A useful perspective on Ukraine and the fascist Azov Battalion

I have a lot of thoughts about the events in Ukraine, and about the racism revealed in the reactions of “Western” media. While no situation like this is simple, it would take a lot to convince me that the more powerful of the two countries, which is also the one doing the invading, is somehow in the right. One argument I have heard, in support of Putin’s claim that this invasion is “de-Nazification”, is that the Ukrainian government is collaborating with the Azov Battalion, an explicitly fascist paramilitary group. It’s true – they are. That does not, however, mean that the Ukrainian government is itself fascist. As usual, Beau of the Fifth Column has a useful perspective on this. Part of what makes a lot of people “leftists” is the ability to hold their own country to the same standard as any other, even when rhetoric might try to mask the similarities. This video not only makes those comparisons, it also discusses what the possible outcomes of this collaboration might be.

Thanks to Gorzki over on Pharyngula for putting this video in front of me!

Renegade Cut: When were you radicalized?

Leon‘s a couple years older than me, but his look back at the beginning of the 21st century feels very similar to a lot of my own experience. With all the talk about election interference and voter suppression since 2016, I think it’s useful to look back at the 2000 election, and how George W. Bush ended up in the Oval Office. I spent a lot of that era engaged in traditional activism. I went to protests, sent letters and emails to politicians, and even took the time to be lied about the SOA/WHINSEC by an army PR officer. From what I can tell, none of it did a damned thing, because that form of opposition relies on the people in power having at least a little shame, and our leaders lack even that. It was Obama’s time in office that made me realize that it was the whole system that needed to be replaced.

During the Bush years, it was easy to believe that all the problems came from the GOP. My conservative relatives joined in the mockery of the “hopey-changey rhetoric of Obama’s first campaign, but they never seemed to get that the disappointment of Obama’s base wasn’t because the policies we wanted turned out to be bad – it was because Obama and the rest of the Democratic Party leadership are far too much like the Republicans to allow anything like the kinds of change many of us hoped for. I remember being enraged at Joe Liebermann, who was then playing the role currently filled by Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema. I remember also being angry that – right at the beginning of the healthcare fight – the Democrats decided to start negotiations by preemptively ceding ground, and taking both universal healthcare and a public option off the table.

I thought it was naiveté, caused by too friendly of a relationship with the Republicans. Looking back, and looking at the rhetoric of the 2020 Democratic Party primary, it seems pretty clear that they didn’t even want to risk getting something like a public option. They couldn’t stand to have it in play even as something they could get rid of in exchange for a “better deal” on what they did want. As far as their lives are concerned, the system works great. They’re wealthy, powerful, and surrounded by people whose livelihoods depend on things continuing as they are. It’s no wonder they think that only minor changes are needed, when they live in a fantasy world, and lack the courage to face reality.

 

If there’s nowhere safe on Earth, protest from space!

A mix of reality and “Western” propaganda have served to make U.S.S.R. and Russian intelligence services into something of a bogeyman – ruthless, effective, and with power that reached around the globe. This benefits the Russian state, of course, but it also serves to justify the existence, power, and murderousness of agencies like the CIA and MI6. Beyond that, it glorifies those agencies for “winning” the Cold War, and serves as a foundation for film propaganda like the James Bond series, or the excellent Atomic Blonde.

But as I said at the beginning, it’s not just propaganda, and it’s frankly hard to know the extend of any intelligence agency’s power. Within Russia, it’s pretty clear that opposing Putin is a dangerous thing to do. Outside of Russia, it seems there’s a very real danger, primarily to former agents of the Russian government. In 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB and FSB officer who opposed Putin, was poisoned with Polonium 210. He had been granted asylum in the UK, but clearly that wasn’t enough to protect him, and honestly I don’t see how the same situation could be prevented in any other country. Likewise, in 2018, several people in the UK were poisoned with a “nerve agent” in the failed attempt to assassinate Sergei Skripal, one of whom died because of the careless way the assassins disposed of their weapon.

