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Warning Against Attack on Syria, Carter Hopes Trump Realizes Nuclear War ‘Catastrophe for All Human Beings’
Warning Against Attack on Syria, Carter Hopes Trump Realizes Nuclear War ‘Catastrophe for All Human Beings’
Former president notes that even bombing campaign that doesn’t escalate into nuclear exchange poses serious dangers
Former President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter received the 2017 Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage. (Photo: Georgia Institute of Technology)
Former President Jimmy Carter has added his voice to those urging President Donald Trump to refrain from launching an illegal military attack on Syria, warning of the serious dangers—including nuclear conflagration—that could result.
“I pray that he would keep our country at peace and not exaggerate or exacerbate the challenges that come up with North Korea, in Russia, or in Syria,” Carter toldThe Associated Press about Trump’s recent threats.
“I hope he realizes very profoundly as I did, and as other presidents have done,” Carter continued, “that any nuclear exchange could involve catastrophe for all human beings.”
Carter pointed out that even a military attack that doesn’t escalate into a nuclear exchange “is a dangerous thing” that can unleash unpredictable consequences.
Anti-war activists are also pressuring Trump to proceed cautiously.
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“There is no proof yet of a Syrian government gas attack,” noted Veterans for Peace President Gerry Condon. “Even if the reports are true, a military response will only lead to more death and destruction, and dangerous escalations.”
Condon also pointed to nuclear concerns—considering Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“We are talking about a direct confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers,” Condon said. “Why would the U.S. risk nuclear war over dubious chemical weapons claims?”
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Climate Bellwether? With Cape Town Almost Out of Water, “Day Zero” Looms
Climate Bellwether? With Cape Town Almost Out of Water, “Day Zero” Looms
In less than three months, residents in South African city could be lining up for rationed water under armed guards. “Is this the new normal?”
Tree trunks stand in the critically low Theewaterskloof Dam in Villiersdorp, South Africa, Jan. 23, 2018. (Photo: Reuters)
For residents of Cape Town, “Day Zero” is getting closer.
That’s the day when taps in the drought-stricken coastal South African city are projected run dry, and its residents would be forced to head to police-guarded distribution sites to obtain their daily ration of water.
“Anyone who works in climate change knows that we’ve given lots of quite doomsday-esque scenarios in the last two decades. This is the first one which I’ve really seen come true.”
—climatologist Simon GearThe city warned last week that the day was “now likely to happen.” And on Monday, the city, citing a drop in dam levels, moved the projected day up from April 22 to April 12.
“We have reached a point of no return,” Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille said last week announcing tightened water restrictions for the city’s 4 million residents. Starting Feb. 1, residents face a 50 liter per day limit (13.2 gallons). [For comparison, Americans’ daily home use is 88 gallons of water, the EPA says.]
When Day Zero hits, the limit will be 25 liters per day, to be collected at one of 200 water collection points. Agence France-Presse reports: “With about 5,000 families for each water collection point, the police and army are ready to be deployed to prevent unrest in the lines.”
USA Today, however, reported that “Each collection point will accommodate around 20,000 people per day.”
Cape Town is being described as the first major city in the developed world that would run out of water.
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Climate Crisis and Managed Deindustrialization: Debating Alternatives to Ecological Collapse
Climate Crisis and Managed Deindustrialization: Debating Alternatives to Ecological Collapse
If we don’t change the conversation, if we don’t deal with the systemic problems of capitalism and come up with a viable alternative, our goose is cooked.
