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Joshua Frank, As the Rich Speed Off in Their Teslas

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Let’s face it: we’re now on a different planet in a different era and it matters not at all that a committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences wasn’t yet willing to officially call it the Anthropocene or (all too) human age. I mean, why sweat about that when, in a distinctly overheating world, we have so much else to sweat about? Call it what you will, but thanks to humanity, we’re already sweating big time — and not just in South Sudan, where schools were recently closed for two weeks in expectation of a heat wave that could hit 113 degrees! After all, last year set a dazzling record for heat and the U.N.’s weather agency, the World Meteorological Organization, expects 2024 to repeat the pattern in some equally grim fashion. It’s already sounding a “red alert,” warning that, as the organization’s secretary-general recently put it, “never have we been so close — albeit on a temporary basis at the moment — to the 1.5C lower limit of the Paris Agreement on climate change.”

In that context, it’s no small thing that, just the other day, the Biden administration issued an important new climate regulation designed, as the New York Times reported, “to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.” And on a planet where startling heat records were set monthly in 2023 and the same thing may indeed be happening again this year, that is no small thing.

Those words “no small thing,” however, do trigger something else in my mind. It’s a subject that TomDispatch regular Joshua Frank, author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, takes up vividly today. It’s no small thing that some of the same creatures responsible for heating this planet to the figurative boiling point now have the urge to try to “save” the planet. And while that’s a distinct positive, don’t think those creatures, who have already created so many problems, won’t create more as they try to — so to speak — change gears.

Ah, gears! Yes, if we humans remain in the same gear as we try to solve the problem of climate change that we’ve been in while creating it, count on this: there will be a steep price for all too many of us. Think, for instance, of the parts of the Global South that had so little to do with creating the conditions for climate change in the first place or, in the case of the lithium that Frank focuses on today, both Native Americans and the land itself. We are, after all, the very same creatures who created the problem, so hold your hat as the “solution” comes down the line. The question remains: Who will pay what price in the perilous future to come? And how large might it be? Tom

Of Life and Lithium

Why the “White Gold” Rush Won’t Save This Planet

With his perfect tan and slicked-back hair, California Governor Gavin Newsom stood at a podium at Sacramento’s Cal Expo in late September 2020 and announced an executive order requiring all new passenger vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emissions by 2035. With the global Covid pandemic then at its height, Newsom was struggling to inject a bit of hope into the future, emphasizing that his order would prove a crucial step in the fight against climate change while serving as a major boon to the state's economy. Later approved by the California Air Resources Board, his order is now being reviewed by the Environmental Protection Agency. For his part, President Biden has moved to tighten regulations on tailpipe exhaust, a not-so-subtle way of pushing car manufacturers to go electric.

As Newsom said shortly before signing his order on the hood of a bright red electric Ford Mustang Mach-E:

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Julia Gledhill and William Hartung, Failure as the Pentagon’s Ultimate Success Story

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It’s true that no nuclear weapon has been used (except in tests) since the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to end World War II. And yes, we now know that, were there to be a nuclear confrontation on this planet (think: the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 without the diplomacy of President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev), it could quite literally send us all to hell and back. It might leave much of humanity dead and the planet in a version of rubble. (Think: nuclear winter!) So, consider it a cheery thing that, all too recently, two world leaders, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong-un of North Korea, threatened to use just such weaponry in our world right now.

And if that makes you nervous, then let me reassure you this way: the United States, while making no nuclear threats, is putting staggering numbers of your tax dollars into expanding and further enhancing its nuclear arsenal. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), we’re talking about spending a nifty $756 billion between 2023 and 2032. And, hey, to cheer you up a little further, here’s how the CBO breaks that figure down: “$247 billion for modernization of strategic and tactical nuclear delivery systems and the weapons they carry; $108 billion for modernization of facilities and equipment for the nuclear weapons laboratory complex and for modernization of command, control, communications, and early-warning systems; and $96 billion for potential cost growth in excess of projected budgeted amounts.”

Yep, $96 billion of your tax dollars are carefully included to cover “cost growth in excess of budgeted amounts.” And here’s the even better news: that $756 billion figure is a mere $122 billion more than the last estimate for the period 2021-2030, which, in turn, means, assuming such weapons aren’t ever used, it’s going to take a while to hit the trillion-dollar mark. Still, have faith in our military and count on it! In fact, if you have any doubts on the subject, check out today’s report from Pentagon experts and TomDispatch regulars Julia Gledhill and William Hartung on just how expensive everything involving future American weaponry and our military could get. I know you’ll feel a deep sense of relief to be reassured that your tax dollars will be stretched so far into a world from which there may be no return. Tom

Spending Unlimited

The Pentagon’s Budget Follies Come at a High Price

The White House released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 on March 11th, and the news was depressingly familiar: $895 billion for the Pentagon and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. After adjusting for inflation, that's only slightly less than last year’s proposal, but far higher than the levels reached during either the Korean or Vietnam wars or at the height of the Cold War. And that figure doesn’t even include related spending on veterans, the Department of Homeland Security, or the additional tens of billions of dollars in "emergency" military spending likely to come later this year. One thing is all too obvious: a trillion-dollar budget for the Pentagon alone is right around the corner, at the expense of urgently needed action to address climate change, epidemics of disease, economic inequality, and other issues that threaten our lives and safety at least as much as, if not more than, traditional military challenges.

Americans would be hard-pressed to find members of Congress carefully scrutinizing such vast sums of national security spending, asking tough questions, or reining in Pentagon excess -- despite the fact that this country is no longer fighting any major ground wars. Just a handful of senators and members of the House do that work while many more search for ways to increase the department’s already bloated budget and steer further contracts into their own states and districts.

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Engelhardt, “War” as Humanity’s Middle Name

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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: As ever, this site needs a helping hand — and sadly, that hand, if possible, should have some money in it. So if you feel the urge, do visit the TomDispatch donation page and do your darnedest, knowing that I just couldn’t be more appreciative. And by the way, given my own focus (as today) on climate change, if you live in New York City, let me recommend that you pay a visit to the Asia Society to see its eye-opening, mind-boggling new climate show, “Coal + Ice.” Tom]

A Slow-Motion World War III?

Imperial Decline (Up Close and Personal) in the Age of Climate Change

I've been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at TomDispatch. I've written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies -- god save us, it could be four in November! I've viewed from a grave (and I mean that word!) distance America's endlessly disastrous wars of this century. I've watched the latest military budget hit almost $900 billion, undoubtedly on its way toward a cool trillion in the years to come, while years ago the whole "national security" budget (though "insecurity" would be a better word) soared to well over the trillion-dollar mark.

I've lived my whole life in an imperial power. Once, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was even "the lone superpower," the last great power on planet Earth, or so its leaders believed. I then watched how, in a world without great-power dangers, it continued to invest ever more of our tax dollars in our military. A "peace dividend"? Who needed that? And yet, in the decades that followed, by far the most expensive military on planet Earth couldn't manage to win a single war, no less its Global War on Terror. In fact, in this century, while fighting vain or losing conflicts across significant parts of the planet, it slowly but all too obviously began to go down the tubes, or perhaps I mean (if you don't mind a few mixed metaphors) come apart at the seams?

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