All of this is to say that it’s not unreasonable to claim that there’s nowhere on Earth that’s really safe for a high-profile Russian who opposes Putin and his decisions. It’s also not safe for “low-profile” Russians, as the recent wave of arrests has shown, but it seems like the more exotic attacks are reserved for those used to send a message. Fortunately, three Russians may have found a way to register their opposition to the invasion of Ukraine, where Putin can’t reach them. If nowhere on Earth is safe, then protest from somewhere off Earth!

Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station last night in flight suits made in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag, in what appeared to be a daring statement against the war.

Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a six-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory yesterday, joining the crew of two Russians, four Americans and one German.

In an extraordinary move, the three new arrivals emerged from their Soyuz capsule after docking with the space station wearing bright yellow jumpsuits with blue stripes, instead of the standard-issue blue uniform.

The image shows a group of 10 people posing for a photo in the International Space Station. The 7 in the back are wearing gray uniforms, and the three in the front are wearing yellow uniforms with blue stripes

The cosmonauts claim that the yellow suits were because they just had a lot of yellow material around and they needed to use it up, but the Ukrainian flag is currently being used as a symbol of opposition to the invasion, and solidarity with Ukraine. That excuse reminds me of the men arrested for Skripal’s murder saying that they were just in Salisbury to see the clock at Salisbury Cathedral.  All jokes aside, they will need to come back to Earth soon, since staying in space indefinitely would result in a death that’s at least as bad as anything Putin might cook up. It takes guts to do something like this, even if you know that you’re safe for the next few months. It seems likely that this war is going to have lasting effects around the world, from its effects on food production and distribution, to the direct effects of war on those suffering it, to the shifts in politics and policy that are currently happening as a result.

In the meantime, I always like seeing unusual methods of protest, and this made me smile.


If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into this. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Let me snooze on, like a kitty in the sun

We’re all glad that the sun is back, but His Holiness seems particularly pleased that his favorite napping conditions have returned. If contentedness were given mortal flesh, I think this is what it would look like.

 

The image shows a cat sleeping in the sun by a window, on top of a small dresser. The cat's legs, shoulders, neck, and muzzle are pure white, and velvety soft. His sides are glowing golden-brown in the sunlight, with a hint of black stripes. You can tell, looking at him, that while his fur isn't very long, it's very thick. His rump and tail show the black stripes a little more, with some gray. His upper cheeks, temples, and ears are the same brindled golden-brown and gray with black as his back. He's lying on his right side, with his right leg and tail dangling over the edge of a light brown wooden dresser. There's a fleece blanket on top of the dresser. His head is using the windowsill as a pillow, and his front legs are sticking out toward a yellow flowerpot with something growing in it. Through the window, you can see an asphalt parking lot with the bumper of a blue car. The window frames are black, and there's a white lace curtain covering the rightmost half of the righthand window.


If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into this. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Living near green spaces reduces your risk of stroke by 16%.

One of my hopes for the future involves a more urban humanity, but with cities that have plants growing wherever possible. Instead of towers covered in glass, we can have them covered in ivy, or with tiered gardens. Instead of streets, we can free underground mass transit (or elevated railways), designed for accessibility. Also maybe bicycle taxis and the like. The streets themselves can be repurposed for gardening or leisure, or even just some version of “forest”. I want cities that look like strange forested landscapes from a distance, until it gets dark, and you can see lights twinkling through the leaves. There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which I’ve talked about before, but a big one is its affect on the overall health of the population, primarily by mitigating some of the air pollution associated with traffic and industry. We should be clear; air pollution is also a problem in rural areas. That’s why simply adding more vegetation to our current cities – while that’s a decent start – isn’t enough. We also need to change how and why cities are designed, and what the options are for getting around. Regardless, even in cities as they exist today, more green space seems to mean less risk of having a stroke, even controlling for factors like air pollution, smoking, and so on:

The results indicate a direct relationship between increased levels of NO2 in the atmosphere and the risk of ischaemic stroke. For every increase of 10 micrograms (µg) per cubic metre, this risk increases by 4%. The same happens when PM2.5 levels increase by 5 µg/m3. In the case of soot particles, the risk increases by 5% for every 1 µg/m3 increase in the atmosphere. These figures are the same for the entire population, irrespective of other socio-economic factors, age or smoking habits.

