Biden Is Better Than Trump On Climate And The Environment

In his Climate speech yesterday, Biden tore into Trump with two well-written questions: "If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze? If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater?" Nice! And Trump earned it!

Before he spoke, 170 environmental leaders, generally part of the Democratic Party establishment coalition urged their supporters to vote for Biden... rather than Howie Hawkins of the Green Party, someone who has no chance but who provides an alternative to backing the candidates of the two corrupt establishment parties-- one which has re-nominated a dangerous and criminal fascist and one which has nominated an unfit conservative, not as bad as Trump, of course, but still bad... and years behind your average Democrat on Climate policy.

The only national Climate group I trust is the Sunrise Movement. Their leaders aren't interested in being invited to Democratic Party cocktail parties or being buddies with Schumer or Pelosi. They're only interested in fixing the Climate Crisis. This is how they explain their strategy:

1- We support candidates who, if elected, would represent a significant break with the status quo.

2- We support politicians who will represent us, not the fossil fuel industry.

3- We have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies.

So different from the corrupted elites in the old fashioned environmental movement! Sunrise endorsed Bernie and I have no idea if they plan to endorse the lesser evil for November. I hope not; it will tarnish their brand. Their 16 current endorsements for House seats include 15 endorsed by Blue America:

• Audrey Denney (CA-01)
• Marie Newman (IL-03)
• Cori Bush (MO-01)
• Ilhan Omar (MN-05)
• Rashida Tlaib (MI-13)
• Mike Siegel (TX-10)
• Jamaal Bowman (NY-16)
• Julie Oliver (TX-25)
• Beth Doglio (WA-10)
• Cathy Kunkel (WV-02)
• Jon Hoadley (MI-06)
• Qasim Rashid (VA-01)
• AOC (NY-14)
• Mondaire Jones (NY-17)
• Ayanna Pressely (MA-07)

And their 3 Senate candidates-- Marquita Bradshaw (TN), Paul Jean Swearengin (WV) and Ed Markey (MA)-- are also Blue America's Senate candidates. I could care less who Sierra Club or League of Conservative Voters endorses; at this point, it's like caring who the DSCC or DCCC endorses.

Biden has emphasized that Trump "has no interest in meeting this moment. He’s already said he wanted to withhold aid to California, to punish the people of California. Because they didn’t vote for him. This is another crisis. Another crisis he won’t take responsibility for. The west is literally on fire." He also said that, as a nation, "We stand with families who have lost everything. The firefighters. The first responders, risking everything to save others... People are not just worried about raging fires. They’re worried about the air they breath, the damage to their lungs... this year alone nearly 5m acres have burned across 10 states. More acreage than the entire state of Connecticut... We have a choice. We can invest in our infrastructure, make it stronger, more resilient, improving the health of Americans and creating millions of good-paying jobs while at the same time tackling the root causes of climate change. Or we can continue down the path Donald Trump has us on. The path of indifference, costing tens of billions of dollars to rebuild, where the human cost, the lives, the livelihoods the homes and the communities destroyed are immeasurable... With every bout of nature’s fury caused by our own inaction on climate change, more Americans see and feel the devastation. Whether they’re in big cities, small towns, coastlines or farm towns. It’s happening everywhere. It’s happening now. It affects us all."

Audrey Denney, the progressive Democrat running for the northeast California congressional seat (CA-01) that Trump enabler Doug LaMalfa currently holds, told us this morning that "CAL-FIRE, natural resource managers, and fire scientists all agree. Climate change along with vegetation management issues are making our wildfires worse. We will continue to lose lives and property in our part of the world until we have leadership that believes in science and has the political courage to take action." And that's not either Trump nor LaMalfa.

Julie Oliver, enthusiastically endorsed by both Blue America and the Sunrise Movement, laid out an aggressive plan for dealing with Climate Change which Biden should adopt for the country. But he won't.

