Jessica Valenti at The Guardian writes—Violent anti-choice rhetoric must end, or anti-abortion violence never will:
Words matter. When we dehumanize people – when we call them demons, monsters, and murderers – we make it easier for others to do them harm. Let’s not pretend that we don’t know that.[...]
The culture of hate against Planned Parenthood – an organization that serves mostly low-income women and provides legal, safe medical services – is so extreme that some felt it entirely appropriate to express their glee over the shootings on Friday, claiming that the people hurt had it coming. And while the gunman was still in the building, Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois,went on CNN to criticize the organization, saying, “We saw those barbaric videos, and that was something many of us have a legitimate concern about.”
Even those defending the organization fell into the trap of stigmatizing abortion, tweeting corrections at media organizations that called the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs an “abortion clinic” or noting that abortions are a small part of the organization’s work. While it’s true that Planned Parenthood offers a variety of services, I think it’s safe to say the attacker wasn’t there because he was angry about pap smears.
We must demand that the violent radical language and lies about abortion stop.
At the Los Angeles Times, Bill McKibben cranks up the optimism in What the Paris conference on climate change can do for planet Earth:
Think back to Copenhagen in 2009 and the last of the great U.N. climate gatherings. There too the world watched expectantly, only to see negotiations break down. No firm targets, timetables or enforcement mechanisms for cutting carbon emissions were put into place. Copenhagen failed because no real pressure was put on the world's leaders to make a deal. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—and other national leaders—could come home empty-handed and pay almost no political price. It was easier to disappoint a nascent climate movement than it was to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.
In the six years since, the power equation has changed, and that's the real story of the Paris conference.
The shift was clear in New York last fall, when 300,000 to 400,000 people marched through the streets demanding action on global warming, the largest demonstration in this country in years. Two days later, Obama told the United Nations: "Our citizens keep marching. We cannot pretend we do not hear them. We have to answer the call."
And a few weeks after that, the United States and China announced a joint pledge to meet specific emissions goals, a first for China and an increased commitment from the U.S. That agreement from the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters has helped push other nations into the fold in Paris.
There have been other victories as well ...
Rebecca Leber at The New Republic is also optimistic even as she discusses likely shortcomings of the climate talks in The Paris Climate Change Talks Represent a Critical Moment for the World:
If we do not move swiftly to curb carbon emissions, global temperatures are on pace to rise more than 4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century—an outcome that would have severe environmental repercussions. In recent months, countries have put together national pledges for curbing emissions, formally called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), which lay out a course through 2030. The United Nations estimates that these pledges will add up to 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100—assuming live up to all of their promises over the next few decades—though other analyses have suggested that the total will be closer to 3.5 degrees. Either way, the U.N.’s Christiana Figueres, the chair of the Paris conference, has admitted that these proposals are still “by no means enough.”
Plenty of other necessary climate policies won’t make it into the final text. For example, there’s no mention of carbon pricing in the draft proposals, deflating hopes that the world would rally around a mechanism for reflecting the true cost of fossil fuels. And groups of nations are still jostling for something more ambitious than what’s been promised. A number of developing nations that stand to lose the most from a warming planet have come together in recent weeks to urge just that. They expect rich nations to pay up for causing climate change in the first place.
But here, at the start of the conference, let’s be optimistic.d
Tim Radford at Climate News Network writes that our Planet’s future hangs on Paris legacy:
And a new study warns that containing global warming to within a worldwide average of 2°C above the pre-industrial level is possible only if nations go beyond their promises and step up the momentum for change.
The calculations that confront the assembly of nations in Paris for the next two weeks are simple enough: if global economies exploit fossil fuels under a “business as usual” scenario and dump ever greater quantities of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, then by 2100 global average temperatures will have risen by 4°C or more, and sea levels by a metre − with unimaginable consequences for the world’s poorest people.
That already seems unlikely. European Union research shows that the targets set so far by the 155 nations that account for 90% of greenhouse gas emissions would restrict global warming to about 3°C above the average for most of human history.
But this is still considered dangerously high. In the last century, average global temperatures have risen, along with carbon dioxide levels, by 1°C already. Andeven 2°C is not considered a “safe” limit.
Paul Krugman at The New York Times writes Inequality and the City:
The days when dystopian images of urban decline were pervasive in popular culture — remember the movie “Escape from New York”? — are long past. The story for many of our iconic cities is, instead, one of gentrification, a process that’s obvious to the naked eye, and increasingly visible in the data.
Specifically, urban America reached an inflection point around 15 years ago: after decades of decline, central cities began getting richer, more educated, and, yes, whiter. Today our urban cores are providing ever more amenities, but largely to a very affluent minority.
But why is this happening? And is there any way to spread the benefits of our urban renaissance more widely?
Let’s start by admitting that one important factor has surely been the dramatic decline in crime rates. For those of us who remember the 1970s, New York in 2015 is so safe it’s surreal. And the truth is that nobody really knows why that happened.
