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China said it was done with these coal plants. Satellite imagery shows otherwise.

by KristianWYO Posted on September 25, 2018

Newly released satellite photos appear to show continuing construction of coal plants that China said it was cancelling last year, according to CoalSwarm.

“This new evidence that China’s central government hasn’t been able to stop the runaway coal-fired power plant building is alarming,” said Ted Nace, head of CoalSwarm, the nonprofit research network which analyzed and released the satellite images. “The planet can’t tolerate another U.S.-sized block of plants to be built.”

Experts said the images provide credible evidence that China is still building more coal-fired plants than its government claims. Take a look at these shots, the first from January 2017 and the second from this February.

Before…Planet Labs / CoalSwarm…and afterPlanet Labs / CoalSwarm

China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined. The dirty fossil fuel has powered the country’s rapid economic expansion over recent decades, the main reason China is the world’s largest polluter ahead of the United States. This is a problem China wants to fix — and it’s retiring the worst sources of pollution while bringing great gobs of cleaner power online. The country has pledged to begin reducing its rising greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2030. It can’t do that while also burning a lot more coal.

In January 2017, China announced that it was canceling more than 100 coal plants across 13 provinces. At the time, a researcher familiar with Chinese politics said that regional officials might try to skirt the central government’s order.

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“Some projects might have been ongoing for 10 years, and now there’s an order to stop them,” Lin Boqiang, an energy policy researcher at Xiamen University in southeastern China, told the New York Times. “It’s difficult to persuade the local governments to give up on them.”

Burning more coal is bad news for the climate and people’s lungs. But if new coal plants replace older, dirtier ones, “it actually could be good news,” said David Victor, a professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Most of the pictures CoalSwarm released show plants that are much more efficient than the Chinese average, Victor said. Of course, it would be better news for the climate if they were replacing those old coal plants with zero-carbon power.

Ultimately, China’s ability to cut carbon emissions will will depend on how quickly the economy transforms from dirty industrial manufacturing to “less carbon-intensive service sector growth,” said Peter Masters, who watches China’s energy moves for the research firm Rhodium Group.

In other words, China’s past economic growth came from building things like iPhones but future growth could come from designing and marketing their own gadgets. If China’s next wave of workers are designers, economists, and architects, rather than factory workers, it won’t necessarily need a surge of coal power.

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China said it was done with these coal plants. Satellite imagery shows otherwise.

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Keystone XL construction to begin next year, but indigenous activists vow to keep fighting

by RaymondJessup Posted on September 25, 2018

Construction on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline is set to rev up next year. The project received a green light from the State Department late last week — the latest salvo in a contentious decade-long battle between indigenous communities and TransCanada, the pipeline’s developer.

On Friday, the State Department issued a 338-page supplemental environmental impact statement for an alternate route through Nebraska. The agency has determined that major environmental damage stemming from the $8 billion, 1,180-mile project would be “negligible to moderate.” According to the report, there will be safeguards in place that would prevent a leak from contaminating ground or surface water.

“Keystone XL has undergone years of extensive environmental review by federal and state regulators,” TransCanada spokesperson Matthew John said. “All of these evaluations show that Keystone XL can be built safely and with minimal impact to the environment.”

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The review comes a little more than a month after a Montana court required the State Department to conduct a separate analysis — not part of the pipeline’s 2014 environmental impact study — of the updated route under the National Environmental Policy Act. The new route will be longer than TransCanada’s preferred route.

Following the release of the environmental assessment, TransCanada lawyers filed a response on Friday to address concerns by environmental and indigenous groups that are challenging the pipeline’s permit to cross into the U.S. from Canada in the Montana court.

But as TransCanada moves ahead with plans to construct the pipeline — which would carry up to 830,000 barrels of heavy crude from Canada’s oil sands in Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska — tribal communities living in its path remain steadfast in challenging the review’s conclusions.

