Portside

Half of the members of the US Senate don't believe humans cause climate change. This is a national embarrassment.

"The senators who voted in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline know they don't have the votes to override President Obama's veto, so ultimately this was a symbolic vote for them - a testament to their loyalty to dirty money over rational public policy," said Kyle Ash of Greenpeace.

Last year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board concluded, "We can manage our technology, or become victims of it. The choice is ours, and the [Doomsday] Clock is ticking." This year, the board moved the Doomsday Clock to three minutes to midnight and added, "The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon."

Cruz to oversee NASA, Rubio gets Oceans and Atmosphere.

Lean on Me. Hottest Year on Record. Movie: Spare Parts. Why We Need to End the War on Drugs. The Koch's Mysterious Swiss Bank.

“We’ve now got tangible figures of the quantities and locations of fossil fuels that should remain unused in trying to keep within the 2C temperature limit,” said Christophe McGlade, at University College London (UCL), and who led the new research published in the journal Nature.

Naomi Klein rightly blames capitalism for climate change. But she doesn't go far enough.

Reader Comments - Selma; Civil Rights Tour led by Julian Bond; Ferguson Grand Jury; Police, NYPD, PBA, de Blasio; Women telling their Story; Wealth and Inequality; Sports - A Radical Proposal; BDS, Israel, Palestine, Solidarity; Sony; The Interview; Privatization and Hucksterism; Climate Change, Marx and Nature; Healthcare; Superbugs; the Ukraine; Announcements - The American Labor Movement At A Crossroads; Elections in Greece: Can Syriza Break with Austerity?

We are skilled at assuming things cannot change and that we, the people, do not have the power to change them. Yet our country and our world have always been changing, are in the midst of great and terrible changes, and are occasionally changed through the power of the popular will and idealistic movements. The changing climate now demands that we summon up the energy to leave behind the Age of Fossil Fuel (and maybe some portion of the Age of Capitalism as well).