.
It’s a quiet scene, but the stakes increase every year as concerns grow that our food system is not ready for the climate crisis.
Scientists at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Sonora are focused on developing wheat varieties which can better cope with drought, rising temperatures and excessive rainfall. In other words, wheat that can thrive under the extreme and unpredictable weather conditions farmers are experiencing globally due to the rapidly warming planet.
“We’re trying to stay ahead of climate change and give farmers everything,” said breeder […]
Stephan: Here is a second piece on this very important agriculture trend. Regular readers know I have been telling you for years that industrial chemical monoculture agriculture is doomed and climate change is going to change agriculture around the world in ways great and small. Now it is upon us and has become an urgent if little discussed trend. When was the last time you heard an American Congressmember mention this?
A canola plant damaged by heat and drought in Saskatchewan, Canada last July. Credit: Kayle Neis / Bloomberg / Getty
Last June, Aaron Flansburg felt the temperature spike and knew what that meant for his canola crop. A fifth-generation grower in Washington state, Flansburg times his canola planting to bloom in the cool weeks of early summer. But last year, his fields were hit with 108-degree Fahrenheit heat just as flowers opened. “That is virtually unheard of for our area to have a temperature like that in June,” he says.
Yellow blooms sweltered, reproduction stalled, and many seeds that would have been pressed for canola oil never formed. Flansburg yielded about 600 to 800 pounds per acre. The previous year, under ideal weather conditions, he had reached as high as 2,700.
Many factors likely contributed to this poor harvest — heat and drought persisted throughout the growing season. But one point is becoming alarmingly clear to scientists: heat is a pollen killer. Even with adequate water, heat can damage pollen and prevent fertilization in canola and many other crops, including
Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate, Professor, Columnist - The New York Times
Stephan: Paul Krugman and I agree about most things, but I was surprised to see him come out and say what I have been saying, the Uniged States has been in decline for decades now, and is no longer the world leader it was from the end of WWII to the Reagan presidency. By almost any social outcome measure you like America is becoming increasingly second class. Here is Krugman's take on this.
I’ve just finished a long European tour. No, I wasn’t playing Very Important Pundit, interviewing political and business leaders (although there were a few conferences along the way). Mostly I was visiting friends, biking in Portugal, hiking in the English countryside, strolling around Berlin, etc. By the way, I had forgotten that Berlin has a massive monument to the Soviet Army:
But while I wasn’t engaged in serious journalism, I did come away with an impression — namely, that America no longer seems advanced compared with other wealthy countries. If anything, it’s hard to avoid the sense that in important ways we’re falling behind.
Let me start with an example that may surprise you: traffic safety. Back when I was starting my professional career, roads in the United States were much safer than roads abroad. This was especially true compared with roads in southern Europe. When I spent three months working in Portugal in 1976, it was an enjoyable as well as edifying experience, but the traffic was terrifying. Indeed, the American team I was part of […]
Stephan: Here again, is another report on why America does not like its children and does not give them any priority. It is one of the most revealing and saddest aspects of American culture.
Parents and would-be parents in America are facing a torrent of bad news. Credit: Getty
Say you give birth to a baby in America today.
First you have to figure out how to feed it: Hopefully you can breastfeed, because the country’s infant formula shortage is getting worse, with families driving hundreds of miles or paying hundreds of dollars just to get their children the nutrition they need.
Then you have to take care of it — and good luck with that, since the US is the only wealthy country in the world without paid parental leave. Also, child care costs more than college in many states, if you can even find a provider — more than half of Americans live in child care deserts, where there are more than three kids for every spot in day care.
Stephan: I do not believe it is possible for a rational person who cares about facts to doubt that Donald Trump is a criminal who attempted to overthrow America's democracy. One could not listen to Monday morning's Jan 6th hearings and come away with any other conclusion than that Trump had been told multiple times by his closest circle that he had lost the election yet continued to work to overturn the legal election. So he knew the situation, yet continued to hold the intent.
What I took away from today's hearing was, with matters that clear and indisputable, will Merrick Garland finally act? If the people who created the insurrection, particularly the head person, Trump, are not held accountable what stops the next fascist-oriented president from doing the same or worse?
Personally, I think Merrick Garland should have resigned months ago allowing Biden to appoint a new attorney general, one more like Eric Holder. What is really clear to me is that if only the citizens who assaulted the Capitol are prosecuted, and those who set them in motion get away scot-free, you condemn the United States to future assaults on our democracy, and fatally weaken it.
Attorney General Merrick Garland
Eric Holder, the former frontline prosecutor and local judge who served as Barack Obama’s first attorney general, was never a fan of Donald Trump, but he responded cautiously in 2019 when asked whether Trump should face prosecution even after he left office. “I think there is a potential cost to the nation by putting on trial a former president, and that ought to at least be a part of the calculus that goes into the determination that has to be made by the next attorney general,” Holder told David Axelrod in a CNN interview. But in the wake of the January 6 riot and related investigations, Holder’s view appears to have significantly hardened. Appearing in early May on CBS News’ Face the Nation, Holder offered a tougher assessment: “At some point, people at the Justice Department, perhaps that prosecutor in Atlanta, are going to have to make a determination about whether or not they want to indict Donald Trump.” Asked by interviewer Margaret Brennan if he would issue such […]