“It should be borne in mind that, unlike other air pollutants, which have various sources, NO2 is mainly caused by road traffic. Therefore, if we really want to reduce the multiple risks that this pollutant poses to people’s health, we need to implement bold measures to reduce car use”, says Cathryn Tonne, a researcher at ISGlobal.

“The study demonstrates the importance of environmental determinants in stroke risk. Given that it is predicted that the incidence, mortality and disability attributed to the disease will increase in the coming years, it is important to understand all the risk factors involved”, explains Dr. Carla Avellaneda, a researcher in the Neurovascular Research Group at IMIM-Hospital del Mar and one of the main authors of the study. Previous studies by the same group had already provided evidence on the relationship between factors such as soot or noise levels and the risk of suffering a stroke and its severity. All these factors act as stroke triggers.

In contrast, having an abundance of green spaces within the same radius from the home directly reduces the risk of suffering a stroke. Specifically, up to 16%. In this sense, “People who are surrounded by greater levels of greenery at their place of residence are protected against the onset of stroke”, says Dr. Avellaneda. Exposure to green spaces is generally considered to have beneficial effects through a variety of mechanisms, such as stress reduction, increased physical activity and social contact, and even exposure to an enriched microbiome.

Societies tend to be guided based on the goals of those governing them. Currently, the goal is ever-increasing wealth and power for those at the top. That’s not how things have always been, and it’s not how things have to be in the future. We can have a society aimed at giving everyone the time and resources to really seek meaning and happiness for themselves, and research like this can go a long way to showing us what that society should look like, at least in general terms. We should want things like a more verdant kind of city for the same reason we should want universal healthcare – it makes people’s lives better, and gives them longer, healthier lives.

The image shows concept art for China's Liuzhou Forest City. It shows buildings that are tiered almost like step pyramids, or some forms of mountainside farming. Each tier has trees growing on it, with the walls of the building showing white amid the greenery. Closer to the foreground is a sleek-looking railway station, and in front of that is a multi-lane highway. The overall effect is similar to that of overgrown ruins.


If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into this. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Deep below the waves, something is stirring…

I’m afraid I have something of a confession to make. When learning about the dangers posed by thawing permafrost, it never occurred to me that there might be such a thing as underwater permafrost. Turns out there is, and that’s melting too.

Across the Arctic, numerous peer-reviewed studies show that thawing permafrost creates unstable land which negatively impacts important infrastructure and impacts Indigenous communities. Now, a new study from MBARI researchers and their collaborators published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds dramatic changes offshore and is the first to document how the thawing of permafrost submerged underwater at the edge of the Arctic Ocean is affecting the seafloor.

About one quarter of the land in the Northern Hemisphere is permafrost or frozen ground. At the end of the last ice age (12,000 years ago) melting glaciers and sea level rise submerged large swaths of permafrost. Until just recently, this submerged permafrost had been largely inaccessible to researchers. But now, thanks to technological advancements, including MBARI’s autonomous mapping robots, scientists are able to conduct detailed surveys and assess changes in the seafloor.

High-resolution bathymetric surveys in the Canadian Beaufort Sea have revealed changes in the seabed from 2010 to 2019. Using autonomous mapping robots, scientists documented multiple large sinkhole-like depressions—the largest the size of an entire city block of six-story buildings—had developed in less than a decade.

