A song from the forthcoming album "Rap Guide to Climate Chaos," exploring some of the dynamics that drive global warming and arguing for the urgent need to price carbon emissions.
Capitalism wedded to delusional American manifest destiny–including our fatuous decades-long effort to control of the Middle East and recent militarized pivot to Asia–meets its limits in Nature. Either we heed those limits immediately and aggressively, or we face an ecocide from which not even those who own lifeboats will escape.
Since NY has banned fracking, a lot of people are working to try and develop clean energy at the state, county, and local levels. These efforts together are known as “fractivism 2.0.” “They’re trying to prevent the country and the planet from digging their own graves by committing ourselves to another 50 or 100 years of burning fossil fuels.”
Warren: Senate GOP 'Paying the Price for Their Own Extremism.' Baba Brinkman | A Brief History of Rhyme. Voters for Trump. The Computer That Mastered Go. Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell | Till I Can Gain Control Again.
Rap artist Baba Brinkman demonstrates, with examples spanning Eminem and Jay-Z to Chaucer and Lord Byron, that rap is a modern, innovative, and playful form of poetry. Catch Brinkman's Rap Guide to Climate Chaos live in NYC or help crowdfund a Climate Chaos album.
Can disruptive social movements change the world or are we better served by take-it-slow, wait-a-year-or-more-to-speak-up, incremental change? Mark and Paul Engler make a case for the former, arguing in their new book, This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century, that supposed pragmatism often stands in the way of genuine progress. The grand slogan of Paris, 1968 -- "Be realistic, demand the impossible" -- is sage and sober advice.
Whereas, most U.S. science teachers include climate science in their courses, their insufficient grasp of the science may hinder effective teaching. Mirroring some actors in the societal debate over climate change, many teachers repeat scientifically unsupported claims in class.
In a not-so-distant future, Norway has elected a radical branch of the Green Party, and its charismatic new prime minister shuts down the country’s supply of oil and gas to continental Europe. Despite an impending climate crisis, the EU is none too pleased with this overnight weaning from petrol, and invites Russia to offer Norway “technical assistance” in restoring its fossil fuel production. Russian gunships descend on Norway’s oil platforms.
Last year was the second-warmest on record in the continental United States. December was a U.S. record-breaker for heat and also precipitation. 2015 will prove to be the hottest year on record globally. Give Earth a few million years and it'll do fine. If climate change does its worst, life, in some fashion, will undoubtedly survive and someday once again flourish, but the environment will cease to exist in any time span that is meaningful to us.
Candidates can get easy applause by lambasting journalists. Nevertheless, as a scholar concerned with the critical functions journalism fulfills in a democracy, the author argues that the highest imperative for journalists is to serve the needs of audiences and the democratic process for critical information. Journalists moderating presidential debates must function as journalists.
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