KATE WAGNER, Architecture Critic Staff Writer - The Nation
Stephan:
I have been telling you that to deal effectively with climate change it is going to require a radical change in everything from energy technologies to architecture. I very rarely see any coverage of this in media, so was quite interested in seeing this piece on the need to develop new approaches in architecture.
These buildings were made to devour energy. Credit: Yuki Iwamura / Getty
As an architecture critic, I’ve always maintained that the climate crisis cannot be tackled with flashy rhetoric, buildings with showy greenery, or glossy renderings of ecomodernist utopias that will never be built. The field’s most meaningful efforts to combat climate change are actually quite mundane. We need to retrofit the existing building stock with better insulation and ventilation, eliminate fossil fuels in the built environment, and reduce the immense pollution that buildings already emit (energy use in residential buildings accounts for 37 percent of all emissions in New York City).
New York has, in the last few years, made tremendous progress in its battle against building pollution. But thanks to the ever-circling vultures of the real estate industry, that progress is under threat. When New York City Local Law 97 (LL97) was passed in 2019, it was hailed as a kind of “Green New Deal” for the city level. The […]
This is a very interesting development of a new trend in my view, because it indicates that wealth inequality has become not just a U.S. issue but an international issue, and change is coming. I see this as good news because wealth inequality is the cancer of democracy.
Super-prime property in London: Keir Starmer promised a tougher stance on non-doms, and an attack on the super-wealthy was a central theme in Joe Biden’s campaign. Credit: Graham Turner / The Guardian
Calls for higher taxes on the super-rich are gaining traction and even conservative governments are joining in.
In Rome, ministers in Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing administration have doubled a “flat tax” on foreign income from €100,000 to €200,000 (about £85,500-£171,000) that a previous government brought in to attract wealthy investors.
Italy’s low tax on foreigners and their income gained abroad did its job after 1,186 rich individuals adopted the country as their tax residency, but protests this year showed it was out of line with the prevailing mood.
The country’s economy minister, Giancarlo Giorgetti, said Italy was now against the idea of countries competing with each other to offer “fiscal favours” to the wealthy.
The decision came only weeks after 19 former heads of state – including the former prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard, and Dominique de Villepin, who had the same role during Jacques Chirac’s presidency – signed a joint letter […]
We are going into a new Cold War. I don’t agree with everything in this article, in the conservative Wall Street Journal, but I am using it in SR to make the fundamental point. The democracies and the autocracies of the world are facing off against one another. But this isn’t going to be like the last Cold War. Russia was never the super power most Americans once believed it to be, and now it is basically a vassal of China. The big difference, in my opinion, is that China is not looking for a war. They are looking to become the leading nation in the world, and are, and have been, watching the United States decline. They have a long view and are building roads, ports, and towns throughout the world to make themselves the most powerful economy in the world. Frankly, I don’t think either U.S. political party or the Congress really comprehends what is happening.
The coalescing partnership of autocracies led by China and Russia will impose strategic choices on Western democracies, no matter who wins the U.S. presidential election.
Can the U.S. and its allies deter all these rivals—including Iran and North Korea—at the same time, given the decay in the West’s military-industrial base and the unwillingness of voters to spend dramatically more on defense?
And if not, should, and could, an accommodation be sought with one of the rival great powers? If so, which one—and at what cost?
The current moment is uniquely complicated, with multiple crises around the world increasingly interconnected. Bloody wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are showing no signs of abating, Iran is contemplating a military response against Israel, China is engaging in low-level sea clashes with the Philippines and intimidating Taiwan, and North Korea is ramping up provocations against South Korea.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served in senior national-security roles in the Trump White House, compared the state of the world to a game of whack-a-mole—with all the moles now up. “Because the crises erupt at the […]
Whaling is evil, and incredibly stupid. Whales are a major part of the oceans’ ecosystem and Earth’s matrix of life. The only way, I see it ending is if every individual human makes the personal decision not to eat whale. If there is no money in it, the whaling industry will wither away.
Sperm whal. Credit: Valery Hache / AFP
The detention in Greenland of anti-whaling campaigner Paul Watson pending possible extradition to Japan has turned the spotlight on the widely condemned practice of hunting whales.
A 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling allowed numbers to recover following centuries of hunting that decimated the population to near-extinction.
Today three countries still permit the practice — Japan, Norway and Iceland.
Beyond the moral case against whaling, as made in campaigns such Watson’s, what is the science driving the arguments both for and against the practice?
– ‘Scientific’ whaling? –
In 2019 Japan quit the International Whaling Commission moratorium and resumed commercial whaling inside its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone.
Before this, Japan had been pursuing “scientific research” whaling since 1987, arguing some data could only be collected from dead carcasses.
But the evidence to support the claim was thin, Paul Rodhouse, fellow of the Marine Biological Association in Britain, told AFP.
“There seems to be very little justification for scientific […]
Casey Tolan, Isabelle Chapman and Nelli Black, Senior Writer | Producer CNN Investigates | Senior Producer for CNN's Investigations Unit - CNN
Stephan:
I don’t think, and can find no example in doing research, that anyone has ever seen running for president basically use the campaign process as a way to personally enrich themselves. But that, as this article describes in detail, is exactly what criminal Trump is doing. Whether he wins of loses he is going to personally enrich himself by tens of millions of dollars. It is a despicable distortion of the U.S. democratic election system. It is all a huge scam to Trump; he is milking both the rich and the poor.
Late last year, former President Donald Trump announced his endorsement of car dealership owner Bernie Moreno for Ohio’s Senate seat – elevating an untested candidate who’d never held public office over several other more prominent Republicans.
Two days later, Moreno’s campaign spent about $17,000 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and then followed up by spending an additional $79,000 the next month – making him one of the Florida club’s top political spenders.
He wasn’t alone. With glitzy Mar-a-Lago fundraisers, stays at Trump’s hotels, and flights on the former president’s private jet, Republican candidates and political groups are on track to spend more on Trump’s businesses this year than any year since 2016, according to a CNN analysis of federal campaign finance data.
Trump himself has been the biggest spender, both this year and over the last decade. Between his three presidential campaigns, Trump and associated political groups have funneled more than $28 million in campaign donations to his businesses – helping convert the enthusiasm of his political supporters into personal profit.
Other Republicans have followed suit, spending millions […]
