There’s no time to lose. The new research led by the French team confirms that whether we like it or not, human civilisation is in the midst of the most rapid transformation of the global energy system we’ve ever experienced. And hanging on for dear life to the old, dying...
Fuel
Most people have a general idea of what climate change is doing to the planet; after all, 85% of the world's population has already been impacted by fossil fuel emissions that transform our climate from safe and stable to chaotic and deadly. Most, however, have no understanding of how serious the...
For Christmas (and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to give working-class West Virginians a child tax credit, child care assistance, free preschool, two free years of community college, lower health insurance premiums, expanded Medicare, home health care assistance for the elderly, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit...
Democratic voters are depressed, demoralized, and tuning out — and there's no use in denying it. Amanda Marcotte In a couple of weeks, the world will come together in Glasgow, Scotland, in what is yet another attempt for worldwide action to attempt to prevent planetwide devastation trajectory we have yet to slow...
Joe Biden and the Democratic party are walking a tightrope on implementing meaningful changes to save the biosphere. The QOP party joined by two Democratic senators provides strong headwinds to derail that action. The action is the Build Back Better Plan; it is without a doubt the most substantial effort to fight...
“Today's sentencing of human rights lawyer Steven Donziger should be front-page news ringing alarm bells anywhere people are concerned about democracy, abuses of corporate power, and the rule of law. The real crime here is the death and disease resulting from Chevron's poisoning of the drinking water of thousands of Indigenous...
As she walked through Ronald Reagan airport, Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona confronted climate activists and others over her ongoing obstruction of the 3.5 trillion dollars build-back better plan. The former Green Party activist who campaigned for Ralph Nader in 2000 (which helped Goerge W Bush win the presidential election...
As she walked through Ronald Reagan airport, Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona was confronted by climate activists over her ongoing obstruction of the 3.5 trillion dollars build-back better plan. The 3.5 plan is where the majority of climate provisions can be found. It is strongly opposed by the fossil fuel interests that...
I was born in the 1950s when it was not illegal for black people in the south to vote—it was suicide. Pseudo-laws, tests, intimidation, hoods, ropes, and guns were the anti-democracy tactics of the day. Southern state officials could not legitimately ban black people from voting, so the strategy was...
What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words, terrorism? 9/11? ISIS? The Taliban? While these examples are certainly just, they don’t always represent terrorism in its entirety. Dan Brown said, “History is always written by the winners”. Stereotypes and generalizations often cause the public...
RWNJs spent more time today demonizing COVID data whistleblower Rebekah Jones rather than focusing on the various data violations and network attacks happening regionally, causing panics over fuel supplies. The real news is the ransom amount of 5 million dollars paid to the Russian hacking group. Colonial Pipeline paid $5m ransom to...
Short-term price gouging and shortages prompt panic gas buying and hoarding as a result of the Russian gang ransomware attack on one pipeline. Gas stations in several states are out of fuel and AAA reports the nationwide average price breached $3-per-gallon for the first time in six years as the...
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that...
“Dadirri listens and knows, witnesses, feels, empathizes in the pain under the anger, and, if the anger is accompanied by action, seeks to understand the thoughts and feelings behind the action. Dadirri then seeks to find the source of that pain in knowledge-building for a deepening understanding of the more...
The stress test is coming for states like Arizona as water levels likely to dip below 1075 feet in June. The mega-drought in the American west means water restrictions are looming in the next few months. Climate change has arrived in the Colorado basin much as it has in most...
Whether it’s harassing Stormy Daniels to show their support of the previous guy or killing demonstrators, the Columbus Ohio police seem to have exceeded their authority. Skywriting seems a bit past the remit for a police agency that has three times more helicopters than the Chicago police. “The city's annual...
The Florida Piney Point phosphate plant in Manatee county has been releasing 202 million gallons of wastewater into Tampa Bay since the risk of collapse of the holding reservoir became international news due to a risk of major collapse with flood walls of over twenty feet predicted to inundate local communities and...
Is US progressive politics, especially in cultural issues, incapable of attracting majority support. Not so much in terms of the usual self-fulfilling marginalization, but there are absolute limits to the mutability of moderate ideologies in order to build working majorities. In these conditions, it seems almost certain that tit-for-tat will...
Change as a rising tide seems to be falling short as history’s stream is not as mighty. Apparently slavery is still “ordained by God for ultimate good” at Baylor University, as a RW campus group wants to accuse the University of canceling its “Christian identity”. No mention of its athletic team’s...
Like Martin Luther objecting to Pope Leo X selling indulgences to raise money for a variety of excesses, the environmental costs of carbon markets far exceed the benefits. Austerity would have denied us Renaissance art which is less at risk in an age of non-fungible tokens. Today the consequences for the planet...
I watched Jake Tapper yesterday repeatedly try, and fail, to get the Mississippi Governor to say plainly that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president. We all see this same variations over and over – “Joe Biden is the president. He was elected president by a majority of the electors.” Tapper (or...
The sparse number of actual carbon capture and sequestration projects plus weak carbon markets amplify the problems of the climate crisis yet to be revisited, post-Trump. Two heartland examples in North Dakota and Texas show how there are several interlocking problems addressing the climate crisis that must be included in future environmental policy. More specifically...
Democrats look for solutions, and Republicans look for blame. I am not sure where I heard that phrase and I probably rejected it as just political rhetoric. Recent events have given me reasons to examine and not dismiss the statement. Democrats are not perfect as demonstrated by the wavering support...
Texas is the coalmine canary of failures in the GQP’s industrial policy. The “clusterfuzzle” appears to be only in Texas: perhaps they skimmed on costs and failed in winterizing their plants. The structural failure comes from the anti-federal, deregulatory policy of the Texas grid which reveals itself in the disinformation...
