Category: Big Picture

COP28 pledge to triple nuclear energy production: ‘Trumpism enters energy policy’

FRANCOIS DIAZ-MAURIN – Last week, a group of independent energy consultants and analysts released the much-anticipated 2023 edition of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2023 (WNISR). The report provides a detailed assessment of the status and trends of the international nuclear industry, covering more than 40 countries. Now in its 18th edition, the report is known for its fact-based approach providing details on operation, construction, and decommissioning of the world’s nuclear reactors.

Election Defenders’ Top 2024 Worry: Online Rumors, Deceptions, Lies Swaying Masses

STEVEN ROSENFELD – Rumors, misperceptions, mischaracterizations, deceptions, lies, and violence in politics are as old as America itself, as political historians like Heather Cox Richardson have noted. There is no simple or single solution, said Starbird. Nonetheless, she ended her Stanford address with a “call to action” urging everyone to redouble their efforts in 2024: “We’re not going to solve the problem with misinformation, disinformation, manipulation… with one new label, or a new educational initiative, or a new research program,” she told trust and safety researchers. “It’s going to have to be all of the above… It’s going to be all these different things coming at it from different directions.”

Predicting Pestilence in Gaza

KATHY KELLY – Calling the Israeli-Gaza War a war on children, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder warned that “inaction by those with influence is allowing the killing of children.” We, the citizens of the world, are those with influence as well as our elected officials. It is the citizens of the world who came out by the hundreds of thousands in recent weeks that caused the seven day truce to happen. Now we must urgently pay heed to another persecution of Gaza’s children and families, waged by one of war’s more silent partners: disease. 

The Brotherhood of Billionaires

LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – In recent decades, a growing similarity has developed between the Chinese and U.S. economic systems. Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s talk of “socialism,” the rapidly-expanding Chinese economy has become increasingly capitalist, with the private sector accounting for about two-thirds of China’s Gross Domestic Product in 2021. Not surprisingly, then, the two countries currently lead the rest of the world’s nations in their number of billionaires. This March, according to Forbes, the United States had 735 billionaires (worth a collective $4.5 trillion) and China had 562 (worth $2 trillion) out of a global total of 2,640.

Reactor Plans Smashed by Costs

WILL WADE – NuScale Power Corp., the first company with US approval for a small nuclear reactor design, is canceling plans to build a power plant for a Utah provider as costs surge. The move is a major setback to the burgeoning technology that has been heralded as the next era for atomic energy.

NATO’s Steadfast Noon Is Ready-made Doom

JOHN LAFORGE – Steadfast Noon is not just code language, or public relations. The event is a large-scale, psychological operation intended to teach us to pretend that nuclear attacks can do good. Of course if nuclear firestorms saved lives and ended war — as U.S. mythology goes with Hiroshima and Nagasaki — then the Pentagon would have used them in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. People love to be fooled. 

DOE’s error-ridden analysis on coal CCS project threatens climate and engagement goals

EMILY GRUBERT – Evaluating whether technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture provide more benefit than harm is a critical activity for the U.S. on our decarbonization journey. The risks are large, and serious. The analyses we need are nuanced and require careful attention: this cannot be a “check the box exercise.” Not taking this seriously risks potentially trillions of dollars and billions of tonnes of GHG emissions, not to mention the trust and goodwill of the American public, which is reasonably skeptical of these potentially critically important technologies. The Project Tundra EA is shocking, with scary implications for doing this right. We must do better, and we must demand better. 

Wildfires Aren’t Just a Threat to People-They’re Killing Off Earth’s Biodiversity

REYNARD LOKI – In September 2022, climate journalist and native Oregonian Emma Pattee wrote in the New York Times that “[c]limate scientists estimate that the frequency of large wildfires could increase by over 30 percent in the next 30 years and over 50 percent in the next 80 years, thanks in large part to drought and extreme heat caused by climate change.” That is a frightening prospect not just for humans but for the countless nonhuman animals with whom we share this planet.

Sending Cluster Bombs to Ukraine Is a Grave Mistake

PATRICK HILLER – The War Prevention Initiative condemns the decision by the United States government to send cluster bombs to Ukraine in the latest arms shipment package. Cluster bombs kill and maim civilians indiscriminately during and after war. They are also a major threat to the environment, contaminating land for decades after they are used. In short, cluster bombs do not win wars and will only hurt current and future generations of Ukrainians.