• Transition the United States to carbon-free, 100% renewable energy by 2035.
• Eliminate emissions from the power sector in the 10-15 year time frame we have left to address the climate crisis.
• Supercharge the economy through major investments in American industries and manufacturing, modernizing our infrastructure, skilled labor, and innovation in clean technology.
• Provide workforce development and training, labor protections, livable wages, and collective bargaining rights for all jobs in the transition away from fossil fuels.
• Create millions of good-paying new jobs through low-carbon emission generation technologies, solar and wind technologies, energy efficient goods manufacturing and installation, building construction and retrofits, environmental remediation, forestry, and agriculture.
• Ensure a just transition.
• Invest in renewable energy, efficiency, smart grid, energy storage, electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies and green infrastructure to reach our decarbonization goals.
• Democratize the clean energy economy by increasing community ownership of energy generation through more distributed systems and public cooperatives.
• Stop fossil fuel extraction on public lands.
• Hold big business civilly or criminally accountable for their current or historical pollution.
• Innovate and expand energy efficiency through new building, power, and industrial standards, technology, and retrofits.
• Remove lead service water lines and fix water infrastructure problems in America, and protect our watersheds and waterways.
• Restore the American landscape through reforestation, wetlands restoration, and expanded sustainable farming and soil practices.
• Work with front-line, indigenous, and low-income communities and communities of color to build resilience and ensure pollution-free communities and economic opportunity.
• Modernize mass transportation by scaling up charging infrastructure for zero emission passenger vehicles and transition away from fossil fuels in heavy duty vehicles, aviation, and rail, while innovating and scaling up the next generation of carbon-neutral fuels and biofuels.
• Support and pass HR 763, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act.
• Ban offshore drilling in the Arctic and the ANWR, and prevent Kinder Morgan from seizing Hill Country land through eminent domain.
• Create incentives and standards to promote soil health for better food, water quality, and carbon storage.

Scientific American started publishing on August 28, 1845. That's 175 years ago, even before Biden was in the Senate. Today was the first time they ever endorsed a political candidate. "This year," wrote the editors, "we are compelled to do so. We do not do this lightly."

The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people-- because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September. He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.

The pandemic would strain any nation and system, but Trump's rejection of evidence and public health measures have been catastrophic in the U.S. He was warned many times in January and February about the onrushing disease, yet he did not develop a national strategy to provide protective equipment, coronavirus testing or clear health guidelines. Testing people for the virus, and tracing those they may have infected, is how countries in Europe and Asia have gained control over their outbreaks, saved lives, and successfully reopened businesses and schools. But in the U.S., Trump claimed, falsely, that “anybody that wants a test can get a test.” That was untrue in March and remained untrue through the summer. Trump opposed $25 billion for increased testing and tracing that was in a pandemic relief bill as late as July. These lapses accelerated the spread of disease through the country-- particularly in highly vulnerable communities that include people of color, where deaths climbed disproportionately to those in the rest of the population.

It wasn't just a testing problem: if almost everyone in the U.S. wore masks in public, it could save about 66,000 lives by the beginning of December, according to projections from the University of Washington School of Medicine. Such a strategy would hurt no one. It would close no business. It would cost next to nothing. But Trump and his vice president flouted local mask rules, making it a point not to wear masks themselves in public appearances. Trump has openly supported people who ignored governors in Michigan and California and elsewhere as they tried to impose social distancing and restrict public activities to control the virus. He encouraged governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas who resisted these public health measures, saying in April-- again, falsely-- that “the worst days of the pandemic are behind us” and ignoring infectious disease experts who warned at the time of a dangerous rebound if safety measures were loosened.

And of course, the rebound came, with cases across the nation rising by 46 percent and deaths increasing by 21 percent in June. The states that followed Trump's misguidance posted new daily highs and higher percentages of positive tests than those that did not. By early July several hospitals in Texas were full of COVID-19 patients. States had to close up again, at tremendous economic cost. About 31 percent of workers were laid off a second time, following the giant wave of unemployment-- more than 30 million people and countless shuttered businesses-- that had already decimated the country. At every stage, Trump has rejected the unmistakable lesson that controlling the disease, not downplaying it, is the path to economic reopening and recovery.

