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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
I don’t know about where you live but I do know this. Cultivate plants on your property that nourish bees, butterflies, and other insects. Humans are destroying Earth’s matrix of life, and the end result will be humanity’s endangerment. Our grandchildren will curse us if we do not work now to restore the health of the matrix.
Not a single bug… Credit: Thom Hartmann
It’s early summer here in the Pacific Northwest and the flowers are blooming; above is a photo Louise took with her iPhone yesterday morning as we were walking along the Columbia River. The hillside is ablaze with wildflowers.
But it was also eerily silent. Look carefully: No matter how much you enlarge the photo you’ll not see a single insect. Thirty years ago this hillside was swarmed with bees, flies, and dozens of other winged bugs. Today, although pretty, walking by it felt like I was passing a graveyard.
I’ll never forget the day the trucker called into my radio show from southern Illinois. It was about seventeen years ago, and he was a long-haul driver who regularly ran a coast-to-coast route from the southeast to the Pacific Northwest a few dozen times a year.
“Used to be when I was driving through the southern part of the Midwest like I am right now,” he said, “I’d have to stop every few hours to clean the bugs off my windshield. It’s been […]
You would think that wind energy would be the obvious next step for the carbon energy industry, as we exit the carbon power era. You might think that but the carbon corporations don’t or can’t see it as this important article on this technology reports. Note also how criminal Trump did everything he could to sabotage the development of wind energy, to serve the carbon industry’s interest, and how disinformation to damage the development of wind power was used by MAGAt world. Note finally, as the article describes how the China is leading the world in wind power development.
In 2020, installation was completed on the first wind turbines installed in U.S. federal waters 27 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va. The Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind pilot project is designed to demonstrate a grid-connected, 12-megawatt offshore wind test facility. Credit: Stephen Boutwell / Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
In the early 2000s, a long-time Louisiana engineer and entrepreneur thought it would be natural for the oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico to expand into offshore wind. The industry could use the same workforce, the same shipyards and possibly even the same platforms to generate renewable power.
With designs, data and offshore leases from Texas, Herman Schellstede and his team planned to build a 62-turbine wind farm off Galveston’s coast— one of the first such proposals in the United States and the first in the Gulf of Mexico.
The team approached banks and even Koch Industries seeking financing for the $300 million wind farm, he said. […]
Here is some semi-good news. The industrialized nations, including the United States, are doing better to help developing nations prepare for what climate change is doing, but late and not nearly enough. The governments of the developed nations of the world just seem to understand yet that the Earth’s matrix of life is under threat, and that humanity is simply not taking climate change seriously enough — with criminal Trump and the Republicans amongst the evilest examples of this failure
Why it matters: The delay in fulfilling the pledge, which was made at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009, generated resentment and doubts among developing nations regarding future climate funding promises.
Zoom in: According to a new OECD report, developed countries provided $115.9 billion in climate finance for developing nations in 2022, exceeding the $100 billion annual goal for the first time.
This was a 30% jump in climate finance from 2021, the report found, which was the biggest year-on-year increase.
Hitting the $100 billion goal comes just as countries work to come up with a new climate finance target, known as the New Collective Quantified Goal, to be decided at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, in November.
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, Associate Writer - The New Republic
Stephan:
About 8% of pregnancies in the US develop complications that could harm the mother or baby if left untreated. If you are a pregnant woman in Texas and something goes wrong you now have only two choices. Leave the state or die.
Texas pro-choice demonstration. Credit: Montinique Monroe / Getty
The Texas Supreme Court unanimously rejected a challenge to the state’s abortion laws Friday, overturning a lower court’s decision that would have allowed women within Texas to actually access abortions granted within the confines of the state’s ban.
The case, Zurawski v. Texas, began with five women and eventually grew to represent 20 women and two doctors. It became the strongest challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s myriad abortion restrictions implemented since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the suit last year, argued that while the state’s laws technically left room for abortions in urgent circumstances, they were also so vague that they practically restricted all medical practitioners from actually considering the procedure as an option. Specifically, people could undergo abortions during complicated pregnancies so long as their doctor made a “good faith judgment” that it was medically necessary.
But opponents to the laws have argued that “good faith” is too subjective for language determining medical access—and could potentially open doctors up to […]
Russia has been trying to support criminal Trump first to become President, then to cut deals with him when he was President and, now, as he seeks to be re-elected. It is perfectly clear who Putin favors and why. The interesting thing for me is that yesterday as I was working I had the Foix Disinformation Channel playing in the background, and they virtually mirrored Russian TV. In an early period of American history this would be a major story. Today, I found only two mentions of it, and those only minor websites.
