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Massachusetts is considering trust funds, aimed at reducing the racial wealth gap, for the state's poorest newborns that the recipients would be able to access when they turn 18. The "baby bonds" would be an at-birth publicly funded trust fund program for Massachusetts residents, to be used for college, buying a home or starting a business. The amount given to each eligible newborn would depend on their household income, although it doesn't give a maximum amount or specify who would qualify for the funds. "Children born into households with low income (which are disproportionately households of color) are prioritized through...

Against the enormity of climate change, it’s easy to see individual efforts as futile. But tiny acts add up. Not only do we profoundly influence friends and family, our actions and example act as billboards advertising social norms. We have the power to change what’s “normal.” Just look at why your neighbors install solar panels. Based on the response to this column over the past year, millions of you want to do more in your own life about climate change. Here are seven things I discovered in 2023 that can make a difference in your new year. Lentils are the...

BELFAST, Maine — How does it feel to be a climate scientist in 2023? Let’s set the scene. Hundreds of picnickers are sprawled across a lawn speckled with colorful blankets. Yachts bob in the bay. Guitars blare, children wrestle and dancers twirl across a concert lawn in the golden glow of a dying summer night. Off to the side, Peter Kalmus sits alone. His eyes are closed. His toes are tucked beneath his body. He’s catching an occasional side-eye from onlookers. “When I’m meditating, I don’t feel anxious,” Kalmus later says, explaining that he strives for two hours of meditation...

Far-left Axios is gushing over a new study that blames climate change for people fleeing Democrat-run cities like the “metro areas of Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Washington, D.C. (specifically, Alexandria, Va.).” “Climate migration is already taking place within American communities, new data finds, as people flee flood-prone areas, and create ‘climate abandonment’ zones,” writes an unquestioning Axios. “The study constitutes the latest warning sign of the effects of climate change,” Axios continues without skepticism. “Population shifts, and a larger reckoning for real estate, are only expected to worsen as global average surface temperatures rise.” But then the premise of the study...

If there was ever a year that called for bold global action on climate change, 2023 was it. In what will likely go down as the warmest year on record — one rife with catastrophic floods, scorching heat waves, devastating wildfires and enduring drought — leaders from nearly 200 countries gathered to chart a path forward in the fight against climate change. After more than two weeks of tense negotiations representatives from 198 countries agreed Wednesday to “transition away” from fossil fuels. It was a historic deal but one that once again fell short for many climate activists, who saw...

How the horrifying atrocities in Israel against Jewish women and children on October 7th could result in an explosion of hatred towards Jews in America makes no sense. It defies all logic, and the initial epicenter of that hate was on “safe space” college campuses. But, then, maybe it’s understandable if you consider the role of “socialist-loving ‘intellectuals’” or, anti-American academics. When assessing the hate that I encountered returning from combat in Vietnam in 1969, that group came out on top as the leading offender. Today, socialist-loving “intellectuals” are the root cause of the hatred against the Jewish people. They’ve...

When they tell you who they are, you better listen. This isn’t about Palestine. It’s about Jews. It’s not about a cease-fire. It’s about destroying Israel. The Syracuse chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Syracuse Collective for Palestinian Liberation, the Resilient Indigenous Action Collective, and the Syracuse chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation organized the “Shut It Down for Palestine protest in downtown Syracuse, NY. The anti-Israel students targeted comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s show. Seinfeld is Jewish. He signed an open letter expressing support for Israel. From The Daily Orange: Attendees called for an end to U.S....

Advocates for stronger actions to address climate change frequently invoke climate justice claims, noting that climate change’s impacts fall disproportionately on poorer, marginalized communities in America and elsewhere. Unfortunately, some of the remedies promoted by those same advocates — such as eliminating natural gas hookups in new housing — threaten to create injustices of their own by making new housing more expensive and less accessible. Natural gas is much less carbon intensive than coal and oil and, crucially, usually is a less expensive way to heat homes and power hot-water heaters. For decades, Washington’s utilities encouraged switching to gas from...

We've all heard of human rights and civil rights, but what about the rights of nature? A growing global movement is working to give plants, animals and ecosystems some of the same legal protections as humans, and in some countries, it's leading to new legislation. Panama is one of the only nations in the world with a country-wide rights of nature law. The legislation was just used to help shut down one of the largest copper mines in the world. Callie Veelenturf was the driving force behind the law. The 31-year-old Massachusetts native is a marine biologist who has been...

French Energy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said Saturday she was "stunned" after the oil cartel OPEC urged its members to thwart any deal targeting fossil fuels at the COP28 conference. ADVERTISING "I am stunned by these statements from OPEC+. And I am angry," she said from the climate conference in Dubai, adding that "OPEC+'s position endangers the most vulnerable countries and the poorest populations who are the first victims of this situation". The minister said she was "counting on the presidency of the COP not to be influenced by these declarations, and to reach an agreement which affirms a clear objective...

