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The internet is ablaze with Lil Dicky’s bizarre, star-studded climate anthem

Lil Dicky, the self-flagellating Jewish rapper slash comedian, came out with another banger on Friday. Born Andrew David Burd, Lil Dicky is known for his hits with rappers Fetty Wap, Rich Homie Quan, and Chris Brown. His songs are about stuff other artists don’t usually discuss, like fiscal responsibility and being a white rapper, and often verge into satire.

Lil Dicky’s latest jam, Earth, takes on new and unusual subject matter, even for him: climate change. The 7-minute music video is his most celebrity-packed yet, featuring Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, Halsey, Bad Bunny, PSY, Zac Brown, Miley Cyrus, Sia, Snoop Dogg, and more. How did Dicky get all those celebs to star on his track? Probably the same way he got strangers to let him use their mansions and yachts for free for his $ave Dat Money music video: a lot of begging.

Regardless of how Lil Dicky pulled it off, Earth is already trending on YouTube with 6 million views and climbing, and the rapper worked with the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation to donate proceeds from the video to climate and environment projects. So what all is the song about? Think “We Are The World,” but animated and millennial as f***.

The video opens with a clip of a newscaster talking about the fires that ripped through California last year. But the video rapidly leaves the sweltering California streets and enters an animated world, replete with talking bald eagles and safari animals.

Dicky frolics with penguins, analyzes chatty microbes under a microscope, and talks to a marijuana plant voiced by Snoop Dogg (duh). The video might look like a Disney channel special, but isn’t too concerned with being wholesome (Justin Bieber’s line: “I’m a baboon. I’m like a man just less advanced and my anus is huge).

The second half of the video is a call to action. “These days it’s like we don’t know how to act, all these shootings, pollution, we under attack on ourselves,” he says. “Like let’s all just chill.” Gripping stuff.

If you don’t want to watch an animated Lil Dicky sing about the planet in a loincloth g-string for seven minutes, I don’t blame you. But think of it this way: what if this whole video is a critique of the tired and worn-out tropes used by old-school Earth Day advocates? Hmm??

As Dicky recently told TIME in an interview, “If we don’t completely redefine how we do everything on earth, from an energy perspective, from a food perspective, from a conserving nature perspective, in the next 12 years, the damage is irreversible and we’re screwed.” Clearly, he knows that recycling bottles and changing light bulbs isn’t enough to get ourselves out of this climate predicament.

Then again, the celebrities in his video are contributing more than their fair share of pollution by jetting around the world to play shows, as Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg points out. Commenters have also noted some racist and misogynistic tropes. (Case in point: Lil Dicky points out India, Germany, and “Africa” as he twirls around the globe. You can’t group a whole continent with a bunch of countries, ya dingus.) Maybe this shit isn’t that deep and I’m just looking for an excuse to dunk on Earth Day? You be the judge.

Either way, the fact that Lil Dicky chose to focus one of his songs on climate change in the first place marks a shift in popular culture. “I’d like to figure out a way to impact humanity as best as I possibly can beyond my typical d**k and fart jokes,” he said. Well, Mr. Dicky, I guess you succeeded?

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The internet is ablaze with Lil Dicky’s bizarre, star-studded climate anthem

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Hurricane season starts today, and Trump still hasn’t learned from his deadliest blunder — Hurricane Maria

It wasn’t until five days after Hurricane Maria made landfall that President Trump tweeted about the devastation. FEMA administrator Brock Long arrived in Puerto Rico that same day — he was among the first Trump officials to get to the battered U.S. territory.

This week, a Harvard study revealed that the September 2017 storm is likely the deadliest disaster in modern U.S. history — with more casualties than Hurricane Katrina and the 9/11 attacks combined. The analysis places Puerto Rico’s death toll at somewhere between 4,645 and 5,740 people, 90 times more dead than the government’s widely disputed official death toll.

