November 2019, a group of more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries named climate change an "emergency" that would lead to "untold human suffering" if no big shifts in action takes place:[3][4][5]

We declare clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency. To secure a sustainable future, we must change how we live. [This] entails major transformations in the ways our global society functions and interacts with natural ecosystems.
The emergency declaration emphasized that economic growth and population growth "are among the most important drivers of increases in CO
2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion" and that "we need bold and drastic transformations regarding economic and population policies".[3]

A 2021 update to the 2019 climate emergency declaration focuses on 31 planetary vital signs (including greenhouse gases and temperature, rising sea levels, energy use, ice mass, ocean heat content, Amazon rainforest loss rate, etc), and recent changes to them. Of these, 18 are reaching critical levels. The COVID-19 lockdowns, which reduced transportation and consumption levels, had very little impact on mitigating or reversing these trends. The authors say only profound changes in human behavior can meet these challenges and emphasize the need to move beyond the idea that global heating is a stand alone emergency, and is one facet of the worsening environmental crisis. This necessitates the need for transformational system changes and to focus on the root cause of these crises, the vast human overexploitation of the earth, rather than just addressing symptom relief. They point to six areas where fundamental changes need to be made:[6]

(1) energy, eliminating fossil fuels and shifting to renewables;
(2) short-lived air pollutants, slashing black carbon (soot), methane, and hydrofluorocarbons;
(3) nature, restoring and permanently protecting Earth's ecosystems to store and accumulate carbon and restore biodiversity;
(4) food, switching to mostly plant-based diets, reducing food waste, and improving cropping practices;
(5) economy, moving from indefinite GDP growth and overconsumption by the wealthy to ecological economics and a circular economy, in which prices reflect the full environmental costs of goods and services; and
(6) human population, stabilizing and gradually reducing the population by providing voluntary family planning and supporting education and rights for all girls and young women, which has been proven to lower fertility rates.

Tell the truth or your three kids will be fatally shot,” Al Schmidt, a Republican city commissioner on the Philadelphia Board of Elections, quoted one such threat to him.

“RINO stole election, we steal lives,” read another threat.

Another said: “Cops can’t help you. heads on spikes, treasonous Schmidts.”

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the state’s top election official and a Democrat, testified that “armed protesters” gathered in front of her house, chanting, “Katie come out and play. We are watching you,” after Trump lied that his loss in the state was due to election fraud.

“As an elected official, I expected that sometimes I would have constituents who were unhappy with me,” Hobbs said. “But I never expected that holding this office would result in far-right trolls threatening my children, threatening my husband’s employment at a children’s hospital or calling my office saying I deserve to die and asking, ‘What is she wearing today, so she’ll be easy to get.’”

Today's hearing before the Senate Rules Committee was designed to gather testimony from state and local election officials about the torrent of harassment and death threats that followed Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. The hearing was part of Democrats’ push to pass voting rights legislation that includes new protections for election officials.

The bill introduces new felony crimes for threatening, intimidating and disclosing personal information of election workers. It also expands the number of those workers who qualify for such protection.

Since Trump’s various attempts to overturn his loss, state and local election officials, in areas of all political stripes, have faced a torrent of constant harassment and death threats.

One in three election officials now feel unsafe in their job, and one in five believe death threats to be a main job concern, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonprofit that backs voting rights legislation.

The Trump-inspired threats specifically followed officials targeted by the former president. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and those in his office faced constant death threats after the Republican election official refused Trump’s request that he “find” enough votes to reverse the state’s election outcome.

“You would think there might be some folks on the left who would say, ‘This just proved this is the guy we wanted to put in there,’ ” a former Justice Department lawyer, who served during part of the Trump administration, told me. “It’s amazing how people jump from ‘Merrick Garland, centrist hero, fair-minded judge, who was unfairly denied a chance to be on the Supreme Court’ to” accusing him of a “cover up” for Trump and Barr. “That’s what he has to struggle against.”

During a hearing in June, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy asked Garland about the memo and the defamation suit. “I know about the criticisms,” Garland said. “Look, the job of the Justice Department in making decisions of law is not to back any administration, previous or present. … Sometimes it means that we have to make a decision about the law that we would never have made and that we strongly disagree with as a matter of policy.”