“We know that big changes are happening across the Arctic landscape, but this is the first time we’ve been able to deploy technology to see that changes are happening offshore too,” said Charlie Paull, a geologist at MBARI who led the study with Scott Dallimore from the Geological Survey of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and an international team of researchers. “While the underwater sinkholes we have discovered are the result of longer-term, glacial-interglacial climate cycles, we know the Arctic is warming faster than any region on Earth. As climate change continues to reshape the Arctic, it’s critical that we also understand changes in the submerged permafrost offshore.”

The image is a topographical map of a section of seafloor. The areas of higher elevation are orange, fading to yellow, green, and then blue at greater depths. The image shows a sinkhole that's 220 meters long, 74 meters wide, and 24 meters deep.

Repeated surveys with MBARI’s mapping AUVs revealed dramatic, and rapid, changes to seafloor bathymetry from the Arctic shelf edge in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. This massive sinkhole developed in just nine years. Image: Eve Lundsten © 2022 MBARI

It seems there’s something of a thawing and re-freezing process going on, which could account for the creation of sinkholes without any real methane release, but that doesn’t mean that couldn’t change if frozen organic matter is thawed long enough to start rotting. I’m honestly more worried about the stability of methane clathrates. If it turns out this process is widespread on the seafloor in the Arctic, or if it’s becoming more so, then that could cause a lot of problems. As ever with this stuff, we probably won’t know if we’ve crossed a deadly threshold until it’s far too late to do anything about it. It would be better to be proactive than reactive.

On the plus side, maybe it’s just Kroll waking up.

 


If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into this. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Tegan Tuesday: Stuart Little and the recovery of lost art

Studying art history is a bittersweet thing for me. Much of art is ephemera, and any preservation is only as good as your failsafe. Fires, floods, random spills of ink, hard drive failure, the memorable cat-based file-deletion, and a myriad of other things mean that a huge amount of has simply been lost to time. I’ve read about composers or performers, the best of their ages, with all of their musical works lost. We only know Sappho’s poetry in fragments. Early film was highly combustible and whole warehouses have gone up in flames, as well as being destroyed or lost for any number of non-accidental reasons – in 2013, the Library of Congress reported that 75% of all silent-era films were lost. For myself, as a kid, my favorite painter was Claude Monet, and when I learned that he would paint over old canvases I cried to think of all the paintings that nobody will ever see!

But just as there have been losses, there have been amazing finds. I worked with a flutist in the Boston area who reconstructed an early 19th century concerto. The most important oboe concerto in the repertoire is Mozart’s — and it was only rediscovered in an attic in 1920 by a Mozart scholar named Bernhard Paumgartner. (And amusing to my modern academia-trained self, the article detailing the find is a scanty four pages long.) The US Library of Congress also hosts a semi-yearly event called “Mostly Lost” with scraps of unidentified film and the public invited to help identify aspects. Mere seconds of a film might show show something distinctive and lead to proper identification. From what I’ve heard it is a fun event and a real life mystery puzzle that could have archival importance for these scraps of celluloid. Despite ongoing efforts like this to find lost art, many of the biggest discoveries were made by accident.

While on Christmas break in 2009, Hugarian art historian Gergely Barki opted to relax with his daughter and watch the 1999 film Stuart Little, when he recognized the art in Stuart’s living room as a previously-missing painting by Hungarian avant-garde artist Róbert Berény (1887 – 1953).

Barki recognized the painting—“Sleeping Lady with Black Vase”—from a black-and-white photograph taken of the work during its last exhibition, in 1928. “It was not just on screen for one second but in several scenes of the film, so I knew I was not dreaming. It was a very happy moment,” said Barki. who had no idea how it ended up as set dressing in a 1999 children’s movie.

Barki, who is writing a biography of Berény, went into full detective mode. “I started to write e-mails to everyone involved in the film,” he told the New York Post. He sent letters to the film’s creators, Sony Pictures and Columbia Pictures, finally receiving a reply from the film’s former set designer two years later.

