Free Republic

A University of California, Berkeley Student Senator proposed that all student government funding for the Berkeley College Republicans be reallocated to the Black Student Union. According to The Daily Californian, Senator Rizza Estacio made an amendment to the proposed budget allocations to student organizations and university groups which would eliminate the $1,000 funding for the BCR and add it to the budget for the BSU. Estacio said that her reasoning for the reallocation is because the BCRs “have violated a lot of, like, lead center rules during like free speech week,” adding that because of this, the organization does not...

Austin will celebrate Earth Day on April 29 with a festival on the beautiful grounds of Huston-Tillotson University. They will pay tribute to the unique ecosystems of Texas and the Hill Country, the animals and plants that make our region so spectacular. Earth Day is also a potent call to action. So, it is extremely gratifying that Austin’s leadership has heeded the intent of Earth Day with bold action. On Thursday, the City Council signed a resolution endorsing a powerful climate change solution called carbon fee and dividend, making Austin the first city in Texas to do so. Carbon fee...

The number of full-time officials dedicated to climate change in the Foreign Office has dropped by almost 25% in the two years since Boris Johnson became foreign secretary, according to data released under freedom of information (FoI) rules. Johnson has also failed to mention climate change in any official speech since he took the office, in marked contrast to his two predecessors. The cutback in climate change diplomacy has come despite the prime minister, Theresa May, asserting that the UK leads the world on climate action. The UK has been praised for its past climate diplomacy, which helped pave the...

Land reform is a key issue in South Africa, due to the long history of dispossession of indigenous populations by white settlers. Progress has been painfully slow over the past 24 years, but the question of land is now suddenly at the top of the political agenda. A major controversy erupted at the end of February following a motion adopted in parliament, tabled by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and modified by the ANC, which started the process of potentially amending the constitution to allow for the expropriation of (white-owned) land without compensation, and its subsequent redistribution (to black people.)...

A report to be released Friday by the University of Massachusetts points to the challenges the city and the region face in funding solutions to combat climate change, with local neighborhood projects expected to amount to $2.4 billion. The report recommends a layered approach of federal, state, city, and private financing strategies, including: â–  A statewide carbon tax and an increase to the state gas tax that could support a climate resilience fund. â–  The possibility of a Boston climate resilience fee based on water and sewer bills, which could fund city general obligation bonds. â–  The creation of climate-focused...

Putting a price on carbon, in the form of a fee or tax on the use of fossil fuels, coupled with returning the generated revenue to the public in one form or another, can be an effective way to curb emissions of greenhouse gases. That’s one of the conclusions of an extensive analysis of several versions of such proposals, carried out by researchers at MIT and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). What’s more, depending on the exact mechanism chosen, such a tax can also be fair and not hurt low-income households. The analysis was part of a multigroup effort...

Members of the Princeton Student Climate Initiative have drafted a New Jersey Carbon Fee and Dividend Policy, a 94-page white paper outlining a fee-based strategy for reducing carbon emissions and air pollution while minimizing environmental impact. “What a carbon fee and dividend does is it places a fee on fossil fuels based on their carbon content,” said Jonathan Lu ’18, the founder and research director of PSCI. The carbon fee provides an incentive for companies and individuals to reduce emissions. Another key aspect of the policy is that tax revenue will be recycled back to low- to moderate-income households and...

Securing enough money to combat climate change will be a challenge, but is “non-negotiable,” Mayor Martin J. Walsh said yesterday, a day after experts said Boston should expect to pay as much as $2.5 billion to curb the effects of rising seas and increasingly intense storms. “Two billion dollars is (an issue), our budget is $3 billion a year, so of course it’s going to be an issue,” Walsh said. “It’s non-negotiable, we have to do something. We’ve been doing things, we have to actually increase what we’ve been doing.” Earlier this week, climate experts warned city councilors that the...

If they’re a person of color, they pay $12. If they’re white, he’ll tell them they can either pay $12, or they can pay $30 — two and a half times the base price, which reflects the wealth disparity in New Orleans. He tells them the profits will be redistributed to people of color, but not as charity — just to any minority customers of his who want it, regardless of their income or circumstance. “When I tell black folks what’s happening, 90 percent of them start laughing, like, ‘For real?’ They’re tickled,” he said. “White folks, there’s this blank...

The Guardian bolstered the proliferation of lawsuits against governments and companies over climate change by portraying them as incredibly significant. The left-wing British newspaper asked in all seriousness on March 20, “Can Climate Litigation Save the World?” In it, environment editor Damian Carrington’s word choice revealed support for these efforts. He called courts the new “front line” against climate change and cited numerous instances where “groups and individuals seek to hold governments and companies accountable for the damage they are causing.”

