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"The virtuous man is driven by responsibility, the non-virtuous man is driven by profit."

-- Confucius

News and Opinion

Profit-Driven Systems Are Driving Us To Our Doom

I just read a disturbing paragraph in a New Yorker article about the Instant Pot, a popular electronic pressure cooker whose parent company recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy:

“So what doomed the Instant Pot? How could something that was so beloved sputter? Is the arc of kitchen goods long but bends toward obsolescence? Business schools may someday make a case study of one of Instant Pot’s vulnerabilities, namely, that it was simply too well made. Once you slapped down your ninety dollars for the Instant Pot Duo 7-in-1, you were set for life: it didn’t break, it didn’t wear out, and the company hasn’t introduced major innovations that make you want to level up. As a customer, you were one-and-done, which might make you a happy customer, but is hell on profit-and-growth performance metrics.”

Just think about that for a second. Under our current systems for profit generation, which is the primary driver of human behavior on this planet, making a quality product that lasts a long time instead of quickly going obsolete or turning into landfill will actually drive you into bankruptcy.

An article in The Atlantic about the bankruptcy filing similarly illustrated this point last month:

“From the point of view of the consumer, this makes the Instant Pot a dream product: It does what it says, and it doesn’t cost you much or any additional money after that first purchase. It doesn’t appear to have any planned obsolescence built into it, which would prompt you to replace it at a regular clip. But from the point of view of owners and investors trying to maximize value, that makes the Instant Pot a problem. A company can’t just tootle along in perpetuity, debuting new products according to the actual pace of its good ideas, and otherwise manufacturing and selling a few versions of a durable, beloved device and its accessories, updated every few years with new features. A company needs to grow.”

This just says such dysmal things about why our planet is facing the existential crises it’s now facing. Corporations will die if they don’t continually grow, and they can’t grow without things like inbuilt planned obsolescence or continued additional purchases, which in a sane society would just be regarded as shoddy craftsmanship. Our entire civilization is driven by the pursuit of profit, and to keep turning large profits your corporation needs to continually grow, and your corporation can’t continually grow unless you’re manufacturing a crappy product that needs to be continually replaced or supplemented, and you can’t manufacture those replacements and supplementations without harvesting them from the flesh of a dying world.

As writer Robert Moor recently observed on Twitter, “The fact that Instant Pot is already being framed as a corporate cautionary tale — the company that went bankrupt because they made a product so durable and versatile that its customers had little need to buy another one — instead of as a critique of capitalism is deeply, deeply depressing.”

The fact that Instant Pot is already being framed as a corporate cautionary tale—the company that went bankrupt bc they made a product so durable & versatile that its customers had little need to buy another one—instead of as a critique of capitalism is deeply, deeply depressing. pic.twitter.com/GXwyVFauii

— (@robertmoor_) July 12, 2023

It’s really heartbreaking to think about all the ways human potential is being starved and constricted by these ridiculous limitations we’ve placed on the way we operate as a collective. Resources being allocated based on how well they can turn a profit stymies technological innovation, because the most profitable model will always win out over less profitable ones that are more beneficial to people and our environment. Someone could invent a free energy machine that lasts forever and costs next to nothing, and even though it would save the world you can be certain it would never see the light of day under our current systems, because it couldn’t yield huge and continuous profits and it would destroy many current means of profit generation.

Science should be the most collaborative endeavor in the world; every scientist on earth should be collaborating and communicating. Instead, because of our competition-based models, it’s the exact opposite: scientific exploration is divided up into innovators competing against other innovators, corporations competing against other corporations, nations competing against other nations.

If we could see how much we are losing to these competition-based models, how much innovation is going unrealized, how much human thriving is being sacrificed, how we’re losing almost all of our brainpower potential to these models, we’d fall to our knees and scream with rage. If science had been a fully collaborative worldwide hive mind endeavor instead of divided and turned against itself for profit and military power, our civilization would be unimaginably more advanced than it is.

This is doubtless. We gave up paradise to make a few bastards rich.

Thinking that corporations are faceless and amoral seems like a mean thing to think about them, but it is actually great for their profits. It lets the people who work there put their morality aside and make decisions that no human would ever otherwise make.

