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Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook

Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed. Keep them on the hook

Rebecca Solnit writes: Personal virtue is an eternally seductive goal in progressive movements, and the climate movement is no exception. People pop up all the time to boast of their domestic arrangements or chastise others for what they eat or how they get around. The very short counterargument is that individual acts of thrift and abstinence won’t get us the huge distance we need to go in this decade. We need to exit the age of fossil fuels, reinvent our…

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The self is not singular but a fluid network of identities

The self is not singular but a fluid network of identities

Kathleen Wallace writes: Who am I? We all ask ourselves this question, and many like it. Is my identity determined by my DNA or am I product of how I’m raised? Can I change, and if so, how much? Is my identity just one thing, or can I have more than one? Since its beginning, philosophy has grappled with these questions, which are important to how we make choices and how we interact with the world around us. Socrates thought…

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As Biden faces a political crisis, Democrats look on in alarm

As Biden faces a political crisis, Democrats look on in alarm

The New York Times reports: With President Biden facing a political crisis that has shaken his standing in his party, Democrats across the country are increasingly worried about their ability to maintain power in Washington, as his administration struggles to defend its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and stanch a resurgent pandemic that appeared to be waning only weeks ago. While Americans watched devastating scenes of mayhem at the Kabul airport and ascendant Taliban forces last week, the steady drumbeat of…

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Afghan staff at U.S. Embassy losing faith in evacuation efforts, diplomatic cable says

Afghan staff at U.S. Embassy losing faith in evacuation efforts, diplomatic cable says

NBC News reports: Local staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul are “deeply disheartened” by U.S. evacuation efforts and have expressed a sense of betrayal and distrust in the American government, according to a State Department diplomatic cable obtained by NBC News. Sent Saturday, the cable said that memos had been sent to Afghan staff at the Embassy on Wednesday, inviting them to head to the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. It told them to take food and…

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The war in Afghanistan was always a scam

The war in Afghanistan was always a scam

Jason Linkins writes: “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.… It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” These words, penned by Major General Smedley Butler in 1935, nearly a century before the global war on terrorism began, decades before the notion of a “military-industrial complex” became a glint in Dwight Eisenhower’s imagination, could sum up…

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In Texas, hundreds of patients are waiting to be admitted into hospitals, but there are no beds

In Texas, hundreds of patients are waiting to be admitted into hospitals, but there are no beds

Click2Houston.com reports: Emergency room doctors in Southeast Texas say they are running out of hospital beds, and some patients are waiting hours, sometimes days to be admitted into a hospital. “Are there patients dying because of this that might not have died? Absolutely, yes,” said Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council CEO, Darrell Pile. “I am very concerned about the fatalities that are about to happen.” As of Friday afternoon, Pile says 482 patients were waiting for hospital beds in his…

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Why the coronavirus has changed as it has, and what it means going forward

Why the coronavirus has changed as it has, and what it means going forward

STAT reports: It’s impossible to say how the coronavirus will continue to evolve. Those changes, after all, are a result of random mutations. But there are some fundamental principles that explain why the virus has morphed as it has, principles that could guide our understanding of its ongoing evolution — and what that means for our future with the pathogen. The great fear is that nature could spit out some new variant that completely saps the power of vaccines and…

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Work is a false idol

Work is a false idol

Cassady Rosenblum writes: In China this April, a 31-year-old former factory worker named Luo Huazhong drew the curtains and crawled into bed. Then he posted a picture of himself there to the Chinese website Baidu along with a message: “Lying Flat Is Justice.” “Lying flat is my sophistic movement,” Mr. Luo wrote, tipping his hat to Diogenes the Cynic, a Greek philosopher who is said to have lived inside a barrel to criticize the excesses of Athenian aristocrats. On Chinese…

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The fall of the Roman Empire was a lucky break for humanity

The fall of the Roman Empire was a lucky break for humanity

Walter Scheidel writes: For an empire that collapsed more than 1,500 years ago, ancient Rome maintains a powerful presence. About 1 billion people speak languages derived from Latin; Roman law shapes modern norms; and Roman architecture has been widely imitated. Christianity, which the empire embraced in its sunset years, remains the world’s largest religion. Yet all these enduring influences pale against Rome’s most important legacy: its fall. Had its empire not unravelled, or had it been replaced by a similarly…

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How the Taliban silently infiltrated Kabul months ago

How the Taliban silently infiltrated Kabul months ago

Christoph Reuter reports: In early July, before the great storm broke over Afghanistan, Kabul was already surrounded by the Taliban. And nowhere were the Islamist fighters closer to the Afghan capital city than on the shores of the Qargha Reservoir, a popular getaway on the western edge of the city. People were saying that the Taliban had gathered in the villages behind the nearby hills. The last frontline, it was said, was on the shore of the reservoir at the…

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How the U.S.’s Afghanistan exit plan unravelled

How the U.S.’s Afghanistan exit plan unravelled

The New York Times reports: The nation’s top national security officials assembled at the Pentagon early on April 24 for a secret meeting to plan the final withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. It was two weeks after President Biden had announced the exit over the objection of his generals, but now they were carrying out his orders. In a secure room in the building’s “extreme basement,” two floors below ground level, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen….

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Biden is counting on the fact that most Americans don’t care much about what happens to Afghanistan

Biden is counting on the fact that most Americans don’t care much about what happens to Afghanistan

Reuters reports: President Joe Biden is brushing off criticism of his administration’s chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal because he and his aides believe the political fallout at home will be limited, according to White House allies and administration officials. Biden and his top aides argue they are managing an evacuation mission as well as could be expected given the faster-than-anticipated takeover of the country by the Taliban, and are seeking to draw attention back to the choice to get U.S. troops out…

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‘Unprecedented’ rain falls for first time in recorded history at Greenland’s ice sheet summit

‘Unprecedented’ rain falls for first time in recorded history at Greenland’s ice sheet summit

USA Today reports: It rained for several hours at the summit of Greenland’s ice sheet on Saturday, marking the first time in recorded history the area has experienced rain and at a time when temperatures there rose above freezing in an extremely rare occurrence. The rainfall occurred at the highest point on the country’s ice sheet, according to the National Snow and Ice Date Center. The weather was observed at Greenland’s Summit Station, which is 10,551 feet above sea level,…

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It’s not a competition, but renewables are beating nuclear anyway

It’s not a competition, but renewables are beating nuclear anyway

Nathaniel Bullard writes: Energy giant BP Plc has been publishing its annual review of global energy statistics for seven decades. (I’ve been reading it — and digesting its data — for about a fifth of that time.) The latest edition published in July is, understandably, quite focused on the largest year-on-year decline in primary energy consumption since 1945. But there’s another finding worth noting: 2020 was the first year in which renewable power generation (excluding hydro) surpassed nuclear power generation….

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