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‘COP26 hasn’t solved the problem’: Scientists react to UN climate deal

‘COP26 hasn’t solved the problem’: Scientists react to UN climate deal

Nature reports: Government ministers at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) have reached a deal on further steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions after discussions overran by 24 hours. On 13 November, representatives from nearly 200 countries agreed the final text of the deal, which pledges further action to curb emissions, more frequent updates on progress and additional funding for low- and middle-income countries. Researchers have expressed relief that the meeting did not fail to…

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Biden names Mitch Landrieu to lead roughly $1 trillion infrastructure plan

Biden names Mitch Landrieu to lead roughly $1 trillion infrastructure plan

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Biden named former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to supervise the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill, turning to a veteran of Hurricane Katrina’s recovery to coordinate the rebuilding of roads, bridges and ports, the White House said. Mr. Biden chose Mr. Landrieu, a former Louisiana lieutenant governor who led the city of New Orleans from 2010 to 2018, because of his experience running the city and his relationships with state and municipal leaders around…

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Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president

Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president

CNN reports: Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff — deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns. The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors…

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Steve Bannon’s contempt indictment isn’t all that Trump foes think it is

Steve Bannon’s contempt indictment isn’t all that Trump foes think it is

Renato Mariotti writes: Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement that former Trump aide Steve Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury for criminal contempt of Congress for flaunting the Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the Capitol has led some to believe that this could represent a turning point in the yearslong effort by House Democrats to conduct oversight of the Trump administration. Don’t count on it. Criminal contempt is a difficult charge to prosecute, which is one reason…

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His reasons for opposing Trump were Biblical. Now a top Christian editor is out

His reasons for opposing Trump were Biblical. Now a top Christian editor is out

The New York Times reports: When Marvin Olasky gets angry emails from readers — more often than not about an exposé of wrongdoing at an evangelical church, or about a story that reflects poorly on Donald Trump — he has a stock reply. “We think this is useful to the Church,” he tells disgruntled readers, “because we are also sinners.” As the longtime editor of World, a Christian news organization that has a website, a biweekly magazine and a set…

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Men are just as emotional as women, study suggests

Men are just as emotional as women, study suggests

Alison Escalante writes: It is not a compliment to call someone “emotional.” We incorrectly see emotion as the opposite of the “rational” or “effective,” even though neuroscientists have long known that emotion is what drives intelligent thought. Now scientists have just revealed another area where we get emotion completely wrong. Despite centuries of stereotypes, a new study finds that men are just as emotional as women. Men have the same ups and downs, highs and lows as women do. And…

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After the failure of Cop26, there’s only one last hope for our survival

After the failure of Cop26, there’s only one last hope for our survival

George Monbiot writes: Now it’s a straight fight for survival. The Glasgow Climate Pact, for all its restrained and diplomatic language, looks like a suicide pact. After so many squandered years of denial, distraction and delay, it’s too late for incremental change. A fair chance of preventing more than 1.5C of heating means cutting greenhouse gas emissions by about 7% every year: faster than they fell in 2020, at the height of the pandemic. What we needed at the Cop26…

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COP26 negotiators do little to cut emissions, but allow oil and gas executives to rest easy

COP26 negotiators do little to cut emissions, but allow oil and gas executives to rest easy

Inside Climate News reports: As the debate continues over whether the global climate summit in Scotland will significantly move the needle on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, one thing is clear: The oil and gas industry still holds its grip on the world’s economic and political systems. Many climate advocates and vulnerable nations entered this year’s conference hoping to address an enduring failure of the Paris Agreement, which said nothing about fossil fuels. But a draft agreement released on Saturday included…

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Fossil fuel companies owe reparations to countries they are destroying

Fossil fuel companies owe reparations to countries they are destroying

Mark Hertsgaard writes: Mohammed Nasheed made global headlines in 2009 by convening the world’s first underwater cabinet meeting. As president of the Maldives, a nation of 1,138 low-lying islands south-west of India, Nasheed donned scuba gear and descended beneath the waves with 13 government ministers. The officials used waterproof pencils to sign a document urging the world to slash carbon dioxide emissions so the Maldives would not disappear beneath rising seas. “If the Maldives cannot be saved today, we do…

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Steve Bannon knows exactly what he’s doing

Steve Bannon knows exactly what he’s doing

David Frum writes: Does anyone still remember the Chicago Seven? They were a disparate group of radicals—some who knew each other, some who didn’t—who went to the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968 to spark trouble. Trouble did indeed erupt, although maybe not the exact trouble they had wanted. They were indicted and prosecuted. And then things went terribly wrong for the government. The prosecution thought it was running a trial, a legal proceeding governed by rules. The defendants decided…

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GOP roars back to life in Trump-resistant Pennsylvania suburbs

GOP roars back to life in Trump-resistant Pennsylvania suburbs

Politico reports: The Philadelphia suburbs buried Donald Trump in 2020. One year later, after enabling Joe Biden to flip one of the nation’s most critical swing states, their lurch in the opposite direction is a cause for alarm among Democrats. Largely overlooked amid the party’s dismal suburban results in Virginia and New Jersey last week, Republicans regained ground in the vote-rich Philly suburbs after years of losses under Trump. The GOP flipped multiple row offices in populous Bucks County, carried…

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Emerson didn’t practice the self-reliance he preached

Emerson didn’t practice the self-reliance he preached

Mark Greif writes: In the lead-up to the bicentennial of American independence in 1976, a graduate student sent a proposal to an editor at a trade publisher in New York. Would he consider taking on a book about the Minutemen and their “shot heard round the world,” set painstakingly in a history of Concord, Massachusetts, the town where the North Bridge fight broke out? In 1977, that book—which was also the student’s dissertation—won a Bancroft Prize, the highest honor in…

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Why did modern humans take so long to settle in Europe?

Why did modern humans take so long to settle in Europe?

Robin McKie writes: Modern humans made several failed attempts to settle in Europe before eventually taking over the continent. This is the stark conclusion of scientists who have been studying the course of Homo sapiens’s exodus from Africa tens of thousands of years ago. Researchers have recently pinpointed sites in Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic where our ancestors’ remains have been dated as being between 40,000 to 50,000 years old. However, bone analyses have produced genetic profiles that have…

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Belarus’s ruler has used asylum seekers to destabilize the EU

Belarus’s ruler has used asylum seekers to destabilize the EU

Anne Applebaum writes: A small Kurdish boy is sitting on the ground in a damp Polish forest, a few miles from the eastern border with Belarus. The air is heavy with cold and fog. The boy is crying. Around the boy, sitting in a circle, are his parents, uncles, and cousins, all from the same village near Dohuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan. There are 16 of them, among them seven children, including a four-month-old infant and an elderly woman who can…

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