Scientists have developed new models to better understand how governments can work together to ensure global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. The different models consider a variety of political, socioeconomic and technological factors, including the impacts of economic inequality, energy demand and regional cooperation. The models considered five different so-called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, or SSPs. A critical value of the paper is the use of the SSPs, which has helped to systematically explore conditions under which such extreme low targets might become attainable," Keywan Riahi, energy program director at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis...

Thousands of women in Bangladesh will receive financing to develop livelihoods that can withstand the effects of climate change in one of the world's hardest-hit countries, the United Nations said. Women and girls in the disaster-prone coastal districts of Satkhira and Khulna will receive assistance from US$33 million (S$44 million) provided by the UN's Green Climate Fund and Bangladesh's Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs. "The rising sea level is a major threat to these areas," Mamunur Rashid, a climate change specialist at the UN Development Programme (UNDP), said from Dhaka. "Women are disproportionately affected by the impacts," Saleemul Huq,...

We the People call upon Congress to apply immigration priority to the South African Farmers facing systematic land confiscation and murder by their own government. These government sanctioned land confiscations / murders are race related (See here - https://tinyurl.com/y7mfmhco ) and our governments responsibility to act by UN law ( See here - https://tinyurl.com/ya5fn63p ) Must not be ignored. White South African Farmers facing genocide in their home land should be given priority as they not only face extinction in their homelands but also stand as a primary example of the kind of immigrants we would want here in our...

NEW DELHI: A turf battle for national highways has erupted with the department of economic affairs (DEA) seeking to take control of the funding for the highway construction programme. After unsuccessfully pushing for corporatisation of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), the DEA has proposed changes in the Central Road Fund (CRF) Act to take control of the allotment of fuel cess for infrastructure projects and to decide the priority of expenditure. So far, the road transport and highways ministry is entitled to get the largest share of the CRF, estimated at 41%. The proposal to use 2.5% of...

The Church offers people 'the soothing remedy of prayer, almsgiving and fasting' during Lent, the Pope said Catholics should use the season of Lent to look for signs and symptoms of being under the spell of false prophets and of living with cold, selfish and hateful hearts, Pope Francis said. Together with “the often bitter medicine of the truth,” the Church – as mother and teacher – offers people “the soothing remedy of prayer, almsgiving and fasting,” the Pope said in his message for Lent, which begins on February 14 for Latin-rite Catholics. The Pope also invited all non-Catholics who...

SEATTLE – When President Trump was candidate Trump, he called climate change a hoax. Since taking the Oval Office, he’s said very little about greenhouse gasses and their impact on the planet. But he did issue a statement that he plans to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to reduce emissions as a way to stop global warming. But West Coast states are driving in the opposite direction, with designs of erecting a green wall built on taxing carbon. “This is both an economic benefit for the state of Washington and a job creator,” said...

OSLO - Global warming is on track to breach the toughest limit set in the Paris climate agreement by the middle of this century unless governments make unprecedented economic shifts from fossil fuels, a draft U.N. report said. The draft, of a report due for publication in October, said governments will also have to start sucking carbon dioxide from the air to achieve the ambition of limiting temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. “There is very high risk that ... global warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels,” the U.N. panel of experts wrote,...

A trio of recently released economic statistics have boosted Democratic hopes of retaking the majority in the House and Senate later this year. First, in December, private employers increased payrolls by stepping up hiring and reducing layoffs. Second, unemployment among blacks fell to the lowest level since 1972. Third, the number of Americans on food stamps fell by two million. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez labeled these statistics “the starkest of warnings concerning the sad fate in store for average Americans under Republican government. Millions are being forced out of the social safety net so meticulously constructed for them...

The challenge of a possible cholera outbreak is facing Bangladesh as the climate-induced warming of the earth induces the growth for algae and bacteria, experts have observed. The temperature rise in Bangladesh will make possible the growth for various algae and bacteria, leading to more cholera cases in the country, said Dr Md Sirajul Islam, emeritus scientist of International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh. Global warming caused by climate change might influence the transmission dynamic of cholera, he added. The environmental microbiologist came up with the observation during his presentation on water treatment as an adaptation option to climate...

The globe is set to start drying out dramatically if global warming isn't stopped. That's the message from a new environmental study published by the journal Nature Climate Change . Over 25% of Earth will start experiencing the effects of "aridificaiton" by the year 2050 if humans don't meet the changes proposed by the Paris climate agreement . The study claims that if the Earth's average temperature goes up by two degrees Celsius over the next 32 years, the planet will start to become a desert. “Our research predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20-30 percent of the world’s...