“It’s a total disregard for the land, and the animals, and the people that reside on it and have for generations,” Faith Spotted Eagle, a member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and a vocal opponent of major oil-pipeline projects like the Keystone XL pipeline and the Dakota Access pipeline, told Grist. “I think the thing to remember is that the people who are building this pipeline — they don’t care because they don’t have to live here. But it’s not going to stop me from fighting back.”

Pipeline-opponents on the front lines like Spotted Eagle are gearing up for what comes next, pledging to fight until the pipeline project is halted for good. Earlier this month, the Fort Belknap Indian Community of Montana and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota sued the Trump administration after it granted the pipeline a permit which they claimed didn’t assess how it’s construction “would impact their water and sacred lands.”

Indigenous groups aren’t the only ones voicing their discontent — the Sierra Club called the new State Department report a “sham review.” “We’ve held off construction of this pipeline for 10 years, and regardless of this administration’s attempts to force this dirty tar sands pipeline on the American people,” said Kelly Martin, director of the group’s Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. “That fight will continue until Keystone XL is stopped once and for all.”

Members of the public have 45 days to comment on the State Department’s review, but Spotted Eagle is skeptical that the powers that be will even bother to consult with indigenous people residing in the pipeline’s route. “There is no regard to nation-to-nation relationships with tribes,” she says.

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Keystone XL construction to begin next year, but indigenous activists vow to keep fighting

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This Is the Way the World Ends – Jeff Nesbit

by Myrna Posted on September 25, 2018

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This Is the Way the World Ends

How Droughts and Die-offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes Are Converging on America

Jeff Nesbit

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $14.99

Publish Date: September 25, 2018

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Seller: Macmillan


Bustle's "17 Best Nonfiction Books Coming Out In September 2018" "With This is the Way the World Ends Jeff Nesbit has delivered an enlightening – and alarming – explanation of the climate challenge as it exists today. Climate change is no far-off threat. It's impacting communities all over the world at this very moment, and we ignore the scientific reality at our own peril. The good news? As Nesbit underscores, disaster is not preordained. The global community can meet this moment — and we must." —Senator John Kerry A unique view of climate change glimpsed through the world's resources that are disappearing. The world itself won’t end, of course. Only ours will: our livelihoods, our homes, our cultures. And we’re squarely at the tipping point. Longer droughts in the Middle East. Growing desertification in China and Africa. The monsoon season shrinking in India. Amped-up heat waves in Australia. More intense hurricanes reaching America. Water wars in the Horn of Africa. Rebellions, refugees and starving children across the globe. These are not disconnected events. These are the pieces of a larger puzzle that environmental expert Jeff Nesbit puts together Unless we start addressing the causes of climate change and stop simply navigating its effects, we will be facing a series of unstoppable catastrophes by the time our preschoolers graduate from college. Our world is in trouble – right now. This Is the Way the World Ends tells the real stories of the substantial impacts to Earth’s systems unfolding across each continent. The bad news? Within two decades or so, our carbon budget will reach a point of no return. But there’s good news. Like every significant challenge we’ve faced—from creating civilization in the shadow of the last ice age to the Industrial Revolution—we can get out of this box canyon by understanding the realities and changing the worn-out climate conversation to one that’s relevant to every person. Nesbit provides a clear blueprint for real-time, workable solutions we can tackle together.

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This Is the Way the World Ends – Jeff Nesbit

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Shipping giants look lustily at the warming Arctic

by RachaelMais0 Posted on September 24, 2018

When a blue-hulled cargo ship named Venta Maersk became the first container vessel to navigate a major Arctic sea route this month, it offered a glimpse of what the warming region might become: a maritime highway, with vessels lumbering between Asia and Europe through once-frozen seas.

