Author: Norman Leahy

Recycling has long been touted as a low-cost, feel-good way for individuals to help cut down on the volume of trash we send to landfills, and overseas, every year. But there’s long been a problem with recycling plastics. It’s hard to do, costly and often much of what gets sent to the recycler is unusable and gets tossed in a landfill anyway. The problem is so bad even Greenpeace USA is saying effectively recycling plastics is a “myth” in need of busting: “Recycling is never going to solve the plastic waste crisis. There’s simply too much plastic, and it’s just…

While economists and politicians focus on when (or if) a recession is coming near, the big question – where the global economy is heading over the next few years – isn’t getting enough attention. That’s a mistake, because the forces at work today will fundamentally reshape the way we live tomorrow. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Mohamed El-Erian says we may be witnessing “major structural and secular changes that will outlast the current business cycle.” El-Erian identifies three major changes that are “likely to drive even more uncertainty in the future as shocks grow more frequent and more violent.” One of…

The Dec. 9 deadline to avert a rail strike that could cost the nation’s economy $2 billion per day has prompted the Biden administration to ask the lame-duck Congress to step in and force labor and management to accept a deal. It’s a big change from September when the president made a Rose Garden speech to tout a deal that promised rail union workers “better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs.” Rank-and-file members split on the Biden-brokered deal, with many rejecting it because it didn’t address a top concern: paid time off. (RELATED:…

One thing autocrats count on to maintain their authority on the world stage is deference. It need not be a physical bow or scrape. Prompt verbal displays of affection, loyalty or other means of humiliation are equally useful. Consider this example from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg after former British Prime Minster Boris Johnson dared call China a “coercive autocracy” at a Bloomberg-sponsored confab in Singapore: Bloomberg, who invited Johnson and whose organisation was hosting the event in partnership with the Singapore government, acknowledged at the conference on Thursday that some attendees may have been “insulted or offended” by…

Back in September, the Biden administration made a splash with its announcement that it had helped broker a deal between labor unions and railroad companies. Biden was “personally involved in the talks” which the president said would deliver workers “better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs.” Not to mention the political benefits of avoiding a strike right before the November midterm elections. But a funny thing happened when union members actually voted on the deal Biden brokered: They turned it down, setting up a potentially disastrous pre-Christmas strike. According to The Wall Street…

Just in time for the holidays…a new report from the North American Electric Reliability Council on the nation’s power supply over the coming winter months says there’s a lot to be worried about, including potential fuel shortages and blackouts in a quarter of the U.S. According to Bloomberg News: NERC’s warning touches at least a quarter of Americans, who are poised to see already high utility bills soar even more this winter. Electricity demand has rebounded faster than anyone anticipated after the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns. Prices of gas, the No. 1 power-plant fuel in the US, are high because of…

It should be no surprise that state-sponsored surveillance is getting easier, more pervasive and more intrusive. Increasingly sophisticated and cheap, technology makes it possible, and law enforcement is eager to go along for the ride. How widespread are the state’s eyes these days? According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) Atlas of Surveillance Database, Big Brother is bigger than ever: The Atlas of Surveillance has now hit 10,000 data points. It contains at least partial data on approximately 5,500 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states, as well as most territories and districts. What does this figure mean? …this milestone…

The presidency ages people. We can see it in the photos of incumbents who entered office hale, hearty and young(ish) only to leave it grey, worn and…relieved to be leaving the stress behind. But in 2024, there’s a real possibility the general election could feature an 82-year-old incumbent, Joe Biden, running against his 78-year-old predecessor, Donald Trump.  Hardened partisans look at such numbers and dismiss them as irrelevant to the issues each candidate will run on. But the broader electorate, which isn’t invested in Team Red or Team Blue, would much prefer that Presidents Biden and Trump hang up their…

One of the biggest ideas in the world of climate change today is a very old concept recycled (naturally) to address the times. It’s “reparations,” the idea/demand that developed nations in the West should pay developing nations for the suffering and damage Western carbon emissions have inflicted on them. The wealth transfer isn’t specifically called “reparations.” Rather it’s called a “loss and damage fund.” The emotional pitch for this fund is payback for European colonialism: “The practice of colonialism transferred the rich resources of Asia and Africa to Europe to industrialize their countries, which is also the root cause of…

It looked like the great and the good who assembled in Egypt to haggle over climate change would not embrace a global loss and damages fund – otherwise known as climate reparations. The developed economies weren’t all on board and, even if they were, the problems of how to fund, administer and account for the tens of billions proposed for such an effort were just too big. A funny thing happened on the last day of the climate talks. Not “haha” funny. More like “you’ve got to be kidding me” funny: The agreement on loss and damage is a landmark…