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Month: April 2019

The natural world can help save us from climate catastrophe

The natural world can help save us from climate catastrophe

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George Monbiot writes: I don’t expect much joy in writing about climate breakdown. On one side, there is grief and fear; on the other side, machines. I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering. Technological change is essential, but to a natural historian it often feels cold and distancing. Today, however, I can write about something that thrills me: the most exciting field…

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Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole

Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole

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The Guardian reports: Trees growing near the South Pole, sea levels 20 metres higher than now, and global temperatures 3C-4C warmer. That is the world scientists are uncovering as they look back in time to when the planet last had as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it does today. Using sedimentary records and plant fossils, researchers have found that temperatures near the South Pole were about 20C higher than now in the Pliocene epoch, from 5.3m to 2.6m…

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Facebook Brexit ads secretly run by staff of Lynton Crosby firm

Facebook Brexit ads secretly run by staff of Lynton Crosby firm

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The Guardian reports: A series of hugely influential Facebook advertising campaigns that appear to be separate grassroots movements for a no-deal Brexit are secretly overseen by employees of Sir Lynton Crosby’s lobbying company and a former adviser to Boris Johnson, documents seen by the Guardian reveal. The mysterious groups, which have names such as Mainstream Network and Britain’s Future, appear to be run independently by members of the public and give no hint that they are connected. But in reality…

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How Rupert Murdoch’s media empire remade the world

How Rupert Murdoch’s media empire remade the world

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Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg write: Media power has historically accrued slowly, over the course of generations, which is one reason it tends to be concentrated in dynastic families. The Graham family owned The Washington Post for 80 years before selling it to Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos. William R. Hearst III still presides over the Hearst Corporation, whose roots can be traced to his great-grandfather, the mining-baron-turned-United-States-senator George Hearst. The New York Times has been controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family…

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How an aging, digitally semi-literate population is reshaping the internet and politics

How an aging, digitally semi-literate population is reshaping the internet and politics

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BuzzFeed reports: Although many older Americans have, like the rest of us, embraced the tools and playthings of the technology industry, a growing body of research shows they have disproportionately fallen prey to the dangers of internet misinformation and risk being further polarized by their online habits. While that matters much to them, it’s also a massive challenge for society given the outsize role older generations play in civic life, and demographic changes that are increasing their power and influence….

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The Pete Buttigieg boom

The Pete Buttigieg boom

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Vox reports: As strange as it may sound, the mayor of a medium-size city in the Midwest is now a real contender for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. A late March Quinnipiac poll had Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, tied with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for fifth place nationally, putting him ahead of Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). On Monday, Buttigieg announced that his campaign raised more than $7 million in the…

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Attacks by white extremists are growing. So are their connections

Attacks by white extremists are growing. So are their connections

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The New York Times reports: In a manifesto posted online before his attack, the gunman who killed 50 last month in a rampage at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he drew inspiration from white extremist terrorism attacks in Norway, the United States, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom. His references to those attacks placed him in an informal global network of white extremists whose violent attacks are occurring with greater frequency in the West. An analysis by The…

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U.S. auto plants would shut down within a week if border closes, economist says

U.S. auto plants would shut down within a week if border closes, economist says

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CNN reports: The entire US auto industry would shut down within a week if President Donald Trump goes through with his pledge to close the US-Mexican border, according to a leading expert on the industry. That’s because every automaker operating an auto plant in the United States depends on parts imported from Mexico, said Kristin Dziczek, the vice president of industry, labor and economics at the Center for Automotive Research. About 16% of all auto parts used in the United…

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U.S. officials said aid to El Salvador helped slow migration. Now Trump is canceling it

U.S. officials said aid to El Salvador helped slow migration. Now Trump is canceling it

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The Washington Post reports: Until last week, U.S. officials held up El Salvador as proof that foreign aid could help curb migration. The partnership between the two countries drew praise from diplomats, members of Congress and even America’s top border enforcement official. Then President Trump announced that he was withdrawing economic assistance to the Central American country and its neighbors Guatemala and Honduras. “They haven’t done a thing for us,” the president said Friday. The claim baffled development officials and…

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Theresa May calls for Brexit talks with Jeremy Corbyn

Theresa May calls for Brexit talks with Jeremy Corbyn

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The Guardian reports: Theresa May has offered to enter talks with Jeremy Corbyn to break the logjam over Brexit and let parliament decide a binding way forward if they fail to find a compromise. In a significant shift, May said she would request an extension to leaving the European Union and opened the door to accepting a softer Brexit, with No 10 not ruling out accepting either a customs union or a second referendum. The prime minister extended the offer…

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An era of fidgety politics marked by the loss of belief in collective agency

An era of fidgety politics marked by the loss of belief in collective agency

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John Harris writes: Forty years of post-Thatcher individualism have done their work, so that protest is now not a matter of collective agency (in other words, “we can stop this”), but the kind of atomised conscience-salving I first glimpsed at the time of the Iraq war, with the appearance of that deathly slogan “Not in my name”. Moreover, in a world as over-mediated as ours, each day brings a different spectacle – a march, a parliamentary vote, some or other…

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Technology in deep time: How it evolves alongside us

Technology in deep time: How it evolves alongside us

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Tom Chatfield writes: Plenty of creatures can communicate richly, comprehend one another’s intentions and put tools to intelligent and creative use: cetaceans, cephalopods, corvids. Some can even develop and pass on particular local practices: New Caledonian crows, for example, exhibit a “culture” of tool usage, creating distinct varieties of simple hooked tools from plants in order to help them feed. Only humans, however, have turned this craft into something unprecedented: a cumulative process of experiment and recombination that over mere…

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