Of course, all the criticism from the left hasn’t bought Garland any goodwill among Trumpist conservatives. In June, when Garland announced the administration’s new domestic terrorism strategy — with its finding that the top violent extremist threat comes from white supremacists — Laura Ingraham of Fox News displayed a collage portrait of Garland and the accused Capitol rioter known as the QAnon Shaman with the headline, “Who’s Really Terrorizing America?”
Later that month, after Garland announced the department was suing the state of Georgia over voting rights, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp fumed: “The Biden administration is weaponizing the Department of Justice to serve their own partisan goals.”

The thankless predicament of any attorney general in 2021 is that it’s become the default position of partisans on both sides to see the Justice Department as a political institution. Even worse, any move to fix that perception is itself viewed with deep suspicion.

.... It isn’t yet clear whether Garland will go as far as many observers — both on the left and in the center — want him to go in pushing new institutional safeguards and reforms. When Garland invokes [Ford's AG, Edward Levi's] name in speeches, it’s usually to imply that everything will be better if the department simply rededicates itself to the norms Levi espoused. He doesn’t suggest that, after Trump, those norms might need reinforcing or updating with new standards.

It’s early in his tenure, but thus far, Garland has only tiptoed into this realm. In the wake of revelations that the Trump Justice Department had subpoenaed reporters’ phone records in leak investigations, Garland promised to prohibit the collection of reporters’ records and to work with Congress on legislation to address the issue. But beyond that, he has been vague about what he thinks needs fixing. ... When evidence of a problem emerges, he routes the matter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Horowitz is looking into the collection of reporters’ records and congressional accounts; whether Justice Department officials improperly tried to overturn the presidential election; and the circumstances of a U.S. attorney in Georgia abruptly resigning after Trump pressed officials there to question the vote count.

Garland’s reliance on the inspector general frustrates reform advocates who want to see a more hands-on effort by the attorney general himself. I spoke to a number of people who have proposals that they say could help build bipartisan confidence in the department.

Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, is planning this summer to reintroduce the Protecting Our Democracy Act, which he co-sponsored in the fall. The original version of the bill would require, among other measures, the attorney general to keep a log of communications with the White House, and the inspector general to report to Congress any improper political interference...

...“I’m very fond of and a great admirer of Attorney General Garland,” Whitehouse added. “But he comes out of an ivory tower judgeship, far away from a lot of the political mischief. And I’m not sure how much situational awareness he has about the forces that are operating … around the department and operated through the department, it appears, during the Trump administration.”

Even supporters of Garland’s approach so far want bold action — at least in the realm of norm-building. In their book “After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency,” Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel to Obama, and Goldsmith, the veteran of the George W. Bush administration, propose numerous ways to buck up Justice Department norms to reduce the opportunity for political meddling.
The ideas include reinforcing the so-called 60-day rule that bars disclosure of major decisions related to investigations too close to Election Day; making clear the attorney general should obey the same strictures against discussing investigations in public that line prosecutors follow; formalizing the factors that trigger counterintelligence investigations of political candidates; and adding language to internal manuals and training to ensure that improper partisan motivations do not guide actions. They also propose legislation, such as a statute clarifying the circumstances under which the department could charge a president with obstruction of justice.

“Even if we can be confident that … the administration will stay on the right path under Merrick Garland, the point here is to establish standards that other administrations are going to have to confront,” Bauer told me.

Following Levi's example of engaging the public in the discussion could also help. “The reason for him to speak publicly to these issues at some point in adopting some of these measures is to underscore that this is institutional reform,” Bauer continued. “It’s not just a moment of shift in policy at the Department of Justice, it’s an institutional moment in which a marker is laid down and other administrations are going to have to confront it in the future.”

"In Glasgow, the United States will showcase President Biden's whole-of-government approach to tackling the climate crisis," a White House official told CNN.
They will demonstrate the strength of the entire US government working in lock-step to reduce emissions and achieve our international climate commitments
-- and that the countries who take decisive action on climate will reap the economic and jobs benefits of the clean energy future.

Refreshingly Honest Billionaire Says Media Purchase Will Be Used For Propaganda

The billionaire CEO of the multibillion-dollar corporation that recently purchased the news media outlet POLITICO has said that its newly acquired employees will be required to support Israel and the capitalist world order.

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the German publisher Axel Springer, said that Politico staffers will be required to adhere to a set of principles which include "support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-market economy, among others."

“These values are like a constitution, they apply to every employee of our company,” Mr. Döpfner told WSJ. People with a fundamental problem with any of these principles “should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly,” he said.

I mean, how refreshing is that?
How often does a billionaire corporation buy up a media property and just straightforwardly tell you they're going to be using it to push propaganda? They even say what the propaganda will be. It makes you feel like your intelligence is being respected.