We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report

We must change food production to save the world, says leaked report

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The Guardian reports: Attempts to solve the climate crisis by cutting carbon emissions from only cars, factories and power plants are doomed to failure, scientists will warn this week. A leaked draft of a report on climate change and land use, which is now being debated in Geneva by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), states that it will be impossible to keep global temperatures at safe levels unless there is also a transformation in the way the world…

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Ethiopia plants 350 million trees in a day to help tackle climate crisis

Ethiopia plants 350 million trees in a day to help tackle climate crisis

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The Guardian reports: About 350m trees have been planted in a single day in Ethiopia, according to a government minister. The planting is part of a national “green legacy” initiative to grow 4bn trees in the country this summer by encouraging every citizen to plant at least 40 seedlings. Public offices have reportedly been shut down in order for civil servants to take part. The project aims to tackle the effects of deforestation and climate change in the drought-prone country….

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Some men avoid ‘green’ behavior because they don’t want to be perceived as gay

Some men avoid ‘green’ behavior because they don’t want to be perceived as gay

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Tom Jacobs writes: There are many reasons people fail to act in environmentally friendly ways. Inertia, for some. Fatalism, for others. Then there’s the difficulty of fully grasping the long-term consequences of our actions. New research points to another, more surprising disincentive for going green: the fear that others might question our sexual orientation. As a 2016 study confirmed, environmentalism is widely perceived as feminine behavior. Even today, caring and nurturing behavior is associated with women—and that includes taking steps…

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The cost of climate change is being paid by the wrong people

The cost of climate change is being paid by the wrong people

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Henry Farrell writes: Last week, CNN announced plans to host a climate crisis town hall with the Democratic presidential candidates on September 4. MSNBC scheduled a multiday climate change forum with the presidential hopefuls later that month. In both venues, some version of the perpetual question will undoubtedly be raised: “How will you pay for the costs of dealing with climate change?” Despite its pervasiveness, this is a profoundly wrongheaded line of inquiry. Asking how to pay for the impact…

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Democrats are veering left. It might just work

Democrats are veering left. It might just work

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John F. Harris writes: “Candidates who look like they are cautious, modulating, have their foot on the brake are missing the moment,” said veteran Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who is coming out later this summer with a book on how both parties have been refashioned in the Trump era. The moment, according to Greenberg’s polling and focus-group work, has left voters of all stripes clamoring for disruption. Cultural and ideological currents in society—more profound than any given day’s Trump uproars—are…

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Elizabeth Warren is running a brilliant campaign

Elizabeth Warren is running a brilliant campaign

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David Axelrod writes: Elizabeth Warren is running a strategically brilliant campaign. More than any other candidate, she has a clear, unambiguous message that is thoroughly integrated with her biography. That is essential to a successful campaign. Her unsparing critique of corporate excess and her expansive — and expensive — agenda for change mirror those of the reigning left champion, Bernie Sanders, in places. But where Sanders sometimes seems like a parody of himself — or of Larry David’s parody of…

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With Ratcliffe, another Trump nominee withdraws with a damaged reputation

With Ratcliffe, another Trump nominee withdraws with a damaged reputation

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Michael Warren writes: Five of the worst words to hear in Washington these days: “The President has nominated you…” Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe, President Donald Trump’s short-lived nominee for director of national intelligence, is the latest would-be official to get the bad news. Up until he was tapped for the country’s top intelligence job on July 28, Ratcliffe was practically unknown around Washington. Five days later, after Trump announced on Twitter that he had withdrawn from consideration, Ratcliffe has a…

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U.S. preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in initial deal with Taliban

U.S. preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in initial deal with Taliban

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The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is preparing to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan in exchange for concessions from the Taliban, including a cease-fire and a renunciation of al-Qaeda, as part of an initial deal to end the nearly 18-year-old war, U.S. officials say. The agreement, which would require the Taliban to begin negotiating a larger peace deal directly with the Afghan government, could cut the number of American troops in the country from roughly 14,000 to between…

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Can the president of Brazil jail Glenn Greenwald for publishing leaks?

Can the president of Brazil jail Glenn Greenwald for publishing leaks?

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Adriana Carranca writes: On June 9, The Intercept began publishing a series of investigative stories that sent shocks through Brazil. The pieces appeared to supply evidence that Sergio Moro, Brazil’s Justice Minister and the former top judge in a major corruption investigation, colluded with federal prosecutors to convict prominent political figures—among them, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who had been leading 2018 election polls and was rendered ineligible to run. Drawing from private chats leaked to Glenn Greenwald—the Intercept’s…

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Metabolic health is inseparable from the health of our gut microbes

Metabolic health is inseparable from the health of our gut microbes

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James Hamblin writes: The relationship between microbes and weight gain has long been overlooked in humans, but people have known about similar effects in animals for decades. After World War II, antibiotics became affordable and abundant for the first time. Farmers began giving the drugs to their livestock—for example, to treat a milk cow’s infected udder—and noticed that animals who got antibiotics grew larger and more quickly. This led to a flood of patent applications for antibiotic-laden foods for all…

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The conservative nationalists’ contempt for America’s unalterably multiracial, multicultural national character

The conservative nationalists’ contempt for America’s unalterably multiracial, multicultural national character

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Will Wilkinson writes: The Republican Party under Donald Trump has devolved into a populist cult of personality. But Mr. Trump won’t be president forever. Can the cult persist without its personality? Does Trumpist nationalism contain a kernel of coherent ideology that can outlast the Trump presidency? At a recent conference in Washington, a group of conservatives did their level best to promote Trumpism without Trump (rebranded as “national conservatism”) as a cure for all that ails our frayed and faltering…

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U.S. ends Cold War missile treaty, with aim of countering China

U.S. ends Cold War missile treaty, with aim of countering China

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The New York Times reports: The United States on Friday terminates a major treaty of the Cold War, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces agreement, and it is already planning to start testing a new class of missiles later this summer. But the new missiles are unlikely to be deployed to counter the treaty’s other nuclear power, Russia, which the United States has said for years was in violation of the accord. Instead, the first deployments are likely to be intended to…

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Bashar al-Assad’s useful idiot

Bashar al-Assad’s useful idiot

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Josh Rogin writes: Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) talks often about her January 2017 trip to Syria, when she met Bashar al-Assad, toured Aleppo after it had been reduced to rubble (by the Assad regime), and interviewed Syrian civilians and the regime-approved “opposition,” who unanimously told her Assad was a better option for Syria than the “terrorists.” But Gabbard never talks about her other trip — to the Turkish-Syrian border with a group of lawmakers in June 2015, when she met…

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The world has turned its back on the carnage of Idlib

The world has turned its back on the carnage of Idlib

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Kareem Shaheen writes: Close to half a million people in Syria have been displaced from their homes in the past three months, refugees in the making, who would have sought safety with their neighbours across the border if the doors hadn’t been shut in their faces. Let that number sink in for a moment. Half a million rendered homeless, running for their lives. They fled rebel-held areas in the provinces of Idlib and Hama between April and July, trying to…

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