Years of melting ice have made it easier for ships to ply these frigid waters. That’s a boon for the shipping industry but a threat to the fragile Arctic ecosystem. Nearly all ships run on fossil fuels, and many use heavy fuel oil, which spews black soot when burned and turns seas into a toxic goopy mess when spilled. Few international rules are in place to protect the Arctic’s environment from these ships, though a proposal to ban heavy fuel oil from the region is gaining support.

“For a long time, we weren’t looking at the Arctic as a viable option for a shortcut for Asia-to-Europe, or Asia-to-North America traffic, but that’s really changed, even over the last couple of years,” says Bryan Comer, a senior researcher with the International Council on Clean Transportation’s marine program. “It’s just increasingly concerning.”

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Venta Maersk departed from South Korea in late August packed with frozen fish, chilled produce, and electronics. Days later, it sailed through the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, before cruising along Russia’s north coast. At one point, a nuclear icebreaker escorted Venta Maersk through a frozen Russian strait, then the container vessel continued to the Norwegian Sea. It’s expected to arrive in Germany and St. Petersburg later this month.

The trial voyage wouldn’t have been possible until recently. The Arctic region is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, with sea ice, snow cover, glaciers, and permafrost all diminishing dramatically over recent decades. In the past, only powerful nuclear-powered icebreakers could forge through Arctic seas; these days, even commercial ships can navigate the region from roughly July to October—albeit sometimes with the help of skilled pilots and icebreaker escorts.

Russian tankers already carry liquefied natural gas to Western Europe and Asia. General cargo vessels move Chinese wind turbine parts and Canadian coal. Cruise liners take tourists to see surreal ice formations and polar bears in the Arctic summer. Around 2,100 cargo ships operated in Arctic waters in 2015, according to Comer’s group.

“Because of climate change, because of the melting of sea ice, these ships can operate for longer periods of time in the Arctic,” says Scott Stephenson, an assistant geography professor at the University of Connecticut, “and the shipping season is already longer than it used to be.” A study he co-authored found that, by 2060, ships with reinforced hulls could operate in the Arctic for nine months in the year.

Stephenson says that the Venta Maersk’s voyage doesn’t mean that an onrush of container ships will soon be clogging the Arctic seas, given the remaining risks and costs needed to operate in the region. “It’s a new, proof-of-concept test case,” he says.

Maersk, based in Copenhagen, says the goal is to collect data and “gain operational experience in a new area and to test vessel systems,” representatives from the company wrote in an email. The ship didn’t burn standard heavy fuel oil, but a type of high-grade, ultra-low-sulfur fuel. “We are taking all measures to ensure that this trial is done with the highest considerations for the sensitive environment in the region.”

Sian Prior, lead advisor to the HFO-Free Arctic Campaign, says that the best way to avoid fouling the Arctic is to ditch fossil fuels entirely and install electric systems with, say, battery storage or hydrogen fuel cells. Since those technologies aren’t yet commercially viable for ocean-going ships, the next option is to run ships on liquefied natural gas. The easiest alternative, however, is to switch to a lighter “marine distillate oil,” which Maersk says is “on par with” the fuel it’s using.

But many ships still run on cheaper heavy fuel oil, made from the residues of petroleum refining. In 2015, the sludgy fuel accounted for 57 percent of total fuel consumption in the Arctic, and was responsible for 68 percent of ships’ black carbon emissions, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation.

Black carbon wreaks havoc on the climate, even though it usually makes up a small share of total emissions. The small dark particles absorb the sun’s heat and directly warm the atmosphere. Within a few days, the particles fall back down to earth, darkening the snow and hindering the snow’s ability to reflect the sun’s radiation—resulting in more warming.

When spilled, heavy fuel oil emulsifies on the water’s surface or sinks to the seafloor, unlike lighter fuels which disperse and evaporate. Clean-up can take decades in remote waters, as was the case when the Exxon Valdez crude oil tanker slammed into an Alaskan reef in 1989.

“It’s dirtier when you burn it, the options to clean it up are limited, and the length it’s likely to persist in the environment is longer,” Prior says.

