Extra, Extra
Failed States in the Time of Climate Change: Even in an era when natural disasters are becoming more extreme, the Libyan flooding stands at as something truly horrific. “The center of the eastern city of Derna is like one big graveyard — a mass of flattened buildings, wrecked lives and upended vehicles amid torn trees. Huge nine-story buildings have been ripped off their foundations and smothered by volumes of mud.” ‘We saw friends being swept away’: Inside Derna, Libya’s devastated city. “The climate crisis, counterintuitively, will make these storms rarer. But, when they do hit, they could be bigger than ever before.” Libya’s Deadly Floods Show the Growing Threat of Medicanes. While the flooding was a natural disaster, it was also a very unnatural one. Time: How Libya Fell Victim to a Most Unnatural Disaster. “It’s never good to be in a failed state, but it’s even worse to be in a failed state during the Anthropocene epoch.”
+ Whereabouts Known: “Adolescence is a time when teens begin to develop a sense of self that is independent from their parents. That’s a necessary, messy process, and one that’s probably best left less examined than constant monitoring allows for.” In The Atlantic, Devorah Heitner argues that Surveilling your kids will only backfire. (I don’t really worry that much about my kids. But I do find tracking their location to be just about as addictive as every other app on my iPhone.)
+ A Daily Constitutional Away From the Constitution: Tom Nichols reflects on some the comments Mitt Romney made about his party. “Millions of American citizens no longer believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. This is not some pedestrian political observation, some throwaway line about partisan division. Leave aside for the moment that Romney is talking about Republicans and the hangers-on in the Trump movement; they are also your fellow Americans, citizens of a nation that was, until recently, one of the most durable democracies on Earth. And they no longer care about the fundamental document that governs our lives as Americans.” When Americans Abandon the Constitution. I shared my take on the Romney retirement yesterday. I highly recommend it. Spartacus Has Left the Building.
+ Exx Post Facto: “Exxon’s public acceptance in 2006 of the risks posed by climate change was an early act of Rex Tillerson, an Exxon lifer who became CEO that year. Some viewed him as a moderating force who brought Exxon in line with the scientific consensus. The documents reviewed by the Journal, which haven’t been previously reported, cast Tillerson’s decadelong tenure in a different light. They show that Tillerson, as well as some of Exxon’s board directors and other top executives, sought to cast doubt on the severity of climate change’s impacts. Exxon scientists supported research that questioned the findings of mainstream climate science, even after the company said it would stop funding think tanks and others that promoted climate-change denial.” WSJ: Inside Exxon’s Strategy to Downplay Climate Change.
+ Dining Haul: Mike Pence said he’d definitely be open to selecting a woman as his VP. However, he wouldn’t go so far as to say he’d dine alone with her. (I gotta hand it to Pence. Even after all these years, he can still make me laugh uncomfortably before racing to scrub my unconscious with a wire brush.)