Doyle McManus at the Los Angeles Times thinks we are too anxious about terrorist attacks and writes that After Paris, we must keep unreasonable fears in check:
The spike in fear is easy to measure. A CBS poll last week found that 69% of Americans think a terrorist attack is likely in the United States over the next few months, up from 44% in April.
Over time, that number is likely to recede if similar attacks don't occur soon, according to John Mueller of Ohio State University, who has studied public responses to terrorism. That's what happened after earlier attacks such as the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon and the 2005 bombings on the London Underground.
But the fear never quite goes away, Mueller adds. Ever since Al Qaeda's attacks Sept. 11, 2001, he told me, “We've internalized a long-term level of fear. Before the rise of [Islamic State], I expected a gradual erosion, but it didn't happen.”
Much of that fear is exaggerated, Mueller argues. Even counting the nearly 3,000 deaths from 9/11, your chances of being killed by terrorists in the United States over the last 20 years has been very, very small. You're more likely to be killed by lightning, or by falling off a ladder, or by drowning in a bathtub. It was far more dangerous to drive on Thanksgiving weekend than to spend the day among those crowds in New York City.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes Laquan McDonald and the ‘System’:
I spent Wednesday night following a gaggle of protesters through the streets of downtown Chicago. The air was unseasonably warm, but the sentiment in the air burned with a rage and revulsion.
Disturbing video had been released of the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. He had been shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke. Most of the shots were fired when McDonald was no longer standing. Some entered through his back. [...]
The only reason that these killings keep happening is because most of American society tacitly approves or willfully tolerates it. There is no other explanation. If America wanted this to end, it would end.
Bill Boyarsky at TruthDig looks at the failure of the media to follow what is going on in increasingly right-wing state legislatures. The results are not good, he writes in Creeping Restrictions on Abortion and Voting Are Going Unchecked:
Although it has gone virtually unnoticed because a declining number of journalists cover state government, big Republican gains in statehouses last year have resulted in a political revolution that has inflicted great damage on voting rights and access to abortion.
Millions of people will be affected by these changes in the law. One set subjects a woman’s body to the whims of the state. The other deprives people—generally the poor and the old—of their right to vote.
Taken together, they amount to a public policy revolution that began with Republican gains in state legislatures in 2010. Those gains were no accident. They occurred in districts drawn—or gerrymandered—by Republicans to assure victory in legislative and congressional elections. While the development has been noted in some media, it hasn’t generated the sensational coverage that even a minor national political event, such as a presidential candidate’s staff shake-up, gets on television, print or social media.
According to the Pew Research Center, the number of reporters covering state government across the nation declined by 35 percent between 2003 and 2014—a loss of 164 jobs. Television and radio attention is all but nonexistent, reflecting the bosses’ diminished interest in state coverage, once a prestigious journalistic mainstay.
David Moberg, a long-time labor reporter at In These Times, writes The Robots Are Coming. Whether They’ll Be Job Terminators or Job Transformers Is Up to Us:
Robots can be good—and bad. They fuel both fantasies and fears. Recently, they’ve sparked an abundance of both. Engineering breakthroughs in robotics, artificial intelligence and machine learning are coming faster than expected. In 2013, two Oxford University researchers, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, estimated that 47 percent of U.S. workers are at risk of replacement by robots or other computer-based technologies.
The rapid progress in robot development raises sobering questions: How many jobs—and which ones—will be lost or transformed? What policies should we pursue as we prepare for a robot-dependent world? And what will become of human work if robots do much of what people do now?
Much will depend on whether we humans leave robotization to the free market or whether we take deliberate steps to shape our future relationships with robots, work and each other.
Not as bad as you think
Robots can easily provoke human panic. To the anxious and precarious workers of today, a “lights out” factory raises the specter of a jobless future. Corporations, well aware of this, happily use the prospect of a robotic future as a threat—just as they use offshoring—to discipline their human workforce and hold down wages.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes Understanding what makes Trump’s supporters so angry:
On the one hand: Republicans have lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections and have, at best, a very narrow path to an Electoral College majority next year. The rising groups in the American electorate — Latinos, Asian Americans and young people — are hostile to the party, a problem itspresidential front-runner is making worse with his unapologetic xenophobia.
On the other: Democrats have their fewest seats in state legislatures since the 1920s, their fewest in the House since the late 1940s, and they control only 19 governorships. In the past two midterm contests, they have suffered wipeouts.
If reality is so contradictory, we shouldn’t be surprised that different groups choose to see it differently. We are divided evenly, 49 percent to 49 percent, on the question of whether “America’s best days are ahead of us or behind us,” according to the PRRI poll. Among liberal Democrats, 67 percent think our best days are yet to come; only 40 percent of conservative Republicans share this confidence.