US President Donald Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017 Credit: AFP).
Russian state television personalities this week were reportedly crestfallen by news of former President Donald Trump’s criminal conviction on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
The Daily Beast’s Julia Davis reports that television personalities in Russia were despondent to see their preferred candidate dealt a guilty verdict, even as they hoped he could still go on to win the 2024 presidential election.
State Duma member Aleksei Zhuravlyov, for one, said that the jury’s decision to convict Trump was a poor reflection on Americans’ intelligence.
“There are idiots in every country, but this is the only instance where idiots have their own country,” he declared. “This is something new in history.”
TV host Dmitry Kulikov, meanwhile, angrily declared that, “They wronged our Donald Trump!” before interviewing […]
LISA MASCARO and MARY CLARE JALONICK, Reporters - Associated Press
Stephan:
Here is a clear example of the failure of the U.S. Congress, both Democrat and Republican leaders. They have invited Benjamin Netanyahu, a war criminal responsible for the death of tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children, to address a joint session of Congress in order to show how ironclad our commitment to Israel remains. The result will be more death in Gaza, and further diminishment of the respect and stature of the United States in the rest of the world.
War criminal Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited to address a joint session of Congress by both Democrat and Republican leadership. Credit: AP
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congressional leaders have invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deliver an address a the Capitol, a show of wartime support for the longtime ally despite mounting political divisions over Israel’s military assault on Gaza.
The invitation from House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, along with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, has been in the works for some time. No date for the speech was set.
Leaders said the invitation was extended to “highlight America’s solidarity with Israel.”
“We invite you to share the Israeli government’s vision for defending democracy, combatting terror and establishing a just and lasting peace in the region,” they wrote.
A speech by Netanyahu would almost certainly expose election-year divisions in the U.S., where a growing number of Democrats have turned away from the […]
Journalism, as it has existed for centuries, is disappearing in the United States. First, local newspapers are closing by the dozens. Getting local news is becoming harder and harder to obtain. Second, even when a paper still exists, as this article describes, the stories it presents may not be written by actual journalists or even humans. Third, most people today seem to get what news they read from social media, where disinformation is the norm. The result is a population so ill-informed that democracy may not survive.
A network of local news outlets has been trading in human hands for AI to report stories. Credit: Moyo Studio /E+ / Getty
The articles on a local news site popping up around the country appear to cover what any community outlet would focus on: crime, local politics, weather and happenings. “In-depth reporting about your home area,” the outlet’s slogan proudly declares.
But a closer look at the bylines populating the local site and a national network of others — Sarah Kim, Jake Rodriguez, Mitch M. Rosenthal — reveals a tiny badge with the words “AI.” These are not real bylines. In fact, the names don’t even belong to real humans. The articles were written with the use of artificial intelligence.
The outlet, Hoodline, is not the first or only news site to harness AI. News organizations across the world are grappling with how to take advantage of the rapidly developing technology, while also not being overrun by it.
But experts warn that relying too heavily on AI could wreck the credibility of news organizations and potentially supercharge the spread of misinformation if not kept in close check. Media companies integrating AI in news publishing have also seen it backfire, resulting in public […]
Maura Barrett and Lucas Thompson, Reporters - NBC News
Stephan:
This is very good news. Vermont has now done what every state should do. As this article describes the state has passed a law holding fossil fuel companies responsible for the disasters that are occurring because of the climate change carbon energy has caused. Bravo, Vermont.
Flooding in downtown Montpelier, Vermont, in July 2023. Credit: John Tully / The Washington Post / Getty
A new law in Vermont — the first of its kind in the U.S. — will require fossil fuel companies to pay for a share of the costs of weather disasters fueled by climate change.
Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law on Thursday night without his signature, after it passed in the state Legislature with the support of a supermajority of Democrats.
Vermont’s law has been referred to as the “Climate Superfund Act” because it is modeled after the Environmental Protection Agency’s superfund program, which requires the companies responsible for environmental contamination to either do cleanup work themselves or reimburse the government for it. Vermont’s bill similarly mandates that big oil companies and other high emitters pay for the costs of recovering from and preparing for extreme weather caused by climate change.
Which companies will be charged, and precisely how much, will be determined […]