— Hank Green (@hankgreen) July 11, 2023

Our competition-based, profit-motivated systems limit scientific innovation, and they also greatly limit the scope of solutions we can avail ourselves of. There’s a whole vast spectrum of potential solutions to the troubles we face as a species, and we’re limiting ourselves to a very small, very inferior fraction of it. By limiting solutions to ones that are profitable, we’re omitting any which involve using less, consuming less, leaving resources in the ground, and leaving nature the hell alone. We’re also shrinking the incentive to cure sicknesses and eliminate problems rather than offer expensive, ongoing treatments and services for them.

Or even a project as fundamental to our survival as getting all the pollution out of our oceans. The profit motive offers no solution to this problem because there’s no way to make a surplus of money from doing so, and in fact it would be very costly. So the pollution stays in our seas, year after year. People have come up with plenty of solutions for removing pollution from the sea, but they never get rolled out at the necessary scale because there’s no way to make it profitable. And people would come up with far more solutions if they knew those solutions could be implemented.

How many times have you had an awesome idea and gotten all excited about it, only to do the math and figure out that it’s unfeasible because wouldn’t be profitable? This is a very common experience, and it’s happening to ideas for potential solutions to our problems every day.

The profit motive system assumes the ecocidal premise of infinite growth on a finite world. Without that, the entire system collapses. So there are no solutions which involve not growing, manufacturing less, consuming less, not artificially driving up demand with advertising, etc.

It’s hard to appreciate the significance of this artificial limitation when you’re inside it and lived your whole life under its rules. It’s like if we were only allowed to make things out of wood; if our whole civilization banned the entire spectrum of non-woodcraft innovation. Sure such a civilization would get very good at making wooden things, and would probably have some woodcrafting innovations that our civilization doesn’t have. But it would also be greatly developmentally stunted. That’s how badly we’re handicapping ourselves with the profit motive model from the pursuit of viable solutions.

And some solutions would be really great right now. This planet just had its warmest week in recorded history, and Antarctic sea ice is now failing to form in what for the southern hemisphere is the dead of winter. Even if you still want to pretend global warming isn’t real, this planet’s biosphere is giving us plenty of other signs of looming collapse, including plummeting insect populations, a loss of two-thirds of Earth’s wildlife over the last 50 years, ecosystems dying off,forests disappearing, soil becoming rapidly less fertile, mass extinctions, and oceans gasping for oxygen and becoming lifeless deserts while continents of plastic form in their waters. So our need for immediate solutions to our environmental crisis is not seriously debatable.

But we’re not getting solutions, we’re getting a world ruled by corporations whose leaders are required to place growth above all other other concerns, even concerns about whether the future will contain an ecosystem which corporations can exist in or a human species for them to sell goods and services to. Corporations function as giant, world-eating sociopaths, because our current models let their leaders and lawyers wash their hands of all the consequences of the damage their monsters inflict in the name of growth and the duty to maximize shareholder profits.

People worry about the world getting destroyed by machines driven by a heartless artificial intelligence, but we might end up destroying it with a kind of artificial mind we invented long before microchips: the corporation. So much of humanity’s dysfunction can be explained by the fact that corporations (A) pretty much run the world and (B) are required to act like sociopaths by placing profit above all other concerns.

A $150 million fine for a company with over $3 trillion in assets is ultimately just a fee to do whatever they want. pic.twitter.com/2Tf8JWfmZc

— jordan (@JordanUhl) July 11, 2023

As long as human behavior remains driven by profit, ecocide will continue, because ecocide is profitable.

As long as human behavior remains driven by profit, wars will continue, because war is profitable.

As long as human behavior remains driven by profit, exploitation will continue, because exploitation is profitable.

As long as human behavior remains driven by profit, corruption will continue, because corruption is profitable.

There is no “good” model in which human behavior can remain driven by profit without these destructive behaviors continuing, because so many kinds of destructive behavior will always necessarily be profitable. No proponents of any iteration of capitalism have ever been able to provide any satisfactory answers to this.

The call then is to move from competition-based, profit-driven systems to systems which are based on collaboration toward the common good of all. We’re a long way off from that, but a long way can be cleared in a short time under the right conditions. Our species is at adapt-or-die time, and the adaptation that must be made is clear.

