This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last month, Eugene became the first city in Oregon to pass an ordinance requiring new residential buildings to be fossil fuel-free. But the policy may never go into effect—not if the natural gas industry gets its way. Ever since the electrification ordinance passed, […]
Author: Ruqaiyah Zarook
Senate Democrats Are Taking Companies to Task Over Invasive Workplace Surveillance
Whether you call it “tattleware,” “bossware,” or “surveillance capitalism,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has had enough of exploitative workplace monitoring technologies. Late last week, Casey and a handful of other Senate Democrats introduced the Stop Spying Bosses Act, which would help protect workers from intrusive employer surveillance both on and off the clock. The legislation would require “timely and […]
The Word That Makes Brutal Budgets Sound “Truly Evil”
The cuts have come even for the word itself. “Austerity” is a cornerstone of conservatism—a catch-all term for limiting government spending to promote capitalist growth—and yet the expression seems to have disappeared from deficit hawks’ speeches. “I call it balancing the budget,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2013. “Everyone else is using this term […]
England Will Ban Single-Use Cutlery and Plates
This story was originally published by Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Single-use items such as plastic cutlery, plates, and trays are to be banned in England in a bid to reduce pollution, the government has confirmed. Figures suggest that every year England uses about 1.1 billion single-use plates and 4.25 billion pieces of such cutlery, […]
Home Front
It has been nearly 10 months since Russia invaded Ukraine. Horrifying images of people shot in the streets, of mass graves and scorched land, have shown the unprecedented brutality of the Russian Army. More than 100,000 buildings have been destroyed. The peaceful Kyiv suburbs of Bucha, Irpin, and Hostomel, which were, until recently, a haven […]
How Voter Suppression and Gerrymandering by the Texas GOP Derails Environmental Justice
This piece was published originally by Capital & Main. They say everything is bigger in Texas—and that includes the scale and brazenness of voter suppression efforts. The 2020 election saw record turnout in the Lone Star State, an 8% increase from 2016 overall and a 9% increase among nonwhite Texans. In a healthy democracy, such a […]
Planting Trees to Offset Emissions Sounds Great, but There’s a Catch
This story was originally published by the Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Countries’ climate pledges rely on “unrealistic” and “extensive” amounts of land for carbon removal projects like tree planting schemes, a new report from the University of Melbourne said. A landmass larger than the entire United States, about […]
How a Hostile America Undermined Its Black World War II Veterans
In August 1944, just two months after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (a.k.a. the GI Bill of Rights), Harry McAlpin, Washington correspondent for the National Negro Publishers Association, warned that the new law, though race-neutral on its face, would exclude Black veterans. The GI Bill included funding for housing, college, and […]