Demanding an end to coal and all forms of dirty energy extraction, over 4,000 activists descended on the Rhineland coalfields in Germany earlier this month in a mass demonstration just a day before COP23 climate talks began in Bonn. (Photo: Code Rood/Twitter)
On Monday November 13th, climate scientists from the Tyndal center for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia presented their carbon emissions research to the UN climate negotiators at Bonn Germany. The data were shocking: After three years in which human-caused emissions appeared to be leveling off, global CO2 emissions are now rising again to record levels in 2017. Global emissions are on course rise this year by 2%. China’s emissions are projected to rise by 3.5%. These may sound like small numbers but to climate scientists these are huge because if we’re to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Centigrade, those emissions need to be falling sharply, not just leveling off, let alone rising. Colorado State University climate scientist Scott Denning said “We’ve got to cut emissions by half in the next decade, and by half again in the next two decades, as well. The fact that it’s going up is like a red flag flashing light on the dashboard.”
“The problem is, we live in an economy built on perpetual growth but we on a finite planet with limited resources and sinks.”
The same day, the journal BioScience published a letter by more than 15,000 scientists from around the world that looks back at the human response to climate change and other environmental challenges in the 25 years since another large group of scientists published the 1992 “World Scientists Warning to Humanity.”
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Time Is Running Out for the Planet
Time Is Running Out for the Planet
Bill Moyers talks with Bill McKibben about his new novel Radio Free Vermont and the nonfiction ways to fight the system.
Environmental activists in kayaks protest the arrival of the Polar Pioneer, an oil drilling rig owned by Shell Oil, in Seattle. The rig is part of a fleet that will lead a controversial oil-exploration effort off Alaska’s North Slope. (Photo: Backbone Campaign/flickr/ CC 2.0)
BillMoyer.com editor’s note: I wasn’t one of the 50,766 participants who finished the New York City Marathon last weekend. Instead, I spent the average marathon finish time of 4:39:07 to read a book — obviously a small book. In the interest of disclosure, I didn’t even start the race, but that’s another and even shorter story than Radio Free Vermont, the book from which I did occasionally look up and out the window to check on the stream of marathoners passing our apartment, their faces worn and haggard. A shame, I thought, that I couldn’t go outside and hand each one a copy of the book that had kept me smiling throughout the day while also restoring my soul; I was sure the resilience would quickly have returned to weary feet and sore muscles now draped in aluminum foil for healing’s sake. I admire those athletes, but wouldn’t have traded their run for my read, because Radio Free Vermont is funny, very funny, all the more so considering the author is one of the more serious men on the planet — the planet he has spent his adult life trying to save. Bill McKibben’s calling has been a footrace of its own, not to report to Athenians the victory of Greek warriors over the Spartans, but to wake up Americans to the once creeping, now billowing threat of global warming. .
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On The Road To Extinction, Maybe It’s Not All About Us
On The Road To Extinction, Maybe It’s Not All About Us
The devastating consequences of human superiority over nature.
“We can’t prevent the suffering and dying of wild life, and the Earth herself, when confronted by the unleashed forces of fire and water, but we can include them in our assessment of the cost. We might even grieve for them. Their losses are indeed ours, and if we do not see them or their importance to our lives, if we continue to either ignore and/or dominate all other life on this planet, it won’t be long till we join them.” (Photo: Flickr/ChrisA1995/cc)
It is crystal clear—unlike the smoky skies where I live–to most of us who are willing to consider the facts: this summer’s ‘natural’ disasters have been seeded anthropogenically. Wildfires in the northwestern United States and Canada, in Greenland, and in Europe are often referred to in the media as ‘unprecedented’ in size and fury. Hurricanes and monsoons, with their attendant floods and destruction, are routinely described as having a multitude of ‘record-breaking’ attributes. No one reading this is likely to need convincing that humans –our sheer numbers as well as our habits—have contributed significantly to rising planetary temperatures and thus, the plethora of somehow unexpected and catastrophic events in the natural world. I’d like to include earthquakes, particularly those in Turkey (endless) and Mexico (massive), in this discussion, and while intuition tells me that there is a connection between them and climate change, research to support this supposition is just emerging, so for the nonce I will leave the earthquakes out of it.
