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Greenland’s moment in the sun goes beyond Trump’s real estate interests

by CristinBKY Posted on August 16, 2019

Greenland is sooo hot right now. And we’re not just talking literally (though, yeah, that’s also true). In the last week, the gigantic Arctic island has been the focus of several news stories. Here’s a quick round-up of why Greenland is blowing up your Twitter feed:

#1: President Trump expressed interest in buying Greenland

Let’s start with the most bizarre story. According to a story from the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, President Donald Trump repeatedly asked his top aides “with varying degrees of seriousness” how he could buy Greenland. Like, literally buy it.

“It has to be an April Fool’s joke,” the island’s former prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen tweeted. “Totally out of season.”

FYI Greenland is currently a self-ruling part of Denmark, which controls the region’s foreign and security policy. Still, the president somehow thinks that buying 836,300 square miles of fjord-riddled tundra floating in the middle of the North Atlantic could be feasible since “Denmark was having financial trouble over its assistance to Greenland.”

In case you’re wondering, “Um, why would he do that?” it’s not necessarily because the president is eyeing the island as the next Trump Towers location. After all, 80 percent of Greenland is covered by an ice sheet, and the population is estimated at less than 60,000. But the island is considered to be rich in valuable minerals, which may be easier to access as its vast ice sheets melt.

Of course, there are some major issues with this plan. For one thing, Greenland is not looking for a buyer. In response to Trump’s alleged interest in purchasing the island, officials politely told the president, Thanks, but no thanks.

”We have a good cooperation with [the] USA, and we see it as an expression of greater interest in investing in our country and the possibilities we offer,” the government of Greenland said in a short statement. “Of course, Greenland is not for sale.”

#2: Greenland is melting

For decades, the Arctic has been galloping toward a more perturbed state butt they seem to have reached a fever pitch this summer. Greenland’s ice sheet just had its biggest daily melt event ever recorded. That resulting rise in sea level is, you know, bad news for all us coastal peeps.

The story received a lot of attention after sobering images of Greenland’s melting glaciers flooded the internet. According to the Associated Press, a team of NASA scientists is flying over Greenland to further understand why this is happening. Greenlanders, on the other hand, have a pretty good idea of what to blame (see next story).

#3: Greenlanders are convinced of climate change

Greenlanders are not snoozing on global warming. According to the first-ever national survey examining the human impact of the climate emergency, dubbed Greenlandic Perspectives on Climate Change, 92 percent of people in Greenland believe climate change is happening.

As for the 8 percent of respondents who didn’t answer in the affirmative? Only 1 percent actually said they didn’t believe in climate change, and around 6 percent said they didn’t know.

More than three-quarters of Greenlanders surveyed said they’ve felt the effects of climate change, with many expressing concerns about everything from its impact on sled dogs to food security.

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Greenland’s moment in the sun goes beyond Trump’s real estate interests

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This Hill, This Valley – Hal Borland

by Myrna Posted on September 3, 2017

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

This Hill, This Valley

Hal Borland

Genre: Nature

Price: $9.99

Publish Date: January 14, 2014

Publisher: Open Road Media

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


A classic country memoir—Hal Borland’s masterful story of one year spent immersed in nature on his New England farm After a nearly fatal bout of appendicitis, Hal Borland decided to leave the city behind and move with his wife to a farmhouse in rural Connecticut. Their new home on one hundred acres inspired Borland to return to nature. In this masterpiece of American nature writing, he describes such wonders as the peace of a sky full of stars, the breathless beauty of blossoming plants, the way rain swishes as it hits a river, and the invigorating renewal brought by the changing seasons. The delights of nature as Borland observes them seem boundless, and his sense of awe is contagious. “[Hal Borland is the] beloved spokesman for all of us who love the earth and who find sustenance in nature.” —Loren Eiseley Hal Borland (1900–1978) was a nature writer and novelist who produced numerous bestselling books including memoirs and young adult classics, as well as decades of nature writing for the  New York Times . Borland considered himself a “natural philosopher,” and he was interested in exploring the way human life was bound to the greater world of plants, animals, and natural processes. 

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This Hill, This Valley – Hal Borland

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Want Pollinators to Visit Your Yard? Here’s How to Attract Them.

by ElviaWootton Posted on June 24, 2016

One way to protect the birds, bees, bats and beetles that help pollinate plants is by growing a garden that will help feed and nurture them. National Pollinator Week is a perfect time to plant a garden these creatures will love. Here’s how to get it off the ground.

