October 2, 2022

Ian Is a Wake-Up Call on the Real Costs of Climate Paralysis

(Bloomberg) After a sleepy start to the North Atlantic hurricane season, Ian jolted us all awake.

By the time you read this, the storm will have torn through the Carolinas and possibly beyond. But all we can see at the moment is the devastation left behind in Florida. As of Friday morning, at least 15 people have been confirmed dead, some 2.6 million homes and businesses are without power and two bridges have collapsed. Photos show the extent of the destruction: trees flattened, streets littered with debris and homes soaked in sewage-tainted water.

As we clean up after Ian, it’s impossible to shake off a single, devastating fact: This won’t be the last time, and it won’t be the worst time. Ian is a reminder that we’ve got to start spending to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

Estimates of Ian’s damage range in the tens of billions to as much as $100 billion. But even at the lower end of estimates, it would be one of the most expensive hurricanes in US history. ...............(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-10-02/hurricane-ian-climate-change-makes-storms-bigger-more-expensive-l8rak06o

October 2, 2022

US supreme court to decide cases with 'monumental' impact on democracy

(Guardian UK) On Monday, the nine justices of the US supreme court will take their seats at the start of a new judicial year, even as the shock waves of the panel’s previous seismic term continue to reverberate across America.

In their first full term that ended in June, the court’s new six-to-three hard-right supermajority astounded the nation by tearing up decades of settled law. They eviscerated the right to an abortion, loosened America’s already lax gun laws, erected roadblocks to combating the climate crisis, and awarded religious groups greater say in public life.

The fallout of the spate of extreme rightwing rulings has shaken public confidence in the political neutrality of the court. A Gallup poll this week found that fewer than half of US adults trust it – a drop of 20 points in just two years and the lowest rating since Gallup began recording the trend in 1972.

Justices have begun to respond to the pressure by sparring openly in public. The Wall Street Journal reported that in recent speeches the liberal justice Elena Kagan has accused her conservative peers of damaging the credibility of the court by embracing Republican causes. ................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/oct/02/us-supreme-court-cases-monumental-impact-democracy

October 1, 2022

"Statewide book bans" are coming to Florida's classrooms, enforced by the far right

(Salon) In early August, a video posted on TikTok by a Tennessee elementary school teacher went viral. The teacher was sitting on the floor of her classroom, before a bookshelf containing hundreds of slim books — a collection normally available to students if they finish their classwork early. But according to a new Tennessee law, the "Age Appropriate Materials Act," she was required to catalog every book in her classroom, then send it for several rounds of review and post a final list of approved books online for parents to scrutinize, before she could allow her students to read any of them. In the close to 14,000 comments the video received, a common theme emerges: "And people wonder why teachers are leaving in droves."

As of this week, it seems likely that teachers in Florida will be placed in a similar situation. This March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a policy, HB1467, that bans schools from using any books that are "pornographic" or age "inappropriate," and allows parents broad access to review and challenge all books and materials used for instruction or in school libraries.

In combination with other recent laws restricting public schools from discussing LGBTQ issues or racism — including Florida's 2022 "Don't Say Gay" law (HB 1557) and "Stop WOKE Act" (HB7) and its 2021 ban on teaching "Critical Race Theory" — this has led some school districts to advise teachers to box up their classroom libraries until each book is vetted. Others have instructed teachers to stop buying or accepting donated books for their classrooms until at least January, to give the district time to hire mandatory new staff to serve as "media specialists" who review each title.

As Book Riot reported in July, the new requirements are so confusing that "each district is interpreting them differently." In Palm Beach County, the district provided teachers with a checklist to assess their collections: did they have books (usually about LGBTQ characters or issues) that had already been flagged for review? Does a book "explicitly instruct" about sexual orientation or gender identity? Does a book promote the ideas that "People are racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously," that people should feel guilty about things members of their race or sex did in the past, or that systemic racism exists in the U.S.? ................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/10/01/statewide-book-bans-are-coming-to-floridas-classrooms-enforced-by-the-far-right/