Rus Advances Accelerate, Ukr Dnieper Crossing, Putin Out of Grain Deal, Biden Calls Up Reservists

Cluster munitions from the US arrive in Ukraine

Cluster munitions provided by the United States have now arrived in Ukraine, the Pentagon confirmed on Thursday. The munitions – bombs that open in the air and release scores of smaller bomblets – are seen by the US as a way to get Kyiv critically needed ammunition to help bolster its offensive and push through Russian frontlines. US leaders debated the thorny issue for months, before President Joe Biden made the final decision last week.

US leaders have said the US will send a version of the munition that has a reduced “dud rate”, meaning fewer of the smaller bomblets fail to explode. These unexploded rounds, which often litter battlefields and populated civilian areas, cause unintended deaths. US officials said Washington will provide thousands of the rounds, but provided no specific numbers.

Lt Gen Douglas Sims, the director of operations for the joint staff, told reporters on Thursday that “cluster munitions have indeed been delivered to Ukraine at this point”. But it was not clear if Ukrainian troops had used them yet.

Republicans Tank Amendment to Ban US Sale of Cluster Munitions Worldwide

House Republicans on Thursday tanked a bipartisan amendment that aimed to ban the U.S. government from selling or transferring cluster munitions worldwide, instead opting to advance a GOP-led proposal that would only prevent the delivery of the widely prohibited weapons to Ukraine.

During a House Rules Committee meeting on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), all nine Republicans on the panel voted down a motion from Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) to allow a full floor vote on an amendment barring the U.S. from selling cluster munitions around the world—a proposal led by Reps. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

In its place, the rules panel advanced a far narrower proposal led by Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). A summary of the amendment states that "no cluster munitions or cluster munitions technology shall be sold or transferred to Ukraine."

Massie claimed during Thursday's hearing that the narrower amendment would have a better chance of passing. The House is set to debate that amendment and hundreds of others on Thursday.

US 3,000 reservists, mission creep or trip wire. Putin to ditch grain deal

Biden Order Activates 3,000 Reservists for Europe Deployments

President Biden on Thursday signed an executive order allowing the Pentagon to mobilize 3,000 reservists for deployments in Europe, where the US military has significantly increased its presence since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Since February 2022, the US has deployed over 20,000 additional troops to Europe, bringing US troop levels on the continent to over 100,000 for the first time since 2005. The US has beefed up its presence in Eastern Europe and currently has over 10,000 troops in Poland, which has become a hub for weapons bound for Ukraine.

The mobilization of 3,000 reservists signals the US military is strained by maintaining a large troops presence in Europe. A spokesman for US European Command (EUCOM) said the authority will “not change current force-posture levels,” suggesting the reservists might be used to rotate other troops out of Europe.

What Is the Point of NATO? Historian Grey Anderson on How U.S. Has Used Alliance to Strengthen Power

Biden attacks ‘ridiculous’ Republican senator for blocking military picks

The Alabama Republican senator Tommy Tuberville is jeopardising US national security by blocking military leadership confirmations in protest of Pentagon policy on abortion, Joe Biden and the US defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, said on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters in Finland, where he attended meetings after the Nato summit in Lithuania, Biden said he would talk to Tuberville if he thought there was any prospect he would change his “ridiculous” position.

“He’s jeopardising US security by what he’s doing,” the president said. “I expect the Republican party to stand up – stand up – and do something about it. It’s in their power to do that … they’ve got to stand up and be counted. That’s how it ends.”

The conservative-dominated US supreme court removed the federal right to abortion last year. Tuberville, a former football coach now a supporter of Donald Trump on the far right of the Republican party, mounted his obstruction effort earlier this year.

He is seeking the end of Department of Defense policy that provides paid time off and covers travel costs for servicewomen and dependents in need of abortion services. The effect of Tuberville’s block became strikingly evident this week, when the US Marine Corps found itself without a permanent commander for the first time in 164 years, since before the civil war. The Pentagon has said more than 650 leadership positions could be vacant by the end of the year.

Biden BRAGS About Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturer In Ariz As Workers Face HORRIBLE Work Conditions

Guatemala prosecutor suspends party of anti-corruption election candidate

Guatemala’s presidential election has been thrown into confusion after the country’s top prosecutor moved to suspend the party of a centre-left anti-corruption candidate who unexpectedly made it to the second round and officials from the attorney general’s office raided the headquarters of the electoral authority.