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Wilder Fires and Rising Waters, Climate Impacts Coming to America’s Door
Wilder Fires and Rising Waters, Climate Impacts Coming to America’s Door
Pair of new studies show how American climate refugees will ‘reshape’ population landscape of the nation
The Chelan Butte fire encroaches on homes in coastal Washington state. (Photo: Ben Brooks/cc/flickr)
Americans in many cases have been slow to acknowledge the real threats posed by global warming. But two new studies out Monday found that people living throughout the United States could soon see their communities forever altered by higher seas and raging forest fires.
While the United States has lagged in taking dramatic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or transform its power grid to accommodate renewable energy sources, other nations have taken the lead. Further, studies have historically shown (pdf) that Americans are generally reluctant to perceive climate change as anything more than a moderate risk, seeing it as something that impacts people in more vulnerable, developing nations.
The idea of a person becoming a climate change refugee seems similarly foreign.
However, Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the University of Georgia, estimates that by the end of the century as many as 13.1 million Americans could too find themselves displaced due to rising sea levels. His research is published in the journal Nature Climate Change and suggests those migrants will be forced to move to inland cities, ultimately “reshaping” the population landscape.
The report notes that unmitigated sea-level rise (SLR)—primarily seen as “a coastal issue”—is “expected to reshape the U.S. population distribution, potentially stressing landlocked areas unprepared to accommodate this wave of coastal migrants.” For instance, if seas rise the expected 1.8 meters by 2100, Texas could see a surge of nearly 1.5 million additional residents. Specifically, inland cities including Austin and Houston, Texas; Orlando, Florida; and Atlanta, Georgia could each see more than 250,000 people migrating from the imperiled coasts.
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The Netherlands Just Banned Weapon Sales to Saudi Arabia over Human Rights Abuses
The landmark resolution, approved on Tuesday, asks the Dutch government to impose a full arms embargo on Saudi Arabia, including dual-use exports that could be used to violate human rights. The bill cites United Nations figures that Saudi-led troops have killed nearly 6,000 people in Yemen—half of them civilians.
The bill also noted the Saudi government’s ongoing executions of its own citizens, many of them political dissidents.
The parliamentary vote puts additional pressure on other EU governments, such as Britain and France—Saudi Arabia’s core suppliers of weapons, in addition to the U.S.—to enact a similar ban. According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), the UK has sold about $9.4 billion (£6.7 billion) in weapons to the Saudi government under Prime Minister David Cameron’s administration.
“Saudi Arabia has a terrible human rights record and governments like the UK must stop supporting it,” Andrew Smith, CAAT spokesperson, told TheIndependent on Wednesday. “The bombardment of Yemen has lasted almost a year now and the humanitarian situation is desperate.”
“The Dutch parliament has set an important precedent and it’s time for other arms dealing governments to do the same,” Smith said. “The decision can’t just be temporary though, it must be permanent.”
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Governor Knew About Flint Water Poisoning for Nearly a Year, Tried to Shift Blame
As far back as February 2015, the governor’s administration was informed of issues with Flint’s water
Only seven emails sent by Gov. Rick Snyder related to the city’s water system were included in Wednesday’s release. (Photo: AP)
Redacted emails released Wednesday by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder show that his administration was informed of problems with Flint’s water almost a year ago, many months before the embattled governor or his staff begrudgingly admitted to bearing any responsibility for poisoning a city—or for fixing the problem.
A background memo sent to the governor on February 1, 2015, “dismissed the pleas of Flint’s then-mayor Dayne Walling for state assistance, saying that the mayor had ‘seized on public panic … to ask the state for loan forgiveness and more money for infrastructure improvement’,” the Guardian reports from Detroit.
According to FOX2 Detroit, the email says the governor and Walling “had a telephone conversation and the mayor has pledged to work together on solutions.” Furthermore, it adds that Flint Representative Sheldon Neeley had “sent the governor a letter, saying that his constituents are on the verge of civil unrest” due to the water issue.
