POLITICS AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS
Liberals Can't Address the Climate Crisis Because It Means Confronting Capitalism
In 2023, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the world already had too much coal, oil, and “natural gas” to halt global heating at 2° Celsius. The report also said that over 2° Celsius, the risk of global “food insecurity” becomes “very high,” and we face a high risk of “limited adaptation” to “heat-related morbidity and mortality.” (Food shortages and fatal heat waves are, of course, only two of the impacts of climate change, all of which interact with and compound each other.) Yet in the past three years the world’s banks, governments, and private fossil-energy companies have poured an estimated $2 trillion into expanding coal, oil, and “natural gas” supply. Global newspaper coverage of climate change, never great to begin with, has fallen by half. The voices of the statusquo will sneer that this is happening because “people don’t care about climate change,” but polling consistently shows that, even if climate is no longer the second-most salient issue in American politics (as it was in 2020), 66 percent of Americans are worried about the climate future. Swing voters reject Republican climate denial, moreover, and a supermajority supports the U.S. economy transitioning from fossil fuels to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.
GOVERNMENTSAMERICANS
HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
MILITARY AND DEFENSE
Right now, the U.S. Senate election in Michigan is anyone’s to win, with most polls giving Democratic nominee Dr. Abdul El-Sayed a slight lead over Republican Mike Rogers. El-Sayed has been the subject of relentless media criticism, ranging from his perfectly reasonable comments on the victims of the War on Terror to being forced to answer for seemingly everything Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has ever said. Rogers, on the other hand, has received markedly less scrutiny, despite a decades-long career in Washington. But there is plenty to criticize, from his well-documented ties to religious extremists, to a track record of using his political influence to promote war and surveillance at every opportunity. In fact, if you’re a lobbyist trying to sell bombs or spy software, Mike Rogers is your best friend.
WASHINGTONLIBYABARBARA LEE
HUMAN RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES
INTERNET CULTURE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Meme-ing Our Way Through the Era of Ultra-Violence
The first hours of September 11, 2001 brought the kind of crisp Manhattan morning that signals fall has finally arrived after a scorching summer. It was a bright blue morning with a chill in the air, and not a single cloud in the sky. News coverage would return again and again to just how blue and cloudless it had been. It was as though the weather being perfect added insult to injury when black smoke started billowing out across the eastern seaboard. “But the weather was so beautiful” was like saying, after someone dies, “But I just saw him last week!” It became a key detail in my memory of how horrible that day was. I was in Sarasota, Florida at the time, but my brother was in New York City, and we weren’t sure if he was safe. My parents worried we might be attacked, too, since President George W. Bush was in our city reading The Pet Goatto elementary school students. As the decades passed, I thought of 9/11 on cloudless, cool days. Eventually, this memory contorted into my favorite joke. When it’s a day without a cloud in the sky, I always call my brother and say “Man, it is just 9/11 beautiful outside today.” He laughs every time.
NEW YORK CITYFLORIDA