Biden denounces Russian invasion, casting it as part of a decades-long attempt to crush democracies

Biden denounces Russian invasion, casting it as part of a decades-long attempt to crush democracies

The New York Times reports: President Biden delivered a forceful denunciation of Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on Saturday, declaring “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power” and casting the military clash in Europe as the “test of all time” in a decades-long battle to defend democracy. In a speech from a castle that served for centuries as a home for Polish monarchs, Mr. Biden described the face-off with Mr. Putin as a moment he has long…

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Dirty bomb ingredients go missing from Chernobyl monitoring lab

Dirty bomb ingredients go missing from Chernobyl monitoring lab

Science reports: When the lights went out at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 9 March, the Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian workers at gunpoint became the least of Anatolii Nosovskyi’s worries. More urgent was the possibility of a radiation accident at the decommissioned plant. If the plant’s emergency generators ran out of fuel, the ventilators that keep explosive hydrogen gas from building up inside a spent nuclear fuel repository would quit working, says Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems…

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Dubai welcomes Russia’s dirty money

Dubai welcomes Russia’s dirty money

The Observer reports: On the tarmac of Dubai airport, half way along its main runway, a small terminal has been doing brisk business this month. Daily flights have disgorged dozens of Russians – many among the wealthiest figures in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. A short VIP welcome and limousine ride later, and the oligarchs are into a world that cares little about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine or the attempts to punish Putin, and has instead willingly embraced his enablers. Perhaps…

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We have the technology necessary to rapidly ditch fossil fuels

We have the technology necessary to rapidly ditch fossil fuels

Bill McKibben writes: On the last day of February, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most dire report yet. The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, had, he said, “seen many scientific reports in my time, but nothing like this.” Setting aside diplomatic language, he described the document as “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” and added that “the world’s biggest polluters are guilty of arson of our only home.”…

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Climate action has been ‘a calamity’, says Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

Climate action has been ‘a calamity’, says Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

The Guardian reports: For nine years, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat representing Rhode Island since 2007, made weekly speeches called “Time To Wake Up” urging the Senate to take action on the climate emergency. He ended the weekly ritual once Joe Biden became president and Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. But now, with hopes of new climate legislation in shambles, Whitehouse is back at it again. “I revived the speech series because I lost confidence in the…

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Biden’s most effective climate warrior faces potential doom in the Senate

Biden’s most effective climate warrior faces potential doom in the Senate

Politico reports: President Joe Biden’s efforts to deliver on his ambitious climate agenda are getting a big boost from the leader of one often overlooked agency who has used his position to home in on the energy industry’s greenhouse gas impact. Now that official, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Richard Glick, may see his efforts to put climate change at the forefront of federal energy policy cost him his job. Glick, who was appointed to FERC in 2017 and elevated…

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What a single metric tells us about the pandemic

What a single metric tells us about the pandemic

David Wallace-Wells writes: Live long enough in a pandemic and you will see the entire narrative landscape shift, even flip, sometimes more than once. As recently as a month ago, Americans of a certain cast of mind could have still looked to China — and indeed all of East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania — with some plausible pandemic envy. Those early lockdowns in Wuhan were brutal, yes; some of the surveillance testing, contact tracing, and quarantine measures imposed in…

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Russia signals scaled-back war aims as Ukrainians advance near Kyiv

Russia signals scaled-back war aims as Ukrainians advance near Kyiv

Reuters reports: Moscow signalled on Friday it was scaling back its ambitions in Ukraine to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists as Ukrainian forces went on the offensive to recapture towns on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv. In the first big sign that Western sanctions on Moscow were impacting investment from China, sources said state-run Sinopec Group, Asia’s biggest oil refiner, halted talks on a petrochemical investment and a venture to market Russian gas. In the month since…

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Ukraine says Moscow is forcibly taking civilians to Russia

Ukraine says Moscow is forcibly taking civilians to Russia

The Associated Press reports: Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said the roughly 400,000 people evacuated to Russia since the start of the military action were from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting for control for nearly eight years. Russian authorities said they are providing accommodations and dispensing payments to the evacuees. But Donetsk Region Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that “people are being forcibly moved into the territory of the aggressor state.” Denisova…

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U.S. to boost natural gas deliveries to Europe amid scramble for new supplies

U.S. to boost natural gas deliveries to Europe amid scramble for new supplies

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. is ramping up shipments of liquefied natural gas to Europe this year as the continent mounts a worldwide hunt for new supplies to phase out its reliance on Russian energy after the invasion of Ukraine. The globe-spanning effort to wean Europe off Russian energy supplies was at the center of President Biden’s summit with European Union leaders this week in Brussels. The U.S. aims to ship 50 billion cubic meters of LNG to…

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Germany’s new government had big plans on climate, then Russia invaded Ukraine. What happens now?

Germany’s new government had big plans on climate, then Russia invaded Ukraine. What happens now?

Inside Climate News reports: Vladmir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made Germany’s reliance on Russian oil and gas untenable, and led the center-left government of Chancellor Olav Scholz to accelerate the transition to clean energy. This is more than just talk. German leaders are in the early stages of showing the world what an aggressive climate policy looks like in a crisis. Scholz and his cabinet will introduce legislation to require nearly 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035, which would…

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Ice shelf collapses in East Antarctica, an area previously viewed as stable

Ice shelf collapses in East Antarctica, an area previously viewed as stable

The Associated Press reports: An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday. The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer…

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Legal scholars say Justice Thomas must recuse himself from any case related to the 2020 election

Legal scholars say Justice Thomas must recuse himself from any case related to the 2020 election

Jane Mayer reports: Several of the country’s most respected legal scholars say that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas must immediately recuse himself from any cases relating to the 2020 election and its aftermath, now that it has been revealed that his wife, Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, colluded extensively with a top White House adviser about overturning Joe Biden’s defeat of then President Donald Trump. On March 24th, the Washington Post and CBS News revealed that they had obtained copies of twenty-nine…

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Scepticism is a way of life that allows democracy to flourish

Scepticism is a way of life that allows democracy to flourish

Nicholas Tampio writes: Think about a time when you changed your mind. Maybe you heard about a crime, and rushed to judgment about the guilt or innocence of the accused. Perhaps you wanted your country to go to war, and realise now that maybe that was a bad idea. Or possibly you grew up in a religious or partisan household, and switched allegiances when you got older. Part of maturing is developing intellectual humility. You’ve been wrong before; you could…

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