Choose Your Plants – Start by identifying the “eco region” you live in. The Pollinator Partnership offers plant guides to attract pollinators for 32 different regions of the U.S., plus Canada. Some examples of eco regions are: the Sierran Steppe, the Southeastern mixed forest, prairie parkland (subtropical), Ouachita mixed forest, outer coastal and Lower Mississippi riverine. You can find the guide that’s right for your ecoregion here.

Learn About Your Eco Region – The guide to your ecoregion will describe your microclimate, general topography and the flora (plants) and fauna (animals) commonly found in your region. It’ll provide an estimate of the amount of rain that falls in your ecoregion annually, let you know when the first frost usually strikes, and when the last frost usually occurs, which normally signals when it’s time to plant.

Get Familiar With the Plant Traits the Pollinators Like – For example, bats prefer dull white, green or purple flowers with a strong musty odor emitted at night. On the other hand, bees prefer bright white, yellow or blue flowers that emit a fresh, mild scent and that have a sort of landing platform they can sit on, since they don’t extract pollen when they’re flying. Birdsneed strong perch supports and are attracted to scarlet, orange, red or white flowers. Pollinators are different animals, so the greater variety of plants you grow, the greater variety of pollinators you’ll attract.

Plant for Food – Flowers provide nectar and pollen, but fermenting fallen fruits also provide food for bees, beetles and butterflies.

Plant in Groups, and Plant a Lot – Planting in groups increases the efficiency by which the pollinator can feed on your plants. That makes it easier both to gather the pollen and to transfer the pollen to the same species, rather than depositing it on a plant that can’t use it.

Plant Many Different Plants – This “biodiversity” will attract and support a bevy of different pollinators while also making your garden more interesting and beautiful to behold.

Don’t Necessarily Weed – What may be a weed to you may be another great source of nectar and pollen to a pollinator. Before you pull a weed, make sure it’s not breakfast, lunch or dinner for the insects and birds you’ve started attracting to your yard.

Grow Different Sizes of Plants, but Also Leave Bare Soil – Different birds and insects inhabit plants at different heights, so make a variety available. Dead tree snags make good shelter, as does bare soil for ground nesting insects.

Provide Water – A pond with gently moving water so mosquitoes don’t proliferate provides drinking and bathing water for pollinators, as does a small container, like the bottom dish of a planter. Make sure the sides slope so the animals can approach the water without drowning.

Grow Organically – Skip the toxic pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers. Pollinators are small to tiny animals and even extremely smalldoses of potent chemicals can kill or harm them.

Plant for Beauty as Well as For Bounty – Make sure you enjoy your garden as much as the pollinators do. Plan your garden so you have something blooming spring, summer, fall and even winter. You may not drink the nectar of the plants you cultivate, but there’s no reason why you can’t relish their gorgeous blooms and rich fragrances.

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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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Want Pollinators to Visit Your Yard? Here’s How to Attract Them.

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The Story of How Maine’s Governor Got His Dog Will Make You Angry

by JustinaBingle Posted on May 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, Maine Gov. Paul LePage posted a photo of the newest member of his family: a Jack Russell terrier mix named Veto—an apparent reference to the combative Republican’s record of rejecting legislation.

But for one woman, Veto’s adoption was unwelcome news. Heath Arsenault, a victim of sexual assault, told local news outlet NECN she had been hoping to adopt the animal herself as an emotional support dog. She said she was heartbroken when she learned that the shelter had bent the rules to allow the governor to adopt him before he became available to the public.

“I just saw the picture and I broke down,” Arsenault said. “He was just the right size for my apartment and he’s just really sweet.”

Unbeknownst to her, LePage had also seen the dog on the Greater Androscoggin Humane Society’s website. But unlike Arsenault, who planned to take off of work on Wednesday to ensure she was first in the adoption line, LePage dropped by the shelter a day early and snagged Veto before the general public had an opportunity to do so.

“It wasn’t about, ‘Oh, I wanted that dog and somebody else adopted it,” Arsenault, added. “It just felt like my happiness was taken away from me. Bettering my relationships—that was taken away from me.”

“No one should be given special privileges, even if they are the governor,” she told the Portland Press Herald.

The shelter has since admitted to breaking its own rules by giving LePage a chance to adopt the dog a day earlier than the public.

It remains to be seen if Veto will soon be moving to Washington, DC, as LePage is reportedly gunning for a position in the Trump administration.

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The Story of How Maine’s Governor Got His Dog Will Make You Angry

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One Hospital in This City Gave Vulnerable Women an Option. Now It’s Gone.

by MercedeDennis Posted on February 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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If a pregnant woman in the Greater Cincinnati area receives the diagnosis of a fetal abnormality such as Tay-Sachs disease or anencephaly—in which a major part of the fetus’ brain does not develop—she is no longer able to terminate the pregnancy in a local hospital.

