“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Bill McKibben: Climate deal: the pistol has fired, so why aren’t we running?
With the climate talks in Paris now over, the world has set itself a serious goal: limit temperature rise to 1.5C. Or failing that, 2C. Hitting those targets is absolutely necessary: even the one-degree rise that we’ve already seen is wreaking havoc on everything from ice caps to ocean chemistry. But meeting it won’t be easy, given that we’re currently on track for between 4C and 5C. Our only hope is to decisively pick up the pace.
In fact, pace is now the key word for climate. Not where we’re going, but how fast we’re going there. Pace – velocity, speed, rate, momentum, tempo. That’s what matters from here on in. We know where we’re going now; no one can doubt that the fossil fuel age has finally begun to wane, and that the sun is now shining on, well, solar. But the question, the only important question, is: how fast.
Paul Krugman: Hope From Paris
Did the Paris climate accord save civilization? Maybe. That may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but it’s actually the best climate news we’ve had in a very long time. This agreement could still follow the path of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which seemed like a big deal but ended up being completely ineffectual. But there have been important changes in the world since then, which may finally have created the preconditions for action on global warming before it’s too late.
Until very recently there were two huge roadblocks in the way of any kind of global deal on climate: China’s soaring consumption of coal, and the implacable opposition of America’s Republican Party. The first seemed to mean that global greenhouse emissions would rise inexorably no matter what wealthy countries did, while the second meant that the biggest of those wealthy countries was unable to make credible promises, and hence unable to lead.
But there have been important changes on both fronts.
Brandon Smith: Real police reform is unlikely in Chicago
On Nov. 24, I pried loose the video of Laquan McDonald being killed by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke.
Seemingly as a result of a couple of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, Van Dyke was charged with murder.
Editorial boards and protesters have called for the resignation of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He hasn’t resigned, but he has sacked — or prodded the ouster of — the city’s police chief, the head of the police detectives unit and the head of the body that investigates police. Emanuel first objected to but eventually accepted a Department of Justice civil rights investigation. Now, with protesters chanting “Resign Rahm” in the streets and on far reaches of the Internet, two Illinois State Representatives have introduced a bill providing for a recall election. Black leaders are preparing their stakeholders to spread the petitions that would make recall a reality. [..]
Little did I know that my FOIA lawsuit — whose cost is covered by the government in Illinois — would spur national interest in requesting documentation of police violence and spark a public debate over Emanuel’s fitness for office. I’ve heard from countless people that this story has given them a sense of agency.
What the story has not done yet is start reforming the Chicago police.
Robert Kuttner: Thinking About President Trump
It appears that nothing Donald Trump says deflates his standing in the polls. The more outlandish his comments, the more his support grows.
The Washington Post recently reported on a focus group conducted by arch-Republican strategist Frank Luntz with 29 Trump supporters. Literally no argument Luntz could devise shook their faith in Trump — but only reinforced it.
America has been a sitting duck for a figure like Trump for a long time. The combination of a deeply eroding democracy, the downward mobility of white men other than the top ten percent, and the fusion of shallow media celebrity with politics — all this has created tinder as vulnerable to conflagration as a brittle forest after years of drought.
Combine these conditions with a real threat of terrorism that is bewilderingly complex, and the right celebrity bully — and you have a perfect storm for an American Caesar.
The ruling GOP elite that commissioned Luntz’s focus group is in panic mode, as it should be. And the Hillary Clinton campaign is no less alarmed.
Consider the deeper preconditions, one at a time.
Amy Cuddy: Your iPhone Is Ruining Your Posture — and Your Mood
THERE are plenty of reasons to put our cellphones down now and then, not least the fact that incessantly checking them takes us out of the present moment and disrupts family dinners around the globe. But here’s one you might not have considered: Smartphones are ruining our posture. And bad posture doesn’t just mean a stiff neck. It can hurt us in insidious psychological ways.
If you’re in a public place, look around: How many people are hunching over a phone? Technology is transforming how we hold ourselves, contorting our bodies into what the New Zealand physiotherapist Steve August calls the iHunch. I’ve also heard people call it text neck, and in my work I sometimes refer to it as iPosture.
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