Dear friends,
Tomorrow is the solstice. The angle of the sun is sharpest, the light is dramatic, and then, the days begin to lengthen. It is an auspicious time, and though I am not an adherent of any faith, it feels special.
Light is an exquisite metaphor, and the tradition of good news on Tuesdays is one of my ways of bringing light to dark days.
The New York Climate Action Council approved a bold plan of climate action yesterday. A lot of us participated in shaping that plan with our comments.
[T]he nation’s third largest economy is charting a path to slash emissions at an aggressive pace, and supporters hope to see it implemented and the roadmap adopted in other states.
The plan contains detailed recommendations for cutting emissions 40 percent — from 1990 levels — by 2030 and 85 percent by 2050. Buildings and vehicles will have to be electrified, and the state will need to invest in renewable energy projects to generate a lot of megawattage.
Thank the folks who delivered a strong climate scoping plan!
We will be here, reminding legislators to invest in the future. It helps that Democrats retained their supermajority in the NYS Senate, now that a recount has affirmed Senator John Mannion’s victory. . . by ten votes.
On the global scene, Cop15 has produced an agreement to protect biodiversity by halting ecosystem destruction. It is, no doubt, imperfect.
Read the main points of the deal to save nature!
The way in which the objections of some African nations were disregarded may turn out to be a fatal flaw. In addition, the US has not signed on. Still, I’m going to wait for folks more knowledgeable than I am to parse the deal and hope that what we’re seeing is the beginning of something good.
HSBC, the largest bank in Europe, has updated its climate strategy and announced that it will not fund new oil and gas fields. This doesn’t cancel existing financing arrangements. It would be a mistake to see this as inconsequential, however.
“Banks make everything possible, including either the entrenchment of the status quo, that is infrastructure based on fossil fuels, or a transition that’s at the pace and of the kind that science tells us that is needed to address the crisis of climate change,” said Timmons Roberts, a professor at Brown University and director of the Climate Social Science Network. “So big banks making pledges like this are a big deal, a very big deal.”
Climate change studies are now part of the curriculum in Connecticut. They will be mandated in every school beginning this summer. Connecticut is now the second state to require climate change studies in classrooms and to protect them
from budget cuts and climate-denying political views at a time when education in the US has become a serious culture war battleground.
which prevents educational institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating based on sex.
The Dred Scott decision of 1857 is one of the landmark events that led to the Civil War, and widely understood today as a low point in the Court’s history. The Chief Justice who wrote the ruling, Roger Taney, stated that Black people have no rights that a “white man was bound to respect.”
Last week, the House of Representatives voted to remove Taney’s bust from the US Capitol.
One of the legacies of slavery and the mindset of Taney is the practice of police detaining people at length in order to check their records for outstanding warrants. The NYPD just settled a lawsuit brought by the Legal Aid Society about this abusive practice.
The terms of the settlement require changes to the NYPD patrol guide, retraining, and disciplinary action against officers failing to adhere to the new guidance.
The policies now instruct officers that they cannot detain a person while searching for a warrant or open investigation against them unless they have reasonable suspicion to believe the person has committed or is about to commit a crime. Once they no longer have reason to think that someone is breaking the law — for instance, if they search someone for drugs and find nothing on them — police are not allowed to detain them any longer.
The January 6 committee voted unanimously to refer Trump and John Eastman to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. I appreciate all the work that the Jan 6 committee did to cast dramatic light on the attempted coup and to collect the detailed evidence.
Heather Cox Richardson’s reporting on the final hearing is superb, and she included a fun fact I didn’t see elsewhere:
[T]he Coup d’État Project of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois, which maintains the world’s largest registry of coups, attempted coups, and coup conspiracies since World War II, reclassified the events of January 6 as an attempted “auto-coup.” According to its director, Scott Althaus, an auto-coup occurs when “the incumbent chief executive uses illegal or extra-legal means to assume extraordinary powers, seize the power of other branches of government, or render powerless other components of the government such as the legislature or judiciary.”
Someday, we may again live in a nation in which politicians of both parties put country before party, adhere to a coherent set of principles, and engage in the work of governing with good will toward one another and the rest of us.
Meanwhile, I was cheered by this story: New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern called David Seymour, a libertarian, an “arrogant prick” on a hot mic. Then, they both signed an official transcript of the incident to auction off to benefit a prostate cancer charity.
The auction, titled “Ardern, Seymour join forces for pricks everywhere”, ends on 22 December.
Enjoy the winter light at its jaunty angle!
with love,
L