James Balog writes: Do any of us really have a right to be angry or frustrated about the climate- and-energy crisis without considering how we ourselves have contributed to it? Honestly? Truly? With eyes wide open? I don’t think so. We all play a role in producing the problem. No one inhabits a righteous, pure-and-holy aerie above the human condition. Not me, not you, not anybody. We all drive our chariots of carbon fire. We all rely on carbon fuels…
Asser Khattab writes: When the war broke out in 2011 and many of us quickly grew accustomed to its horrors, programming my days around the possibility of rockets or mortar shells falling around me became increasingly ordinary, like picking clothes appropriate for the weather. And when I had to escape, it was just another thing that I had to do. The night before I left, I went to the bar, raised a glass to the good old days with the…
Ussama Makdisi writes: By the time I was born in 1968, my grandfather was an emeritus professor and a pillar of Ras Beirut’s small and highly educated Protestant community. But by then, as well, the optimism of the first half of the 20th century had receded dramatically. European empires had long since cynically partitioned the Ottoman Empire and created several new states including Lebanon. The Arab East, of which the small Mediterranean country was an inseparable part, witnessed the vibrant…
Natalie Wolchover writes: To look back in time at the cosmos’s infancy and witness the first stars flicker on, you must first grind a mirror as big as a house. Its surface must be so smooth that, if the mirror were the scale of a continent, it would feature no hill or valley greater than ankle height. Only a mirror so huge and smooth can collect and focus the faint light coming from the farthest galaxies in the sky —…
Julia Rosen writes: During this summer’s stifling heat wave, Robin Fales patrolled the same sweep of shore on Washington’s San Juan Island every day at low tide. The stench of rotting sea life grew as temperatures edged toward triple digits—roughly 30 degrees above average—and Fales watched the beds of kelp she studies wilt and fade. “They were bleaching more than I had ever seen,” recalls Fales, a Ph.D. candidate and marine ecologist at the University of Washington. She didn’t know…
The Washington Post reports: A new study provides a glimpse into the future of Western U.S. snow and the picture is far from rosy: In about 35 to 60 years, mountainous states are projected to be nearly snowless for years at a time if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked and climate change does not slow. Due to rising temperatures, the region has already lost 20 percent of its snowpack since the 1950s. That’s enough water to fill Lake Mead, the…
The Guardian reports: The Omicron variant has been detected in at least 38 countries but no deaths have yet been reported, the World Health Organization has said, amid warnings that it could damage the global economic recovery. The United States and Australia became the latest countries to confirm locally transmitted cases of the variant, as Omicron infections pushed South Africa’s total cases past 3 million. The WHO has warned it could take weeks to determine how infectious the variant is,…
The New York Times reports: The Biden administration’s growing alarm about a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine is based in part on U.S. intelligence that Moscow has drawn up plans for a military offensive involving an estimated 175,000 troops as soon as early next year. An unclassified U.S. intelligence document details some of the intelligence findings, including the positioning of what officials say could eventually be 100 battalion tactical groups, as well as heavy armor, artillery and other equipment. The…
Roger Kerson writes: When Donald Trump was scrambling in November of 2020 to overturn an election he clearly lost, my home state of Michigan was directly in his crosshairs. Nancy Tiseo, a Republican activist from Macomb County—home to the legendary “Reagan Democrats”—was ready to join him on the ramparts. Tiseo’s prescription: The president should declare martial law, call off the December meeting of the Electoral College, and cancel January Senate runoffs in Georgia. “Military tribunals” are needed, Tiseo wrote on…
Avi Shlaim writes: British Home Secretary Priti Patel has declared her intention to proscribe the whole of Hamas – the Islamic resistance movement that rules the Gaza Strip – as a terrorist organisation. The military wing of the group was proscribed in the UK back in March 2001. Twenty years on, the home secretary proposes to extend this ban to the political wing by arguing that the distinction between the two wings is no longer tenable. The truth of the…
Jack Shafer writes: How did the cable news networks become our main stage? Nary a day goes by without somebody saying something stupid somewhere on cable that ignites a national uproar that seizes the news cycle for days. On Wednesday, Tucker Carlson praised the journalism of Infowars fantasist Alex Jones on his Fox News Channel show, and that sparked coverage in the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, HuffPost and elsewhere. Earlier in the week, the someone saying something stupid was…
Dahlia Lithwick writes: Perhaps it would be refreshing if the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court no longer felt the need to lie to us. The lying, after all, is becoming nearly untenable—especially for an institution that relies on public confidence. After confirmation hearings in which they promised that stare decisis was a deeply felt value and that Roe v. Wade was a clear “precedent of the court” and “the law of the land.” there’s something sort of soothing about…
Jonathan Chait writes: A recent international YouGov/Global Progress survey, which came to my attention via the Liberal Patriot, framed the political choice facing the public in an interesting way. It asked which position comes closest to the poll taker’s own belief: “We need to be vigilant against groups trying to impose new cultural values and views about religion, gender, immigration, or race that don’t reflect our society’s traditional values” or “We need to be vigilant against groups that undermine democracy…
The Daily Beast reports: Steve Bannon—the right-wing media personality turned adviser to Donald Trump turned right-wing media personality again—became the first person in nearly 40 years to be indicted on a charge of criminal contempt of Congress last month after he refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Now, Bannon appears to be using his criminal case to go after the committee that went after him. Bannon is attempting to force investigators to potentially expose…