Images from the West Coast wildfires are truly apocalyptic: buildings in ashes, searing red skies cloaked in smoke, and entire communities destroyed. Kent Nishimura has risked his life to document all this in his role as photojournalist for the Los Angeles Times. He joins the show to share his images and experiences from the past few days.
Originally aired on September 14, 2020
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As climate-fueled wildfires continue to ravage the West, the Trump administration has tapped a well-known climate change denier for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. University of Delaware professor David Legates has written papers calling for more fossil fuel emissions and has had his work supported by the Robert Mercer-funded Heartland Institute and Koch Industries, as well as major gas companies. He was recently hired as NOAA’s deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. We speak with David Goodrich, a former top climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who says Legates’s appointment goes against the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community. “You have about 97% of the scientists disagreeing with the position of Dr. Legates,” says Goodrich, who served as director of NOAA’s Climate Observations Division from 2009 to 2011. We also speak to David Goodrich about his latest book, “A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean,” in which he examines the impact of the fossil fuel industry through an epic bicycle journey from the Alberta tar sands to the Bakken oil field of North Dakota.
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http://ecoethics.net/2014-ENVRE120/20200920-EV&N-360-Link.html
https://www.cctvcambridge.org/node/735547
Industrial societies — based on legacy myths of boundless growth born of their colonial past — are destroying the essential support systems for many complex life-forms and most civilizations on Earth. The ignorance and arrogance of their myths of expansion and conquest are now inscribed in the fundamental belief systems of their leaders and embedded in their narratives of national self-understanding.
Alternative narratives that challenge the fanciful “white-settler” narratives that now dominate the outlook of American political leaders have been branded as “propaganda,” and an effort is being launched from the White House through a Presidential Executive Order to promote the teaching of a “patriotic history” to counter-act the pervasive understanding of American history across the world.
The task will not be easy. Much of the world understands that America was founded on the principle of genocide of the indigenous populations, built through hundreds of years of slave labor and sustained in more recent decades through imperialist warfare waged across the globe for the control of raw materials and markets. President Trump apparently intends to to promote a more “patriotic education” as he seeks to counter this “warped” understanding of the American story.
Those seeing to link to news about President Trump’s new Executive Order on YouTube are sometimes greeted with intervening advertisement for what is being called a “Patriot Protector Facial Cover” [made in America] for either men or women.
or
It is not clear whether or not this ad is in jest or for real. Nor is it clear from what the mask is designed to “protect” its wearer — or, alternatively, how it might serve to protect anyone in the proximity of the wearer.
Other topics of related interest include:
On the more fundamental problems of American cultural self-understanding see:
Sep 18, 2020
This week President Trump described the work of the legendary historian Howard Zinn, who died in 2010, as “propaganda” meant to “make students ashamed of their own history.” But Zinn believed the opposite, that teaching the unvarnished truth about history was the best way to combat propaganda and unexamined received wisdom. We air excerpts from a 2009 interview with Zinn in which he explained his approach to education. “We should be honest with young people; we should not deceive them. We should be honest about the history of our country,” Zinn said.
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As climate-fueled wildfires continue to ravage the West, the Trump administration has tapped a well-known climate change denier for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. University of Delaware professor David Legates has written papers calling for more fossil fuel emissions and has had his work supported by the Robert Mercer-funded Heartland Institute and Koch Industries, as well as major gas companies. He was recently hired as NOAA’s deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. We speak with David Goodrich, a former top climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who says Legates’s appointment goes against the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community. “You have about 97% of the scientists disagreeing with the position of Dr. Legates,” says Goodrich, who served as director of NOAA’s Climate Observations Division from 2009 to 2011. We also speak to David Goodrich about his latest book, “A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean,” in which he examines the impact of the fossil fuel industry through an epic bicycle journey from the Alberta tar sands to the Bakken oil field of North Dakota.
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As the official United States death toll from COVID-19 approaches 200,000 people, we speak with infectious disease expert Dr. Monica Gandhi, who says President Trump’s refusal to promote face masks has made the pandemic much worse. “Masks are a pillar of pandemic control. They are incredibly important,” says Dr. Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, as well as a division head at San Francisco General Hospital. “There is no country in the world right now that has been fighting masks like this, especially at the presidential level. If we could have started mask wearing, consistent mask wearing, at the beginning, we would have averted deaths and cases.”
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As climate-fueled wildfires continue to ravage the West, the Trump administration has tapped a well-known climate change denier for a top position at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. University of Delaware professor David Legates has written papers calling for more fossil fuel emissions and has had his work supported by the Robert Mercer-funded Heartland Institute and Koch Industries, as well as major gas companies. He was recently hired as NOAA’s deputy assistant secretary of commerce for observation and prediction. We speak with David Goodrich, a former top climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who says Legates’s appointment goes against the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community. “You have about 97% of the scientists disagreeing with the position of Dr. Legates,” says Goodrich, who served as director of NOAA’s Climate Observations Division from 2009 to 2011. We also speak to David Goodrich about his latest book, “A Voyage Across an Ancient Ocean,” in which he examines the impact of the fossil fuel industry through an epic bicycle journey from the Alberta tar sands to the Bakken oil field of North Dakota.
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The real reason behind TikTok’s forced sale is probably more politically motivated. Trump just doesn’t want to see a Chinese company succeeding wildly on America soil, and he wants to stick his hands into what he sees as a pot of gold as a side benefit of kicking it out. #TikTok
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Zimbabwe has offered to return land to foreign nationals whose farms were seized under a controversial government programme two decades ago. Thousands of white farmers were forced from their land, often violently, between 2000 and 2001. The seizures were meant to redress colonial-era land grabs but contributed to the country’s economic decline and ruined relations with the West. A separate compensation scheme has been launched for local white farmers. They have not been offered land, but the government last month promised them $3.5bn (£2.6bn) for seized infrastructure.
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Transition Studies 