Scientists say halving climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is crucial to stop a rise in temperatures of more than 1.5 Celsius that would unleash more extreme weather and heat.

Yet last year, the world's energy-related CO2 emissions increased to a record high. Current commitments to fight climate change would barely cut global emissions at all by 2030.

Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said the next two years are "essential in saving our planet".
"We still have a chance to make greenhouse gas emissions tumble, with a new generation of national climate plans. But we need these stronger plans, now," he said.

Speaking at an event at the Chatham House think-tank in London, Stiell said the Group of 20 leading economic powers - together, responsible for 80% of global emissions - urgently needed to step up.

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-04-liberals-need-to-be-radicals/


The agenda for Biden’s next term must go deeper to restore the American dream.

Media commentators are mystified about why Joe Biden has not gotten more credit for an improved economy, with inflation down nearly to pre-pandemic levels and job creation setting records. The reason is
not hard to grasp. None of the recent improvements have altered the basic situation of most Americans, in which reliable careers are scarce, college requires the burden of debt, health coverage is more expensive and less reliable, and housing is unaffordable.

The American dream of a good job, decent health care, homeownership, college education without crippling debt, and a better life for the next generation was once within reach of most Americans. Now, it’s far harder to attain. Even with a two-income family, the cost of good child care is excessive.

The remedies are all necessarily radical. Biden’s State of the Union address was directionally and rhetorically right. He called for containing Big Pharma to reduce drug prices, raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations to finance broad benefits such as housing down-payment subsidies and affordable child care, as well as protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare. But in a second term, and in his campaign to earn a second term, Biden needs to go a lot deeper.

Since Jimmy Carter, mainstream Democrats in the White House and Congress have been complicit in the corporate erosion of the American dream. They agreed to mixed public-private approaches that resulted in systems that were inefficient, lucrative to for-profit players, and impenetrably frustrating to ordinary citizens. Consider four emblematic cases of policy dead ends that now require radical remedies.

“It’s dangerous because one billionaire decides how millions of people will have an opportunity to communicate with each other,” Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat and prominent progressive, told reporters on Capitol Hill Monday evening, hours after Musk agreed to buy the social media platform for $44 billion.

Regulation of technology giants is essential, Warren said, “because it’s about concentration of power. And concentration of power means less competition, and ultimately means just one or a handful of people are deciding who talks, who gets heard and who gets shut down.”

Members of both parties have long demanded greater supervision of the technology giants, and the Biden administration has been considering antitrust action. A bipartisan bill advanced by Senators Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, is intended to curb the dominance of Apple Inc., Amazon Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.

“There is some power that the administration could use, but Congress should act to strengthen it,” Warren said. “Tech is creating a whole new set of conflicts that Congress needs to attack directly.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-25/warren-calls-for-tougher-tech-regulation-after-musk-twitter-deal

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) on Thursday explained her reasoning behind voting against the House bill to ban Russian oil, saying that it “fails to address the underlying problem.”

Bush, one of 17 lawmakers who voted against the bill to ban Russian oil, said in a statement that she opposed the House bill because “it fails to address the underlying problem of imposing sanctions that are not accompanied with a clear diplomatic process for de-escalation, incentives for a ceasefire, and a condition of withdrawal of Russian military forces in Ukraine.”

The first-term Democrat from Missouri added that the push for a statutory ban is “being used to justify even more dangerous drilling at home and increased imports from other authoritarian governments like Saudi Arabia.”

She added that the approach to banning Russian oil “categorically makes our communities less safe” and “does nothing to jumpstart our transition to renewable energy.”