In contrast to the preceding story about China, here is some good news from the U.S.. The Biden administration is getting serious about decarbonization. Not perfect but so much better than anything that has gone before, and what is going on in China. The problem is that climate change is a planetary problem, not a national problem, and the solution must also be planetary.
An elevated subway station in Queens, New YorkCredit: Bim / iStock
In what can be hailed a significant and impactful move, the U.S. Department of Energy, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and the Environmental Protection Agency released a Blueprint on how to decarbonize the entire U.S. transport system. The strategy is hoped to cut all greenhouse emissions from the transportation sector by 2050.
“The domestic transportation sector presents an enormous opportunity to drastically reduce emissions that accelerate climate change and reduce harmful pollution,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm said in a statement.
Transportation accounts for a major share of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions
The Blueprint only amplifies the Biden-Harris administration’s take on climate change. It is hoped to address the crisis and meet the President’s goals of securing a “100 percent clean electrical grid by 2035 and reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050”.
“DOE [Department of Energy] is prepared to implement this Blueprint alongside our partners within the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure all Americans feel the benefits of the […]
Margaret Renkl, Contributing Writer - The New York Times
Stephan:
All over the Red states their big urban areas are Blue, and the Republican-controlled state legislatures in those states passionately are destroying democracy in order to control those urban areas. This report lays out the issues. The question for me is: Do rural Americans really care about preserving democracy in the United States. I'm not sure.
Tennessee State Capitol circa 1940.Credit…Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Alamy Stock
NASHVILLE, TENNESSE — January in Nashville ushers in two forces for chaos: erratic weather and irrational legislators. Both are hugely disruptive. Neither is surprising anymore.
In the age of climate change, the old joke about New England — if you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes — is true all over the country. But even erratic weather, sometimes careening between thunderstorms and snow in a single day, is easier to cope with than the G.O.P. Unlike human beings, weather isn’t supposed to be rational.
Neither, it seems, are Republicans, at least not anymore, and a blue city that serves as the capital of a red state had better brace itself when the legislature arrives in town. Nothing good ever comes when the Tennessee General Assembly reconvenes, but any Nashvillian paying attention understood that this time the usual assaults would be unusually bad.
As this fascinating research report lays out poor eating habits not only lead to the national crisis of morbid obesity, diabetes II, and a host of other illnesses. Research tells us it also strongly affects your brain and your ability to think properly. Given that reality, you might expect that our government would make good and adequate nutrition and eating practices a national priority for everyone. But, of course, that would conflict with food industry profit, and profit trumps all other considerations in the United States.
Our guts are a menagerie of different species of bacteria, some of which appear to communicate with our brains Credit: Rodolfo Parulan Jr/Getty
Your gut is a bustling and thriving alien colony. They number in their trillions and include thousands of different species. Many of these microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea and eukarya, were here long before humans, have evolved alongside us and now outnumber our own cells many times over. Indeed, as John Cryan, a professor of anatomy and neuroscience at University College Cork, rather strikingly put it in a TEDx talk: “When you go to the bathroom and shed some of these microbes, just think: you are becoming more human.”
Collectively, these microbial legions are known as the “microbiota” – and they play a well-established role in maintaining our physical health, from digestion and metabolism to immunity. They also produce vital compounds the human body is incapable of manufacturing on its own.
But what if they also had a hotline to our minds? In our new book, Are You Thinking Clearly? 29 Reasons You Aren’t And What To Do About […]
Jake Johnson, Staff Writer - Raw Story / Common Dreams
Stephan:
It is my opinion that the worse decision made by Biden was his appointment of Merrick Garland to be Attorney General. I think he has been a disaster. Lots of low level street thugs have been prosecuted but above the Proud Boys, who afterall were acting on what they thought were orders from the President of the United States, no one has been held accountable. John Eastman, Paul Manufort, Roger Stone, Mark Meadows, Donald Trump, and the list goes on. Two years after the insurrection not one has been indicted. All are going on with their lives. And this report on Garland's lack of prosecution of corporate misbehavior is more of the same.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland Credit: AFP
Despite the Biden administration’s pledge to crack down on corporate crime, a new analysis of Justice Department data shows that business prosecutions fell to a record low in fiscal year 2022 even as there appeared to be no shortage of wrongdoing—from healthcare fraud to large-scale price gouging.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonprofit data-gathering outfit, noted Thursday that out of the more than 4,000 federal white-collar prosecutions last year, “under 1% or only 31 of these defendants were businesses or corporate entities.”
“This is the lowest number of criminal prosecutions of business entities for white-collar offenses since federal prosecutor tracking began for these in FY 2004,” TRAC observed. “The decision to criminally charge a business in contrast to an individual for engaging in white-collar criminal activity is exceedingly rare (just 1%).”
TRAC also found that “the prosecution of white-collar offenders in FY 2022 reached a new all-time low since tracking began during the Reagan administration.”
Here we see the absolute proof that the worldview of Christian pastors, particularly evangelicals, with fascism has proven to be a disaster for that faith. A growing number of young people are spiritual, in that they see the matrix of life, and the importance of wellbeing, and it leaves them uninterested in the old-fashioned rituals, the male dominance, the LGBTQ hatred and judgment, and the fascist politics. Plus, particularly for Roman Catholics, the endless case of child sexual molestation. The result, as described in this report, they are leaving in droves. What I think is important to keep in mind is that this is a completely self-inflicted wound.
About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church’s stance on political and social issues. Credit: Ed Jones / AFP / Getty
Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.
As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The situation means some hard decisions for pastors, who have to decide when a dwindling congregation is no longer sustainable. But it has also created a boom market for those wanting to buy churches, with former houses of worship now finding new life.
About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the […]