Observers had voiced fears that the Central American country’s political establishment might try to force Bernardo Arévalo from August’s runoff after he unexpectedly came second in last month’s vote.

On Wednesday night those fears appeared to be confirmed when the prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche – who has been accused of corruption by the US – announced that Arévalo’s Movimiento Semilla (Seed Movement) was having its legal status suspended as a result of an investigation into supposed irregularities in the collection of signatures allowing the party’s formation.

“There are indications that more than 5,000 citizens were illegally signed up to the Seed Movement by having their writing and signatures forged,” Curruchiche said. Hours later, on Thursday morning, officials from the attorney general’s office raided the offices of the supreme electoral court, causing further alarm over the future of the election.

The decision and Thursday’s raid caused outrage in Guatemala and overseas. Dozens of Arévalo supporters gathered outside the electoral court in Guatemala City to protest against what they called an attempted coup d’état.

US Inflation Cools To 3 Percent In June; Fed MAKES Ppl LOSE JOBS?!

Body camera footage confirms unarmed Orlando, Florida father was murdered by police while sitting in legally parked car

After over a week of protest from the family and their supporters, on July 12, the Orlando Police Department (OPD) in Orlando, Florida, publicly released the body camera footage from the July 3 police murder of 26-year-old Derek Diaz. The footage confirms that Diaz was unarmed, legally parked, and sitting in his car listening to music, when he was shot at least once by Orlando police officer Jose Velez. OPD confirmed that Velez has been with the department for three years and is currently on paid administrative leave pending the completion of an “investigation” by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Body camera footage shows multiple cops riding bicycles in a well-lit area of downtown Orlando at approximately 1:50 a.m. on July 3. For reasons unknown, one of the bicycle cops approached Diaz’s parked car from the passenger side and shone his flashlight inside, while another cop, Velez, approached from the drivers side. Velez immediately began issuing commands to Diaz, ordering him turn off his car, and his music, followed by demands to hand over what appears to be tin foil and a small plastic bag. Velez then ordered Diaz to put his hands on the steering wheel, which he did. Throughout the interaction, Diaz was constantly apologizing to Velez, saying, “My bad. I’m sorry.”

After ordering Diaz not to move, one of the cops opened the driver’s side door. As the cop opened the door, Diaz took his right hand off the steering wheel and opened the center console. Velez screams frantically, “Put your hands on the steering wheel! PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE STEERING WHEEL!!” and immediately pulled out his pistol and fired at least one shot at Diaz while backing away. Diaz was struck by the bullet and remained in an upright position in the front seat. The gun shot appears to have narrowly missed another cop and passed through Diaz’s back and chest. Diaz immediately began moaning in pain; “Did you shoot?” one cop asks, “I did” another replies.

Turning their attention back to the dying Diaz police issued more commands, “Hands! Show me your hands!” After waiting over 30 seconds, police began to move back towards the car to administer first aid to Diaz. After a minute police finally pulled Diaz from the vehicle and began CPR.

More than ten days after the shooting, police have yet to claim that any weapon was found on Diaz’s person or in his car. Seeking to justify their extrajudicial execution of the unarmed and apologetic Diaz, the police released an edited version of their body camera footage which zoomed in and slowed down on an object police allege Diaz threw from the car as he was being shot. They have claimed that this object was a “narcotic.” Lawyers for the Diaz family have confirmed that Diaz, a father to a five-year-old girl, had a medical marijuana prescription for anxiety.

Family of activist killed in alleged ‘spray of bullets’ by US police files lawsuit

The family of Michael Reinoehl, an anti-fascist activist killed by police in 2020 while wanted for fatally shooting an Oregon man during a pro-Trump rally, have filed a lawsuit alleging his civil rights were violated when officers “sprayed more than 40 bullets” outside the apartment complex where he died.

The federal lawsuit filed on behalf of his children alleges that police killed Reinoehl at the apartment complex in Lacey, Washington, without ever identifying themselves. His family is seeking compensation for pre-death pain and suffering experienced by Reinoehl and for his two children, who they say suffered “permanent and irreparable emotional injury” from their father’s death and the “highly publicized, sensational and political nature” of his killing.

