Tag: environment

A Fossil Fuels Giant Has Been Raising the Election Chances of Extreme-Right Candidates — Using a Dangerous High-Tech Weapon

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Federal Election Commission (FEC), a federal agency, states that its mission is to “protect the integrity of the federal campaign finance process by providing transparency and fairly enforcing and administering federal campaign finance laws.” So last week Wall Street On Parade sent an email inquiry to the FEC, asking the following:

A Fossil Fuels Giant Has Been Raising the Election Chances of Extreme-Right Candidates — Using a Dangerous High-Tech Weapon

US Treasury recommends exploring creation of a digital dollar

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

The Biden administration is moving one step closer to developing a central bank digital currency, known as the digital dollar. Administration officials say it’d help reinforce the U.S. role as a leader in the world financial system.

US Treasury recommends exploring creation of a digital dollar

H/T: PFYT2

Related:

A digital dollar would allow Americans to directly open up an account at the Fed

And while some have suggested that the Fed could potentially launch a digital dollar on a public network like Ethereum, Luther suspects that it would instead choose to launch on its own dedicated blockchain.

“A public blockchain would limit the government’s ability to control access and monitor transactions. I am not convinced it will give up control and oversight, even if doing so would be in the best interest of society.”

Fed’s Powell: a U.S. digital dollar could help maintain international primacy

The development of an official digital version of the U.S. dollar could help safeguard its global dominance as other countries issue their own, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Friday, weighing in with generally positive remarks on a hot-button topic at the central bank that has left policymakers divided.

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Ten countries have already launched central bank digital currencies and another 105 countries are exploring the option, according to the Atlantic Council, leading to fears the dollar could lose some of its dominance to China.

U.S. Climate Chief Calls On Africa To Slash Emissions

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

U.S. Climate Chief Calls On Africa To Slash Emissions

“It is true that 20 countries – including the United States — are now responsible for 80 percent of all emissions. It is also true that 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa are responsible for only 0.55% of total emissions,” Kerry said in a speech at the African Ministerial Conference on the Environment (AMCEN).

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Many African nations argue that they wouldn’t curb investment in fossil fuels which are vital to allowing hundreds of millions of people access to electricity. The developed nations, for their part, are calling on Africa to help curb emissions, but no concrete plans have been proposed to help developing nations, including those in Africa, with increased funding to fight climate change.

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea): Full Text of Kim Jong Un Speech On Nuclear Weapons Policy

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

We are pleased to present to our readers a very significant policy speech given by Kim Jong Un, the General Secretary of the Korean Workers Party and President of State Affairs. In this speech, he clearly warns the United States that he and his government are prepared to defend the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, known in the US as “North Korea”), including the use of nuclear weapons if the DPRK is faced with an invasion from the USA, the South Korean puppet regime of the US, or both.

The context of the speech is important. As we wrote in the previous article to this one, the United States has engaged in decades of deadly provocations against the Korean workers state in the form of constant “war games” in preparation for initiating an attempt to overthrow the DPRK and restore capitalist exploitation to North Korea. However, in the past several years, the United States has started to openly proclaim its intention to “decapitate” the leadership of the DPRK in a massive attack from South Korea which may include the use of nuclear weapons to destroy the defensive underground bunkers which the workers of the DPRK constructed to survive the massive bombing campaign the US launched against them in the Korean War, killing an estimated 3 million North Koreans. In response, North Korea has – in spite of crushing US sanctions that have caused immense suffering for the workers of the DPRK – embarked on a crash program to develop a nuclear arsenal capable of defending their country. We wholeheartedly agree with this heroic attempt by North Korea to defend itself from the psychotic warmongers of the US imperialist capitalist class and their murderous gangster regime in Washington. The US government is the #1 terrorist threat in the world today! Defend the DPRK! End All Sanctions Against the DPRK Immediately! US Out of the Korean Peninsula Now!

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea): Full Text of Kim Jong Un Speech On Nuclear Weapons Policy

This Remote Mine Could Foretell the Future of America’s Electric Car Industry

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

TAMARACK, Minn. — In this isolated town of about 100 people, dozens of employees are at work for Talon Metals, drawing long cylinders of rock from deep in the earth and analyzing their contents. They liken their work to a game of Battleship — each hole drilled allows them to better map out where a massive and long-hidden mineral deposit is lurking below.

This Remote Mine Could Foretell the Future of America’s Electric Car Industry

US to Appoint New Arctic Ambassador With Eye on Russia

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

US to Appoint New Arctic Ambassador With Eye on Russia

The US military is preparing for a future conflict in the Arctic with Russia, as well as China, by revamping its forces in the region. The US Army released a strategy document last year that said the Arctic has the “potential to become a contested space where United States’ great power rivals, Russia and China, seek to use military and economic power to gain and maintain access to the region at the expense of US interests.”

The US Navy released a similar strategy document in early 2021. Then-Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite suggested that the US could start challenging Russian claims to the Arctic by sending warships near Russia’s northern coast, similar to how the US Navy makes provocative passages near Chinese-controlled islands in the South China Sea.

Related:

Melting ice will change the economics of extracting resources from the Arctic

Of the 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,700 trillion cubic feet of natural gas estimated to lie north of the Arctic Circle, 84% lies offshore. And while Arctic conditions can still be as harsh as they were on the Seabees, the infrastructure of oil and gas extraction has improved vastly. “If people aren’t drilling all over the Arctic now, I don’t think it’s because there’s a gap in technology,” said Stig-Mortean Knutsen, a petroleum geologist at the Arctic University of Norway. “It’s more to do with cost.”

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These extractive ambitions rub against the urgency of our environmental moment: the need to cut down, rather than pursue, fossil fuel use. As part of their sustainability goals, banks claim they’re now making it difficult for oil firms to get funds for new Arctic projects. Knutsen calls this decision to withhold financing an easy one to make, “like kicking down an open door,” because the upfront expense of a project is so steep today. If those expenses shrink in a warming Arctic, banks might well step up once again, he said. One sustainability executive at a London-based bank, who asked not to be named, pointed out: “In any case, China and Russia will be happy to fund new projects.”

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Ironically, to best transition away from carbon fuels, the Arctic may first have to yield up another kind of resource: metals. The batteries, electric vehicles, and fuel cells of the future will need huge quantities of copper, nickel, manganese, rare earths, and other metals, said Gerard Barron, the CEO of The Metals Company, which hopes to mine the sea floor once the International Seabed Authority, a body within the UN, finalizes an undersea mining code. Barron’s miners are most actively studying the Clarion Clipperton Zone, a region just south of Hawai’i, where there is, Barron believes, enough metal to build 280 million EV batteries.