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Britain can legally cancel Brexit. That’s EU advice – but will parliament agree?

Britain can legally cancel Brexit. That’s EU advice – but will parliament agree?

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Jolyon Maugham writes: We can cancel Brexit. That’s what the advocate general to the court of justice of the EU, Europe’s highest court, advised this morning. The advocate general, Manuel Campos Sánchez-Bordona, said that the UK can cancel its article 50 notice unilaterally. This means that if our own parliament decides that our interests are best served by remaining, the EU cannot stand in our way. His decision is not certain to be followed by the full court – which…

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Collapse of civilisation is on the horizon, says David Attenborough

Collapse of civilisation is on the horizon, says David Attenborough

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The Guardian reports: The collapse of civilisation and the natural world is on the horizon, Sir David Attenborough has told the UN climate change summit in Poland. The naturalist was chosen to represent the world’s people in addressing delegates of almost 200 nations who are in Katowice to negotiate how to turn pledges made in the 2015 Paris climate deal into reality. As part of the UN’s people’s seat initiative, messages were gathered from all over the world to inform…

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Mueller is building a conspiracy case that’s likely to ensnare Trump and his family

Mueller is building a conspiracy case that’s likely to ensnare Trump and his family

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Peter Zeidenberg writes: It appears that the Mueller investigation is reaching its endgame. After a two-month hiatus for the midterms, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is prepared to once again show its work. These developments are ominous for President Donald Trump. In short order, expect to see a case of conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election to be laid out in court. Defenders of the president have, despite the obvious progress of the Mueller investigation — more than 30…

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Trump’s latest tweets cross clear lines, experts say: Obstruction of justice and witness tampering

Trump’s latest tweets cross clear lines, experts say: Obstruction of justice and witness tampering

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump took to Twitter Monday morning, haranguing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and witnesses to his ongoing Russia investigation. His tweets have become a common morning occurrence, particularly in recent weeks. But legal experts are calling Monday’s missives a newsworthy development that amounts to evidence of obstructing justice. Trump’s first statement went out after Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney who pleaded guilty last week for lying to Congress about the president’s real estate…

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Trump’s skepticism of climate science is mostly echoed across GOP and those who know better remain silent

Trump’s skepticism of climate science is mostly echoed across GOP and those who know better remain silent

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The Washington Post reports: Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who has become a staunch Trump ally since running against him for president in 2016, has consistently attempted to push his party to address climate change. He worked in 2010 with then-Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) to try to pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation, an effort that ultimately failed. Graham has endorsed a carbon tax and challenged his party to stop giving credence to the out­liers who question the science….

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The GOP regards disenfranchising minority voters as a legitimate political strategy

The GOP regards disenfranchising minority voters as a legitimate political strategy

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Adam Serwer writes: North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms opposed the Civil Rights Act, calling it “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress.” He opposed the Voting Rights Act. He filibustered a bill to establish a federal holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr., accusing the civil rights leader of “action-oriented Marxism. He protected South Africa’s apartheid government from sanctions. He backed white rule in Rhodesia. And when he died in 2008, President George W. Bush…

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Even most Americans in coal-reliant states prefer renewables

Even most Americans in coal-reliant states prefer renewables

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CBS News reports: A large majority of Americans in coal-heavy states favor increasing renewable energy use. Most would also be willing to buy solar panels for their own use, and a plurality would be willing to pay an additional $5 a month to get energy from fully renewable sources, according to a survey from Consumer Reports. The consumer advocacy group spoke with 1,200 Americans, including 400 residents of coal-reliant states: Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia. Residents of those four states…

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Let’s cultivate our material intelligence

Let’s cultivate our material intelligence

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Glenn Adamson writes: Are you sitting comfortably? If so, how much do you know about the chair that’s holding you off the ground – what it’s made from, and what its production process looked like? Where it was made, and by whom? Or go deeper: how were the materials used to make the chair extracted from the planet? Most people will find it difficult to answer these basic questions. The object cradling your body remains, in many ways, mysterious to…

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Portrait of the Earth at the threshold of climate catastrophe

Portrait of the Earth at the threshold of climate catastrophe

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The Guardian reports: On Sunday morning hundreds of politicians, government officials and scientists will gather in the grandeur of the International Congress Centre in Katowice, Poland. It will be a familiar experience for many. For 24 years the annual UN climate conference has served up a reliable diet of rhetoric, backroom talks and dramatic last-minute deals aimed at halting global warming. But this year’s will be a grimmer affair – by far. As recent reports have made clear, the world…

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Climate change first became news 30 years ago. Why haven’t we fixed it?

Climate change first became news 30 years ago. Why haven’t we fixed it?

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Andrew Revkin writes: Thirty years ago, the potentially disruptive impact of heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels and rain forests became front-page news. It had taken a century of accumulating science, and a big shift in perceptions, for that to happen. Indeed, Svante Arrhenius, the pioneering Swedish scientist who in 1896 first estimated the scope of warming from widespread coal burning, mainly foresaw this as a boon, both in agricultural bounty and “more equable and better climates, especially as regards…

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The technology industry is run by capitalists pretending to be idealists

The technology industry is run by capitalists pretending to be idealists

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Ian Bogost writes: Businesspeople are in business for the money, won directly through profits and indirectly through the forces of market speculation. And yet, for more than a decade now, the technology industry has persuaded the public, and the street, that the efforts of firms such as Facebook and Google are conducted first for reasons of social benefit. To “change the world,” as their leaders intone, even as it becomes clear that some of the changes in question are often…

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How Trump fuels the fascist right

How Trump fuels the fascist right

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Bernard E. Harcourt writes: President Trump makes constant use of the language and logic of the “new right,” a toxic blend of antebellum white supremacy, twentieth-century fascism, European far-right movements of the 1970s, and today’s self-identified “alt-right.” And his words and deeds have empowered and enabled an upsurge of white nationalists and extremist organizations—from Atomwaffen to the Proud Boys to the Rise Above Movement—that threatens to push the country into violent social conflict. Amplified by social media, this new right…

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GOP unwilling to face Trump’s deep toxicity among moderate voters, especially women

GOP unwilling to face Trump’s deep toxicity among moderate voters, especially women

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The New York Times reports: With a brutal finality, the extent of the Republicans’ collapse in the House came into focus last week as more races slipped away from them and their losses neared 40 seats. Yet nearly a month after the election, there has been little self-examination among Republicans about why a midterm that had seemed at least competitive became a rout. President Trump has brushed aside questions about the loss of the chamber entirely, ridiculing losing incumbents by…

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