The president has yet to offer any public condolences on the death count in the new study. He has, however, tweeted vigorously in the wake of Roseanne Barr being fired to Disney CEO Bob Iger demanding an apology for “HORRIBLE” statements made about him on ABC.

“What if 5,000 people in any US state died because of a natural disaster? It would be 24/7 news. Well, that happened in #PuertoRico as a result of #HurricaneMaría, and we are now talking about a mediocre sitcom being cancelled,” tweeted journalist Julio Ricardo Varela.

Writing in an opinion piece for NBC news, Varela continued: “Puerto Ricans are not suddenly shocked by the Harvard study … because the proof was already there months ago. But almost nobody else wanted to look for it.”

Trump’s only visit to the island after the storm — when he said that Maria wasn’t a “real” tragedy like Hurricane Katrina — Varela writes, “served to highlight the late response and federal neglect to Puerto Rico’s catastrophe.”

The president’s inattention, critics argue, contributed to a disaster response that was slow, meager, and ripe with allegations of misconduct and corruption. And rather than drive compassion for fellow Americans, his priorities have helped shift attention elsewhere. Cable news dedicated more than 16 times more airtime to the Roseanne controversy than it did to the Puerto Rico death toll.

Because of the silence, Refinery 29 journalist Andrea González-Ramírez has started a viral thread on Twitter in an effort to remember and name the dead:

“This should be a day of collective mourning in Puerto Rico. Thousands dead because of administrations that could not get the job done,” San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz tweeted on Tuesday. “These deaths & the negligence that contributed to them cannot be forgotten. This was, & continues to be, a violation of our human rights.”

And with Hurricane Season 2018 beginning today, there’s still uncertainty about how prepared this administration is for another storm. Puerto Rico’s power authority announced yesterday that it may take another two months to get power back completely on the island, and officials say it’s likely that the electrical grid will crash again with the next hurricane.

On top of that, FEMA is going through a “reorganization,” Bloomberg reported last week, and several key leadership roles are still vacant or temporarily filled.

“What the impacts from the 2017 disasters show is that there is also still work to do in order to build a culture of preparedness across the country at all levels of government, including improved resilience among our critical infrastructure,” FEMA wrote to Grist in an email.

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Hurricane season starts today, and Trump still hasn’t learned from his deadliest blunder — Hurricane Maria

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Elon Musk Threatens to Ditch Trump’s Advisory Council Over Paris Climate Treaty Withdrawal

Mother Jones

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Amid news reports that President Donald Trump is preparing to pull the US out of the Paris climate treaty on Wednesday, Tesla CEO and member of Trump’s economic advisory council, Elon Musk, threatened to step down as an adviser if the president went through with the withdrawal.

Musk took to Twitter to insist he had done all he could to convince Trump to remain in the accord. When asked what he would do if his efforts went unheeded, the Tesla CEO said he would have no choice but to leave:

Musk is among a growing list of executives, Republicans, and oil industry leaders urging Trump to remain in the treaty that 195 countries have signed.

In December, Musk attracted widespread criticism for his decision to serve on Trump’s advisory team, which includes other heads of powerful companies such as Disney and Walmart. While he previously expressed reservations regarding Trump’s fitness for the Oval Office, Musk would later rationalize his decision to advise Trump as his effort to provide a “voice of reason” in the increasingly erratic administration.

On Wednesday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to confirm mounting reports of Trump’s plan to pull out of the agreement. When asked specifically about Musks’ threat, Spicer told reporters, “Let’s wait and see what the president’s decision is.”

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Elon Musk Threatens to Ditch Trump’s Advisory Council Over Paris Climate Treaty Withdrawal

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Disneyland Is the Latest Victim of Thin-Skinned 1-Percenters

Mother Jones

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If you don’t live in Southern California—or if you do, but have a life—you might not be aware of Club 33, a “secret” club at Disneyland coveted by the rich and famous as a hideway from the hoi polloi at the park. (And, not coincidentally, the only place at Disneyland that serves alcoholic beverages.) It’s so coveted, in fact, that there’s no waiting list for membership. Years ago, it got so long that Disneyland just closed it.

