Music: Joni Mitchell — ‘Help Me’
The dark side of solar power
Atalay Atasu, Serasu Duran, and Luk N. Van Wassenhove write: It’s sunny times for solar power. In the U.S., home installations of solar panels have fully rebounded from the Covid slump, with analysts predicting more than 19 gigawatts of total capacity installed, compared to 13 gigawatts at the close of 2019. Over the next 10 years, that number may quadruple, according to industry research data. And that’s not even taking into consideration the further impact of possible new regulations and…
Biden must stop methane pipelines to deliver on climate change and environmental justice
Crystal Cavalier and Michael E. Mann write: Four years of President Donald Trump have cost America dearly. We lost our global leadership on addressing climate change and saw the struggle for environmental justice thwarted here at home. President Joe Biden has defined both of these objectives as cornerstones of his legacy, but a huge interstate methane gas pipeline now being rammed through the Appalachian Mountains threatens to undermine the progress his administration has promised. The 42-inch diameter Mountain Valley Pipeline…
How Democrats are ‘unilaterally disarming’ in the redistricting wars
Politico reports: Oregon Democrats had finally secured total control of redistricting for the first time in decades. Then, just months before they were set to draw new maps, they gave it away. In a surprise that left Democrats from Salem to Washington baffled and angry, the state House speaker handed the GOP an effective veto over the districts in exchange for a pledge to stop stymieing her legislative agenda with delay tactics. The reaction from some of Oregon’s Democratic House…
The man who controls the Senate
Evan Osnos writes: On a frosty night in February, Joe Manchin III, the senior senator from West Virginia, invited a few colleagues over for dinner aboard the houseboat he docks on the Potomac. In the past, opponents have sought to highlight the vessel for political effect; a 2018 advertisement by the National Republican Senatorial Committee called it a “$700,000 D.C. luxury yacht.” (In response, Manchin’s office reported that he bought it, used, for two hundred and twenty thousand dollars.) The…
Progressives crank up filibuster pressure on Sinema with million-dollar ad buy in Arizona
NBC News reports: A progressive group is launching a seven-figure ad campaign aiming to pressure Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., to support abolition of the filibuster, as the Senate eyes a vote to advance major voting rights legislation. The group, Just Democracy, is spending $1.2 million for TV ads and another $200,000 on digital ads in Arizona from June 21 to June 30, said a spokesman for the group, adding the effort will feature two ads on cable news programs, local…
The authoritarian instincts of police unions
Adam Serwer writes: In May 2020, Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old with a smartphone camera, documented the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Most Americans who watched the video of Floyd begging for his life, as Officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck, saw a human being. Robert Kroll did not. The head of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis saw a “violent criminal” and viewed the protests that followed as a “terrorist movement.” In a letter to…
Since 9/11, military suicides dwarf the number of soldiers killed in combat
NBC News reports: Since 9/11, four times as many U.S. service members and veterans have died by suicide than have been killed in combat, according to a new report. The research, compiled by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, found an estimated 30,177 active duty personnel and veterans who have served in the military since 9/11 have died by suicide, compared with 7,057 killed in post 9/11 military operations. The figures include all service members, not just those…
Music: Bill Evans — ‘The Two Lonely People’
Climate models predicted heatwaves like America’s record-breaking weekend
Quartz reports: The U.S. hasn’t seen anything quite like this. Over the weekend, temperatures soared to new triple-digit heights across the American West. The immediate cause was a “heat dome,” a mass of high-pressure air trapping heat beneath it, one far stronger and larger than normal. But what we saw this weekend is what climate scientists have been predicting for decades. And it’s a taste of what’s to come. “It’s surreal to see your models become real life,” Katharine Hayhoe,…
Everyone wants to sell the last barrel of oil
Bill McKibben writes: A final victory last week over the Keystone XL pipeline is a reminder that fighting particular fossil-fuel projects is a necessary strategy if the climate is to be saved. The defeat of Keystone XL doesn’t mean that Canada’s vast tar-sands project, which is generally regarded as the largest industrial project in the world, is over, but the fight has been a gut punch to the fossil-fuel industry. In 2011, when protests began outside the White House, Canada’s…
A mysterious crater’s age may add clues to the dinosaur extinction
The New York Times reports: Some 65 million years ago, a rock from outer space slammed into Earth, wreaking havoc on life in its wake and leaving a large crater on our planet’s surface. No, it’s not the one you’re thinking of. Boltysh crater, a 15-mile-wide formation in central Ukraine, may not be as famous as the Chicxulub crater under the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, which is directly implicated in the death of the dinosaurs and many other species about…
The day the dinosaurs died
Douglas Preston writes: If, on a certain evening about sixty-six million years ago, you had stood somewhere in North America and looked up at the sky, you would have soon made out what appeared to be a star. If you watched for an hour or two, the star would have seemed to grow in brightness, although it barely moved. That’s because it was not a star but an asteroid, and it was headed directly for Earth at about forty-five thousand…
The world relies on one chip maker in Taiwan, leaving everyone vulnerable
The Wall Street Journal reports: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s chips are everywhere, though most consumers don’t know it. The company makes almost all of the world’s most sophisticated chips, and many of the simpler ones, too. They’re in billions of products with built-in electronics, including iPhones, personal computers and cars—all without any obvious sign they came from TSMC, which does the manufacturing for better-known companies that design them, like Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc. TSMC has emerged over the past…
Iran’s next president, Ebrahim Raisi, isn’t who you think he is
Sajjad Safaei writes: In late May, the 12-member Guardian Council—Iran’s election watchdog, many of whose members are associated with Raisi—barred prominent moderate and pro-reform figures from running in the race. Some still clung to the hope that Khamenei would eventually intervene, just as he had done in 2005, to reinstate some of the disqualified candidates. Khamenei eventually called on the Guardian Council to “make amends” for its “unjust” conduct, but without demanding any specific candidate to be reinstated; the Guardian…
Historic change: Arab political parties are now legitimate partners in Israel’s politics and government
Mansour Abbas, Israeli Arab politician and leader of the Ra’am Party, in a meeting at the Israeli president’s residence in Jerusalem on April 5, 2021. Abir Sultan/Pool/ AFP/Getty Images Morad Elsana, American University The next government is not going to be a typical one for the citizens of the state of Israel, and especially for members of the Palestinian Arab minority, who are 20% of Israel’s population. This is the first time the Zionist political parties forming the government are…