Beto O’Rourke (D. TX) had some harsh words yesterday: x “We are nearing a failed state in Texas. And it has nothing to do with God, or natural disasters. It has everything to do with the leadership and those in the positions of public trust who have failed us,” says...
The “Arctic is already under such threat from so many angles, and while production there is expensive, it is also very, very high risk. It requires absolutely the strongest levels of global oversight.” Phoebe Barnard, Professor at Washington’s Conservation Biology Institute Putin’s Russia made history today when the Christophe de Margerie, the enormous...
Here’s the latest news today out of Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D), who announced a 2022 Senate bid earlier this month, said in a statement Tuesday that he will not accept donations from the fossil fuel industry in his run. Fetterman said in the statement obtained by The Hill via...
Jim Acosta of CNN reports that a Trump advisor says that “Trump is F’ed if further criminal proceedings happen after this impeachment trial”. Bad lawyering happened and the GOP knew it. Donald Trump's own lawyer just argued that “tired” and “fed up” voters kicked Trump out of office. x Bruce...
“In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous.” ~ Aristotle It is a fact that the biggest threat to our species is not climate change, though it will likely end much of what we experience today, but rather our war on bio-diversity. Bio-diversity is under attack from...
Many Progressives are excited about the upcoming prospective “Green New Deal” which is already taking shape, even before formal Green New Deal legislation. Multi-billion dollar manufacturing plants for electrical vehicle batteries, providing 2000 jobs per plant, are already rising in Michigan and Georgia. Fossil fuel pipelines, already partly built like...
I keep vigil. Last summer, record-breaking wildfires in Siberia, “in and around the Arctic circle,” continue to smolder and burn; the fuel feeding the fires is peat, decomposing organic matter that has been stored in the earth for millenniums. According to NASA estimates, at least half of wildfires burned in Siberia in the...
When California’s deadly and worst wildfire struck the state of California, intense drought provided the fuel necessary when a PG&E Pacific Gas and Electricity sparked the catastrophe. California has a Mediterranean climate, which is particularly vulnerable to our climate crisis. That explanation was too much for the simple-minded QAnon nutballs. To...
When California’s deadly and worst wildfire struck the state of California, intense drought provided the fuel necessary when a PG&E Pacific Gas and Electricity sparked the catastrophe. California has a Mediterranean climate, which is particularly vulnerable to our climate crisis. That explanation was too much for the simple-minded QAnon nutballs. To...
Playing catch up here today. Received this e-mail this week from Democracy For America: As you may have noticed, DFA’s first four endorsements of the 2021 election cycle are all progressive black women. That is not by accident. Jennifer Caroll Foy, Maya Wiley, Nina Turner, and Tishaura Jones embody our...
You know what? NO. You don't get to do this. Not this time, Fox News. During the violent insurrection at the Capitol building, everyone was on the same page. Our Capitol hadn’t been invaded since 1814. People couldn’t believe what they were seeing. No one dared empathize with the malevolent traitors...
On the sixth of January Congressional Republicans will make a farce of American democracy live and direct before the whole world. I know many Americans don’t care, some even doubt it exists and anyway it’s furrin parts. As an expat all I want to do is hide and cry, no...
Received this e-mail today from actor Bradley Whitford on behalf of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee: Rev. Raphael Warnock (D. GA) & Jon Ossoff (D. GA) Hey there. Happy New Year! Bradley Whitford here — the monster from Jordan Peele’s film Get Out who's not unlike the two GOP Georgia Senators we're...
Antarctica researchers have become alarmed by a new finding that shows sub-glacial lakes under the Thwaites glacier are draining a significant amount of water to the bedrock under miles thick with ice. Once the lake water reaches the bedrock, it lubricates the glacier enough to create frictional heat at the bed...
The neoliberals’ “free market” is not going to sequester enough carbon to save the environment. Even Warren Buffett isn’t willing to take a bet on surviving an impending climate crisis catastrophe, because “the rents are too high”. Existential threats have a critical reality, about which ruthless criticism is entailed. Even...
Is the Market for Lemons like the market for lemonade or even Don Lemon. Asymmetric information is everywhere, the example of the used-car salesman synonymous with the reign of Trump, best exemplified by his disinformation complicity shared by hiring as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil from...
Yemen’s Houthi rebels in Yemen finally gave the United Nations access to a disintegrating oil tanker that threatens the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba's coral reefs and coastal communities. Safer, the tanker, had been abandoned with over 1.1 million barrels of crude oil (four times the amount of the...
Unlike one of her predecessors, who had numerous connections to the Trump impeachment and its hinky relations with the Russian oligarchs, Jennifer Granholm will combine clean energy policy and economic recovery. Even without explicit support for the GND, this is a direction 180 degrees from the prior administration's kowtowing to...
The Independent writes on the intensification of melting on the Antarctic peninsula. Last year's melt season was the highest in forty years of satellite records. Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf experienced its highest rate of melting since records began 40 years ago from 2019-2020, a new study has found. The unprecedented melt at...
Received this e-mail today from Democracy For America: Have you signed up to text Georgia voters yet? On Friday, at 6pm Eastern/3pm Pacific, we'll kick off our Georgia Text Out The Vote campaign. We have 33 days to reach 3 million voter contacts and we need all hands on deck...
We will remember 2020 as the good old days as the climate continues to overheat due to our failure to rein in heat-trapping fossil fuel emissions. Heck, this year might even be the coolest we will experience for an unknowable number of Millenium. We have entered perilous times, and physics will...