Today, the LA Times passes along breaking news that has outraged the 1% who are the primary (only?) denizens of the place:

For access to what is billed as “the most exclusive address in all of Disneyland” — Club 33 — many members pay $11,000 a year….The current uproar has to do with how many extra VIP cards are allotted to platinum members.

The cards allow a lucky few to enjoy many of the benefits of a member, including access to Disney parks and dining at the secretive Club 33 restaurant, tucked away in Disneyland’s New Orleans Square….But last week, platinum members received a letter that said in 2015 only the member and a spouse or domestic partner would have Club 33 benefits, while the price for the platinum level would rise to $12,000….A current platinum VIP cardholder was enraged. “It really has just turned to a money game for them.”

OMG! “It really has just turned to a money game for them.” This is mighty rich coming from someone who is almost certainly wealthy as hell and probably considers himself a rock-jawed supporter of laissez-faire capitalism. But if Disneyland raises the price and changes the terms of a product that obviously has far more demand than supply, why, it’s just an example of a bunch of ruthless money-grubbers taking advantage of the downtrodden. How dare they?

Plus he’s dead wrong anyway. First of all, last I looked Disney was a public corporation widely admired in the business world for its money-making prowess. Of course it’s a money game for them. Second, the waiting list for Club 33 is so long that it’s closed. Quite plainly, they could double or triple the price of a platinum card and keep their membership at the same level. In other words, if they really were just ruthless money-grubbers, they could instantly double or triple their revenues for Club 33 with the stroke of a pen. The fact that they haven’t done this clearly suggests some combination of loyalty to longtime members along with an understandable desire to avoid a PR headache.

Anyway, that’s Orange County for you. Home of conservative Republicans who have an abiding faith in the free market when they’re the ones setting the rules, but get in a snit when they themselves end up on the business end of the not-so-invisible hand. You can file this under the shockingly thin skins of the rich when they aren’t treated with the fawning deference they all think is their birthright.

UPDATE: Here’s a note for aficionados of behavioral economics. As near as I can tell, the outrage here is not over the modest 9 percent price increase. It’s over the loss of a perk. This is an example of people responding far more strongly to loss than to gain. And in this case it’s especially irksome because it’s the loss of a perk that allows a member to very publicly show off their status. “Going to Disneyland? Here, why don’t you take one of my VIP cards and eat at Club 33. It’s great.” This is a chance to do a favor for someone and show off your ownership of a normally invisible status symbol that money can’t buy. But now it’s gone.

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Disneyland Is the Latest Victim of Thin-Skinned 1-Percenters

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Is Ezra Klein the Next Roger Ailes?

Mother Jones

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Andrew Sullivan today:

I have to say it’s been amazing to see Washington get almost giddy about the Ezra Klein story. Well, maybe only Washington journalists … but, still….All the stories about these ventures rightly take a wait-and-see approach as to whether we are witnessing a realignment in which those old big media companies accelerate their decline by being unable to accommodate their new media stars … or whether these new ventures will eventually founder in a grim business climate for journalism. These new models may be evanescent or central to the future. We just don’t know yet.

This is true: we don’t know yet. At the same time, no one should feel like this is something new and unprecedented. It’s the same thing that’s been happening to popular media for over a century. When radio was invented, it attracted young entrepreneurs like William Paley (using family money) and Richard Sarnoff (working his way up the ranks at RCA). The burgeoning market for middle-class reading material attracted young entrepreneurs like Henry Luce (magazines), William Randolph Hearst (newspapers), and Simon & Schuster (books). The film industry attracted young entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Howard Hughes. Cheap four-color printing prompted Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson to start up the company that would later become DC Comics. Car culture produced car magazines. Computers produced computer magazines. Gaming produced gaming magazines. The rise of cable TV brought us CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. When politics collided with the rise of the internet, we got websites like Drudge Report, Talking Points Memo, the Huffington Post, and Politico.