Trump repeatedly lied to the public about the deadly threat of the disease, saying it was not a serious concern and “this is like a flu” when he knew it was more lethal and highly transmissible, according to his taped statements to journalist Bob Woodward. His lies encouraged people to engage in risky behavior, spreading the virus further, and have driven wedges between Americans who take the threat seriously and those who believe Trump's falsehoods. The White House even produced a memo attacking the expertise of the nation's leading infectious disease physician, Anthony Fauci, in a despicable attempt to sow further distrust.

Trump's reaction to America's worst public health crisis in a century has been to say “I don't take responsibility at all.” Instead he blamed other countries and his White House predecessor, who left office three years before the pandemic began.

But Trump's refusal to look at the evidence and act accordingly extends beyond the virus. He has repeatedly tried to get rid of the Affordable Care Act while offering no alternative; comprehensive medical insurance is essential to reduce illness. Trump has proposed billion-dollar cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agencies that increase our scientific knowledge and strengthen us for future challenges. Congress has countermanded his reductions. Yet he keeps trying, slashing programs that would ready us for future pandemics and withdrawing from the World Health Organization. These and other actions increase the risk that new diseases will surprise and devastate us again.

...Biden is getting advice on these public health issues from a group that includes David Kessler, epidemiologist, pediatrician and former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief; Rebecca Katz, immunologist and global health security specialist at Georgetown University; and Ezekiel Emanuel, bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. It does not include physicians who believe in aliens and debunked virus therapies, one of whom Trump has called “very respected” and “spectacular.”

Biden has a family and caregiving initiative, recognizing this as key to a sustained public health and economic recovery. His plans include increased salaries for child care workers and construction of new facilities for children because the inability to afford quality care keeps workers out of the economy and places enormous strains on families.

On the environment and climate change, Biden wants to spend $2 trillion on an emissions-free power sector by 2035, build energy-efficient structures and vehicles, push solar and wind power, establish research agencies to develop safe nuclear power and carbon capture technologies, and more. The investment will produce two million jobs for U.S. workers, his campaign claims, and the climate plan will be partly paid by eliminating Trump's corporate tax cuts. Historically disadvantaged communities in the U.S. will receive 40 percent of these energy and infrastructure benefits.

It is not certain how many of these and his other ambitions Biden will be able to accomplish; much depends on laws to be written and passed by Congress. But he is acutely aware that we must heed the abundant research showing ways to recover from our present crises and successfully cope with future challenges.

Although Trump and his allies have tried to create obstacles that prevent people from casting ballots safely in November, either by mail or in person, it is crucial that we surmount them and vote. It's time to move Trump out and elect Biden, who has a record of following the data and being guided by science.

And, yes, Albert Einstein used to write for the magazine.

The Republican War On Immigrants Melds Perfectly Into Their War On Science

And a delightful dining companion

One of the brilliant innovations of the Trump phenomenon has been the turning of expertise into a class issue. Formerly, scientists were political liabilities only insofar as their work clashed with the teachings of TV Bible-thumpers. Now, any person who in any way disputes popular misconceptions-- that balancing a budget is just like balancing a checkbook, that two snowfalls in a week prove global warming isn't real, that handguns would have saved Jews from the Holocaust or little kids from the Sandy Hook massacre-- is part of an elitist conspiracy to deny the selfhood of the Google-educated American. The Republicans understand this axiom: No politician in the Trump era is going to dive in a foxhole to save scientific research. Scientists, like reporters, Muslims and the French, are out.

That was from Matt Taibbi's essay in Rolling Stone this week, Trump The Destroyer, which we discussed in some depth earlier. When I read it I thought of a guy I only met a couple of times, a medical researcher in the field of molecular microbiology, Samuel Stanley, Jr., who I met a couple years ago, after he had been appointed president of SUNY, Stony Brook, where decades ago I was an undergraduate. In recent posts I've mentioned how pretty recently Stony Brook had decided to honor two donors with a dinner, myself and... a reclusive local man now known throughout the world as the financier behind the Trump Regime curtain, Robert Mercer. It always a cute little story about how I suggested it would be an uncomfortable match and how Stony Brook had decided to have two separate dinners instead. This morning I noticed that Dr. Stanley had penned a guest post for Scientific American, one I'm going to guess isn't going to endear him to the Mercers or any other Trumpists.


