As I listen to the weather channel and listen to them describe Phoenix having 112°F weather for a week, Las Vegas something similar and… well you have probably heard the weather reports yourself, I have wondered how long before the migration out of those areas begins. If your kids can’t safely play outside when it is 112°F, and it’s no fun, even dangerous, to sit by a pool at that those temperatures do you really want to live in such a place? Particularly, when you know it is only going to get even hotter as the years go on. We, as a country, and particularly in the Republican controlled Red states, are not doing anywhere near enough to prepare for and attempt to mediate what climate change is going to do to our country. The only thing that is going to change this is to vote in such a way that the Democrats take control of both Houses of Congress, and retain the Presidency. Also that the same happens at the state level. Will Americans be smart enough to do that? I’m not sure.
Illustration: Danielle Rhoda / The Guardian
Round the cycle turns. As millions are driven from their homes by climate disasters, the extreme right exploits their misery to extend its reach. As the extreme right gains power, climate programmes are shut down, heating accelerates and more people are driven from their homes. If we don’t break this cycle soon, it will become the dominant story of our times.
A recent paper in the scientific journal Nature identifies the “human climate niche”: the range of temperatures and rainfall within which human societies thrive. We have clustered in the parts of the world with a climate that supports our flourishing, but in many of these places the niche is shrinking. Already, around 600 million people have been stranded in inhospitable conditions by global heating. Current global policies are likely to result in about 2.7C of heating by 2100. On this trajectory, some 2 billion people may be left outside the niche by 2030, and 3.7 billion by 2090. If governments limited heating to their agreed goal of 1.5C, the numbers exposed […]
$35 million dollars; it is totally gobsmacking. Donald Trump is, in my opinion, a man who ought to be in prison on multiple counts and for many years. Basically the rest of his life. But he has been held accountable at this point only in the Stormy Daniels and E. Jean Carroll sex molestation cases and defamations. Nothing about his irrefutable attempt to destroy American democracy has even come to trial, or is likely to for months, if ever. And yet Americans are pouring money into his till, and will almost certainly vote for him. As I have said many times, the problem with America, is Americans.
The total amount raised is likely to further cement Donald Trump’s status as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Credit: Michael M. Santiago / Getty
Donald Trump nearly doubled his fundraising during the second quarter of 2023 — an indication that his legal troubles are propelling his campaign financially.
The former president’s joint fundraising committee raked in more than $35 million, according to a campaign official. That figure is about twice the $18.8 million the committee raised during the first quarter of the year. The joint fundraising committee is split between two entities: Trump’s official campaign, and his leadership political action committee, Save America.
The official did not break down how much of the $35 million-plus went to the campaign and how much went to the PAC. But the most recent fundraising solicitations direct 90 percent of each donation to the former and the remaining 10 percent to the latter. The PAC focuses its spending on non-campaign activity, including paying the former president’s legal bills.
The total amount raised is likely to further cement Trump’s status […]
As the Great Schism Trend continues I am paying close attention to what is happening with social outcome data, which is the real measure of a state’s quality of governance, not the political crap that spews out of the mouths of politicians. And what I am seeing is what I predicted. If the wellbeing of the people of a state is your measure Republican governance is always, I can’t find an exception, inferior and second rate, compared with Democratic governance. Why? Because Republican policies are not based on fostering wellbeing. Instead, they are oriented toward supporting special status for the rich, or religious groups, or corporate interests. One of the states I am paying particular attention to is Minnesota. Here is what is going on.
Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz Credit: Gllen Stubbe / Star Tribune / Getty
In an era of divided government and partisan gridlock on the federal level, states have become the laboratories for significant social policy experiments on both ends of the ideological spectrum. While Republican-led states have recently approved a bevy of laws advancing conservative priorities, Democratic-controlled states have mirrored that pattern with progressive policies. Perhaps no state has taken more dramatic action in that direction recently than Minnesota, which saw its Democratic governor and legislative majorities work in lockstep, passing several laws to transform the state’s social and economic landscape.
“This was a bonanza year without precedent,” said Larry Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota, highlighting the fact that the recently passed two-year budget is 40 percent larger than the current one. “Minnesota is an example of a full-on progressive gallop towards greater government activism and a willingness to spend just unimaginable amounts of money.”
Narrow Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate—including a one-vote margin in the upper […]
In contrast to the good things I covered in the previous article that are happening in Minnesota and as well in Michigan under Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, here is what is happening in Florida under christofascist Republican Ron DeSantis. First there was the stupidity of his fight with Disney the state’s largest employer then immigrant agricultural workers fleeing the state, then college professors resigning, then LGBTQ folk leaving in droves, and now the loss of conventions and conferences, and all the business that brings to hotels, restaurants, and all the other things visitors have traditionally enjoyed in Florida. De Santis is thrashing his state at a time when he should be planning what Florida is going to do as nearly half of it submerges due to the sea rise he does not fully acknowledge.
Christofascist Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. Credit: Gage Skidmore
Convention organizers are pulling out of Florida, which is devastating knock-on tourism and causing panic over the future of the industry, experts warned in a report Friday.
When asked for a reason why they were scrapping plans, one organizer wrote simply: “Governor DeSantis.”
More than half a dozen planned conventions in Broward County, which encompasses the Fort Lauderdale area, have been scrapped in recent months, according to a list drawn up by the county’s tourism promotion group Visit Lauderdale and reported by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
“We lost this program due to political climate,” Visit Lauderdale notes on a decision by the Supreme Council of America Inc., Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite Masons to cancel its meeting, planned for August next year. It also canceled 855 hotel rooms.
, - Associated Press in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) / The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan:
The inferiority of authoritarian fascist governance is not limited to the United States. Here we have an example from Brazil. This is also excellent good news because the wellbeing of the Amazon affects the wellbeing of the entire planet.
Aerial view of the Amazon forest
After four years of rising destruction in Brazil’s Amazon, deforestation dropped by 33.6% during the first six months of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s term, according to new government satellite data.
From January to June the rainforest had alerts covering 2,650 sq km (1,023 sq miles), down from 4,000 sq km during the same period last year under former president Jair Bolsonaro. This year’s data includes a 41% plunge in alerts for June, which marks the start of the dry season when deforestation tends to jump.
“The effort of reversing the curve of growth has been reached. That is a fact: we reversed the curve; deforestation isn’t increasing,” João Paulo Capobianco, the environment ministry’s executive secretary, said during a presentation in Brasilia.
Capobianco noted that full-year results will depend on a few challenging months ahead. Still, the data is an encouraging sign for Lula, who campaigned last year with pledges to rein in illegal logging and undo the environmental devastation during Bolsonaro’s term.
The far-right leader weakened environmental authorities while his insistence on development of the Amazon region resonated with […]
