On the 50th Anniversary of the first ever Earth Day, Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore released a documentary film free on You Tube. The film is called Planet of the Humans, and it proved quite popular. This week we review the movie and consider its implications for climate activism.
If you're still waiting for your pandemic payment from the federal government, and you would like to receive it directly into your bank account, head over to the IRS website by noon on Wednesday.
If the IRS doesn't have your direct deposit information by that deadline, you'll still get your payment — but you'll receive it in the form of a paper check, which might not arrive until June.
I didn't get my direct deposit yet, because the feds didn't have my bank account. But that website was helpful, and now I know when to expect my check in the mail.
If you’re looking for a little distraction from the news of the pandemic — something a little gossipy, but with a point at the end about how change happens in the world — this essay may soak up a few minutes.
I’ll tell the story chronologically, starting a couple of weeks ago on the eve of the 50th Earth Day. I’d already recorded my part for the Earth Day Live webcast, interviewing the great indigenous activists Joye Braum and Tara Houska about their pipeline battles. And then the news arrived that Oxford University — the most prestigious educational institution on planet earth — had decided to divest from fossil fuels. It was one of the great victories in that grinding eight-year campaign, which has become by some measures the biggest anti-corporate fight in history, and I wrote a quick email to Naomi Klein, who helped me cook it up, so that we could gloat together just a bit. I was, it must be said, feeling pleased with myself.
From Emma Goldman’s fiery speeches at Union Square during the Gilded Age through Occupy Wall Street in the Bloomberg era, the New York City left’s fight for social justice has often encompassed a simultaneous battle on behalf of the First Amendment right to protest.
Yet amid the current pandemic, the city’s progressive mayor, Democrat Bill de Blasio, has deemed public protests “non-essential” gatherings, and NYPD commissioner Dermot Shea (a registered Republican) is enforcing the ban.
Last week cops dispersed a gathering of LGBTQ activists speaking out against the alliance between Mt. Sinai Hospital and Samaritan’s Purse, an anti-gay, Islamophobic evangelical organization. The event’s participants adhered to the city’s social-distancing guidelines.
A few days prior, large crowds had gathered across the city to watch a decidedly non-essential flyover by the Blue Angels, and although many onlookers did not practice social distancing, there was no NYPD enforcement.
Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late.
There is a lot of truth in this film - as much as people want to denounce it. Green energy isn't as green as it's proponents make it seem. Before you reject the film, I encourage you to catch the film in it's entirety and give it a lot of thought.
The other day I was experimenting with the Microsoft Buildings dataset, trying to better understand where there are most buildings. I knew suburban areas had more buildings then urban areas, with sprawling single family homes, a trend you can see around most of the major upstate cities. Manhattan, has a massive under-count of buildings, by almost a factor of 10, due to the way the Microsoft Building algorithm sometimes groups together buildings in urban areas.
How I made this map: