IF YOU ENJOY SR AND FIND IT USEFUL WOULD YOU PLEASE DONATE
When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Stephan: Here is some good news. I have a personal interest in this because I have hiked the trails of Tongass National Forest in Alaska. It is extraordinary and true wilderness. This move by Biden reversing Trump's scumminess, is going to have long-term climate importance. Bravo President Biden.
Hikers walk through the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska. (Photo: U.S. Forest Service/Flickr/cc)
Conservation and climate action groups on Thursday applauded the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s announcement of far-reaching new protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest as well as a restoration of a key rule that former President Donald Trump rescinded three months before leaving office in a bid to open millions of acres to industrial logging.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the administration would put back in place the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, also known as the Roadless Rule, which Trump exempted Alaska from in a move that outraged Indigenous communities in the region as well as environmental advocates.
“The towering giant trees in the Tongass are ancient and sacred, and they are also one of the best solutions we have to climate change.” —Abbie Dillen, Earthjustice
With the rule back in effect, companies will again be barred from road construction and large-scale logging in more than half of the 16 million acre forest, which includes five million acres of old-growth trees such as Sitka spruce trees that date back at least 800 years.
Stephan: Here is some more good news. It won't solve the challenge of climate change but is a good step in the right direction. It shows governments are beginning to make reality more important than corporate corruption.
The European Union unveils a landmark climate plan in Brussels. Credit: Thierry Monasse/Bloomberg
The European Union’s climate plan might be the most ambitious attempt yet to force a major economy to abandon fossil fuels, and by some measures it still won’t be enough to keep global temperatures from rising. But that’s no reason to despair.
The Fit for 55 package — named for its goal of cutting emissions at least 55% from 1990s levels by 2030 — is a staggeringly detailed piece of work. In more than 3,500 pages it lays out a roadmap that includes expanding what is already the world’s biggest carbon market, putting a price on shipping and aviation emissions, and banning the sale of new combustion engine cars. It boosts the EU’s target for solar and wind energy and seeks to make sure buildings are better insulated. A 72 billion-euro ($85 billion) fund will be set up to help vulnerable households and businesses cope with energy price increases.
The European Commission is already facing pushback from member states and industry groups, even as […]
Christopher Flavelle, Patricia Mazzei and Giulia Heyward, - The New York Times
Stephan: I have been telling my readers for a decade this day was coming when insurance companies would no longer insure Florida coastal real estate. Now it is here. If you own such property I would begin to think seriously about how many years you have left before a trillion-dollar real estate collapse occurs in Florida.
The frequency of natural disasters and the speed at which structures deteriorate in the humid, salty air makes insuring buildings riskier for companies. Credit: Marta Lavandier/Associated Press
Steve Rosenthal escaped with his life when his condo building in Florida crumbled and left him homeless last month, but he still owes more than $100,000 on his mortgage.
Mr. Rosenthal, a 72-year-old restaurant advertising executive, soon received two small insurance checks for living expenses and personal property, but he was still waiting for his big payout. He expects it to be over six figures, but it will probably go to the bank to pay off the mortgage on a condo that no longer exists.
“We’re all freaking out,” he said of survivors of the partial collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside. “I don’t want to dip into savings that I wasn’t supposed to touch until I’m 80.”
For Mr. Rosenthal and other survivors of the collapse, sorting out complicated insurance payouts is but one part of starting over after a catastrophic loss. And his fellow Floridians may soon be feeling the shock waves […]
Stephan: Human greed and stupidity have scored another blow to the earth's ecosystem, and it is hardly getting any notice. Stop thinking of climate change as something that will happen decades from now. I predict that by the end of this decade climate change and the associated water changes that come with it will be reshaping human civilization and that the United States will, in certain states, be unrecognizable
Even with a decree banning fires, flames and clouds of smoke were seen near the city of Novo Progresso, in southern Pará, Brazil, on August 15, 2020. Credit: Ernesto Carriço/NurPhoto/Getty
Following years of warnings and mounting fears among scientists, “terrifying” research revealed Wednesday that climate change and deforestation have turned parts of the Amazon basin, a crucial “sink,” into a source of planet-heating carbon dioxide.
Though recent research has elevated concerns about the Amazon putting more CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than it absorbs, the new findings, published in the journal Nature, were presented as a “first” by scientists and climate reporters.
From 2010 to 2018, researchers for the new study—led by Luciana Gatti of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research—conducted “vertical profiling measurements” of carbon dioxide and monoxide a few miles above the tree canopy at four sites in Amazonia.