In April, the International Maritime Organization, the U.N. body that regulates the shipping industry, began laying the groundwork to ban ships from using or carrying heavy fuel oil in the Arctic. Given the lengthy rulemaking process, any policy won’t likely take effect before 2021, Prior says.

One of the biggest hurdles will be securing Russia’s approval. Most ships operating in the Arctic fly Russian flags, and the country’s leaders plan to invest tens of billions of dollars in coming years to beef up polar shipping activity along the Northern Sea Route. China also wants to build a “Polar Silk Road” and redirect its cargo ships along the Russian route.

Such ambitions hinge on a melting Arctic and rising global temperatures. If the warming Arctic eventually does offer a cheaper highway for moving goods around the world, Comer says, “then we need to start making sure that policies are in place.”

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Shipping giants look lustily at the warming Arctic

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Some displaced Puerto Ricans face homelessness after FEMA stops paying for hotels

by TheronHeidenrei Posted on September 21, 2018

This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

It’s been a year since Hurricane Maria upended Jennyfer Ortiz’s life. The single mother fled Puerto Rico with her two children after their house in the mountain town of Orocovis lost power. They have been using a government-funded program to pay for a hotel in the Bronx, but that ended last week, forcing Ortiz, her 20-year-old son, and 14-year-old daughter into a homeless shelter.

“Maria changed our lives ― ruined our lives ― and left us with nothing. After 18 hours of horror, we woke up the next day and had lost everything,” Ortiz said. The 46-year-old hasn’t been able to work since they’ve been in New York City ― she has diabetes and hypertension, takes 14 medications a day, and uses a walker. Her son works full time at a grocery store but doesn’t make enough to pay for their own place.

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“We’re working. We’re not just waiting for the government to pay everything,” she said. “We’re trying to get ahead ― but it’s hard.”

Ortiz is one of 2,436 displaced Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland who, as of last month, were still in hotels paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance program.

After repeated extensions of the program in response to a lawsuit from the advocacy group Latino Justice, a federal judge ruled late last month to end it, forcing people still using the program to check out by September 14.

There were few good options for the people still in hotels: accept the government’s offer to pay for a plane ticket back to Puerto Rico or stay on the mainland and either secure their own place, stay with friends, or go to a shelter.

Many relying on FEMA’s housing funds are in precarious financial situations, said Peter Gudaitis, executive director of the nonprofit New York Disaster Interfaith Services, which has been helping Maria evacuees. Some have medical conditions, others have young kids and haven’t been able to afford daycare, which has prevented them from finding a job. Even evacuees who have found work struggle to save enough for a security deposit and first month’s rent.

“I don’t have anybody here. I don’t know what to do,” Myrna Reyes, another Maria evacuee, who suffers from diabetes, asthma, and high blood pressure, told HuffPost on Monday. “I’ve lost hope.”

After Reyes left the hotel that FEMA was paying for in Brooklyn on Friday, she ended up at a New York shelter. But she didn’t feel safe there. She saw people outside injecting drugs, she said, and her room was up four flights of stairs with no elevator, and she has limited mobility. She went to a friend’s home nearby, but that friend is moving to Florida next week, and Reyes will have to find somewhere else to go.

“They’ve left us practically in the street,” Reyes said. “They’re not treating us like the U.S. citizens that we are.”

Jennyfer’s daughter, 14, painting at the table in their room at the Bronx shelter. HuffPost.

When U.S. District Judge Timothy Hillman in Massachusetts ruled to end the FEMA hotel program earlier this month, he urged the government to find longer-term housing solutions for Maria evacuees. Latino Justice alleges that FEMA hasn’t.

FEMA told HuffPost on Tuesday that since Maria hit, it had assisted more than 7,000 families who had survived the storm with temporary hotel rooms in 40 states, costing more than $100 million.