Also included in the backgrounder were statements from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, listing three factors affecting the appearance of water in Flint. CNNreports:
“It’s the Flint River,” it said first. “With hard water, you get a different flavor and feel. It’s why General Motors suspended use of Flint Water—it was rusting their parts.”
Second, “the system is old. Flint has more than 500 miles of water pipes. More than half of those pipe miles are more than 75 years old. Much of it is cast iron. Hard water can react with cast iron and exacerbates the rusty factor, which creates that brown water that angry residents were holding up in jugs for the media cameras last week.”
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‘About Time’: Jerry Brown Declares State of Emergency Over Porter Ranch
‘About Time’: Jerry Brown Declares State of Emergency Over Porter Ranch
Organizers say the leak has ‘been a wake-up call for this community…. We’re all on the front lines of climate change.’
Porter Ranch residents protest California Governor Jerry Brown’s months-long refusal to call a state of emergency over the gas leak that has been pumping out methane since October. Brown announced a state of emergency on Wednesday. (Photo: LA Daily News)
Following months of pressure from activists and residents, California Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday issued a state of emergency over the Porter Ranch gas leak that has been pouring tens of thousands of kilograms of methane into the air surrounding the community since October.
The order means “all necessary and viable actions” will be taken to stop the leak and ensure that the Southern California Gas Company (SoCal Gas), which owns the leaking natural gas injection well, is held accountable for the damage.
“It’s about time,” Alexandra Nagy, Southern California organizer at Food and Water Watch, told Common Dreams. “It’s incredible. Now residents can actually get the assistance that they need.”
Brown issued the state of emergency after making a quiet visit to the area earlier this week to tour the facility and meet with the Porter Ranch neighborhood council. Wednesday’s order also directs action to protect public health, according to a press release issued from the governor’s office.
“It is really going to…amplify the urgency of this issue and really expose how bad the problem is,” Nagy said.
The leak, which has been ongoing since October, gained limited media attention after environmental and public health advocate Erin Brockovich declared it “a catastrophe the scale of which has not been seen since the 2010 BP oil spill.” Residents living in proximity to the well, which is situated in Aliso Canyon, roughly 30 miles northwest of Los Angeles, reported having symptoms of methane exposure, including headaches, nausea, and in some cases, bleeding eyes and gums.
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Surprise! Corporate America Is Throwing Down for the TPP
Surprise! Corporate America Is Throwing Down for the TPP
Flurry of big business endorsements is likely aimed at building congressional momentum for mega-deal
Both the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership this week. (Photo: Lane Oatey/Getty Images)
American big business has now officially endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), giving many all the proof they need that the 12-nation deal—poised to be the largest ever—is bad news for people and the planet.
An association of Chief Executive Officers known as the Business Roundtable (BRT) announced its formal backing on Tuesday, indicating that it plans to use its muscle to press Congress to approve the deal this year. In fact, BRT president John Engler told The Hill that the association wants the TPP to pass as quickly as possible—before the summer.
That endorsement followed Monday’s announcement from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) that it is throwing its weight behind the pact. “Open markets encourage cooperation and prosperity among nations and governments, rather than conflict, and the NAM has a long and proud history of promoting free and fair trade,” saidNAM President and CEO Jay Timmons.
With these two endorsements now established, some predict that the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce will be next.
To be sure, multinational corporations have already been heavily influential in the TPP negotiations, which have been conducted in near complete secrecy.
But the endorsements this week appear to be calculated to add momentum to the deal in Congress. Because the U.S. Senate passed Fast Track authority this summer, lawmakers will not be able to debate or amend the deal. But both houses must ratify the TPP, which will likely be submitted by the White House in the early spring.
Civil society groups are still holding out hope that grassroots pressure can persuade legislators to vote down the TPP.
