Obama warns against obsession with progressive purity

“One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States —maybe it’s true here as well — is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be,’ and then we start sometimes creating what’s called a ‘circular firing squad,’ where you …

Big oil to create CO2 removal machines

Chevron, Occidental Petroleum and the Australian mining giant BHP this year have invested in Carbon Engineering, a small Canadian company that claims to be on the verge of a breakthrough in solving a critical climate change puzzle: removing carbon already in the atmosphere. At its pilot project in Squamish, an old lumber town about 30 …

Lamar Alexander calls for “New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy” to Counter Green New Deal

Who writes the new Einstein-Szilard letter? Legal Insurrection Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has …

New at the Belmont Club: our political obsession with controlling the future

Our expectations of the future are set by the past. When Stephen Hawking died in 2018 his final warning to humanity was to beware artificial intelligence, climate change and a meteor strike from outer space. Although these are now familiar terms no newspaper editor before 1970 would have heard of them. Until the early 1980s …

Netanyahu may annex West Bank settlements

“I am going to extend [Israeli] sovereignty and I don’t distinguish between settlement blocs and the isolated settlements.” A spokesman for Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told Reuters: “Any measures and any announcements will not change the facts. Settlements are illegal and they will be removed.” BBC What may have killed the Palestinian cause was the …

You can work

Arizona is one signature away from becoming the first state in the country to recognize out-of-state occupational licenses. That means licensed workers will be able to move to Arizona and immediately find work without going through the expensive, time-consuming, and redundant process of getting re-licensed Reason

When “bath” is spelled “national park”

Every day, hundreds of people without running water hike up from the city on Avila’s winding trails to bathe, wash clothes and collect water to carry home. To the dismay of environmental activists who fear the damage will be irreversible, people are littering its slopes and creeks with shampoo and water bottles, food wrappers, cardboard …

Crawling out the tunnel but still inside the wire

Mrs. May’s plan was to eventually take Britain out of Europe’s main economic structures but give it control over immigration from continental Europe. Mr. Corbyn has been reluctant to be pinned down on a single alternate plan, but Labour’s policy is to keep Britain more closely tied to European regulations and leave the door open …

Can the ICC prosecute US military personnel?

The travails of the global world and an international “rule based order” The U.S. is not a party to the treaty that created the international court. Instead of joining the organization when it was founded, the U.S. adopted the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which broadly prohibits the U.S. from facilitating any ICC investigation of U.S. …