Will Ezra Klein’s new venture succeed? Who knows. But I think it’s safe to say that some of these ventures will succeed, and they will indeed produce a realignment in the political media universe. They already have, after all: Fox News and Politico are probably more influential already than the entire old-guard newspaper industry combined.

Young (and some not-so-young) entrepreneurs have been reshaping popular media forever. It’s no surprise that this is continuing. What else would you expect, after all?

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Is Ezra Klein the Next Roger Ailes?

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Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

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When a promising cap-and-trade bill failed in the Senate in 2010, oil and coal companies everywhere must have breathed a sigh of relief, then probably wiped the sheen from their collective brow with a spare Benjamin and got back to work.

It now looks like some of that work involved planning for a time when they would actually lose the battle over their climate sins.

In a report [PDF] released by the UK-based Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), 29 companies — including the five biggest oil-producers, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, BP, and Shell (not that we’re keeping track) — report that they are using carbon pricing estimates to plan for hypothetical future regulation in the U.S. This generally means that an estimated carbon price is applied to a corporation’s big-investment projects — new drilling rigs, for example — which will likely be subject to some kind of emissions tax in ten or twenty years.

For climate hawks and economists disappointed by the failure of carbon tax schemes in the real world, this may sound hopeful: At least SOMEONE believes that carbon-pricing stands a chance, and soon, too. But it’s also just good business: With California’s fledgling cap-and trade market getting under way, and public opinion on climate change swinging back toward sanity, carbon tax is looking less and less utopian and more like a plausible business expense.

The CDP claims that the usage of internal carbon prices demonstrates the “assumption that addressing climate change will be both a business cost and a possible business opportunity.” Basically, if companies start planning now, maybe our global economy won’t go into a tailspin when we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Plus, lots of international companies, especially ones operating in regulated Europe or Australia, are already dealing with carbon taxes in some form. Australia prices all consumer fossil fuels at about $21 per ton of carbon; for European countries it falls somewhere between $5 and $80.

ExxonMobil, king of the big five, is no stranger to the carbon debate. Despite a sordid history of funding huge anti-climate-science campaigns to widen the consensus gap between scientists and the general public, the company publicly supported a carbon tax in 2009 (while lobbying against the actual bill in Congress). In the CDP’s report, ExxonMobil had the highest reported cost — $60 per ton of carbon, by 2030 — while BP and Shell were more tentative with $40 a ton. (The U.S. government, by comparison, has set a tentative “social cost” price between $37 and $57 for 2015 [PDF].)

Even companies like Google and Disney got in on the carbon-pricing action, using auction prices from California’s cap-and-trade scheme to help set the bar. Not everyone is as committed: Walmart claimed only that their estimated price is set “flexibly,” whatever that means.

One conspicuous absence (drumroll, please): everyone’s favorite climate-denying multinational conglomerate, Koch Industries! The multibillion dollar corporation, with its history of campaigning against all things climate-science-y, has not joined the herd of oil companies in budgeting for carbon tax. The Koch-funded American Energy Alliance has spent $1.2 billion this year alone in attacking candidates who allegedly support a carbon price.

Of course, no one can guarantee that any of the companies reporting internal carbon prices aren’t engaging in other forms of shenanigans, hanky-panky, or mustache-twirling in this and other environmental areas. Xcel Energy, one of the 29 companies, was recently embroiled in an attempt to restrict access to local, renewable energy in Boulder, Colo. ExxonMobil, with all its pinkie-promises to be more sustainable, has started investing in natural gas — which is a smart move if carbon starts being taxed, but still lets them get away with plenty of other environmental shenanigans. And planning for a future carbon tax is a long way from actually supporting one. Color us cynical, but we have a hard time believing any energy company is that gung ho to undermine its business model.

