It’s interesting that Slate’s Christian Cauterucci failed to ask US Representative (and massive Jew hater) Pramila Jayapal about her own outsized travel via fossil fueled flights and vehicles
Climate Change Is Bad. Cherry Blossoms Are Good.
I had been strolling beneath the cherry blossoms with Rep. Pramila Jayapal for about 15 minutes on a recent morning in March when she was greeted by her first fan of the day. “Thank you for taking care of America!” a white-haired man in a baseball hat yelled out, with the enthusiasm of a tourist getting more than his money’s worth on a visit to the nation’s capital. (snip)
The early arrival of the white and pink flowers, hastened this year by an unusually warm February, was the reason I had asked Jayapal to take a walk around the Tidal Basin with me. It was “peak bloom,” an enchanting and fleeting period during which 70 percent of cherry tree buds are in full flower. But the season has also been flecked with a guilty unease: These trees wouldn’t be blooming so early without the rising temperatures of a warming climate.
I asked Jayapal if she was familiar with the concept of “apocabliss”—the feeling of delight at unseasonably warm weather, even as one recognizes it as an omen of a catastrophically less habitable climate to come. “Totally, because I live in Seattle. And Seattle is typically cloudy and rainy and cold,” she said. “And yet, in Seattle for the last many years, we have seen these massive weather changes. Some of them are good in the moment, the apocabliss kind of changes.” She described a recent visit to her hometown in late winter, when it was 65 degrees and sunny, the mountains around the city were visible, and “everything was sparkling.”
This is a sign of a cult, where, no matter how things are, the apocalypse is always right around the corner.
Still, weaning the United States off of fossil fuels will be harder than many people realize, she said. “I think, for a lot of people, they think that once we pass the legislation, we’re done.” But federal agencies still have to write rules about how each piece of legislation is implemented and the appropriated funds distributed. Lobbyists are swarming all over that process. Last year, Jayapal introduced the Stop Corporate Capture Act, which would reduce corporate influence over the rulemaking process by, among other things, jacking up penalties for companies that lie to regulators and creating an office to advocate for members of the public who stand to benefit from regulations.
And how many fossil fueled flights is she taking between Seattle and D.C., along with other places? Why can’t she take the train? Does she drive around in fossil fueled vehicles in D.C. and Seattle, or, take mass transit, a bike, or walk?
There is something like a contradiction, here, in the role Jayapal plays on climate. On one hand, she is one of the few people on Earth with anything approaching real power to change the calamitous trajectory of the planet, an issue that has a way of making everyday people feel infuriatingly powerless. On the other, when you get right down to it, whether or not the U.S. moves aggressively enough to forestall a looming climate apocalypse is almost entirely dependent on a handful of people—many of them, like Manchin and Biden, named Joe—who don’t seem to approach the problem with the life-or-death resolve it warrants.
Why is it not up to We The People? Pretty sure we are not living in an authoritarian nation.
New post-indictment polling data from former President Donald Trump’s campaign shows that not only does he hold a commanding lead in the GOP primary and a lead over Democrat President Joe Biden in a likely general election matchup but that more voters in both the primary and the general election say they are now going to vote for Trump because of it.
Inside this chic Sydney hair salon, the chat between stylists and clients could be much the same as in any other hairdressers around the world. Some small talk. The ubiquitous and occasionally mundane chat about holidays and traffic. For regulars, the conversation can move to the deeply personal before you can say semi-tint or shag cut.
A Belgian man reportedly ended his life following a six-week-long conversation about the climate crisis with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.
Groups that monitor far-right and extremist channels online say they haven’t seen immediate signs of organizing for large-scale protests or credible threats of violence in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s indictment on charges related to his alleged role in a hush money payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels. They cautioned, however, that this could change, since Trump is expected to be arrested and arraigned before a judge in New York next week.
My boyfriend and I had been dating for six months when we had the biggest fight of our relationship over the carbon footprint of a kerosene lamp. We had finished dinner in the cozy cabin of his sailboat and were about to begin a game of gin rummy to determine who would do the dishes when Doug stood up and banged his head on the kerosene lantern that dangled from the ceiling. He cursed as the lantern swung back and forth, dribbling kerosene onto the table.
Ukraine is unlikely to expel all Russian forces from its territory this year, the top U.S. officer said Friday, giving a grim reality check to the expressed goal and hopeful ambitions of policymakers, diplomats, and defense leaders from Washington to Kyiv.
