Music: Milton Nascimento — ‘Tudo O Que Você Podia Ser’
Trump administration hardens its assault on climate science
The New York Times reports: President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis. Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault. In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback…
Top GOP pollster finds overwhelming support for carbon tax by millennial Republicans
Joe Romm reports: A new survey finds Republicans under 40 support a carbon tax 7-to-1. And a remarkable 85% of Republican millennials are concerned that “the current Republican position on climate change is hurting the party with younger voters.” But what makes this result so striking is that the survey was conducted by Frank Luntz, a top GOP strategist and pollster. Luntz wrote an infamous memo in 2002 detailing the exact words conservatives should use if they want to sound…
European trade policy seen going greener after EU parliament vote
Reuters reports: The rise of the Greens, the “Greta effect” of a young Swedish climate activist and the entry of French President Emmanuel Macron’s party into the European Parliament are likely to result in a more defensive and climate-oriented EU trade policy. Sunday’s European election saw the traditional conservative and socialist parties that have long run the European Union lose dozens of seats each. Between them, they can no longer form a majority, making them more reliant to pass European…
The officials around Jeremy Corbyn who designed this electoral fiasco need to go
Paul Mason writes: [T]he officials who designed this fiasco, and ignored all evidence that it would lead to disaster, must be removed from positions of influence. They include Seumas Milne, director of strategy, and Karie Murphy, who is currently juggling the roles of Corbyn’s chief of staff and acting general secretary. With an electoral fiasco like this, the buck has to stop somewhere, and it must stop with them – together with Ian Lavery MP, the party chair, who twice…
‘This is bigger’: Palestinian and Israeli teens strike together for the climate
Michael Bäcklund writes: The Israeli school strike branch had a very successful strike on Tuesday, which was three times bigger than the last one in March. It was the first sitting day of the new parliament. We had over 500 students marching and shouting slogans in front of the prestigious Knesset in Jerusalem. We had Arab Palestinians and Jewish Israelis participating together. We have multiplied our following on social media and we have started to plan social media campaign with…
World’s rivers ‘awash with dangerous levels of antibiotics’
The Guardian reports: Hundreds of rivers around the world from the Thames to the Tigris are awash with dangerously high levels of antibiotics, the largest global study on the subject has found. Antibiotic pollution is one of the key routes by which bacteria are able develop resistance to the life-saving medicines, rendering them ineffective for human use. “A lot of the resistance genes we see in human pathogens originated from environmental bacteria,” said Prof William Gaze, a microbial ecologist at…
Living on Mars is a misguided fantasy
Philip Ball writes: Who said this? “I’ve been having to say everywhere I go that there is no planet B, there is no escape hatch, there is no second Earth; this is the only planet we have.” If you’re a science fiction fan the answer might surprise you: it was the writer Kim Stanley Robinson, whose Mars trilogy is an ultimately utopian series of tales that describe the terraforming of Mars – planetary engineering to give it an Earth-like environment…
Music: Milton Nascimento — ‘Chamada (The Call)’
Greens surge as parties make strongest ever showing across Europe
The Guardian reports: Green parties have swept to their strongest ever showing in European elections, boosting their tally of MEPs to a projected 71 compared with 52 last time. The result gives them every chance of becoming kingmakers in a newly fragmented parliament. “Thank you so much for your trust in us Greens,” a delighted Ska Keller, one of the European Greens’ two lead candidates for the post of European commission president, told a press conference in Brussels. “This is…
Methane being released faster than ever, posing new threat to Paris climate goals
The Independent reports: Record levels of methane in the atmosphere will make it even harder to reach targets set by the Paris climate agreement, scientists have warned. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found increasing amounts of the potent greenhouse gas were coming from the tropics. They are uncertain about the source but believe it is likely to be due to microbial changes in methane-belching tropical wetlands. They believe warmer temperatures could be causing them to emit…
Trump’s EPA is ‘cooking the books’ to justify its attack on clean air rules
Think Progress reports: Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working to distort the way it measures the benefits of some of the agency’s most impactful policies, regulations that safeguard human health by limiting air pollution. The primary beneficiary of such distortion? The coal industry. When the government evaluates the health and financial benefits of clean air, the calculation typically incorporates the number of lives saved and the scale of reduced health impacts thanks to reducing pollution — also known as…
Trump turns the full force of the government on perceived political enemies
NBC News reports: President Donald Trump found four former federal officials guilty of “treason” Thursday — and then commissioned his intelligence agencies to help the Department of Justice prove it. At the same time, he is blocking Congress from executing its constitutional duty to execute oversight of his administration, not only with regard to his campaign’s ties to Russia and the interference detailed in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation but also on a host of other fronts. He’s wielding power…
NSA cyberweapon, on the loose, now wreaks havoc across America
The New York Times reports: For nearly three weeks, Baltimore has struggled with a cyberattack by digital extortionists that has frozen thousands of computers, shut down email and disrupted real estate sales, water bills, health alerts and many other services. But here is what frustrated city employees and residents do not know: A key component of the malware that cybercriminals used in the attack was developed at taxpayer expense a short drive down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway at the National Security…
The spy case that made Adam Schiff a Russia hawk
Zach Dorfman writes: On September 25, 1984, three officials from the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco departed for San Francisco Airport to meet with their counterparts from Seattle and exchange confidential “pouched” diplomatic materials. This exchange happened every other Tuesday, and each time, the Soviets were tailed by a van full of San Francisco-based FBI counterintelligence officials. Although the FBI knew the Soviets were aware of this surveillance, the Bureau didn’t try to conceal it either, according to the Los…
Like humans, ravens mirror the distress they witness in others, study suggests
Katherine J. Wu reports: Seeing someone else suffer a big disappointment can have a pretty damaging effect on your own morale. That’s definitely the case with people—and it might be true for ravens, too. New research suggests that, like humans and many other mammals, common ravens (Corvus corax) can read and internalize the emotional states of others. In the study, published today in the journal PNAS, ravens watch their friends grapple with a frustrating task in which they’re denied a…