What Are We Putting Into Our Atmosphere?
Hairspray, that’s what.
The amount of propellant that came out of the 15-or-so hairspray cans that went into prepping for this ridiculous picture probably widened the hole in the Earth’s ozone layer.
Greta Thunberg Has Her Detractors, But Why?
Apparently Greta Thunberg is a controversial figure, though it’s hard to understand why. She’s insisting that the people running the world, i.e., the generation ahead of her, take better care of the Earth. Somehow, that seems just fine to me.
It seems that Arvol Looking Horse agrees.
Designing Products That Don’t Generate Plastic Waste
The Story of Stuff makes a good point here.
In truth, both the manufacturers and the consumers play important roles in reducing plastic waste, and the consumer’s role is not limited to recycling. It also includes shopping with waste in mind.
Good examples are all around us. I like the current trend towards laundry detergent that comes in strips of material that dissolve in the wash, and concentrated broth that is sold jars.
Tagged with: Designing Products That Don't Generate Plastic Waste
ExxonMobil Rebel Shareholders Want To Confront Climate Change
An old friend, now a law professor at Georgetown, writes about this: Today is the showdown between ExxonMobil and rebel shareholders trying to convince the company to confront climate change and install four new independent directors. The vote will come at today’s ExxonMobil annual meeting. The country’s biggest pension funds have openly sided with rebel shareholders, and the votes of the major fund managers — BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street — hung in the balance. (more…)
Tagged with: Divestment movements, fossil fuel industry, growing viability of electric transportation and popularity among consumers, Litigation from shareholders and potential criminal charges re: hiding what they knew about climate change and thus the value of their assets, no path from burning hydrocarbons to decarbonization, plummeting costs of renewables, showdown between ExxonMobil and rebel shareholders, World governments (especially in the EU) banning the sale of new internal combustion engines
For Trump, It’s Justice Time
A surprise to no one, Trump is decrying the actions that the Justice Department is taking against him as an extension of the original witch hunt. He can be counted on to say precisely this whenever he’s attacked legally, at least as long as there are people who believe that.
At the risk of stating the obvious, the American people want absolutely nothing here but fairness. Speaking for myself, I don’t want excessive aggression or excessive leniency. In the case of the alleged fraud in re: the Trump Foundation, I want for the Trumps whatever would have happened to my family and me if we ran the “Shields Foundation” in the precise fashion that he ran his organization. (more…)
Tagged with: alleged fraud in re: the Trump Foundation, it's time to move on, Mueller and Comey, no one has ever loved this country more, no one has every been treated more unfairly, the corrupt FBI, the Deep State, the elites, the fake news, the radical left, the strongest economy in history, the strongest military, the swamp, the waste of taxpayers' money, this is soooo divisive, Trump Justice Department, Trump witch hunt
Memorial Day
A friend sent me this, “a powerful image of what Memorial Day is all about.” It is indeed powerful.
The United States is the most bellicose nation in the history of humankind. We’re a land whose core negotiating strategy is sending young troops to fight and die simply because a few old white men are angry with another country and have duped voters to support them. Yet maybe this basic ethos will someday be revealed for what it is: a gross moral failing. (more…)
No January 6th Commission, But How Important Is That To Ferreting Out the Truth?
Trump rioters occupy the West Front of the Capitol
At this point, it appears that Senate Republicans will be effective in blocking the creation of an independent commission to investigate what culminated in the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Perhaps even more important than the event itself is the planning by numerous right-wing extremist groups that went into it, which seems to have begun shortly after it became clear that Trump had lost the election.
However, the absence of a commission doesn’t mean we’ll never know. (more…)
Tagged with: January 6th Commission
Moral Justification for Selfishness?
What Galbraith said here was true until recently. The election of Trump started an epoch in which the modern conservative is so involved in hate, cruelty, deceit, science denial, and conspiracy theories that it no longer is in search of a moral justification for anything.
Please don’t tell me that the support of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the demotion of ultraconservative Liz Cheney (who voted with Trump in 92% of cases while he was in office) is anything other than a sickening blend of sycophancy and insanity.
My Religion Is Kindness: Dalai Lama
Think of the type of world we would have if the Dalai Lama’s words here informed the way we live our lives.
All the dogma, war, white supremacy, cruelty, superstition, and ignorance–all of it replaced by a single commodity.
Kindness.
What Does the U.S. President Control?
As illustrated in the brief discussion below, it’s always easy to pick something that’s going wrong in the world, and blame a politician you don’t like for it. I don’t fault Trump for being unable to keep Kim Jong-un from testing nuclear weapons or failing to end Israeli/Palestinian hostility, though he is certainly culpable as a liar and a criminal.
Reader: And that’s just 4 months! Imagine what this illegal, unelected administration can do in 4 years. In just 4 months President Trump (the real PRESIDENT) had made so many changes for the good. Anyone who defends this current dictator is out of their mind. (more…)