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Exxon Targets Journalists Who Exposed Massive Climate Cover Up
Exxon Targets Journalists Who Exposed Massive Climate Cover Up
‘We’ve often wondered if Exxon actually hates our children because they so consistently stand in the way of safeguarding their future,’ campaigner said, ‘it turns out they apparently hate good journalism as well.’
U.S. Senator and White House hopeful Bernie Sanders on Tuesday slammed Exxon on social media, writing: “It’s absurd that massive corporations can legally intimidate journalists who dare question them.” (Photo: Minale Tattersfield/cc/flickr)
ExxonMobil has launched a full-throttled “bully” campaign against the graduate students who recently unmasked its scandalous climate change cover-up threatening to pull funds from the university that helped bring to light its dangerous and “most consequential” lies.
In a letter (pdf) addressed to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and obtained by Politico, the oil giant’s vice president of Public and Government Affairs accuses a team of investigative journalism students of violating the school’s research policy by “suppressing” or “manipulating” information to produce “deliberately misleading reports” about ExxonMobil’s climate change research.
“The reports, produced by a team headed by Susanne Rust, an instructor at the Columbia Journalism School, cherry-picked—and distorted—statements attributed to various company employees to wrongly suggest definitive conclusions about the risk of climate change were reached decades ago by company researchers,” wrote Exxon’s Kenneth Cohen in the letter, dated November 20.
The lengthy letter then proceeds to dissect the allegedly “false narrative” that “ExxonMobil ‘knew’ the risks of climate change in the 1980s, chose to ignore or suppress that knowledge, stopped or curtailed ongoing climate research and shifted to a policy of funding climate change denial.”
Those findings—which were published early October in the Los Angeles Times, mirroring a separate but similar investigation by Inside Climate News—have set off a storm of outrage over what “Exxon knew.” The New York Attorney General has even launched a formal inquiry as a result of the allegations.
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50 Ways to Leave the Euro: Greece and the Global Crisis
50 Ways to Leave the Euro: Greece and the Global Crisis
A sticker reads “No” on the palm of a protester during a demonstration calling for a ‘No’ vote in the upcoming referendum in Athens on Jul 3, 2015. (Photo: AFP/Aris Messinis)
The problem is all inside your head, I told the Greeks
The answer is easy, you need only stop the leaks
The power is yours to claim the freedom that you seek
There must be fifty ways to leave the Euro
(Apologies to Simon and Garfunkel)
Following the resounding “NO” vote by the Greek people on the bailout conditions in the July referendum, the negotiations between the Greek government and “the institutions” resumed with the expectation that a better deal for Greece would ensue. The outcome was quite the contrary. Greek negotiators ended up agreeing to a bailout deal that was far more onerous than the one the voters had rejected. Why?
The harsh reality is that the Greek government is insolvent. Having been lured into the debt-trap and the shared euro currency by western oligarchs using a combination of measures, including outright fraud, Greece was forced to accept the onerous conditions attached to the first two bailouts. Now it has been bludgeoned into accepting a third. The weapon of choice is the euro currency itself which is being wielded by the European Central Bank (ECB). By throttling the flow of euro currency into the country, the ECB last summer created near chaos in the Greek economy. This, and the threat of even more severe punishment in the future, was enough to bring the Greek government to heel.
With sovereign debt up around 180% of GDP, there is no way that the Greek government will ever be able to grow its way out of the current mess. The draconian measures demanded by the creditor institutions will just make it worse. Even the IMF has acknowledged (with apparent reluctance) that some debt relief is necessary for the Greek economy to recover.
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Deal defies global call for arms embargo over mounting evidence of the Saudi dictatorship’s war crimes in Yemen.
Deal defies global call for arms embargo over mounting evidence of the Saudi dictatorship’s war crimes in Yemen.
Defying the international call for an arms embargo over war crimes concerns, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced Tuesday it has approved an $11.25 billion deal to sell combat ships to Saudi Arabia, which has been waging a military assault against Yemen for more than six months.