“The actions of the officers, before, during, and after the shooting, show that they either had no plan to arrest the man without injury, made no effort to follow such a plan, or planned to use deadly force from the start,” the lawsuit states. The controversial circumstances around Reinoehl’s killing have long raised questions, particularly after witnesses and law enforcement officers offered conflicting accounts of what occurred and whether officers identified themselves.

A taskforce led by the US Marshals Service, which was involved in Reinoehl’s death, previously determined that he had been shot and killed after firing a round from a handgun. However, more than 20 witnesses interviewed by the New York Times said they did not hear officers identify themselves or give commands before they started shooting.

Donald Trump, who was president at the time, praised Reinoehl’s death, calling it “retribution”, and said the US marshals “didn’t want to arrest him”.

New Mississippi law discriminates against Black residents, says DoJ

A recent Mississippi law that allows the state to appoint judges and prosecutors in Hinds county, including the majority-Black capital of Jackson, constituted a “crude scheme that singles out and discriminates against Black residents”, the justice department said on Wednesday.

The agency announced its intent to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the NAACP against the state, arguing that the law, signed by the Republican governor, Tate Reeves, in April, took voting authority away from Black residents in Jackson and Hinds county, which are both Democrat-run and majority-Black.

“This thinly veiled state takeover is intended to strip power, voice and resources away from Hinds county’s predominantly-Black electorate, singling out the majority-Black Hinds county for adverse treatment imposed on no other voters in the state of Mississippi,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the justice department’s civil rights division, said in a statement.

The 32-page federal complaint argues that the state created a “two-tiered system of justice” by crafting a new court system in the part of Jackson called the Capitol Complex Improvement District and doubled the area’s size through incorporating Jackson’s predominantly white neighborhoods in a majority-Black city.

That means state capitol police and state appointed judges and prosecutors would oversee the city’s predominantly white areas and insulate “residents within its boundaries from judges accountable to the Black voters of Jackson and Hinds county”, the complaint notes.

Biden’s Sinister Plan To Trick Young People Into Voting For Him

Justice department says ‘no basis’ to delay Trump’s classified documents trial

Federal prosecutors asked the judge presiding over the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case on Thursday to reject Donald Trump’s request that any trial should not take place until after the 2024 presidential election and reset the trial date for December.

“There is no basis in law or fact for proceeding in such an indeterminate and open-ended fashion, and the defendants provide none,” the prosecutors wrote in an 11-page court filing that sharply attacked Trump’s arguments.

The dueling requests from Trump and the justice department present an early test for the US district court judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who is under heightened scrutiny for previously issuing favorable rulings to the former president during the criminal investigation.

The delay Trump is seeking would be hugely consequential. If the case is not adjudicated until after the 2024 presidential election and Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, is re-elected, he could try to pardon himself or direct the attorney general to have the matter dismissed.

Fresh congressional New York map could boost Democrats’ chances for 2024 House majority

A mid-level state appeals court on Thursday ordered new congressional lines be drawn for New York, a ruling that could benefit Democrats in the 2024 fight for control of the US House.

The appellate division of the state supreme court reversed a lower court order and directed a state redistricting commission to start work on new proposed state congressional lines. Democrats are supporting the lawsuit, which seeks to scrap the 2022 lines in New York under which Republicans flipped four congressional seats.

The ruling was welcomed by Democrats as the party tries to retake the House majority they lost in last year’s elections. Republicans quickly pledged to appeal the politically charged case to New York’s highest court.

“On to the court of appeals,” former Republican Representative John Faso said in a statement. “Democrats want to rig the congressional district lines in their favor. New York State now has more competitive congressional districts than any state in the nation.”

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of 10 New York voters who want the state’s Independent Redistricting Commission to submit new proposed state congressional lines for 2024. The commission’s first set of lines were rejected and a lawsuit led to the 2022 lines being drawn by a court-appointed expert.

CNN Says Cornel West Is SPOILER Like Jill Stein

Manchin Denies Presidential Ambitions Behind 'No Labels' New Hampshire Event

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin insisted Wednesday that his upcoming trip to New Hampshire to speak at an event hosted by a dark money group committed to fielding a third-party "centrist" presidential candidate has "nothing to do with" running for president 2024—although the right-wing West Virginia Democrat refused to rule it out.

