Rethinking the utility company as solar power heats up

PBS NewsHour

Published on Dec 6, 2017

The plummeting price of solar panels has led to a boom of customers and solar industry jobs. What does it mean for the evolution of utility companies? William Brangham reports.

UN Environment Assembly 3: Day3

UN Environment
Published on Dec 6, 2017

The 3rd UN Environment Assembly concluded on a very high note the 6th of December, 2017 with the adoption of a Ministerial Declaration and #BeatPollution resolutions successfully adopted by the world’s environmental leaders. In this short clip, Erik Solheim, Head of UN Environment, and Edgar Gutiérrez, UNEA3 President, celebrate the achievement.

The Sacrifice Zones of Hurricane Harvey – Environmental Justice

Empire Files
Published on Dec 6, 2017

In this second installment of special coverage Hurricane Harvey’s aftermath, Abby Martin explores how the petrochemical industry dominates the city and why its low-income, Black and Latino areas are in the highest-risk areas for flooding and pollution, earning them the name “sacrifice zones.” Abby explores Houston’s unique lack of zoning and regulations that maximized the impact of the storm, the “fence-line communities” deliberately put in harm’s way, inhumane treatment of incarcerated people in the disaster, and how the ownership of the city by Big Oil puts thousands of lives in peril. Featuring interviews with Dr. Robert Bullard, professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University; Azzurra Crispino, co-founder of Prison Abolition Prisoner Support (PAPS); and Yvette Arellano of the Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Series.

Daniel Ellsberg Reveals He was a Nuclear War Planner, Warns of Nuclear Winter & Global Starvation

Democracy Now!

Published on Dec 6, 2017

https://democracynow.org – Could tension between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un bring us to the brink of nuclear war? As tensions ramp up, we discuss what nuclear war would look like with a former nuclear war planner and one of the world’s most famous whistleblowers—Daniel Ellsberg. In 1971, Ellsberg was a high-level defense analyst when he leaked a top-secret report on U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other publications, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. He played a key role in ending the Vietnam War. Few know Ellsberg was also a Pentagon and White House consultant who drafted plans for nuclear war. His new book, published Tuesday, is titled “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.” We speak with Ellsberg about his top-secret nuclear studies, his front row seat to the Cuban missile crisis, whether Trump could start a nuclear war and how contemporary whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden are his heroes.

Native American Tribes Join to File Lawsuit Against Trump Attack on Bears Ears National Monument

Democracy Now!

Published on Dec 5, 2017

https://democracynow.org – Five Native American tribes have joined to file what they are calling an historic lawsuit against President Donald Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and several other members of the administration. The move came just hours after Trump visited Utah Monday, where he announced his plan to open up protected federal lands to mining, logging, drilling and other forms of extraction. The plan calls for shrinking the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument by more than 80 percent and splitting it into two separate areas. Trump would slash the state’s 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by 50 percent. Bears Ears National Monument was created in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama. President Bill Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. The national monuments were designated under the century-old Antiquities Act, a law meant to protect sacred sites, artifacts and historical objects. We speak with Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and former co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, and with Bob Deans, director of strategic engagement at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics
Streamed live on Mar 22, 2017
Graham Allison
Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

Niall Ferguson
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Senior Fellow, Center for European Studies, Harvard University

Samantha Power
United States Ambassador to the United Nations (2013-2017)
Founding Executive Director, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
2003 Pulitzer Prize for “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide

Arne Westad (Moderator)
S.T. Lee Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School

Bob Carr: Trump brings golden opportunity for China’s leadership

CGTN America
Published on Dec 6, 2017

CGTN’s Rachelle Akuffo spoke with Deborah Lehr, senior fellow at Paulson Institute, about the messages coming out of the Fortune Global Forum

Deborah Lehr discusses key message sent by Chinese leaders at the Fortune Global Forum

CGTN America
Published on Dec 6, 2017

CGTN’s Rachelle Akuffo spoke with Deborah Lehr, senior fellow at Paulson Institute, about the messages coming out of the Fortune Global Forum

We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads | Zeynep Tufekci

TED
Published on Nov 17, 2017

We’re building an artificial intelligence-powered dystopia, one click at a time, says technosociologist Zeynep Tufecki. In an eye-opening talk, she details how the same algorithms companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon use to get you to click on ads are also used to organize your access to political and social information. And the machines aren’t even the real threat. What we need to understand is how the powerful might use AI to control us — and what we can do in response.

What’s hidden under the Greenland ice sheet? | Kristin Poinar

TED

Published on Nov 6, 2017

The Greenland ice sheet is massive, mysterious — and melting. Using advanced technology, scientists are revealing its secrets for the first time, and what they’ve found is amazing: hidden under the ice sheet is a vast aquifer that holds a Lake Tahoe-sized volume of water from the summer melt. Does this water stay there, or does it find its way out to the ocean and contribute to global sea level rise? Join glaciologist Kristin Poinar for a trip to this frozen, forgotten land to find out.