At COP 26, countries must get serious about detailing their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

At COP 26, countries must get serious about detailing their plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions

Tina Gerhardt writes: As the sun rose in Glasgow, over 20,000 people—delegates from individual nations, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and activists—gathered in Scotland for the start of the United Nations’ two-week climate conference. Known as the Conference of the Parties or COP 26, it runs from Monday, November 1 to Friday, November 12, 2021. The COP 26 will mainly focus on two things: (1) commitments on greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions reductions; and (2) funding and technology transfers from developed countries…

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This is where the first climate wars will break out

This is where the first climate wars will break out

The Daily Beast reports: Climate-related warfare is a near-term reality—not some far-off boogeyman—according to leading defense thinkers and military strategists. They are still talking about the importance of fighting climate change, but they’re also making plans to fight other human beings because of climate change. So, where will these climate-related battles take place? Some people argue they already have, with controversial academic reports claiming recent conflicts were directly spurred by the effects of climate change. Other military advisers and strategists…

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Almost a third of Republicans say violence may be needed to save U.S., poll shows

Almost a third of Republicans say violence may be needed to save U.S., poll shows

Yahoo News reports: Almost one-third of Republicans say they think violence may be necessary to solve the problems facing the United States, according to a new national survey by the nonprofit Public Religion Research Institute. The finding is part of PRRI’s 12th annual American Values Survey released Monday which, among other things, highlights the continued impact of the same falsehoods and conspiracy theories that fueled the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol nearly one year later. The survey…

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‘They’re probably going to put us back in power’: GOP basks in Democrats’ discord

‘They’re probably going to put us back in power’: GOP basks in Democrats’ discord

Politico reports: Most of the House GOP isn’t lifting a finger to help Democrats out of their infrastructure jam, and with good reason. Just ask Rep. Randy Weber. “They’re probably going to put us back into power,” the conservative Texas Republican said with a loud laugh. “There’s an old saying: ‘When your enemy is trying to commit suicide, never get between him and the gun.’” Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s conference is largely taking his advice to sit back and let…

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What will drive China to war?

What will drive China to war?

Michael Beckley and Hal Brands write: President Xi Jinping declared in July that those who get in the way of China’s ascent will have their “heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel.” The People’s Liberation Army Navy is churning out ships at a rate not seen since World War II, as Beijing issues threats against Taiwan and other neighbors. Top Pentagon officials have warned that China could start a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait or other geopolitical…

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America has lost the plot on Covid

America has lost the plot on Covid

Sarah Zhang writes: We know how this ends: The coronavirus becomes endemic, and we live with it forever. But what we don’t know—and what the U.S. seems to have no coherent plan for—is how we are supposed to get there. We’ve avoided the hard questions whose answers will determine what life looks like in the next weeks, months, and years: How do we manage the transition to endemicity? When are restrictions lifted? And what long-term measures do we keep, if…

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Everyday noises are making our brains noisier

Everyday noises are making our brains noisier

Nina Kraus writes: Take a walk on a busy avenue and you hear either traffic whizzing by or creeping in a honk-laden crawl. Add the hissing of pneumatic bus brakes, distant sirens, the boom-boom of overloud car stereos, the occasional car alarm, music coming from shops you pass, the beeping of a reversing delivery truck. All are part of the fabric of city life. These sounds do not meet or exceed the generally accepted threshold of “unsafe.” They are not…

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Imagination: It might be the core of what human brains evolved to do

Imagination: It might be the core of what human brains evolved to do

Philip Ball writes: ‘To me,’ wrote William Blake in 1799, ‘this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination.’ The imagination, he later added, ‘is not a state: it is the human existence itself.’ Blake, a painter as well as a poet, created images that acquire their power not only from a certain naive artistic technique, but because they are striving to transcend it – to convey a vision of the world beyond superficial appearances, which only imagination…

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Biden says Russia, China ‘didn’t show up’ on climate change commitments

Biden says Russia, China ‘didn’t show up’ on climate change commitments

Politico reports: U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday blamed Russia and China for any disappointment over the level of commitment by G20 leaders to fight climate change. “With regard to the disappointment, the disappointment relates to the fact that … not only Russia but China basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change,” Biden said at his news conference at the end of the two-day leaders’ summit in Rome. “And there’s a reason why…

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Democracy dies in silence

Democracy dies in silence

Adam Serwer writes: The state of Florida is silencing those opposing its efforts to disenfranchise its own citizens. A lawsuit filed by a coalition of civil-rights groups contends that Florida’s Republican-controlled government has repeatedly attempted to restrict the franchise, including curtailing third-party registration campaigns, cutting early voting, and imposing an onerous poll tax on formerly incarcerated Floridians after the state voted overwhelmingly to restore their rights. The more recent restrictions involve a series of “measures that prohibit or restrict access…

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CIA abuse was ‘closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history,’ says military jury

CIA abuse was ‘closer to torture performed by the most abusive regimes in modern history,’ says military jury

The New York Times reports: Seven senior U.S. military officers who sentenced a terrorist to 26 years in prison last week after hearing graphic descriptions of his torture by the C.I.A. wrote a letter calling his treatment “a stain on the moral fiber of America.” The rebuke of the U.S. government’s treatment of Majid Khan, a suburban Baltimore high school graduate turned Qaeda courier, was contained in a two-page handwritten letter urging the senior Pentagon official overseeing the war court…

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Why many police traffic stops turn deadly

Why many police traffic stops turn deadly

The New York Times reports: “Open the door now, you are going to get shot!” an officer in Rock Falls, Ill., shouted at Nathaniel Edwards after a car chase. “Hands out the window now or you will be shot!” yelled a patrolman in Bakersfield, Calif., as Marvin Urbina wrestled with inflated airbags after a pursuit ended in a crash. “I am going to shoot you — what part of that don’t you understand?” threatened an officer in Little Rock, Ark.,…

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How American racism inspired Hitler

How American racism inspired Hitler

In 2018, Alex Ross wrote: Scholars have long been aware that Hitler’s regime expressed admiration for American race law, but they have tended to see this as a public-relations strategy—an “everybody does it” justification for Nazi policies. Whitman, however, points out that if these comparisons had been intended solely for a foreign audience they would not have been buried in hefty tomes in Fraktur type. “Race Law in the United States,” a 1936 study by the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger,…

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Vaccine confers better protection than natural immunity, CDC finds

Vaccine confers better protection than natural immunity, CDC finds

Yahoo News reports: Earlier this month, the conservative radio host Dennis Prager announced he had contracted the coronavirus. This was, as far as he was concerned, good news. The unvaccinated Prager had hoped to protect himself against COVID-19 the old-fashioned way: by getting sick. “It is infinitely preferable to have natural immunity than vaccine immunity,” Prager said, echoing an anti-vaccine argument echoed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other pro-Trump figures who have turned coronavirus vaccination into a culture war…

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