The researchers found that “Southeastern Amazonia, in particular, acts as a net carbon source” and “total carbon emissions are greater in eastern Amazonia than in the western part.” The former, they noted, has been “subjected to more deforestation, warming, and […]
Dan Diamond , Hannah Knowles and Tyler Pager , Reporters - The Washington Post
Stephan: The MAGA world has created and submitted to the anti-vaxxer hysteria. If you have been vaccinated, sit back. You are witnessing one of history's greatest examples of karma in action. As the President said, "the only pandemic we have is the unvaccinated one." Tens of thousands of people are going to commit a kind of Westernized seppuku, politicized suicide in front of us. It is already happening. It will be interesting to see how American society reacts, particularly, the people around the anti-vaxxer people who contract Covid, many dying from it. There will be other pandemics because as a result of human-mediated climate change viruses and bacteria are mutating to accommodate to the change circumstances of their lives. At this point, my hope is that these sacrifices will finally awaken that facts don't care whether you believe in them, they still are what they are and capable of doing what Covid-19, or AIDS before it, did. The response to pandemics that fosters wellbeing is to make decisions based on science not politics.
Anti-vaccine rally protesters in Houston last month. (Mark Felix/AFP/Getty
On July Fourth, President Biden celebrated dramatic progress in the war on the coronavirus, with more than 150 million adults fully vaccinated and infections plunging 93 percent since Inauguration Day. “Together, we’re beating the virus,” Biden said at a party on the White House lawn.
But at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, attendees celebrated a different — essentially opposite — milestone: that Biden had missed his goal of vaccinating 70 percent of adults.
“Clearly they were hoping — the government was hoping — that they could sort of sucker 90 percent of the population into getting vaccinated,” activist Alex Berenson told the crowd Saturday, seeming to inflate Biden’s target. “And it isn’t happening.”
The crowd clapped and cheered at that failure.
What began as “vaccine hesitancy” has morphed into outright vaccine hostility, as conservatives increasingly attack the White House’s coronavirus message, mischaracterize its vaccination campaign and, more and more, vow to skip the shots altogether.
The notion that the vaccine drive is pointless or harmful — or perhaps even a government […]
Stephan: Donald Trump should be indicted for treason, tried, and on the basis of the evidence put in prison. His former wife told us decades ago he kept Hitler's speeches on his bedside table, and he has clearly been a wannabe Fuhrer. I find it amazing that there seems to be no accountability.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Mark A. Milley (R) listens while US President Donald Trump speaks before a meeting with senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC on October 7, 2019. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/ Getty
Evermore damning revelations about Donald Trump’s regime began first as a trickle, then became a persistent leak, eventually a torrent and are now seemingly a tsunami.
Even after Trump’s attempted coup and his followers’ attack on the U.S. Capitol, public opinion polls suggest that tens of millions of Americans would prefer to throw the horrors of Trumpism and the events of that day down the memory well.
That will not save them from the reality of what has happened, and is still happening, […]
Stephan: Senator Manchin is a man torn between conscience and greed. He likes being a senator, with its perks and prestige, particularly in a low-education state working-class state. He needs money to buy his office, and that is the path he has chosen. That's what makes his behavior so bizarre.
Senator Joe Manchin
A corporate political action committee for the parent company of Fox News, funded partially by the Murdoch family, donated to the 2024 re-election campaign of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, campaign filings show.
A staunch moderate, Manchin’s vote is pivotal in the evenly-divided chamber — and the West Virginia senator has for much of the year used his position to stymie legislation on a number of liberal priorities, instead committing himself to a bipartisan approach criticized roundly within Democratic circles in Washington. In particular, progressives have been hammering Manchin over his support for the filibuster, a major procedural hurdle standing in the way of the legislative agenda favored by President Joe Biden and the vast majority of a currently Democratic-controlled Congress.
The $1,500 donation on June 27 appears to be the first to Manchin from the Fox Corp. PAC, which according to the watchdog organization Open Secrets is funded largely by right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son, Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch, as well […]
Stephan: This is the first competent survey I have seen on secession. It is appalling. The Great Schism Trend is even more advanced than I had realized. 44 percent, nearly have the people in the South support secession. And a large number of people in the Pacific Northwest similarly would like to secede. I had not fully appreciated the fragility of the United States at this time.
As the country turns 245 years old, Americans have reasons to worry about the state of their democracy. In June 2021, we surveyed a representative sample of Americans and an expert sample of political scientists on the performance of U.S. democracy, the threats it faces, and how their political representatives should address these matters.1 We find deep partisan polarization in perceptions of what is right and wrong with American democracy and the steps that should be taken to fix it. In addition, experts express reservations about current changes to election law at the state level. Still, we find some signs that Americans regard partisan attacks on election administration with skepticism.
Our key findings are:
Constitutional hardball politics like gerrymandering, packing the Supreme Court or blocking Court nominees, voter suppression, abolishing the filibuster, adding new states to the union, or refusing to certify election results enjoy little support among the public and, with few exceptions, among experts. However, these strategies appear to go unpunished by voters when used by elites.
Experts expect these tactics to be used more frequently in the years ahead, rating extreme partisan gerrymandering a near certainty; obstruction of Supreme Court nominations highly likely; […]
