3 most frightening stories
- The U.S. government’s dominant ideology of free trade and globalization may have roots in U.S. government propaganda designed to provide hidden subsidies to Japan and Korea, our Cold War allies in Asia. And resulting financial deregulation in the 1990s may have been the beginning of the end for the U.S. empire.
- A new study says that ice melting in Antarctica could double sea level rise projections in the long term. Meanwhile, in the short term, the drought in Southeast and South Asia is getting more and more severe.
- Robert Paxton says Trump is pretty much a fascist. Although conditions are different and he doesn’t believe everything the fascists believed. Umberto Eco once said that fascists don’t believe anything, they will say anything and then what they do once in office has nothing to do with what they said.
3 most hopeful stories
- Brookings has a new report on encouraging innovation in the water sector. A lot of it is just about charging more, and it should be fairly obvious why that is politically controversial even if it is the right thing economically. But the report did have an explanation of decoupling (p. 28) which I found helpful. Decoupling is an answer to the puzzle of how a utility can support conservation without losing its revenue base.
- The U.S. Department of Energy says the technical potential of solar panels is to supply about 39% of all energy use. And electric cars may be about to come roaring back in a big way.
- Better management of agricultural soil might be able to play a big role in carbon sequestration.
3 most interesting stories
- Beyond: Our Future in Space is a new book on space colonization. It caught my eye because I also read Coyote by Allen Steele in April, which besides being a supposedly plausible story of near-future space colonization, was just a really entertaining read. Luckily, there are options for hiding our current planet if aliens decide they would like to colonize us.
- Virtual reality is coming.
- Genes can now be programmed just like circuits.