“While FEMA and other forms of government assistance can never make a disaster survivor whole, the assistance is meant to help survivors begin their recovery process,” FEMA spokesperson Lenisha Smith wrote by email. “FEMA will continue to work with survivors in their long-term housing plans.”

Gudaitis, whose group has been helping Maria survivors in New York, said that of the 34 families it assisted who were still in hotels paid by FEMA as of last week, over two-thirds are now in the New York City shelter system. The rest are staying with family, and a “small number” have found their own place, he said.

In central Florida, Vamos4PR, a group assisting Maria evacuees there, said of about 100 families it knew of that were using the FEMA program, about half are now doubled up with friends, a “handful” returned to Puerto Rico, and a few had secured their own place. For the remaining, the group is now trying to assist with cash or by negotiating low hotel rates. They were told in recent months that there was no more capacity in the central Florida shelter system. Amneris Ortíz (no relation to Jennyfer) is a single mom who had been using the FEMA program to pay for a hotel on the outskirts of Orlando until Friday, along with her elderly mother and three children, ages 17, 10, and 8. A local church helped her pay a deposit and the first month’s rent to secure an apartment, but she doesn’t know how she’ll make rent next month.

She had been working at a Wawa gas station, but after her car broke down in July, she lost that job because it was too far to walk there. She then got a job closer to the hotel, working as a part-time teacher in a daycare, but the apartment they were able to line up is too far from that job. When HuffPost spoke to her Monday, she hadn’t been able to make it to work that day.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it,” said Amneris Ortíz. Her kids have asthma, and her mother also has health issues. She has a college degree, but her current job pays only $9 an hour. “I’m trying to make enough to help my kids get by, but it’s really hard.”

Amneris Ortíz, her mother and three kids in their rental apartment.

Huffpost.

FEMA noted that one of the options it offered evacuees was free plane tickets to return to Puerto Rico. About 500 people have taken them up on that.

But for many of the most vulnerable families, returning to the island is not a viable option. Experts say Puerto Rico’s recovery process will take years. Repeated power outages still plague the island, and the health care system has not fully recovered.

In the wake of the storm, the schools Amneris Ortíz’s kids had attended had closed. In Florida, they’re getting a good education, at least. The principal at her son’s school even paid for his soccer cleats so he could join the team.

Jennyfer Ortiz says she’s undergoing treatment in New York for her medical conditions. She has knee surgery scheduled. Without power in the wake of Maria, she couldn’t keep her insulin refrigerated. The family would line up for hours for ice only to have half of it melt by the time they got home. She doesn’t see how she can return to an island where she has no place to stay ― their home that flooded was a rental ― and where there’s still a shortage of doctors.

“Without health, we have nothing,” Jennyfer Ortiz said. “They wanted to pay me a ticket to go back to an island where I lost everything. And to return where? To the street?”

FEMA also pointed to a rental assistance program it offers to provide two-months’ rent to survivors. The agency said it had provided it to 3,833 families who had previously stayed in FEMA-paid hotels stateside.

But Gudaitis said that, to his knowledge, none of the families his group serves in New York had been able to get rental assistance through that program. Vamos4PR echoed that in central Florida: None of the families it had assisted received additional longer-term housing assistance from FEMA.

“I honestly feel lost,” said Amneris Ortíz. She applied for rental assistance from FEMA a couple of weeks ago and sent further documentation last week. She has not heard anything so far.

“I’m getting panic attacks. I’m scared of ending up in the street with my kids,” she said, in tears. “Not being able to provide them with what they need ― they ask me for things and I can’t. I’m feeling very depressed. I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

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Some displaced Puerto Ricans face homelessness after FEMA stops paying for hotels

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A Natural History of the Senses – Diane Ackerman

by Myrna Posted on September 21, 2018

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A Natural History of the Senses

Diane Ackerman

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: September 10, 1991

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth. “Delightful . . . gives the reader the richest possible feeling of the worlds the senses take in.” — The New York Times

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A Natural History of the Senses – Diane Ackerman

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Cry of the Kalahari – Mark James Owens & Delia Owens

by Myrna Posted on September 21, 2018

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Cry of the Kalahari

Mark James Owens & Delia Owens

Genre: Nature

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: October 15, 1992

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Seller: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company


This is the story of the Owens’ travel and life in the Kalahari Desert. Here they met and studied unique animals and were confronted with danger from drought, fire, storms, and the animals they loved. This best-selling book is for both travelers and animal lovers.