The Christ Hospital in Mount Auburn was the last hospital in the city of more than 2 million to provide this service, but two months ago it enacted a new policy that prohibits physicians from performing abortions in fetal anomaly cases. The hospital will now only terminate pregnancies “in situations deemed to be a threat to the life of the mother,” the new policy reads.

“The cases are highly emotional and tragic,” Danielle Craig, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio, told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “Under these circumstances, for many patients, an overnight stay in a hospital is better than an outpatient procedure, and women should have that option.”

Comprehensive fetal testing, like ultrasounds of the heart and anatomical sonograms, are typically performed at around 20 weeks’ gestation and can reveal a host of disorders, from genetic problems to fetal development gone awry. Late mid-term abortions are less common than first-trimester abortions, so this option is likely taken by women who are facing some kind of severe fetal birth defect.

For women in Cincinnati who decide to terminate their pregnancies after receiving this diagnosis, the only other option to get an abortion would be at the local Planned Parenthood affiliate. But if the abnormality comes with certain health risks that may complicate the procedure and endanger the life of the mother, the case would have to be referred back to a hospital outside the Greater Cincinnati area, according to Craig.

According to the Ohio Department of Health’s annual report, only 84 of more than 21,000 abortions were performed in hospitals in 2014—merely 0.4 percent of all abortions statewide. Christ Hospital reported performing a total of 59 such abortions in the past five and a half years.

Ohio has several abortion restrictions in place, including requiring counseling with information to discourage abortions, a 24-hour waiting period between counseling and abortion, and the right for all medical professional and institutions to refuse to provide an abortion.

Bans on abortion because of fetal abnormalities are not common in the United States. Only North Dakota has a statewide ban. Arizona, Minnesota, and Oklahoma require counseling if a hospital abortion is sought because of a lethal fetal abnormality. And in some cases, as with the Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, a single hospital enacts the policy.

During the 2012 presidential race, candidate Rick Santorum declared that 90 percent of fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome are aborted, but no comprehensive data exists on how many women choose to abort after a fetal abnormality is detected. In early 2013, Americans United for Life put forth draft model legislation that aimed to end “discrimination based on genetic abnormalities,” as AUL president and CEO Charmaine Yoest put it. The North Dakota ban was a result—Indiana and Missouri also picked it up, but the measures ultimately failed.

The Zika virus—a virus transmitted by both mosquitos and sexual encounters that may be linked to microcephaly—has focused attention on the issue of pregnancy termination in cases of fetal abnormalities. Women in El Salvador, Brazil, Honduras, and Colombia, where the virus is spreading, have been urged to avoid pregnancy. While the North American climate is inhospitable to the mosquito population that is responsible for the spread closer to the equator, the potential reach of the virus does include a small sliver of the southern United States, according to a map by the World Health Organization.

Should the virus spread in the United States, women who live where fetal abnormality abortions are prohibited may still have an option. In the 1960s, when the rubella pandemic hit, the virus caused birth defects such as blindness and deafness. Although abortion was illegal in the decade before Roe v. Wade, “therapeutic abortions“—meaning doctors verified that the procedure was medically necessary—were allowed.

The specifics of the Zika virus are still being determined by scientists and medical professionals, but if the connection between the virus and microcephaly is confirmed, it could have a powerful impact on reproductive policy in Latin America and the United States.

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One Hospital in This City Gave Vulnerable Women an Option. Now It’s Gone.

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Little Did These Adorable Kids Know That Carly Fiorina Was Using Them as Anti-Abortion Props

by LeticiaManna Posted on January 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Carly Fiorina has upset some Iowa parents, who say the presidential candidate “ambushed” their children and used them as the backdrop of an anti-abortion rally.

On Wednesday, the former Hewlett-Packard executive was attending an anti-abortion rally at the Greater Des Moines botanical garden as part of a campaign stop in Iowa. After entering the gardens, she passed a group of preschoolers on a field trip. According to the Des Moines Register, Fiorina “headed straight for a group of giggling 4- and 5-year-olds,” and ushered them onto the rally’s stage and beneath a giant picture of a fetus.

“We’re being told to sit down and be quiet about our God, about our guns, and about the sanctity of life,” Fiorina told the crowd. “No one is going to tell me to sit down and be quiet, not on this issue, not on any issue. And the more we talk about abortion, the more people learn, the more we find common ground.”

