Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Over the past 40 years, midterm elections have typically been quiet affairs in which only 38% to 40% of voters show up at the polls, and those who vote skew toward the older, wealthier and whiter spectrum of the electorate. In contrast, in presidential election years, the turnout tends to […]
One Billionaire emits a Million times more CO2 than an Average Person, as Protesters block Private Planes at Amsterdam
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Oxfam has a new study, Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people. The Executive Summary says that they concluded that quite apart from the 3,300 or so billionaires, the wealthiest one percent in the world emit twice as much carbon dioxide as the bottom 50%. The top […]
UN: Past 8 Years have been 8 hottest on Record, in Harbinger of Heating World
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The past eight years have been the eight hottest on record, in further evidence that human-caused global heating is accelerating rapidly and dangerously. So reports the World Meteorological Organization in tandem with the COP27 Climate Summit in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The report argues that we can see rapid heating […]
The Saudis depleted their Own Aquifers: now they’re emptying Arizona’s and Getting Sweetheart Deals to do So
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ella Nilsen at CNN has done an excellent deep dive on the shrinking aquifers of the Southwest and how Arizona has allowed a Saudi and a United Arab Emirates company to establish water-hog farms to grow crops to be shipped back to the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is a country […]
Backlash in Iran against President Biden’s vow to “Free” the Country
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – At a campaign event in California late on Thursday, President Joe Biden said, “Don’t worry, we’re going to free Iran, they’re going to free themselves pretty soon.” Biden’s pledge drew a sharp rebuke from Iranian president Ibrahim Raisi, who said the Iranians had already freed themselves with their 1979 Islamic […]
Top 5 Worst things that Far-Right Netanyahu Could do as Prime Minister to Israeli Democracy and Palestinian Society
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Now that far, far right Israeli politician Binyamin Netanyahu has been elected, what are the major negative consequences Israel and the world might see, according to the Israeli press and other sources? I’m drawing in part on a roound-up by BBC Monitoring. 1. Netanyahu’s more fascist allies have demanded that […]
Egypt’s Alexandria in Danger of becoming a modern Atlantis, as Climate Conference opens in Sharm El Sheikh
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The second-largest city in the country hosting this year’s international climate change conference, Alexandria in Egypt, will struggle for its life the rest of this century and may be 33% under water in only 30 years. We may be seeing the end of a city founded 2,353 years ago. The […]
The Rise of Israeli Fascism as the Swing Vote in Parliament, and the Project of Ethnic Cleansing
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Despite Israeli propaganda about being a democracy that shares values with the liberal West, the country has for some time gone down a much darker path. Exit polling done by the major Israeli television channels in Tuesday’s election suggests that Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, in a joint slate with […]
Death Knell for Big Carbon? Globally, All New Electricity Demand was Met by Renewables in first 1/2 of ’22, with Fossil Fuels Flat
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In the first half of 2022, there was no increase in the world’s use of fossil fuels, and all new electricity demand was met by renewables. The world is nearing a tipping point, estimated by the International Energy Agency to come in 2025, after which all new electricity demand will […]
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