The richest 10 percent of U.S. households are responsible for 40 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study released Thursday in PLOS Climate.
The study, which looked at how a household’s income generated emissions, underlines the stark divide between those who benefit most from fossil fuels and those who are most burdened by its effects.
People often think of their carbon footprint in terms of consumption, such as how they get to work or what they eat, but that provides an incomplete view of who is responsible for a lot of greenhouse gas activity, said Jared Starr, lead author of the study.
Many of the ways people earn money are also linked to carbon pollution, including from how and where they earn their wages to where they invest parts of their income. These investments, especially if linked with fossil fuel-related industries, can seriously tip who is most responsible for the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, said Starr. READ MORE...
The Nasher Sculpture Center created a special prize in 2015 to celebrate “a living artist who elevates the understanding of sculpture and its possibilities,” and a Black woman is receiving the honor for the first time.
According to The Washington Post, Senga Nengudi, 79, an acclaimed artist whose unique sculptures incorporate nylon pantyhose and other miscellaneous items and spans more than half a century, is the 2023 recipient of the Nasher Prize from the Dallas-based museum.
Nengudi’s work, which has ably addressed the feminist and Black arts movements, is renowned for defying expectations and elevating artistic expression to a new level.
For example, she once hung “fabric spirits,” fashioned from flag material from fire escapes in Harlem, to represent what she called the souls of the people she encountered there. READ MORE...
A distinct irony hovers over the standoff over Ukraine. A principal goal of President Vladimir Putin’s threat of invasion is to ensure Ukraine does not join NATO, which would grant Ukraine the protection of the alliance’s mutual-defense pact. But even if Russia had not poised troops on its borders, there was no realistic prospect in the near-to-medium term that the United States and its allies would accept Ukraine into their ranks. In a sense, both sides agree — Ukrainian leaders aside — that the nation does not currently belong in the Western alliance.
Clearly, NATO cannot, in response to Putin’s demands and threats, unconditionally promise to deny Ukraine membership forever. Still, the starting point for diplomacy should be the following: There is no way Ukraine will join NATO In the foreseeable future. The United States and its allies don’t want the security commitments that would involve; some NATO members have always been against it; and for Russia, the idea is threatening enough to become its main argument for invading now.
If we can devise a different way to ensure Ukraine’s security, membership may never be needed — as we should indicate to Moscow now.
Acknowledging that reality does not mean abandoning resolution in opposing Russian sabre rattling. If anything, to strengthen our deterrent, the threat of severe and lasting economic punishment if Russia attacks Ukraine should be intensified. Potential retaliation could include a serious U.S.-European Union-NATO plan to wean the West off Russian oil and gas over the next five years (for example, by expanding U.S. production and using NATO infrastructure funds and other resources to build more liquid natural gas terminals in western Europe.) President Biden has proposed shutting down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Germany and Russia if Russia invades, but dismantling it fully would be an even stronger response.
Nonetheless, if the prospect of Ukraine in NATO is taken off the table — albeit not formally, or forever (not yet at least) — the focus of diplomacy can return to resolving the dispute over the two breakaway regions in Ukraine’s east, which Russia seeks to control.
About 2,000 pages of historical documents related to the lives of free and enslaved Black Americans from the 1600s to 1800s were discovered in the attic of a house in Maryland. The 200-year-old house was being demolished, and the papers were put up for sale by a local auction house. Historians and members of the local Black community raised funds to preserve the documents and archive them for the public.
Thousands of papers, some documenting the auction and sale of enslaved Black Americans, were headed for the auction block themselves before Black historians and community members stepped in to reclaim ownership over their past. 
About 2,000 pages dating from the late 1600s to early 1800s were found in a plastic trash bag in the attic of a 200-year-old house near Chestertown, Md., as the owner, Nancy Bordely Lane, was cleaning it out this spring. The foundation of the house, built in 1803 on property that had remained in the family since 1667, was reportedly damaged and the structure was going to be demolished. The documents were headed for the garbage, but were rescued and delivered to Dixon’s Crumpton Auction in waxed seafood boxes, John Chaski, an antique-manuscript expert, told the Washington Post.
Darius Johnson, a Washington College alum, was one of several people who saw pictures of the documents up on the auction house’s Facebook page. After moving back to Kent County from Baltimore, Johnson became part of the Chesapeake Heartland project at Washington College, in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and local partners. For him, the documents couldn’t have shown up at a better time. TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE...