Decency Requires a Change in Immigration Policy

DEREK ROYDEN – In the years ahead, as climate change truly takes hold, wealthier nations are going to have to make even more difficult decisions about what to do about those fleeing unlivable situations. Unfortunately, as the story of the SS St. Louis and more contemporary reactions to migration show, we don’t have a very good track record in this regard. Can we repair our historical amnesia enough to not only avoid committing moral outrage, but once again strengthening our societies by welcoming immigrants and refugees?

Why News of Population Decline and Economic Slowdown Isn’t Necessarily a Bad Thing

RICHARD HEINBERG – Sure, the end of economic expansion and population growth is a challenging prospect. But it’s not nearly as daunting as the crisis we are setting up for ourselves if we continue to destroy nature through wasteful consumption and pollution. China’s slowdown is a welcome opportunity for global leaders and policymakers to get our priorities straight and set ourselves on a path of sustainable happiness and well-being.

Record Turnout in Georgia?? MY A**!

GREG PALAST – A one-million-vote nose-dive in turnout was well-concealed by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to cover up the effects of “Jim Crow 2.O” at the launch of his presidential campaign. From the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal, math-challenged reporters have repeated the completely upside-down fable of a “record turnout” in the Georgia Senate runoff.

Starved of New Talent: Young People are Steering Clear of Oil Jobs

KATE YODER – Doing business today is harder for oil companies. Big Oil is becoming stigmatized as awareness grows that its environmentally-friendly messaging, full of beautiful landscapes and far-off promises to erase (some) of its emissions, doesn’t match its actions. This poses a hiring challenge for oil companies, with much of their current workforce getting closer to retirement. For years now, consulting firms have been warning the industry that it faces a “talent” gap and surveying young people to figure out how they might be convinced to take the open positions. 

Do We Have the Moral Imagination to Preserve the DACA Program?

ANDREW MOSS – What John Lewis did by describing democracy as an act was to expand the discussion of democracy from issues concerning governmental institutions and political norms to questions of individual ethical choice. Democracy, he helped us understand, is choosing to see truthfully and humanely. It is choosing to act responsibly on the basis of that vision. And sometimes acting in this way will take great courage: to endure the blows of state troopers, as Lewis did in a 1965 march for voting rights; or, years later, to risk deportation and speak out as undocumented (or temporarily documented) individuals in order to claim full rights as human beings – and as fellow Americans.

The Future We Could Have Is Here Now

ROB HOPKINS – During my talks, I often invite people to time travel in their imagination to a 2030 that’s not utopia, or dystopia, but rather is the result of our having done everything we could possibly have done in those intervening years. We do it because, as Walidah Imarisha puts it, “we can’t build what we can’t imagine.”

Stick to your guns? No, stick to your songs

BRAD WOLF – The resolution to endless war just might be found in the eternal mystery of music, its ability to attract, to rebuild, to connect. It calls to something deeper than reason, since too often we can reason ourselves into or out of anything we wish. It offers the chance to regain our fundamental nature, a trading of swords for symphonies. Why not Bach? Why not his “Prelude”? And after Bach, on to Liszt. Once we quietly listen, we may come out the other side and remember who we truly are.

Some Public Relations and Ad Firms are Refusing Fossil Fuel Clients

SUZANNE BEARNE – In 2019, Ms Ventura’s feelings started to shift when she decided to certify her business as a so-called “B Corp” organization. This is a global certification scheme whereby firms aim to meet the best possible social and environmental standards. “As a B company, we know that in order to fulfill our corporate purpose we cannot turn a blind eye to these questions: Who am I selling to? What am I selling? Will I be proud of what I am selling in 10 years?,” says Ms Ventura.

‘Public Pressure Works’: Postal Service To Boost Electric Vehicle Purchases After Backlash

KENNY STANCIL – Pressure from progressive advocacy groups and lawmakers bore fruit on Wednesday, July 20, when the U.S. Postal Service announced that it would be making 40% of its new delivery vehicles electric, up from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s initial plan to electrify just 10% of the mail agency’s aging fleet.

We Are Witnesses to the Best and the Worst of Human Aspirations

WINSLOW MYERS – We can look upward and outward from the echo-chamber of despair, greed, fear, and cynicism that mark our era. We can dare to set new planetary goals—feeding all the hungry, finding homes and work for refugees, demonstrating the advantages of representational government, and deploying the technologies of wind, solar, and battery to move beyond fossil fuels. The scientists that pulled off the Webb have provided the most powerful possible example of setting a high goal and then learning how to work together to achieve it.