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The key to winning victories against big oil? Perseverance

The key to winning victories against big oil? Perseverance

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Bill McKibben writes: Vermont’s Middlebury College announced on Wednesday that it was divesting its holdings in fossil fuel companies. Given that more than a thousand institutions with endowments totaling more than $8tn have made similar pledges, it might not seem so newsworthy – but Middlebury was one of the first to reverse course. Six years ago the college flatly rejected divestment, and the shift makes it clear why big oil’s purchase on our economy and our society is eroding. Much…

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America never gave Afghan women a chance

America never gave Afghan women a chance

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Sophia Jones and Christina Asquith write: Parwin is dying from cancer, her time running out. There is no radiation available, and chemotherapy might not save her. But it isn’t just her life she’s worried about—it’s the future of her daughter Fatema, who had planned to go to college to become a midwife. If Parwin dies of breast cancer, her husband will likely pull Fatema out of school and marry her off. One less mouth to feed for their struggling family….

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A leading anthropologist suggests that protohumans became domesticated by killing off violent males

A leading anthropologist suggests that protohumans became domesticated by killing off violent males

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Melvin Konner writes: When I was studying for my doctorate, in the late 1960s, we budding anthropologists read a book called Ideas on Human Evolution, a collection of then-recent papers in the field. With typical graduate-student arrogance, I pronounced it “too many ideas chasing too little data.” Half a century and thousands of fossil finds later, we have a far more complete—and also more puzzling—view of the human past. The ever-growing fossil record fills in one missing link in the…

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European colonization of Americas killed so many indigenous people it cooled Earth’s climate

European colonization of Americas killed so many indigenous people it cooled Earth’s climate

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The Guardian reports: European colonization of the Americas resulted in the killing of so many native people that it transformed the environment and caused the Earth’s climate to cool down, new research has found. Settlers killed off huge numbers of people in conflicts and also by spreading disease, which reduced the indigenous population by 90% in the century following Christopher Columbus’s initial journey to the Americas and Caribbean in 1492. This “large-scale depopulation” resulted in vast tracts of agricultural land…

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From a no-deal Brexit to a no-Brexit deal

From a no-deal Brexit to a no-Brexit deal

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Hans-Werner Sinn writes: With the recent signing of the Treaty of Aachen, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have renewed the Franco-German friendship pact and taken an important and necessary step forward for Europe. But the United Kingdom should not have been left out. The UK is an integral part of Europe; as the European Union’s second-largest economy, its GDP equals that of the 19 smallest EU member states combined. Its exodus thus would shake Europe to…

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The messier Brexit gets, the better Europe looks

The messier Brexit gets, the better Europe looks

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The New York Times reports: After Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, its leaders were in a panic. The bloc was mired in a migration crisis, and anti-Europe, populist forces were gaining. Britain’s decision seemed to herald the start of a great unraveling. Two years later, as Britain’s exit from the bloc, or Brexit, looks increasingly messy and self-destructive, there is a growing sense, even in the populist corners of the continent, that if this is…

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Michael Bloomberg’s plans to take down Trump

Michael Bloomberg’s plans to take down Trump

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Edward-Isaac Dovere writes: Michael Bloomberg has bigger plans for 2020 than running for president. The billionaire and former New York City mayor has been openly dreaming of the White House for 25 years, and spent huge amounts of time and money four times over the past 10 years trying to figure out a way to get himself there. But he has hesitations about this race, too. He’s not sure there is a realistic space in the Democratic primaries for his…

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Howard Schultz doesn’t understand American history

Howard Schultz doesn’t understand American history

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Jamelle Bouie writes: Howard Schultz, the former chief executive of Starbucks, cannot win the presidency as an independent candidate. But is there someone who could? Is there any chance a third-party candidate could contest the presidency and win? The short answer is no. As long as the United States has an Electoral College and winner-take-all process for presidential elections, third-party and independent candidates will have a hard time finding any traction. There have been times in American history, though, when…

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Cave that housed multiple human species challenges view of cultural evolution

Cave that housed multiple human species challenges view of cultural evolution

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Scientific American reports: Deep in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia sits a very choice piece of real estate. It’s nothing so newfangled as a ski lodge or one of the traditional wood houses that dot the local countryside. Rather it’s a primeval limestone cave, called Denisova, that overlooks a rushing river and the surrounding forest. Multiple human species, or hominins, have sought shelter in this cave over the past 300,000 years, such is its allure. Artifacts, bits of bone…

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Dogs may have helped ancient Middle Easterners hunt small game

Dogs may have helped ancient Middle Easterners hunt small game

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Science News reports: Dogs that lived alongside Middle Eastern villagers roughly 11,500 years ago may have helped to transform how those humans hunted, researchers say. Fragmentary canine bones unearthed at Shubayqa 6, an ancient site in northeastern Jordan, date to a time when remains of hares and other small prey at the outpost sharply increased, say zooarchaeologist Lisa Yeomans of the University of Copenhagen and her colleagues. Many animal bones from Shubayqa 6 also display damage caused by having been…

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January was Australia’s hottest month since records began

January was Australia’s hottest month since records began

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Australian Associated Press reports: January was Australia’s hottest month on record, the Bureau of Meteorology has said. The mean temperature last month, averaged across the country, exceeded 30C for the first time for any month. A senior climatologist at the bureau, Andrew Watkins, said January’s heat was unprecedented. “We saw heatwave conditions affect large parts of the country through most of the month, with records broken for both duration and also individual daily extremes,” he said on Thursday. [Continue reading…]

How the geography of climate damage could make the politics less polarizing

How the geography of climate damage could make the politics less polarizing

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Mark Muro, David G. Victor, and Jacob Whiton write: As a new Congress and the 2020 presidential election cycle gear up, much of Washington is likely to focus on topics where political polarization is high. Yet there may be surprises. Take climate change, a top priority for many Democrats. The standard story is that the high-tech “blue” states are pushing a green wave of massive investment to cut emissions of gases that cause climate change. Meanwhile, the GOP-leaning “red” states…

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Extreme weather events could worsen climate change

Extreme weather events could worsen climate change

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E&E News reports: Droughts, heat waves and other extreme climate-related events are growing concerns in a warming world. Studies have found climate change is already fueling an increase in some extreme events and that they’re likely to worsen as temperatures continue to climb. Now, new research suggests the reverse may also be true—these events, themselves, could also worsen climate change. Weather and climate events tend to affect the amount of moisture contained in the soil, according to the study published…

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Growing chorus of Republican critics for Trump’s foreign policy

Growing chorus of Republican critics for Trump’s foreign policy

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The New York Times reports: They think pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan would be a debacle. They think North Korea cannot be trusted. They think the Islamic State is still a threat to America. They think Russia is bad and NATO is good. The trouble is their president does not agree. More than two years into his administration, the disconnect between President Trump and the Republican establishment on foreign policy has rarely been as stark. In recent days, the…

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