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Cry of the Kalahari – Mark James Owens & Delia Owens

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5 Ways You Might Be Contributing to Water Pollution

by TabathaMilam Posted on September 20, 2018

The health of our planet?s water is critical to life on Earth, yet it?s being polluted at an alarming rate. And humans are to blame. In fact, roughly 80 percent of ocean pollution comes from land, primarily from human activity. Here are five ways people contribute to water pollution in their everyday lives ? and what you can do to help combat the problem.

1. Plastic use

Maybe you?ve seen the viral video of the sea turtle who got a plastic straw stuck up its nose, and you decided to give up straws. That?s a great start. But the plastic problem facing the ocean goes a whole lot deeper. Millions of metric tons of plastic enter the ocean each year, influenced by population size and waste management standards, according to one study.

It all comes down to how much plastic people use. If you want to do your part to minimize plastic pollution, avoid disposable plastics wherever you can ? straws, drink lids, cutlery, grocery bags, water bottles, etc. Steer clear of beauty products with plastic microbeads. Consider the packaging when you make a purchase. For instance, you might be able to buy food from bulk bins using your own reusable containers, rather than purchasing a product packaged in plastic. And, of course, always responsibly recycle plastic whenever you can.

2. Pouring toxins down the sink or toilet

If your kid tries to flush one of their toys down the toilet, it might just mean a hefty plumber?s bill for you. But if an item that isn?t biodegradable makes it down a drain, that could affect the sewage treatment process. Those items often end up polluting water and beaches, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, so never let them go down the drain.

Furthermore, keep toxins far away from your drains, as well ? think old paint, chemical cleaners and unused medication. Instead, find a hazardous waste collection facility near you to dispose of them responsibly. The extra effort certainly is worth it to avoid those chemicals someday making an appearance in your drinking water.

3. Washing your own car

Being a model car owner doesn?t just make the roads safer. It also can keep our water cleaner. ?Good maintenance can reduce the leaking of oil, coolant, antifreeze, and other nasty liquids that are carried by rainwater down driveways or through parking lots and then seep into groundwater supplies,? according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

So what about a car wash? Although it costs more money, it actually might be more environmentally friendly to head to a professional car wash instead of doing it yourself. ?The pros are required to drain their wastewater into sewer systems, where the water is treated for all the bad stuff before being discharged,? the Natural Resources Defense Council says. ?Many even recycle that water.?

4. Not picking up after your dog

If you have a dog, hopefully you?re already a responsible pet owner picking up its waste. And you can pat yourself on the back twice because you?re also preventing pathogens from entering our water supply. ?Rain can carry pathogens in dog waste into streams where people swim, making them sick,? according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The nitrogen and phosphorus in dog waste also can contribute to toxic algae blooms and harm marine life.

And if you have a feline friend, never flush your cat?s poop down the toilet unless it has tested negative for toxoplasmosis. Cats excrete the parasite that causes the disease, which can lead to serious health complications in some people. If you don’t have a municipal compost program that accepts pet waste, the most practical option is to bag it ? preferably in an eco-friendly bag ? and throw it in the trash.

5. Applying lawn chemicals

As long as people insist on having the greenest lawn on the block and growing plants that don?t really belong in their environment, they?ll use fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. Those chemicals might make your grass green, but they also have some serious consequences.

