Climate Crisis

US Nat’l Security State Tilted at War on Terror Windmills when Real Threats — Climate and Pandemic — were at Home

( Tomdispatch.com) – Americans are facing “A Spring Unlike Any Before.” So warned a front-page headline in the March 13th New York Times. That headline, however hyperbolic, was all too apt. The coming of spring has always promised relief from the discomforts of winter. Yet, far too often, it also brings its own calamities and […]

Climate Crisis

A Planet of Missing Beauties: In Memoriam

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – The other morning, walking at the edge of a local park, I caught sight of a beautiful red cardinal, the first bird I ever saw some 63 years ago. Actually, to make that sentence accurate, I should probably have put either “first” or “ever saw” in quotation marks. After all, I was […]

Climate Crisis

Why Countries should use Coronavirus Economic Stimulus to Transition to Green New Deal

Clean Energy Wire

By Rachel Waldholz | – ( Clean Energy Wire) – Foundations are calling on the EU to use any economic stimulus enacted in response to the coronavirus to accelerate the transition to a green economy. The global climate crisis cannot be ignored even as governments focus on the health crisis, said Laurence Tubiana of the […]

Climate Crisis

Why Burning Fossil Fuels is to Today’s Pandemics as Fleas were to the Black Death

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sheri Fink at the NYT reports that Center for Disease Control scientific modeler Matthew Biggerstaff estimated in a conference call that the coronavirus pandemic could last for many months or as long as a year and could infect half to two-thirds of the population of the United States. Between 200,000 […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Change is already Diminishing the Colorado River, U.S. Researchers Find

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Luke Runyon /KUNC | ( Cronkite News) – GREELEY, Colo. – A warming climate already is reducing stream flows in the Southwest’s largest watershed, according to a new study from scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey. And as the planet continues to heat up, it said, the shortages are likely to get worse. Using […]

Climate Crisis

Civil Disobedience in the Time of Climate Crisis

H. Patricia Hynes

On March 27, 2018, a Massachusetts judge found thirteen protestors who obstructed construction of a high-pressure fracked gas pipeline in West Roxbury, Massachusetts not responsible for their crime of trespassing and disturbing the peace. The judge ruled that the potential environmental and public health impacts of the pipeline – including the risk of climate change […]

Climate Crisis

“A Toothpick in a Tsunami”: US Big Oil Faces Bankruptcy as Prices Plunge 30% on Saudi Expansion

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Oil prices plummeted by 30% on Monday morning in Asia on news that Saudi Arabia intended actually to cut its prices and increase its production on April 1 to more than 10 million barrels a day. As a result, Asian markets also took a huge hit. Riyadh’s move came after […]

China

Maybe Try Friendship? Hatred and Enmity are bad Politics for America and a World in Crisis

Richard Penaskovic

We live in an era where animosity and even rage are the norm in the political arena. Both Democrats and Republicans are deeply divided in Congress so that little can be done legislatively. Correspondingly, millions of families are often split down the middle in terms of their political views with relatives divided among Democrats, Republicans […]

Bernie Sanders

Why the Russian Petro-state is actually terrified of a Bernie Sanders Presidency: The Green New Deal

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused by Western intelligence agencies of seeking to interfere in the 2020 US elections in favor of Donald Trump on the right and in favor of Bernie Sanders on the left. But guess what, Russia doesn’t actually want Bernie to win. At all. Moscow […]