News Dump

E.P.A. to Illegally Roll Back And End Regulations on Methane
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/climate/epa-methane-greenhouse-gas.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/energy-companies-set-to-get-reprieve-on-methane-rules-11567051201

Arctic: There is no ice left on Northern Sea Route
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/arctic/2019/08/there-no-ice-left-russias-northern-sea-route

Brazil reverses course, welcomes aid to fight Amazon wildfires
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/brazil-amazon-fires-bolsonaro-macron-1.5262034

US tariff hike on $300 billion China goods to go ahead
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/us-tariff-hike-on-300-billion-china-goods-to-go-ahead

Department of Justice declines to prosecute former FBI director James Comey over leaked memos
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/department-justice-declines-prosecute-comey-over-leaked-memos-n1047706

Trump heavily considering blocking $250M in military aid to Ukraine
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/politics/trump-ukraine-military-assistance/index.html

Trump refused to agree to fund combatting Amazon rainforest fires at G7 summit
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-amazon-aid-fires-g7-summit-macron-bolsonaro-wildifres-a9082916.html

Stop Mocking Vegans. They’re right about ethics and the environment. If you won’t join them, at least respect their effort to build a sustainable future. | Many of us, myself included, engage in painless, performative environmentalism. We’ll give up plastic straws and tweet passionately that someone should do something about the Amazon, yet few of us make space in our worldview to acknowledge the carcass in the room: the irrefutable evidence that our addiction to meat is killing the planet right before our eyes. After all, it takes only a few minutes of investigation to learn that there is one overwhelming reason the Amazon is burning — to clear ground for cattle ranching and for the cultivation of soy, the vast majority of which goes not into tofu but into animal feed, including for fast-food chicken. | I want to urge you to give vegans a chance — to love and to celebrate them instead of ridiculing them. We need more vegan voices, because on the big issues — the criminal cruelty of industrial farming; the sentience and emotional depth of food animals; the environmental toll of meat and the unsustainability of its global rise — vegans are irrefutably on the right side of history. They are the vanguard. Climate scholars say that if we are ever to survive a warming planet, people will have to consume far fewer animals than we do now. We will all have to become a little more vegan — and if we are to succeed in that, we will have to start by saluting vegans, not mocking them. | It’s true that America’s food industry has recently begun investing heavily in animal-free milks and meats; supermarkets are brimming with bounties of meat alternatives, Burger King is selling an Impossible Whopper, and KFC just announced fake fried chicken wings and nuggets. This is all great news for the planet, yet no one thanks vegans for creating a market for these alternatives. Not even the meat-alternative start-ups themselves, which call themselves “plant-based” and strictly avoid the V-word, perhaps because food industry surveys find that “vegan” is the least appealing label that can be applied to food — worse than “diet” and “sugar-free.” | “There are many things that have gotten better in the five years that I’ve been vegan, like the availability of options or the quality of vegan cheese — but the attitude that omnivores have about vegans doesn’t feel like it’s changed that much, if at all,” Summer Anne Burton, the editor of a new vegan-focused magazine called Tenderly, told me. “Even people who are really radical and progressive in lots of areas of their lives still seem really suspicious, frustrated and annoyed by the idea of someone being vegan.” | For the good of the planet, put down the sandwich. But if you won’t do that, at least refrain from putting down the people who are trying to light a path to a livable future. The vegans are right. The vegans were always right. The least you can do is shower them with respect and our gratitude, because they deserve it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/vegan-food.html
https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm
https://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/beef-production-is-killing-the-amazon-rainforest/
http://www.mightyearth.org/mysterymeat/
https://news.mongabay.com/2017/10/amazon-deforestation-linked-to-mcdonalds-and-british-retail-giants/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes-history-ethical-question
https://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=mammal
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02409-7
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown
https://www.delish.com/food-news/a28816817/burger-king-impossible-whopper-taste-test-review/
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/26/20833145/beyond-meat-kfc-fried-chicken-test-plant-based-sample-date
https://thetakeout.com/survey-no-food-word-is-less-appealing-than-vegan-1826326553
https://tenderly.medium.com/

Documents show Bolsonaro actively trying to burn Amazon off the map
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amazon-rainforest-fires-jair-bolsonaro-ngo-san-paolo-a9075071.html

Reminder: Trump To Lift Logging Restrictions In America's Largest National Forest: A Climate Change Threat 'like The Fires Burning In The Amazon,' Warns Expert
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-logging-restrictions-alaska-tongass-largest-national-forest-1456553

Children in Brazil are having respiratory problems, trouble breathing because of the Amazon fires
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-rainforest-fires-children-in-brazil-respiratory-problems-health-death-are-having-trouble-breathing/

Cops Hijack Botnet, Remotely Wipe Malware From 850,000 Computers: Police in France took down a large cryptocurrency-mining malware operation with the help of a cybersecurity firm.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwd7x/cops-hijack-retadup-botnetwipe-malware-from-850000-computers

Donald Trump shares campaign video featuring image used by a white supremacist group
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-shares-campaign-video-featuring-image-used-white-supremacist-group-1456785

Trump tweets 2020 campaign logo linked to alt-right and white supremacy groups
https://www.fastcompany.com/90397217/trump-tweets-2020-campaign-logo-linked-to-alt-right-and-white-supremacy-groups

Arizona’s Governor Is Leading Republicans’ Quiet, Radical Takeover of State Supreme Courts
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/arizona-supreme-court-rigging-doug-ducey-bill-montgomery.html

Snoop Dogg Raves About Vegan KFC: Calls It 'Finger-Lickin' Good'
https://www.plantbasednews.org/lifestyle/snoop-doggs-raves-vegan-kfc

New Zealand bans swimming with bottlenose dolphins, saying dwindling numbers are caused by excessive interaction with tourists, as the animals choose socialising with people over necessary biological functions. They risk "being loved into extinction"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/australasia/new-zealand-bottlenose-dolphin-swimming-ban-endangered-species-boats-a9081571.html

Europe Is Warming Faster Than Even Climate Models Projecte
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/europe-is-warming-faster-than-even-climate-models-projected

More than one million sign petition against Johnson's suspension of parliament - The petition was attracting signatures at a rate of about 1,000 per minute after the PM asked the Queen to prorogue parliament.
https://news.sky.com/story/hundreds-of-thousands-sign-petition-against-johnsons-suspension-of-parliament-11796215

Amazon's indigenous warriors take on invading loggers and ranchers | World news
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/29/xikrin-people-fight-back-against-amazon-land-grabbing

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is in the projected path of Hurricane Dorian
http://tampabay.com/hurricane/2019/08/29/trumps-mar-a-lago-is-in-the-projected-path-of-hurricane-dorian/

'Straight Pride' Rally in California Draws 20 Attendees, 200 Counter-prostestors
https://www.newsweek.com/straight-pride-modesto-1456352