No Labels—a billionaire-backed organization seeking to run a so-called "unity ticket" in 2024—announced Wednesday that Manchin and former Republican Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. are slated to deliver keynote speeches during the July 17 "Common Sense Town Hall" event at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, a key primary state.

Asked by CNN Wednesday if he's got any plans to run against President Joe Biden next year, Manchin—who has often worked to stymie his own party's more progressive policies and practices—said that "this is a strictly a conference we're having for common sense."

"This is nothing about a third party, this is nothing about bringing up any office at all, it's about a dialogue for common sense, which is very hard to have here," he explained. "We're going around the country basically talking to people who want this commonality and commonsense approach to how we fix problems."

However, the senator—who is up for reelection next year—added that "I've never ruled out anything or ruled in anything."

Study Shows Methane Leaks Put Climate Risk From Gas 'On Par With Coal'

The fossil fuel industry has long argued that fracked gas can serve as a "bridge" to a renewable-powered future, but a new study confirms that uncontrolled leaks make it as dangerous for the climate as coal.

So-called natural gas is derived from hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and composed mostly of methane—a planet-heating gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over its first 20 years in the atmosphere. A methane leakage rate of as little as 0.2% is enough to render gas equivalent to coal in driving global warming, according to a peer-reviewed manuscript accepted last week in Environmental Research Letters.

The paper is set is be published next week. According to its abstract:

Global gas systems that leak over 4.7% of their methane (when considering a 20-year timeframe) or 7.6% (when considering a 100-year timeframe) are on par with lifecycle coal emissions from methane-leaking coal mines.

The net climate impact from coal is also influenced by SO2 [sulfur dioxide] emissions, which react to form sulfate aerosols that mask warming. We run scenarios that combine varying methane leakage rates from coal and gas with low to high SO2 emissions based on coal sulfur content, flue gas scrubber efficiency, and sulfate aerosol global warming potentials.

The methane and SO2 co-emitted with CO2 alter the emissions parity between gas and coal. We estimate that a gas system leakage rate as low as 0.2% is on par with coal, assuming 1.5% sulfur coal that is scrubbed at a 90% efficiency with no coal mine methane when considering climate effects over a 20-year timeframe.

Recent aerial measurement surveys of oil and gas production in the United States show methane leakage rates ranging from "0.65% to 66.2%, with similar leakage rates detected worldwide," the abstract states. "These numerous super-emitting gas systems being detected globally underscore the need to accelerate methane emissions detection, accounting, and management practices."

Lead author Deborah Gordon, an environmental policy expert at Brown University and the Rocky Mountain Institute, toldThe New York Times on Thursday that if fossil gas leaks, even a little, "it's as bad as coal."

"It can't be considered a good bridge, or substitute," Gordon emphasized.

As the Times noted, the study "adds to a substantial body of research that has poked holes in the idea that natural gas is a suitable transitional fuel to a future powered entirely by renewables, like solar and wind."

Despite mounting evidence that expanding fossil fuel extraction and combustion is incompatible with averting the worst consequences of the climate emergency, the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year by congressional Democrats "includes credits that would apply to some forms of natural gas," the Times reported.

"When power companies generate electricity by burning natural gas instead of coal, they emit only about half the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide," the newspaper observed. "In the United States, the shift from coal to gas, driven by a boom in oil and gas fracking, has helped reduce carbon emissions from power plants by nearly 40% since 2005."

But that ignores the dangers posed by methane, the primary component of fossil gas. Emissions and atmospheric concentrations of methane continued to climb in 2022, thanks in large part to massive leaks from fossil fuel infrastructure. A study published in October found that pipelines transporting fracked gas in the Permian Basin oil field of the U.S. Southwest are leaking at least 14 times more methane than previously thought.

Another recent study found that more than 1,000 "super-emitter" incidents—human-caused methane leaks of at least one tonne per hour—were detected worldwide last year, mostly at oil and gas facilities, including in Louisiana and Pennsylvania. In addition, it identified 112 global "methane bombs," which are defined as fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release what amounts to 30 years of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution.

Methane is responsible for an estimated 30% of global temperature rise today, and scientists have made clear that policymakers must prioritize cutting this short-lived heat-trapping gas to avoid climate chaos. Even a temporary breach of the 1.5°C threshold—something experts warn has a 50% chance of happening by 2026—could trigger irreversible harm from multiple tipping points.