“The selling of arms in the middle of a war will obviously send the message that the Saudis can do whatever they want and get away with it,” Farea Al-Muslimi, Beirut-based Yemeni writer and visiting scholar with Carnegie Middle East Center, told Common Dreams.
The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is part of the DoD, announced Tuesday that is has rubber-stamped the export of four “Multi-Mission Surface Combatant (MMSC) Ships and associated equipment, parts and logistical support for an estimated cost of $11.25 billion” to Saudi Arabia.
“This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security goals of the United States by helping to improve the security of a strategic regional partner, which has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East,” the U.S. agency stated.
The ships will replace older naval models, also built in the United States. While the transfer is being reportedas a U.S. effort to bolster Saudi Arabia’s defenses in the wake of the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran, the arms sales are part of an ongoing trend. The IHS Jane’s 360 report, released in March, foundthat Saudi Arabia was the “number one” defense trading partner with the United States in 2014.
U.S. Congress now has 30 days to block sale of the ships before the deal goes into effect. While both Lockheed and Austal Ltd. manufacture such vessels, the deal applies to the “Freedom” versions produced by Lockheed.
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The Downsides of Cheap Abundance
Having “a lot” is not necessarily a good thing. (Photo: Public domain)
In college, Economics 101 is often described as the social science discipline that deals with the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. MIT Economist Paul Samuelson liked to focus on scarcity, or more specifically, the allocation of scarce resources. “Abundance” was always a pretty word with an idyllic connotation for Professor Samuelson. I often wonder why there weren’t a few classes about the real-life consequences of abundance, along with scarcity and people’s material welfare.
The present generation of internet technology is a proper subject of study within an economic framework. It might help us understand what is happening to our society.
Let’s start with today’s highly-touted information age. At our finger-tips is the greatest free trove of information in human history. We can get it quickly and efficiently. Are we more informed? Are we hungry for more information? Do we read more books in an era of record production of books? Do we know more about what our congressional and state legislators are about? Are we more knowledgeable about history and its lessons?
My sense is that the present generation of students knows about popular art and music, and has a nascent awareness of current events. But an unfortunate consequence of the abundance of information available to them is that too many students have left themselves less informed than their predecessors about serious information regarding our overall society and the world. This includes geography, politics, economics, literature, history, the side effects of technology, the interactions between consumers, workers, taxpayers and corporations, the doings of City Hall, or even how to cultivate gardens. Alas, the virtual reality of the culture of addictive distractions and stupefying daily routines still reign.
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Because the ‘Time for Climate Action Is Now,’ Oslo Makes Landmark Move to Ban Cars
Because the ‘Time for Climate Action Is Now,’ Oslo Makes Landmark Move to Ban Cars
‘The reduction in pollution will make the city even better to live in, and ensure that we take our global responsibility’
Pedestrians walk down a street in Oslo. (Photo: Caleb Khor/flickr/cc)
As part of a plan to rein in carbon emissions, Oslo’s new city council announced this week that the city’s center would be car-free by 2019.
Ars Technica reports that the move, which aims to help the city halve greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 levels, “will make Oslo the first European capital where cars are permanently banned, plus it’s a strong indicator that similar bans may be enacted in other major cities across the continent.”
To make the shift, the Norwegian capital will boost its investment into public transportation and add roughly 37 miles (60 kilometers) of bike lanes, Reuters reports
“The time for climate action is now, and the new city government will address climate change both locally and globally,” the International Business Times quotes Lan Marie Nguyen Berg, of the Green Party in Oslo, as saying. “The reduction in pollution will make the city even better to live in, and ensure that we take our global responsibility.”
The new coalition running the city, made up of the Labor Party, the Socialist Left, and the Greens, additionally said that it would divest its pension fund from fossil fuels.
“Divestment,” Nguyen Berg added, “sends a strong message to the world prior to the Climate Change Conference in Paris that we need a strong agreement that will ensure that we avoid dangerous global warming.”
