Secretary of State John Kerry warned of dire consequences if the United States does not do more to mitigate the effects of climate change.
“What we do right now, today, matters. Because if we don’t go far enough fast enough, the damage we inflict could take centuries to undo — if it can be undone at all. We don’t get a second chance on this one,” Kerry said, speaking at the MIT Sloan School of Management on Monday.
Kerry did not mention President-elect Donald Trump by name during the speech. Trump has continued to question the science on climate change, even though there is broad consensus that climate change is real.
Before his speech, Radio Boston sat down with Kerry for an exclusive interview.
Guest
John Kerry, secretary of state and former U.S. senator for Massachusetts.
OS producer Zach Goldhammer’s video interviews with some of the women demonstrating and building the anti-Trump coalition in Washington after the inauguration.
University President Drew G. Faust called on “the administration, the Congress, and the courts” to reconsider an executive order blocking immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States in a sharp defense of the University’s “vital interests” Sunday.
In the email sent to Harvard affiliates, Faust outlined a number of resources the University will provide to affiliates affected by the order, which prevents immigrants from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days. The order, signed by President Donald Trump Friday, also bars all refugees for 120 days and Syrian refugees indefinitely. At least two Harvard affiliates have been barred from entering the United States since the order went into effect.
The University will hold a town hall meeting Wednesday in Science Center B to discuss the implications of the immigration order on international affiliates and promised to lobby lawmakers “to advocate approaches meant to sustain the international flow of students and scholars, and thereby safeguard a vital national interest.”
In a broad message detailing the importance of the University’s global reach, Faust affirmed the University’s commitment to its international affiliates and programs.
“Nearly half of the deans of Harvard’s schools are immigrants—from India, China, Northern Ireland, Jamaica, and Iran,” Faust wrote. “Benefiting from the talents and energy, the knowledge and ideas of people from nations around the globe is not just a vital interest of the University; it long has been, and it fully remains, a vital interest of our nation.”
She also wrote that she has begun a search for a Muslim chaplain, which student activists with the Harvard Islamic Society called for in a letter to Faust last week.
In her message Sunday, Faust also reiterated the University’s support for undocumented students, writing that Harvard Law School’s Immigration and Refugee Clinic had hired a full-time attorney dedicated to representing undocumented students and launched a website provided resources for those students. She also pledged to continue lobbying members of Congress to pass the BRIDGE Act, which would provide protections for undocumented students.
Last weekend, concerned citizens across the country took to the streets to demonstrate against the sexism that had been a hallmark of the Donald Trump campaign. Led by women, these protests marked the single largest day of protest in United States history, and they should serve as a warning to Trump that his anti-female attitude will not be tolerated. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins and Sydney Robinson discuss this.
Minnesota’s US Senators say President Donald Trump’s executive order on refugees is not only likely unconstitutional, but it was not well thought through and has resulted in “chaos.”
“You don’t create chaos while you’re doing it. And you don’t do it on the backs of these little girls right now who are waiting for their four-year-old sister,” said Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) standing next to two small children in pink jackets and their mother Samira Dair a Somali refugee who came to Minneapolis in 2013,
Dair says her 4-year-old daughter Mushkaad was scheduled to fly with an escort from Kampala to Minnesota on Monday, but her status is in doubt.
She has been working for years to reunite her family. Trump’s oder came three days before her daughter’s scheduled trip to Minnesota.
The child’s sisters, Muwatib and Mumtaz stood next to Klobuchar at the news conference.
“These are the faces, right here, of who this is affecting,” Klobuchar said. “These little pink jackets. A 4-year-old. And it’s happening over and over.”
“Who is Donald Trump?” asked one of the girls to the press conference crowd.
“That’s a huge question,” said Sen. Al Franken (D-MN).
“They’re not exactly quite aware of all of the politics and what’s gone on in our election all the time, but they’re quickly becoming aware,” said Klobuchar. “And a lot of people are waking up seeing what the effects are when you have people issuing these orders without talking to lawyers, without talking to businesses, without talking to the people in the communities. And so I think the message we’d send is ‘we’re here and we’re not going to go away.'”
Trump’s executive order, signed at the Pentagon on Friday, suspends the entry of all refugees for 120 days, halts the admission of refugees from Syria indefinitely and bars entry for three months to residents from the predominantly-Muslim countries of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
“It’s probably unconstitutional in that it targets country of origin and religion at the same time. Both of which are unconstitutional,” said Sen. Al Franken after he and Klobuchar with privately with community leaders, advocates and Minnesota families impacted by Trump’s order.
“This is not our country,” said Franken of Trump’s order. “I would remind President Trump that on the Statue of Liberty, my grandfather coming from Belarus read this:
‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'”
“That is our country and that is the strength of our country. We are all immigrants, or refugees, or American Indians. That’s who we are.”
TRNN senior editor Paul Jay says that people never would’ve voted for Donald Trump if the mainstream media covered major stories with real standards of journalism
Trump’s potential Secretary of Energy has major conflicts of interest with the Dakota Access Pipeline and would push forward a dangerous proposal for nuclear waste management, say Steve Horn and Diane D’Arrigo
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
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