Anti-Immigration Rhetoric Is a Threat to American Leadership
-by Dr. Samuel Stanley, Jr.,
President, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Our embrace of international students and faculty has given the U.S. a leg up on all other countries in the race to lead in innovation and discovery.

Iranian-American engineer and entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari was a co-sponsor of the Ansari X-Prize for private spaceflight

America’s universities are the best in the world. The quality of the students, faculty, teaching, infrastructure, the commitment to academic freedom, and the extraordinary research opportunities attract the best and brightest people from around the globe to the United States. And our nation is far better for it.

Last year six recipients of the Nobel Prize were working at American universities: the three winners of the prize in physics, the two winners in economics, and one of the three winners in chemistry. All six were foreign born. Bob Dylan was the only Nobel laureate last year born in the United States. And 2016 was no fluke. In all, 42 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded between 1901 and 2015 went to individuals working/living in the United States, and nearly one third of those recipients were born outside the U.S. Our ability to attract the world’s leading scientists to our universities has helped us maintain global leadership in innovation and discovery, a tremendous component of our economic strength and national security.

But it is not just faculty that have come to U.S. universities to pursue their research. We also have been the destination of choice for outstanding graduate and undergraduate students from around the world. At Stony Brook University and many other top research universities, the majority of our graduate students in STEM fields are international students. Many of these talented students stay on after their education and become contributors to innovation and economic development in our country. The economic impact of international students on the U.S. economy was nearly $36 billion dollars in 2015, with $4 billion in New York State alone. Just on my campus, roughly 10 percent of the startup companies at our business incubator are led by foreign born scientists with much of the workforce coming from recent international doctoral students. And the impact of international students on our campus is not just economic, they add to the diversity of culture and ideas on our campus, broadening the experience of every student at Stony Brook University and better preparing them for the 21st century world.

But now this is all at risk. New immigration policies, coupled with xenophobic rhetoric and actions both before and after the election, are undoing the compact between the United States and those seeking opportunity from around the world. The first executive order nearly resulted in the deportation of the President of Stony Brook’s Graduate Student Organization, a former Fulbright Scholar, who had been studying in the United States for 10 years. The campus was dramatically unsettled, with an initial loss of the sense of security and welcoming inclusive environment that we have worked so hard to establish.

Lamar Smith & Darrell Issa, worst of both worlds

And the impact is not just local. Research uni-versities are seeing an immediate effect on the recruitment of international faculty and students. Stony Brook University has seen a decline of roughly 10 percent in international applications for graduate school this year, a figure that seems to be on a par with the decline seen at other institutions. The reasons for these declines may not be solely based on anti-immigration policies and rhetoric, but some accepted applicants to Stony Brook, especially from countries targeted by the first Executive Order, have stated explicitly that they will choose a Canadian or Australian university instead, based on the uncertainty of U.S. immigration policy and the fact that they are being singled out based on their country of origin, not on their academic credentials. And the recent suspension of expedited processing of H1-B visas, which is of significant concern to the Technology Sector, could also have a chilling effect on the ability of Universities to attract outstanding international faculty and scientists to help sustain our research and educational missions.

Rather than creating pathways to citizenship like DACA, the anti-immigration rhetoric, and now acts of violence against immigrants to the United States, is sending a message to the world that the United States, and by implication, our universities, no longer will be a welcoming and safe environment for international students and faculty. “They” should look elsewhere, and, unfortunately for us, they will.

It may not be too late to make this right. Policy needs to be based on facts, not fear. Recent data from Homeland Security on the relative risks posed by recent immigrants to the U.S. vs those who have been residents for years should be incorporated into our approach to security. Continuing DACA and moving to a policy that “staples a Green Card” on to the diploma of graduates of U.S. universities would go a long way to helping address our workforce issues in technology and reassuring the world that we do still want best and the brightest to study and work in the United States of America.

Our embrace of international students and faculty has given the U.S. a leg up on all other countries in the race to lead in innovation and discovery. We augment our extraordinary homegrown talent with future leaders from around the world. But time is short, the new policies and rhetoric are taking their toll, significant damage is being done, and if we surrender our global edge in innovation and discovery, we may never get it back.