The presidential candidate has made her opposition to abortion a central part of her campaign. During the second GOP primary debate in September, Fiorina claimed she’d seen video of a “fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says we have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.” (As Mother Jones reported soon after, the footage she described was fabricated by Carly for America, the super-PAC backing her candidacy.) Fiorina also recently told Fox News that she believes most Americans agree with her that abortion should be banned “for any reason at all after five months.” Nearly 20 states ban abortion after about 20 weeks, or five months, of pregnancy, but most allow exceptions for the life and health of the pregnant woman.

But Fiorina’s spontaneous inclusion of the children at her pro-life rally on Wednesday has upset at least one parent, who says the candidate did not get permission to use the children during the event. “The kids went there to see the plants,” Chris Beck, the father of a four-year-old at the event, told the Guardian. “She ambushed my son’s field trip”

“Taking them into a pro-life/abortion discussion was very poor taste and judgment,” Beck continued, adding, “I would not want my four-year-old going to that forum—he can’t fully comprehend that stuff. He likes dinosaurs, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers.”

Sarah Isgur Flores, Fiorina’s deputy campaign manager, refuted the claim that Fiorina forced the children to attend her event, saying that the group followed her onto the stage. “I guess the kids must have thought she was pretty neat,” Flores said, “because then their teachers and parents and the kids all followed Carly into the event complete with Carly stickers.”

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Little Did These Adorable Kids Know That Carly Fiorina Was Using Them as Anti-Abortion Props

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Girls Are the Fastest-Growing Group in the Juvenile Justice System

by MarielBrookfiel Posted on October 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over the past 20 years, there’s been a promising decline in arrests of youths in the United States. The reasons for the drop are elusive, but one factor might be a renewed interest within the juvenile justice system in paying better attention to child welfare before kids are drawn to crime. States are also seeking alternatives to traditional punishment once kids are in the system.

But a new report out this week finds that for young girls, the trend is going in the opposite direction. The proportion of girls in the juvenile justice system has increased at every stage of the process over the last 20 years, from arrests to detention and probation.

National Women’s Law Center/ National Crittenton Foundation

The report’s authors, Boston College law professor Francine Sherman and Annie Balck, a policy consultant at the National Juvenile Justice Network, attribute the gender gap to the juvenile justice system’s long-standing “protective and paternalistic” approach to dealing with delinquent girls. The system tends to detain girls, the authors write, because they’re seen as needing protection. It’s a strategy that is ill-suited to the personal histories of trauma, physical violence, and poverty that lead many girls into bad behavior. Even when the system acknowledges these factors, there are limited options available beyond traditional arrests and detention.

This report highlights several disparities in the treatment of girls in the system. For instance, there’s a gender gap in the detention of girls for low-level crimes: Nearly 40 percent of detained girls were brought in on status offenses (behavior that is only illegal when you’re under 18), compared with just 25 percent of boys.

National Women’s Law Center/ National Crittenton Foundation

Among girls in the system, there’s also stark racial inequity. In 2013, African American girls, the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population, were 20 percent more likely to be detained than white girls, while American Indian girls were 50 percent more likely.

The authors also argue that detention is uniquely harmful to youths, and can lead to catastrophic consequences for girls. One study cited in the report found that girls who had been detained were five times more likely to die by age 29 than children who had not. For Latina girls, that likelihood increased—they were nine times more likely to die by age 29 than the general population. Detention is a drastic and developmentally incorrect measure to take, the report’s authors maintain, because in most cases the crimes girls commit are the result of past trauma that isn’t being properly addressed. Few have been found delinquent for more serious offenses such as assault.

The report cites a 2014 study of traumatic experiences in justice-involved youth. In the study, 31 percent of girls reported a personal experience of sexual violence in the home, 41 percent reported being physically abused, and 84 percent reported experiencing family violence. Girls reported having been sexually abused at a rate 4.4 times higher than boys.

“Greater restriction is rarely the answer and cannot address the violence and deprivation underlying so many girl offenses,” write the authors. To reverse the growing gender gap in juvenile justice, they say, “systems must craft reforms that directly address the root causes of their behavior and provide an alternate, non-justice-system path for girls’ healthy development and healing.”

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Girls Are the Fastest-Growing Group in the Juvenile Justice System

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Here’s What Martin Luther King Jr. Really Thought About Urban Riots

by ClydeFyans Posted on April 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Since the death of Freddie Gray at the hands of Baltimore police, many commentators have stressed the need for peaceful protests, while others have expressed empathy for the violent unrest that soon followed. It wasn’t long before some in the former camp invoked the ideas of an iconic civil rights leader: “I just want to hear you say there should be peaceful protests, not violent protests, in the tradition of Martin Luther King,” Wolf Blitzer told DeRay McKesson, an activist and community organizer he interviewed on CNN on Tuesday.