According to Barki, the film assistant, whose name has not been reported, had picked up the painting in a Pasadena, Ca., antiques shop for just $500. Unaware of its origin or value, she used the work to decorate the apartment of the family—played by the disembodied voices of Michael J. Fox, Jonathan Lipnicki, Geena Davis, and Hugh Laurie—in the film based on E.B. White’s beloved book. When production wrapped, the assistant bought the painting from the studio and hung it in her apartment. “I had a chance to visit her and see the painting and tell her everything about the painter,” said Barki. “She was very surprised.”

Berény was one of leaders of the Hungarian avant-garde movement in the early 20th century and was heavily influenced by artists like Cézanne and van Gogh, thanks to his training and work in Paris. “Berény’s work was exhibited throughout his lifetime, including at the Ernst Museum in Budapest, at the National Salon in 1929 and 1932, and he represented Hungary at the Venice Biennales of 1928, 1934 and 1936. Works by Berény are in the collections of the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs, and the Deák Collection in Székesfehérvár and have been exhibited as far afield as the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California.” Unfortunately, his studio was destroyed during WWII and many of his works are presumed lost. But the importance of Berény to Hungarian art history combined with the rarity of his extant work made Barki’s discovery all the more important. The five-year journey from discovery to repatriation ended with a record-breaking sale for 70 million forints (226,500 Euros) at a pre-Christmas auction hosted by the Budapest Congress Centre.  Barki suspects that the reason the painting survived the century is that it left Hungary when it was sold in 1928 “because that was when it was last exhibited and, as most of the buyers were Jewish, it probably left the country as a result of the war”. What a journey this little painting took, and how wonderful that it made it home.

The image shows a scene from the movie Stuart Little, with a man in a black suit and a woman in a red dress on either side of a boy in a white tuxedo with a black bowtie holding a clothed mouse in his hand. In the background can be seen Berény's

When I initially thought to write up this article, I thought it was extremely charming and a welcome bit of good news. I had foolishly not looked at the dates, and I thought it was a recent article -the hazards of encountering interesting articles through social media! But even good news from 2014 is still good news to read in 2022, especially considering the general tenor of the news today, and I hope the story of “The Sleeping Lady with Black Vase” enchants you too!


If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work that goes into this. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

What does “green infrastructure” actually mean?

Greenwashing is a serious problem. It’s not just that the rhetoric and advertising mask inadequate or even nonexistent “action”, but also that it misleads people into believing that their individual shopping choices are enough to solve the world’s environmental problems. When it comes to something like infrastructure, it can lull people into thinking that their votes are enough. That’s especially concerning, because there’s an incentive for politicians and construction firms to put a “green” spin on as much of their normal practice as possible. It helps the companies make money, and even if the politicians don’t get kickbacks, they get something to bring up any time they’re asked about dealing with climate change.

So how do we tell when they’re lying? What does “green infrastructure” mean? Turns out, it means a number of different things:

A new nationwide analysis of 122 plans from 20 US cities, published today in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, found that many plans fail to explicitly define green infrastructure. When they do, they tend to focus on stormwater management, favoring engineered facilities over parks and larger urban green spaces. The study is the first systematic review of the use and definition of the green infrastructure concept in US city plans.

Lead author Zbigniew Grabowski, who completed the work as a postdoctoral associate at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, explains, “Green infrastructure is broadly understood to be a good thing, but many city plans lack a clear definition of what it actually is. Hydrological definitions dominate. This narrow view can limit project funding and cause cities to miss out on vital social and ecological services that more integrative green infrastructure can provide.”

Green infrastructure has its roots in 19th century landscape design. Its original conceptualization was broad, taking in parks, trail systems, gardens, and other natural landscape features that provide benefits for people and the environment. This shifted in 2007, when the US Environmental Protection Agency defined green infrastructure as a set of best practices for managing stormwater, to meet Clean Water Act regulations.

Coauthor and Cary Institute scientist Steward T.A. Pickett notes, “While the landscape concept of green infrastructure includes stormwater management benefits, stormwater concepts rarely consider the broader landscape. This can mean lost opportunities for more expansive benefits, among them high-quality green spaces, management of diverse environmental risks, and improved urban public health.”