College Station, Texas GHRC — For Dr. Aaron Hultgren, the wake-up call was Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when the young emergency physician returned from an overseas trip and found his hospital without power, its doors closed to the public. Dr. Lakshmi Balasubramanian, an oncologist in Austin, Texas, signed up to study climate medicine after the death of a patient who was trapped in her home during a freak winter storm two years ago. Dr. Paul Charlton, a physician with the Indian Health Service in northwest New Mexico, was motivated by 2023’s summer heat wave, when temperatures cracked 100 degrees Fahrenheit...

Paris (AFP) – The world may cross the crucial 1.5C global warming threshold in seven years as fossil fuel CO2 emissions continue to rise, scientists warned Tuesday, urging countries at the COP28 talks to "act now" on coal, oil and gas pollution. Battle lines are being drawn over the future of fossil fuels at the UN climate summit in Dubai, with big polluters trying to see off calls for an agreement to phase out the carbon-intensive energy responsible for most of human-caused greenhouse gas.

.....“There is nothing more disgusting than rich people who do nothing to undermine the material position of their own class vaguely calling for peace and love,” Fergie wrote on Instagram on November 2. “It gives me actual bloodlust.”“We’re frightened to go out to restaurants, or cafés in town. It’s chilling,” the man in Great Barrington added. He tells me that the police aren’t much help—“they won’t come”—when it comes to Fergie and his followers, and that he’s considering moving towns. (The police declined to comment and directed me to the DA’s office who, through a representative, emailed to say that...

How much money do you think it will cost to save the world from a climate catastrophe? According to King Charles III, it's about $5 trillion. Every year. That’s what the British royal told a packed conference of green advocates and state leaders on Friday who flew from all around the world – many on private jets – to meet up at the plush United Nations climate summit in Dubai, known as COP 28. Charles did not give a breakdown of who should pay what, or where exactly the money would go, although he did say that the funds should...

A video of security officers wrestling a protester to the floor in the lobby of the Jackson Lake Lodge in Wyoming, outside the Federal Reserve’s most closely watched annual conference, clocked more than a million views. A protest that disrupted a speech by Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, at the Economic Club of New York this fall generated extensive coverage. And when the activists showed up again at Mr. Powell’s speech at the International Monetary Fund in early November, they seemed to get under his skin: The central bank’s usually staid leader was caught on a hot mic using...

The climate crisis threatens the chances of gender equality being achieved in the countries most vulnerable to global heating, the UN has said. As Cop28 opens in Dubai, UNFPA, the UN’s reproductive and maternal health agency, released data showing that the 14 countries most at risk from the effects of the climate crisis are also those where women and girls are more likely to die in childbirth, marry early, experience gender-based violence or be displaced by disaster. “The climate crisis affects everybody but there are subgroups least able to adapt,” said Angela Baschieri, UNFPA’s technical lead on climate action. “It...

DUBAI (Reuters) -World Bank President Ajay Banga said on Friday the development lender will devote 45% of its annual financing to climate-related projects by 2025, up from a target of 35%, and extend debt repayment pauses following climate disasters. Banga made the announcements at the COP28 climate conference in Dubai as the next steps in a broad overhaul of the World Bank to better respond to climate change and other global crises. "We're putting our ambition in overdrive and putting to work more than $40 billion per year -- around $9 billion more than the original target," Banga said. Under...

… Eating more plants and fewer animals is among the simplest, cheapest and most readily available ways for people to reduce their impact on the environment, climate scientists have long said. According to one University of Michigan study, if half of U.S. animal-based food was replaced with plant-based substitutes by 2030, the reduction in emissions for that year would be the equivalent of taking 47.5 million vehicles off the road. An explosion of new types of plant-based “meat” — the burgers, nuggets and other cuts that closely resemble meat but are made from soybeans and other plants — is attracting...

French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the COP28 summit on Friday as world leaders gathered in Dubai for the second day of UN climate talks. Macron urged G7 nations at UN climate talks on Friday to set an example to other countries and "commit to putting an end to coal" by 2030. Speaking at COP28 in Dubai, Macron said investing in coal was "truly an absurdity".

The negative impact on the climate from passenger vehicles, which is considerable, could have dropped by more than 30% over the past decade if not for the world’s appetite for large cars, a new report from the Global Fuel Economy Initiative suggests. Sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, now account for more than half of all new car sales across the globe, the group said, and it’s not alone. The International Energy Agency, using a narrower definition of SUV, estimates they make up nearly half. Over the years these cars have gotten bigger and so has their cost to the climate,...