Apparently, They Didn't Teach Science At The Wharton Business School Real Estate Program

A week or so ago, the editors of Scientific American did something I never saw them do before-- they took a partisan political stand. They didn't mention any names, but it's clear they had two rotten characters in mind, Donald J. Trump and one of his top enablers in Texas, House Science Committee chairman Lamar Smith. Smith's district is not some backward hellhole like Louie's Gohmert's district. TX-21 is a highly educated part of Texas stretching the downtown Austin and the fence around UT through the Texas Hill country, into San Marcos and down into San Antonio, including almost all of that city's northern suburbs. When you hear about polls showing Trump losing ground in Texas, it's among these Austin and San Antonio suburbanites (as well as Houston's, who have been traditionally Republican, where the trouble is biggest for Trump.

Scientific American is not in the business of endorsing political candidates. But we do take a stand for science-- the most reliable path to objective knowledge the world has seen-- and the Enlightenment values that gave rise to it. For more than 170 years we have documented, for better and for worse, the rise of science and technology and their impact on the nation and the world. We have strived to assert in our reporting, writing and editing the principle that decision making in the sphere of public policy should accept the conclusions that evidence, gathered in the spirit and with the methods of science, tells us to be true.

It won't come as a surprise to anyone who pays even superficial attention to politics that over the past few decades facts have become an undervalued commodity. Many politicians are hostile to science, on both sides of the political aisle. The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has a routine practice of meddling in petty science-funding matters to score political points. Science has not played nearly as prominent a role as it should in informing debates over the labeling of genetically modified foods, end of life care and energy policy, among many issues.

The current presidential race, however, is something special. It takes antiscience to previously unexplored terrain. When the major Republican candidate for president has tweeted that global warming is a Chinese plot, threatens to dismantle a climate agreement 20 years in the making and to eliminate an agency that enforces clean air and water regulations, and speaks passionately about a link between vaccines and autism that was utterly discredited years ago, we can only hope that there is nowhere to go but up.

Unlike Louie Gohmert's constituents in Nacogdoches, Lufkin, Tyler, Kilgore and Longview, the suburban voters around Texas' big cities respect science and the scientific method. TX-21 is a literate, educated part of Texas. The progressive Democrat-- and Blue America endorsee-- who's running for the TX-21 seat against Lamar Smith is Tom Wakely. Recently, he told us that he's "spoken to several scientists over the course of this campaign, and they're all rightfully frustrated that we've come to a point where we're faced with the choice to 'believe' in science. We've seemingly exhausted or co-opted everything imaginable to become a political issue. Now these politicians have their sights set on the last bastion of objectivity. We're starting to reject the science that doesn't fit our ideology or narrative and we run the risk of becoming catastrophically regressive. This nation once held the belief that numbers, data, and the scientific method had no bias. If you didn't like the science, you could work the rest of your life to disprove it. These days, politicians work to convince their sector of the public that they know more than the experts. It's certainly disheartening, but it's not too late to fix it. My opponent, Lamar Smith, is now the tip of the iceberg of denial. He refuses to accept the reality facing us and does far more than turn a blind eye. He substitutes his own reality. One where the oil companies are eternal victims and where the scientists of our community are part of some liberal cabal hellbent on ruining society. There are a lot of aspects of Lamar Smith's job performance that I find particularly disqualifying, but his outright rejection of the objective and his harassment of those who are simply performing research rank damn near the top."

This morning Tom Wakely seemed very much in synch with Scientific American, stressing to us that "Lamar Smith is proud of this regressive activist committee he's built, which has Republicans clamoring to join for the sole purpose of political and capital gains. He's taken our last bastion of objectivity and turned it upside down. It should be considered a national disgrace. Our people should be angrier, but they're only just beginning to scratch the surface of a man who's managed to walk unscathed through the halls of the Capitol for nearly three decades... While I've never and will never pretend to be an expert in climate science, I have listened to countless experts and scientists who all seem to be in agreement that we must act now. I've worked with Methodist Earthkeepers, who define themselves as missionaries of God's creation, to further cement in my promise to my constituents a moral imperative to leaving a better planet for generations to come."