2021-01-08: News Headlines

Editor (2021-01-08). The Climate Crisis Sets Another Grim Record. scheerpost.com NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / CC BY 2.0] By Andrea Germanos / Common Dreams Highlighting global campaigners' demands for urgent and bold climate action, the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service announced Friday that despite coronavirus-related lockdowns, 2020 tied with 2016 for being the warmest year on record and closed out the warmest decade on the books. "It is notable that… |

EARTHDAY (2021-01-08). Thursday 1/14: We Throw It All Away: Food Waste & Loss and Changing to Responsible Practices. indybay.org Online event via Zoom or direct livestream…

_____ (2021-01-07). How Activists Shut Down Key Pipeline Projects In New York. popularresistance.org If all had gone according to plan, the Constitution pipeline would be carrying fracked gas 124 miles from the shale gas fields of Pennsylvania through streams, wetlands, and backyards across the Southern Tier of New York until west of Albany. There it would join two existing pipelines, one that extends into New England and the other to the Ontario border as part of a vast network that moves fracked gas throughout the northeastern United States and Canada. | For a while, everything unfolded as expected. When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the project in 2014, the U.S. was in the midst of a frack…

Matthew Rozsa (2021-01-07). Why vaccines are being wasted in the United States. salon.com The US needs to vaccinate 9 million people a week to end the pandemic by July 1. We're very far from that goal…

Staff (2021-01-07). Chomsky and Pollin: A Global Green New Deal Is the Only Way to Avert Disaster. truthout.org Global warming is the biggest challenge facing humanity today. Yet, climate change has yet to become our number one priority even though, as the World Meteorological Organization warned back in March 2020, " In this context, a comprehensive Green New Deal is urgently needed…

EARTHDAY (2021-01-07). Thursday 1/7: We Throw It All Away: Food Waste & Loss and Changing to Responsible Practices. indybay.org Online event via Zoom or direct livestream…

Zach Conti (2021-01-07). White House Announces Puerto Rico Disaster Rebuilding Aid. indybay.org Washington DC — The White House announced a $3.7 billion disaster grant for Puerto Rico to rebuild reservoirs, dams and wastewater facilities.

Antonietta Gatti (2021-01-07). The Side Effects of Vaccines. 2017 Study in the International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination. globalresearch.ca This article was first published in January 2017 by the International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination | Abstract | Vaccines are being under investigation for the possible side effects they can cause. In order to supply new information, an electron-microscopy investigation method …

John Scales Avery (2021-01-07). Human Society And The Biosphere. zcomm.org According to a recent United Nations report, more than a million species of plants and animals are currently threatened with extinction because of human activities…

Noam Chomsky — Vijay Prashad (2021-01-06). Three Major Threats to Life on Earth That We Must Address in 2021. counterpunch.org A scientific paper published in 2018 came with a startling headline: "Most atolls will be uninhabitable by the mid-21st century because of sea-level rise exacerbating wave-driven flooding." The authors found that atolls from the Seychelles to the Marshall Islands are liable to vanish. A 2019 United Nations (UN) report estimated that 1 million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. Add to this the catastrophic wildfires and the severe bleaching of the coral reefs and it is clear that we no longer need to linger over clichés about one thing or another being a canary in the coal mine of climate cat…

Vijay Prashad (2021-01-06). You don't want to imagine an ocean without coral reefs—but you might have to. mronline.org The reefs will die. That seems certain. The UNEP report will not circulate. That seems equally certain. The Marshall Islands and Rwanda will file their updates. That has already happened. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies will sit on the sidelines, expanding fracking with a "who cares" attitude.

Binoy Kampmark (2021-01-06). Environmental Capitalism and Climate Change Wars: Australia in 2000. counterpunch.org The Australian was convinced. "Australia could have avoided two decades of climate change wars had the Howard government pushed ahead with its majority view of an emissions trading scheme (ETS), newly released documents reveal." Historian Chris Wallace is not as unequivocal in this assertion, but nonetheless observes in The Conversation that "a working consensus among

commondreams (2021-01-06). Biden's A.G. Pick Must Hold Polluters Accountable: Center for Climate Integrity Statement. commondreams.org ______________________________…

Mark Hertsgaard, Andrew McCormick (2021-01-06). With Climate Action Finally on the Table, Journalists Must Redouble Their Commitment to the Climate Story. commondreams.org A new year's resolution: climate journalism to match the crisis. | www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/cd_special_coverage/public/views-article/thumbs/americans.jpg

Montgomery Rice V. (2021-01-05). Diversity in Medical Schools—A Much-Needed New Beginning. jamanetwork.com This Viewpoint reviews the many factors contributing to underrepresentation of Black physicians in US medical training pipelines and the health care workforce, and urges actions to dismantle structural barriers to Black medical school enrollment and achieve racial parity in the profession.