From the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday abruptly waived enforcement on a range of legally mandated public health and environmental protections, saying industries could have trouble complying with them during the coronavirus pandemic. (more…)
Rachel Maddow speaks at Harvard’s JFK Forum
Making a decision to protect their listeners from dangerous levels of baldfaced lies emanating from the White House, the NPR affiliate in Seattle, Washington has elected to stop airing Trump’s coronavirus briefings live. Perhaps they’ll take up Rachel Maddow’s suggestion, which I paraphrase, “Tape them and fact-check them. If he happens to say something truthful, you can always air whatever truth he told at that point.” (more…)
Today’s the birthday of Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor. After quite a few fatalistic posts here at 2GreenEnergy recently, I though I’d offer the quote for which he’s best remembered: (more…)
From today’s Daily Stoic:
There is an immutable, inescapable law of human existence that comes to us from the Stoics through Heraclitus (one of Marcus Aurelius’ favorites): Character is fate. (more…)
If these times were the plot line of a movie and not a global catastrophe, the entire audience would be on the edge of their seats, desperate to learn not only how it ends, but “who did it.” Take the implosion of the United States, where the most powerful country in Earth has become a bunch of greedy, cruel, racist, science-denying, criminal thugs. The decline of moral standards has been so precipitous that it’s hard to believe that it didn’t have a cause. (more…)
I used to help my daughter with her math, and so when the coronavirus hit the news, it gave me the opportunity to apply some of this stuff. I asked her, “What is the doubling time of the virus, given that the number of cases in the U.S. went from about 49,500 yesterday to about 60,600 today?” We worked it through as follows: (more…)
A reader, “Maria,” and I are having a conversation that may be of interest.
Maria: The US fatality rate for Covid-19 is less than 1% — it’s 0.7 – 0.8%. Precautions? Yes, by all means! Beyond that we have to get real about this, my friends. The best place to start is by shutting off the TVs, then sign this petition to lift State Executive Orders for “shelter-in” and “restaurant restrictions,” on the basis that they violate the First Amendment right to free assembly, and not excluding religious events violate our right to exercise our religions.
Craig: I need to think about this. We can ignore the direction that our scientists are begging us to take, and act according to ideas of some uninformed people who signed a petition. I’m just not sure that’s a strong idea. (more…)
Here’s an excellent piece on the rise and fall of coal around the world. Even in places like China, the relative costs of coal versus competitive energy resources has begun to take coal out of the picture. Two key metrics are in play. From the article: (more…)
I had to laugh when I came across the meme here. Of course Trump hasn’t said a kind or empathetic word; he doesn’t have those emotions anywhere in his personality.
But let’s not kid ourselves: that’s his appeal. If he had an iota of decency to him, he wouldn’t have even made it to reality television, let alone the White House. His racism, cruelty, vulgarity, bullying, contempt of the poor and sick, tearing up peace treaties, rape of the natural environment, sexual abuse of women, obstruction of justice, his fraudulent university, ripping off his charity, stiffing thousands of contractors, admiration of dictators–these are things that endear him to his base. (more…)
From The New York Times:
“Alarming levels of inaction.” That is what the World Health Organization said Wednesday about the global response to coronavirus. (more…)