“It’s climate change as a line item,” Tom Rivett-Carnac, the CDP’s North American director, told the New York Times. “They’re looking at it from a rational perspective, making a profit. It drives internal decision-making.”

I guess it’s good that someone is looking at it from a rational perspective. Maybe U.S. lawmakers will follow suit.

Amelia Urry is Grist’s intern.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Big corporations are getting ready for carbon taxes, even if we’re not

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Thermos Funtainer Bottle, Disney Princess, Styles May Vary,12 Ounce

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Thermos Funtainer Bottle, Disney Princess, Styles May Vary,12 Ounce

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Thermos Funtainer Bottle, Disney Princess, Styles May Vary,12 Ounce

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Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

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I would probably be bitter, too, if I were Beef Products, Inc. Those are the folks behind uber-gross “lean finely textured beef,” aka “pink slime,” the ammonia-soaked cow trimmings added as filler to ground beef. During pink slime’s heyday, it ended up in more than two-thirds of American hamburgers, at a ratio of up to 15 percent slime to 85 percent burger. That slime was cheap, and so chemical-packed that it sterilized the rest of the meat. Mmm, food!

Fast-forward to today: The origins and grossness of “pink slime” are well-known, fast food restaurants have given up the stuff, and BPI is as pissed as a parent whose kid was unknowingly served pink slime in her USDA-approved school lunches.

According to Time, only about 5 percent of ground beef contains the “lean finely textured” stuff now. Following an 11-part ABC News series that ran last March and April, BPI says its revenues have dropped from more than $650 million a year to $130 million. The company filed a lawsuit last September against ABC, anchor Diane Sawyer, and other named defendants seeking $1.2 billion in damages. ABC didn’t coin “pink slime” — a USDA scientist named Gerald Zirnstein did, in 2002 — but ABC and its parent company Disney sure do have deep pockets.

BPI has hired “a high-powered Chicago trial lawyer,” according to Reuters, which reports the case “is shaping up to be one of the most high-stakes defamation court battles in U.S. history.” The company’s founders say they plan to fight ’til the bitter, slimy end, regardless of the cost. “We have to do this,” one told Reuters. “We have no other choice.”

The case hinges on state “product-disparagement” statutes that protect farmers and their products in 13 states, including South Dakota, where BPI is based. From Reuters:

Under the South Dakota version of the law, plaintiffs must show that defendants publicly spread information they knew to be false and stated or implied “that an agricultural food product is not safe for consumption by the public.” …

For BPI to prove the defamation piece of its case, it would need to show that the network negligently reported a false statement of fact that injured its reputation. If BPI is deemed by the court to be a public rather than a private figure in the legal sense, it would have a higher bar to cross: The company would need to prove ABC knew the facts it was reporting were false or it recklessly disregarded the truth.

While the case is in the early stages, the network appears to have a legal leg-up on both counts: ABC never said BPI’s product is dangerous, and courts have repeatedly offered broad protections for journalists in the course of their work.

But by calling a food product “slime” 137 times over the span of nearly four weeks on its newscasts, its website and on Twitter, according to BPI’s tally, did ABC make the public think [lean finely textured beef] was unsafe? If, as BPI alleges, ABC shrugged off information that refuted parts of its reporting, did it act recklessly and could it therefore be held liable for defamation?

From Time:

The case will be one of the first challenging First Amendment protections for news outlets in the social media era. One notable piece of evidence cited in BPI’s lawsuit is a single Tweet by reporter Jim Avila, who wrote: “It’s just not what it purports to be. Meat.” One of BPI’s arguments is that ABC News intentionally portrayed its product as something other than beef. (The USDA considers [lean finely textured beef] to be beef.)

If BPI wins, the precedent would be chilling for reporting on industrial food. If ABC wins, we probably still won’t see a lot of investigative reporting on industrial food, honestly. And either way, we’ll still have the slime: After a steep dropoff last year, manufacturers are slowly reintroducing the stuff.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Pink-slime maker’s lawsuit against ABC grows slimier

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