US Republicans oppose climate funding as millions suffer in extreme weather

Swaths of the US are baking under record-breaking heat, yet some lawmakers are still attempting to block any spending to fight the climate crisis, advocates say.

Nearly 90 million Americans are facing heat alerts this week, including in Las Vegas, Nevada, which may break its all-time hottest temperature record; Phoenix, Arizona, which will probably break its streak of consecutive days of temperatures over 110F; and parts of Florida, where a marine heatwave has pushed up water temperatures off the coast to levels normally found in hot tubs.

Stifling heat is also blanketing parts of Texas, which for weeks earlier this summer sweltered under a record-shattering heat dome which one analysis found was made five times more likely by the climate crisis. Despite this, the state’s Republican senator Ted Cruz is rallying his fellow GOP members of the Senate commerce committee to circulate a memo attacking climate measures in Biden’s proposed 2024 budget, Fox News reported on Wednesday.

The memo specifically calls on Republican members of the Senate appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee to reject spending provisions focused on climate resilience and environmental justice efforts for scientific agencies. In one example, the memo objects to a Nasa request to fund its Sustainable Flight National Partnership, which seeks to help zero out planet-warming pollution from aviation. ...

It should come as no surprise that Cruz, who has accepted massive donations from oil and gas companies, is defending the fossil fuel industry’s interests, said Allie Rosenbluth, US program co-manager at the environmental advocacy and research non-profit Oil Change International. “What is really devastating for communities who are experiencing extreme heat, wildfires, flooding and drought across the US is that because of these bought-out politicians, they are not getting the support that they need to be resilient in the face of climate impacts at the federal level,” she said.

El Niño brewing in Pacific raises prospect of record-breaking heat

Mild El Niño climatic conditions brewing in the Pacific Ocean will strengthen throughout the year, with an outside chance of a record-breaking event that will further turbocharge already sweltering temperatures around the globe, scientists have forecast.

Last month saw a “weak” El Niño form, a periodic climatic event where the circulation of the equatorial Pacific Ocean shifts and its temperature rises, causing knock-on heat around the world, according to an update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).

This Niño, which has replaced a three-year period of its reverse condition, La Niña, which typically cools the globe, will almost certainly strengthen throughout the year, with an 81% chance it will peak with a “moderate to strong intensity” between November and January, Noaa said.

There is a one-in-five chance that this event will be of “historic” strength, rivaling the major one experienced in 1997, Noaa said. Even if the record is not threatened, however, “El Niños tend to elevate global mean temperatures, so I would not expect this event to be an exception,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a Noaa meteorologist.

The developing event has been closely watched by scientists as it is compounding the excess heat spurred by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. Last week was, preliminary data suggests, the hottest week ever reliably recorded, following a June that was the hottest ever documented globally.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Patrick Lawrence: The ‘Disinformation Industry’ Lands in Court

US Complicit in Israeli Aggression in Jenin

Remilitarized Germany Playing Long Game in Ukraine

When it Comes to Ukranian Claims, Tell the Truth, Don’t Cheerlead

Grain Deal Shenanigans

US Navy Spy Plane Flies Over Taiwan Strait

In Kosovo, NATO allies blame depleted uranium for cancer cases

S. Korea, U.S. stage air drills, involving B-52H strategic bomber after N.K. ICBM launch

Police Abolition Principles

Fossil fuel workers are dying inhaling gases – despite US warnings to big oil

Floods, tornadoes, heat: more extreme weather predicted across US

Anchor, first and oldest US craft brewery, to shut down after 127 years

Video: The Dumbest Smear Job Of RFK jr. Yet!

RFK jr. Refuses To Attack Trump Or Trash “The Left”

A Little Night Music

John Hammond - Nadine

John Hammond - Come Into My Kitchen

John Hammond - Heartattack And Vine

John Hammond - So Many Roads, So Many Trains

John Hammond - Spoonful

Johnny Hammond/Duane Allman - Shake For Me

John Hammond - It's Mighty Crazy

John Hammond Jr - Wang Dang Doodle

John Hammond - Maybelline

Bonnie Raitt, Lowell George, John Hammond and Freebo 10/17/72 Ultrasonic Studios