?When lawn chemicals are applied improperly, they can run off into streams, harming fish and other animals and contaminating our drinking water,? according to the Environmental Protection Agency. ?Overapplication of any lawn chemical can result in runoff that carries toxic levels of chemicals or excessive nutrients into lakes, streams and groundwater.?

Thankfully, there are many viable alternatives to toxic lawn chemicals that will keep your garden growing. Try organic lawn treatments or compost to feed your plants. Landscape with native species, which require less assistance from you. And test your soil for nutrient deficiencies before you apply anything unnecessarily.

Main image credit: Toa55/Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Ways You Might Be Contributing to Water Pollution

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The Puerto Rican diaspora gets ready to flex its political power

by EileenRubinstei Posted on September 20, 2018

It has been one year since Hurricane Maria laid waste to Puerto Rico and one week since President Trump denied official reports that the storm took nearly 3,000 lives. To honor those lives and demand accountability for failures in the federal response to the storm, thousands are expected to march on the White House, Trump Tower, and Mar-a-Lago today.

“From the day Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, President Trump has shown a level of of indifference and callousness towards the people of Puerto Rico that is nothing short of reprehensible,” José Calderón, president of the Hispanic Federation, said in a statement announcing nationwide actions. “It is time for our elected officials to feel the brunt of our outrage and let it be known that we will remember in November whether they stood with us or not.”

A coalition of civil rights, faith-based, labor, and advocacy groups have called for a national week of action that they’re calling “Boricuas Remember.” They are leading mass vigils and marches in D.C., Florida, and New York today, as well as other events across the country through the 22.

In a separate but coinciding effort at New York’s Union Square this evening, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Yampierre, and Naomi Klein will join other big names, grassroots leaders, and artists who are calling for community-led solutions and a just transition away from fossil fuels.

Protest organizers say that policymakers can expect the thousands hitting the streets today to also march to ballot boxes during this year’s elections. Since Hurricane Maria, at least 135,000 people have moved from Puerto Rico to the mainland U.S. and could make a major impact now that they’re eligible to vote in congressional and presidential elections.

At the end of August, the “Respeta Mi Gente” coalition launched in Central Florida to activate Puerto Rican voters and center their priorities during 2018 midterm elections in the swing state. Frederick Velez, the campaign director for Respeta Mi Gente, says disaster resiliency is a top priority. “No. 1 is, how can we use the power of the million Puerto Ricans in Florida to affect congressional legislation so that we can get a good recovery and rebuild in Puerto Rico?” says Velez, adding that it’s important to not only repair the infrastructure but to ensure that the territory is prepared for another disaster.

Former New York City council speaker and campaign director of Power 4 Puerto Rico Melissa Mark-Viverito says the Puerto Rican community is geared up to shape policy across the country. “If we are decisive in these elections,” says Viverito, who is speaking at a vigil in New York today, then, “what comes with political muscle is political leverage.”

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The Puerto Rican diaspora gets ready to flex its political power

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What Have You Changed Your Mind About? – John Brockman

by Myrna Posted on September 18, 2018

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

What Have You Changed Your Mind About?

Today’s Leading Minds Rethink Everything

John Brockman

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 6, 2009

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


Even geniuses change their minds sometimes. Edge (www.edge.org), the influential online intellectual salon, recently asked 150 high-powered thinkers to discuss their most telling missteps and reconsiderations: What have you changed your mind about? The answers are brilliant, eye-opening, fascinating, sometimes shocking, and certain to kick-start countless passionate debates. Steven Pinker on the future of human evolution • Richard Dawkins on the mysteries of courtship • SAM HARRIS on the indifference of Mother Nature • Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the irrelevance of probability • Chris Anderson on the reality of global warming • Alan Alda on the existence of God • Ray Kurzweil on the possibility of extraterrestrial life • Brian Eno on what it means to be a "revolutionary" • Helen Fisher on love, fidelity, and the viability of marriage • Irene Pepperberg on learning from parrots . . . and many others.

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What Have You Changed Your Mind About? – John Brockman

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