STEVE COHEN, Author - Columbia Climate School - Columbia Climate School - State of the Planet
Stephan:
I think this is a brilliant and accurate forecast of what must be done in the transition out of the carbon energy era.
The fire in Lahaina, Maui; extreme heat in Phoenix; floods in Vermont; and the yellow sky over New York City. The signs of a warming planet are everywhere, and the sense of urgency over the climate crisis grows. Each day, the newspapers report both on progress toward decarbonization and on political resistance from fossil fuel interests and communities opposing the siting of wind and solar farms. The sense of urgency seems lacking, and people enraged about climate change are stunned by those who do not share their sense of crisis.
The difficulty with the transition to renewable resources is our continued massive investment in the infrastructure that supports a linear rather than circular economy. Some of the debt used to build these facilities is not yet retired. Turning this huge economic boat around is going to take time. We simply cannot turn off the current economy, and the transition to environmental sustainability will take a generation—around twenty years—before it is mostly complete. When thinking about the complexity of the task, look to your own lifestyle. How much fossil fuel energy do you use each day? We use it to preserve and cook food, to connect to the internet, to watch movies, […]
Emma Goldberg, Business Reporter - The New York Times
Stephan:
If you are not in the corporate office building world you may not have noticed that there is what I think is going to be a long term cultural change occurring. It’s already started and when hologram technology kicks in I think it will become permanent. Cities with all their office space will have to be recontextualized, as this article describes.
An empty New York office building. Credit: The New York Times
At an office in SoHo, rows of desks sit empty, while a shaggy dog — shadowing an owner nostalgic for work-from-home comforts — wanders the conference rooms. At a tech workplace downtown, a gaggle of 20-somethings divide into teams, calling out “Who’s on the Orange team?” and “We’re going to kill it!” as part of a game night enticing them back to in-person work. On the subway, commuters delight in a once-unimaginable indulgence: bag-spreading across two seats.
About a year and a half after Mayor Eric Adams chided workers — “You can’t stay home in your pajamas all day!” — New York’s offices in late August were under 41 percent of their prepandemic occupancy. Just 9 percent of the city’s office workers were going in five days a week at the start of the year, according to the Partnership for New York City, a business group. Remote-work levels crisscrossing the country are more mixed, with just under one-third of America’s workdays […]
I found this article very interesting because it confirms what I have been saying in SR for years. The Republican Party is trying to turn the American population into indoctrinated, poorly educated peasants, whose lives are controlled by the oligarchs who control and use the Republican MAGAt politicians. This is what the Founders feared would happen to the country they had just created. They understood the importance of quality education to a functioning democracy. Benjamin Franklin felt so strongly about this that he established a trust in Philadelphia and Boston to provide scholarship support, and more than two centuries later it is still doing that. Were people like Franklin alive today they would be appalled, but I don’t think surprised at what has happened to our democracy. As Franklin replied to a woman he encountered as he left the constitutional convention in 1787 when she asked him what kind of government he and the others had just created, “A republic if you can keep it.” We now have a Republican Party that doesn’t want to keep it. They want an anocracy that they control.
Illustration by Jared Rodriguez / truthout
Conventional wisdom tells us that every crisis contains an opportunity, and the right wing in the United States is wasting no time in proving this true. Take public schooling. “The uncertain period following pandemic destruction [is] an ideal moment to reimagine U.S. education,” Frederick M. Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote in his recently released book, The Great School Rethink.
Hess is not alone in his reactionary revisioning. Groups including the American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council and the Manhattan Institute, alongside conservative talk radio and other media, have raced to formulate and impose their wish list on what students can learn and what teachers can teach. It’s a long roster and extends from banning the teaching of anything that could possibly be dubbed “critical race theory” (CRT), to eliminating programs that promote and support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Also included are efforts to exclude transgender athletes from women’s teams, the reframing of curricula to focus exclusively […]
I take this as good news because it means our society is finally beginning to grapple with AI and the damage it can and has done to our culture’s wellbeing.
AI experts at leading universities favor creating a federal “Department of AI” or a global regulator to govern artificial intelligence over leaving that to Congress, the White House or the private sector.
The survey found experts split over when or if AI will escape human control — but unified in a view that the emerging technologies must be regulated.
“Regulation” was the top response when asked what action would move AI in a positive direction.
Just 1 in 6 said AI shouldn’t or can’t be regulated. Only a handful trust the private sector to self-regulate.
About 1 in 5 predicted AI will “definitely” stay in human control. The rest were split between those saying AI will “probably” or “definitely” get out of human control and those saying “probably not.”
The intrigue: No one individual is highly trusted to deal with AI issues.
President Biden took the top spot, with 9% of respondents — slightly higher than Sundar […]
This is the true measure of the corruption that fatally infects conservative American politics. The lobbyist world on the right, as this story outlines, has no ethics, no patriotism, no allegiance to the wellbeing of the United States. This is the evil result of Citizens United that legalized bribery of politicians. And yet, do you hear any but a few voices, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, seeking to end this? You do not.
That Russian businessman, Petr Aven was recently sanctioned by the U.S. in August along with his associate. But the story of their efforts to stave off punishment is one of classic Washington influence peddling. Credit: Alfa-Bank Russia via Wikimedia Commons
Weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation targeting dozens of prominent Russian officials and others for potential sanctions. The Biden administration moved to issue penalties against a number of them.
But two wealthy Russian businessmen who were on the original target list escaped the financial penalties. And the pair shared something in common: Their investment group employed a well-connected D.C. lobbying shop, BGR, which held backchannel conversations with congressional staff about the sanctions green lit through legislation dubbed the Putin Accountability Act.
Among the oligarchs’ advocates was Daniel Hoffman, a Fox News contributor and former CIA Moscow chief. Hoffman had been publicly critical of Vladimir Putin. But in this instance, Hoffman, a member of BGR’s advisory board, went to bat for a Russian businessman