More coverage of the protests in Baltimore.


Eyewitnesses: The Baltimore Riots Didn’t Start the Way You Think


Obama: It’s About Decades of Inequality


Rand Paul: Blame Absentee Fathers


What MLK Really Thought About Riots


Photos: Residents Help Clean Up


Orioles Exec: It’s Inequality, Stupid


These Teens Aren’t Waiting Around for Someone Else to Fix Their City


Ray Lewis: “Violence Is Not the Answer”


Bloods and Crips Want “Nobody to Get Hurt”

But what did MLK really think about urban riots? “They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood,” King said in a speech at the American Psychology Associations’ annual convention in Washington, DC, in September 1967. Here’s what else he had to say:

Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights. There are thus elements of emotional catharsis in the violent act. This may explain why most cities in which riots have occurred have not had a repetition, even though the causative conditions remain. It is also noteworthy that the amount of physical harm done to white people other than police is infinitesimal and in Detroit whites and Negroes looted in unity.

A profound judgment of today’s riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, ‘If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.’

The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services. The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.

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Here’s What Martin Luther King Jr. Really Thought About Urban Riots

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America Officially Lost the Vietnam War 40 Years Ago This Week

by APJSvenmzo Posted on April 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

If our wars in the Greater Middle East ever end, it’s a pretty safe bet that they will end badly—and it won’t be the first time. The “fall of Saigon” in 1975 was the quintessential bitter end to a war. Oddly enough, however, we’ve since found ways to reimagine that denouement which miraculously transformed a failed and brutal war of American aggression into a tragic humanitarian rescue mission. Our most popular Vietnam end-stories bury the long, ghastly history that preceded the “fall,” while managing to absolve us of our primary responsibility for creating the disaster. Think of them as silver-lining tributes to good intentions and last-ditch heroism that may come in handy in the years ahead.

The trick, it turned out, was to separate the final act from the rest of the play. To be sure, the ending in Vietnam was not a happy one, at least not for many Americans and their South Vietnamese allies. This week we mark the 40th anniversary of those final days of the war. We will once again surely see the searing images of terrified refugees, desperate evacuations, and final defeat. But even that grim tale offers a lesson to those who will someday memorialize our present round of disastrous wars: toss out the historical background and you can recast any US mission as a flawed but honorable, if not noble, effort by good-guy rescuers to save innocents from the rampaging forces of aggression. In the Vietnamese case, of course, the rescue was so incomplete and the defeat so total that many Americans concluded their country had “abandoned” its cause and “betrayed” its allies. By focusing on the gloomy conclusion, however, you could at least stop dwelling on the far more incriminating tale of the war’s origins and expansion, and the ruthless way the US waged it.

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America Officially Lost the Vietnam War 40 Years Ago This Week

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Here’s What a Hillary Clinton Presidency Would Mean for Global Warming

by Myrna Posted on April 13, 2015

Clinton sees climate change as a major threat. But she still wants to boost fossil fuel supplies. Hillary Clinton at the 2014 National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas John Locher/AP It’s strange to remember how bitterly divisive the 2008 Democratic presidential primary battle was. Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s platforms and ideological positioning were awfully similar. And on the chief difference between them—Obama’s less hawkish foreign policy—the victor wiped away that distinction by appointing Clinton as secretary of state. Now Clinton has announced her candidacy and is poised to coast through the 2016 Democratic primaries as her party’s prohibitive favorite. Would a Clinton presidency be essentially a third Obama term? On climate change and energy, it seems the answer is yes. For better and for worse, Clinton’s record and stances are cut from the same cloth as Obama’s. Her close confidant and campaign chair, John Podesta, served as an Obama advisor with a focus on climate policy. Like Obama and Podesta, Clinton certainly seems to appreciate the seriousness of the threat of catastrophic climate change and to strongly support domestic policies and international agreements to reduce carbon emissions. But, like Obama and Podesta, she subscribes to an all-of-the-above energy policy. She promotes domestic drilling for oil and natural gas, including through potentially dangerous fracking. (The Clinton campaign did not respond to our request for comment.) Here are eight important points about Clinton’s climate and energy views: 1. She understands the science. In a December speech to the League of Conservation Voters, Clinton said, “The science of climate change is unforgiving, no matter what the deniers may say. Sea levels are rising; ice caps are melting; storms, droughts and wildfires are wreaking havoc…If we act decisively now we can still head off the most catastrophic consequences.” Read the rest at Grist. See the article here: Here’s What a Hillary Clinton Presidency Would Mean for Global Warming

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Here’s What a Hillary Clinton Presidency Would Mean for Global Warming

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