Category: Environment

How the Puppets Beg

Congress may have averted a government shutdown but it has done so at the expense of making evermore concessions to its super-rich puppet-masters whose strings are both patently obvious and increasingly invisible all the better for the puppets to beg,…

Seeking a Belated Agent Orange Cleanup

The U.S. war crime of spraying one-eighth of Vietnam with the defoliant Agent Orange continues to wreak havoc four decades later with severe health consequences for Vietnamese civilians, U.S. veterans and their families, prompting a new bill to address this tragedy, writes Marjorie…

A Moment of Hope on the Climate

Republican politics especially the party’s growing separation from science-based reality remain a major obstacle to a global consensus on climate change, but the Paris agreement shows that the world is capable of overcoming these “climate deniers,” as ex-CIA analyst Paul…

Suffering from Global Warming First

Indigenous people who live close to the land are seeing the effects of global warming sooner and more alarmingly than many urban dwellers and thus are demanding a strong voice in the Paris Climate Summit, as Native and Indian leader…

Who Wants to Weaponize Outer Space?

U.S. military hardliners are pushing for military dominance of outer space and U.S. diplomats are blocking international efforts to ban its weaponization but the Obama administration pretends that Russia and China are the problem, as Sam Husseini explains.

Humanity’s ‘Hail Mary’ on Global Warming

The growing crisis over global warming must be addressed seriously now or require risky “geoengineering” strategies as a last resort in the not-too-distant future, a dangerous “Hail Mary” pass for humanity’s survival, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar explains.

Near Boiling Point on Global Warming

Rising global temperatures if they exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels threaten to unleash havoc across the planet, including mass dislocations of desperate people that will make the current flood of Syrian refugees look like a tiny warm-up, writes Nat…

Secrecy of Obama’s TPP Trade Deal

The “free trade” advocates managed to jolt the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement back to life and declared success, but now must walk the giant TPP trade deal past the Congress and other legislatures. Michael Winship explains why he thinks the “monster” should…

GOP Vexed over Pope on Climate Change

In the pocket of the oil industry, key Republicans continue to sow doubts about the science on climate change, an attitude that may extend to their annoyance with Pope Francis if he raises the issue when he addresses Congress, as Michael Winship…

Blunting the Pope’s Environmentalism

Pope Francis has challenged market economics to address the human cost of profit-making, especially global warming’s threat to the future of the planet. But opponents of government regulation are set to spin whatever criticism the Pope delivers during his U.S. trip,…