No emissions travel to a war zone

Or if not to a war zone, in close proximity to one. This seems far less a question at this point than an eventuality, but… will the last vestiges of fossil fuel domination burn furiously right up to the borders of energy transformation? The physical proximity of Russia and Norway hide the light years in distance they are from one another in ways that should make us wonder about the elasticity of time:

a new study by the Clean Cities Campaign, a coalition of non-governmental organizations, which analyzed 36 European cities on factors such as road safety for pedestrians, access to climate friendly transportation and air quality. The research found that Oslo is making the most progress on wiping out mobility emissions, followed by Amsterdam and Helsinki. Naples and Krakow had the lowest scores due, in part, to congestion. The financial hubs Paris and London ranked fifth and 12th, respectively.

Meanwhile, bombs, missiles, troops, and chaos for civilians in Ukraine. We may think this is about a crazy person’s LOOK AT ME obsession and not a ‘war’ for resources, but without the latter, there is no source for the former. His delusions are being fueled by the old standbys, in addition to resentment and authoritarianism.

Dammit.

Movin’ on Down

As an unplanned follow-up on yesterday, apparently the young’uns think the William of Rights used to be Bill Somebody. Or they think bill is a verb. Either way, #civicsfail:

Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights on the most recent national civics examination, and only one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches, according to test results released on Wednesday.

At the same time, three-quarters of high school seniors who took the test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were unable to demonstrate civic skills like identifying the effect of United States foreign policy on other nations or naming a power granted to Congress by the Constitution.

The Department of Education administered the tests, known as the nation’s report card, to 27,000 4th-, 8th- and 12th-grade students last year. Questions cover themes including how government is financed, what rights are protected by the Constitution and how laws are passed.

As I slowly drew my finger to wag in the direction of our young citizens of tomorrow, I remembered some of my own schoolin’ and put it back in the hypocrisy holster. Sure it’s easy to blame them – except that they didn’t create an education system more concerned with turning them into workers and consumers than into citizens. I didn’t either. But they hear all the time that they are consumers and should address every single thing as such. Civil liberties? Unless that’s some kind of all-night sale at Failmart, how would they come into contact with the concept? Shorter me: How can they be expected to know things they are not being taught? Hmm?

These kids have a problem, in that many of them are largely ignorant of important issues and hence are ill-equipped to make decisions about them and double-hence, more likely to be manipulated. But they are not the problem. It’s their elite overlords, who think there are two sides to deathpanelsbirthcertificatedeficitsocialism!, that are the problem.

What a Local Paper Looks Like

We all tune/dial up/surf/click on/re-direct to the NYT so often that it becomes, without our even realizing it, natural for us to project ourselves onto the grandest scale. And while there’s little wrong with that – and so along as the NYT remains the best source of actually reporting – our relationship to local news sees a thoroughgoing change and our national paper becomes another way we lose local connections; we have to pan out now just to select the spots where we pan back in.

And not just news, obviously, but issues become obscured when only viewed through a wide-angle prism. While I wouldn’t suggest we need to be led by any simple wisdoms of uniquely local warranty, and hope to avoid the condescending loyalty to any kind of flyover provincialism, we should realize that many national reporters/columnists strive to lead us back to these very perspectives, albeit from a distant, centralized point of entry.

By just this sort of scaling and re-scaling, you can see how things might get misconstrued or confused, accidentally or otherwise, and generally difficult to discern, much less do anything.

But looking at the way things might and often do happen – on issues related to food, health care or transportation just to name three – the power of motion is all local. Have a look below at this unsigned, front page admonition on a new health department, and a couple of things jump out, even beyond the ‘reality show with actual people’ category. On this scale, it seems that no amount of agitation against ‘socialized this’ or ‘abstinence that’ would or could make any sense. Imagine that, with or without all caps.

What a Local Paper Looks Like

We all tune/dial up/surf/click on/re-direct to the NYT so often that it becomes, without our even realizing it, natural for us to project ourselves onto the grandest scale. And while there’s little wrong with that – and so along as the NYT remains the best source of actually reporting – our relationship to local news sees a thoroughgoing change and our national paper becomes another way we lose local connections; we have to pan out now just to select the spots where we pan back in.

And not just news, obviously, but issues become obscured when only viewed through a wide-angle prism. While I wouldn’t suggest we need to be led by any simple wisdoms of uniquely local warranty, and hope to avoid the condescending loyalty to any kind of flyover provincialism, we should realize that many national reporters/columnists strive to lead us back to these very perspectives, albeit from a distant, centralized point of entry.

By just this sort of scaling and re-scaling, you can see how things might get misconstrued or confused, accidentally or otherwise, and generally difficult to discern, much less do anything.

But looking at the way things might and often do happen – on issues related to food, health care or transportation just to name three – the power of motion is all local. Have a look below at this unsigned, front page admonition on a new health department, and a couple of things jump out, even beyond the ‘reality show with actual people’ category. On this scale, it seems that no amount of agitation against ‘socialized this’ or ‘abstinence that’ would or could make any sense. Imagine that, with or without all caps.