The team’s nationwide analysis explored: the types of city plans that define green infrastructure, how it is defined, and the functions and benefits assigned to green infrastructure projects. Twenty medium to large US cities, representing the major biomes, were included. City plans (303) were collected and screened for references to green infrastructure, with 122 meeting criteria for analysis. These included comprehensive/strategic, sustainability, watershed restoration, and climate plans.

Cities that were part of the assessment: Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Louisville, Miami, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Juan, Seattle, St. Louis, Syracuse, and Washington DC.

Among the team’s findings: 39% of plans that refer to green infrastructure do not define what it is. Of those that do, stormwater concepts predominate (59%), followed by landscape concepts (17%), ‘integrative’ — which combine stormwater and landscape concepts (15%), and other (9%). Across plans containing definitions, 57% had several different definitions, with a total of 153 unique definitions identified, indicating that green infrastructure means different things to city planners across the US.

What qualifies as green infrastructure also varied widely. Across GI definitions, 693 different types of green infrastructure were identified. The features most commonly included in plans were trees (90%), rain gardens (75%), ‘other stormwater facilities’ (55%), blue-green corridors (60%), and green roofs (65%). Some cities went so far as to include green energy and alternative transportation technologies within their definitions of GI.

Green infrastructure benefits identified by city plans include water quality, recreation, health, city livability, and property value. Across cities, social benefits were most commonly cited in plans, followed by environmental, economic, ‘built environment’ (to enhance or support existing built structures, like a sewer or transportation system), and ecological benefits. Some cities also identified more specific benefits such as recovery from extreme weather events (e.g. Washington DC), new business opportunities (e.g. Miami), and social revitalization (e.g. Atlanta).

Taking in the breadth of concepts outlined in the 122 plans, the authors developed a synthetic definition of green infrastructure to guide future research and planning, and help cities and researchers adopt a more comprehensive view of what green infrastructure entails and the benefits it confers.

Green infrastructure (GI) refers to a system of interconnected ecosystems, ecological-technological hybrids, and built infrastructures providing contextual social, environmental, and technological functions and benefits. As a planning concept, GI brings attention to how diverse types of urban ecosystems and built infrastructures function in relation to one another to meet socially negotiated goals.

Coauthor Timon McPhearson, a research fellow at Cary Institute and Director of the Urban Systems Lab at The New School, concludes, “The US is poised to make large scale, needed, investments in urban infrastructure. To ensure these investments build environmental resilience in a way that benefits the lives of all urban residents, we’ve put forth a more comprehensive definition of green infrastructure, to guide planning, policy, and practice — with the goal of facilitating more equitable urban greening.”

Across the country, advocacy organizations, communities, planners, researchers, and practitioners are working to transform urban planning to better address equity and justice issues. To support these efforts, the research team created a website to share deeper project findings, resources, and recommendations for the 20 cities examined.

I don’t know if I’ll have a more detailed response to this in the future, but fortunately the folks behind the study put together a website to help people explore their findings. I appreciate the effort put in to make this material accessible to the general public.

True Facts about carnivorous plants

Carnivorous plants have always fascinated me, from the “pet” Venus Fly Trap that I’d feed ground beef, to the pitcher plants I found growing around a woodland pond in New Hampshire. Things like this always make me regret my own mortality, because I’d love to see what kind of weird life evolves ten thousand years from now.

Video: How not to talk about climate change

There are a lot of wrong ways to approach climate change, both in terms of the policies proposed, and in terms of the rhetoric used. The people in our society with the most power and the biggest platforms are pretty much universally people who have no trouble making ends meet. I think that’s part of why they’re so willing to embrace the notion that climate change is about individual choices, rather than systems, because paying a little more for something doesn’t really affect their quality of life much. Left Reckoning has a perspective on this that I think is worth lyour time: