Twitter, March 2022

It's that time again: another month has passed, so here are 31 more days of Twitter, this time from March 2022. 

It's been a month of Russia's illegal war against Ukraine, increasing gas prices and their political manipulation by Republicans (which I couldn't help mentioning earlier), the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, destruction of Americans' rights in multiple ways, the continuing pandemic, plus the climate crisis and possible solutions to it. Ginni and Clarence Thomas got some unwanted but necessary attention. Oh, and near the end, that thing that happened at the Oscars and what it implied about other things.

Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed Twitter account.

_______

We can have a livable future or billionaires. Not both.
Mary Annaïse Heglar

I am not a social scientist, but the days of high approvals for any president is most likely over for a long while due to tribalism. The polling is telling us President Biden is doing EVERYTHING the way the vast majority of the American want things to be done. Yet.
@BlueSteelDC

It took 250+ years to win the abolition of slavery in the United States and we stand on the shoulders of generations who came before us, so I can’t get too low down when our campaigns for worker, housing and climate justice don’t see results tomorrow
@m_esealuka


Andrew Lawrence @ndrew_lawrence

"what about people with children?!" You do realize there are whole ass families that travel by public transportation and their commutes are extended because of the over abundance of private vehicles and the lack of political will to prioritize buses on our streets, right?
@FullLaneFemme

The pandemic played a role [in the upswing of antisocial behavior] but I honestly think Trump and the Trump years did an enormous amount to validate [it]. Trump isn't just an asshole, he's *permission for you to be an asshole*, and lots of people eagerly embraced the opportunity.
David Roberts @drvolts

I believe children — especially teens — should have the experience of privacy. Even if those experiences are fleeting exceptions, they matter for the adults they'll become. And there are few places where the experience of privacy can be more valuable or meaningful than in libraries.
andrewkarre

it’s expensive to be poor:

Melissa Garriga

If Biden is really going to use executive powers for [EV batteries] why aren't we using the Defense Production Act to manufacture e-bikes, scooters, regular bicycles, bike lane barriers, and ADA sidewalk elements
Alissa Walker @awalkerinLA

One obvious thing about conspiracy theorists is that they’ve never had to plan or coordinate anything difficult in real life. Like, what project management tool do they think the Lizard People are using to keep everyone coordinated and on schedule? Hidden subliminal messages?
anildash

This is the central thing I hope everyone understands about Trumpism: it is driven the psychology of fear and resentment. It's not seeking particular policy goals that will satisfy it. It requires escalation, more enemies, more victim, bigger mobs, without end.
David Roberts @drvolts

The whole reason cultural and gender studies are under attack is because it would be impossible to maintain the status quo structure of oppression if the majority of people were fully taught about origins of modern society.
@BreeNewsome

87% of Americans don't think books should be banned for discussing race or slavery. 85% don't think books should be banned for political ideas you disagree with. And yet, we're fighting over the Republican boogie man of Critical Race Theory.
Erin Heaney

I think we need stochastic hope rather then top down hope
BUILD SOIL; Plant Chestnuts!

2050:
The world will be 2.4C+
The Amazon will be gone.
The Arctic will be ice free.
Billions will be at risk.
Civilisation itself may have collapsed.
My son will be 36.
@ClimateDad77

Primary energy is energy input. What you care about is 'final energy demand': the energy the wheels of your car, for example. This matters because fossil-fueled machines waste so much primary energy that it makes it look hard to replace them with clean energy. Some comparisons:
- Petrol cars turn ~25% of 'primary energy' into motion; EVs 85%.
- Coal power turns ~30% of primary energy into electricity, gas ~50%, solar and wind 100%
- boilers turn 85% of primary energy into heat; heat pumps 300%!
Clean energy doesn't have to replace all primary energy.
Dustin Benton

According to recent research, if a gallon of gasoline was taxed to fund offsetting the harm that burning it does to other people, each gallon would cost about $10
Louis Mirante

As a renter I wouldn't know but I suspect the housing crisis looks a lot less urgent once you own property
George S @noisecapella

"I don’t condone violence":


Nick Estes

Something I just realized in looking back at seven decades of data: U.S. wind power generation in 2020 (338 Terawatt-hours) is greater than ALL U.S. power generation in 1950 (334 TWh)
Nat Bullard

Never felt like I ever really belonged in a social group my whole life, and even now I don't feel I fit in with anyone other than a couple of individuals scattered around. Groups are just impossible for me, online and offline.
Pete Wharmby @commaficionado

The zeal at which we record meetings. That no one has time to go back and listen to.
amandarama @awillis

This month marks two years since the murder of Breonna Taylor. One of the most revealing facts about her case that the media largely ignored: after her death, Louisville gave the cops a budget increase of $750,000 and cut the public library budget by $775,000.
Alec Karakatsanis @equalityAlec

belittling people is not gonna suffice as comedy anymore and it’s prolly scary cuz some of y’all gonna have to face the fact that ur mean and not witty
@sabaahfolayan

“A nation, consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual’s morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn’t a nation.” –William Gibson
Eric Kam

I want a country in which prosecutors prosecute crimes against the rule of law instead of describing them later in memoirs, in which leaders have the spine to call for resignation when a justice corruptly protects his insurrectionist wife, in which accountability is a thing.
Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink @AnandWrites

It's stunning how many people ignore this fact. "A February 2022 study by researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands found that 32 of 40 carbon capture projects they reviewed actually resulted in increased carbon emissions."
Justin Mikulka

Seems the City of Maplewood has taken a firm position on the City of St. Paul:


Sean Hayford Oleary @sdho

Core tenets of reactionary centrism are: a) Democrats are about to become authoritarians; b) Republicans are about to give up being authoritarians.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is a monster grooming children to become bigots.
Frank Conniff

People talking about "the Oscars' ugliest moment." Some perspective... John Wayne was held back by six security guys because he was trying to get on stage to hit Native American actor Sacheen Littlefeather, after she asked that Indigenous people not to be dehumanized in film.
Bobby | DJ BobaFatt @BobaFatt

A simultaneous 30°C anomaly in the Arctic and 40°C anomaly in the Antarctic, among the most terrifying events scientists have recorded, was a footnote in the bulletins. One celeb slapping another: headlines everywhere. This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a bant.
George Monbiot

Maybe I'm biased since I saw the flames of a wildfire as I walked home from lunch sweating on a hot day in March. But I don't think we spend enough time thinking about just how bad climate change could be. If we did, we wouldn't be dragging our feet like this.
Michael Thomas @curious_founder

For Democrats to talk about Clarence Thomas recusing himself is insane. It’s so weeny. Thomas had presumptive advance knowledge of an attempt to overthrow an election, and after the fact he has tried to enable a coverup. Democrats should be demanding his resignation.
James Gleick

Wild to imagine an alternate world where the USA raised the gas tax during the 1970s. Smaller cars, lower emissions, better land use, shrunken petrostates…
David Zipper

Schools should be close and local. Daycare/childcare should be close and local. Grocery stores should be close and local. Everyday life should be close and local.
Brent Toderian

The composition on this photograph is second to none:


MPLS Bike Wrath (that's Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, yes, it's a Tesla…the window sign reads Save Our Businesses SAY NO to Hennepin Ave Bike Lanes)

I like how in the context of trans affirming care, successful treatment in 99% of cases is treated as dangerous, whereas in all other areas of healthcare a 99% success rate would be treated as an absolute miracle.
@EVeracite

Having a child has a 7% regret rate. A knee replacement has anywhere between 6-30% regret. Across all types of surgery, the regret rate is 14%. Transition and trans-related surgeries have a 1% regret rate.
@aster_disaster_

All of mathematics is taught like someone explaining the rules of a board game that you're not playing yet
@TheGrandBlooms

No experiment has failed more, with higher stakes, for longer, than American carceralism and yet it remains the only meaningful solution ever offered to the problem of crime. The mere thought of a robust social welfare state and other social interventions are dismissed out hand. Carceralism has no apparent criteria for failure, like all dogmas it is not falsifiable. It cannot ever be disproven. Dozens of cities increased police budgets this year by 10%+ and saw major spikes in crime and this is never seen as evidence “refund the police” isn’t working. The US continues to have comparatively high crime rates and the top murder rate among rich nations despite having a prison population 5X the global mean. Our solution when these numbers tick up slightly is to bring that figure to 6X the global mean. None of it makes any sense
@adamjohnsonNYC

COVID deniers are constantly shouting about the "authoritarianism" of vaccines and lockdowns, but forcing vulnerable people to work and attend school during a deadly pandemic is a kind of authoritarianism too.
Michael Hobbes @RottenInDenmark

I'm not aware of any government, certainly of high-emitting nations, treating climate change as anything other than a nuisance bolt-on to business as usual. But it really doesn't help when analysts continually spin cheery yarns of 2050, gas as transition, more oil, and other nonsense.
Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate

If there’s one thing we learned from the months-long chamber of commerce meltdown over too much unemployment insurance/stimulus it’s that poverty and destitution isn’t an unfortunate byproduct of our economy—but essential to it; a constant, looming threat fundamental to worker discipline and low wages
@adamjohnsonNYC

cops should have to wear their name and badge number in giant reflective lettering on the back of their uniform like a football player
molly conger @socialistdogmom (responding to a report that showed one-third of complaints about police brutality couldn't be fully investigated because the cops couldn't be identified, most often because they hid the identifying markers on their uniforms)

White people stop becoming social workers challenge. Learn a trade, damn. Don’t we need plumbers, electricians? You feel like fixing something, fix a leaky pipe. People are not for fixing.
@coldbean

The Hunter Biden laptop people are now telling us we can’t hold the activities of Clarence Thomas’ wife against him.
Ron Filipkowski

recent revelation: cars aren’t transportation. they’re land. a portable part of your house, like a giant USB stick. what we need drivers to do isn’t swap one form of transit for another; it’s give up a private flying island and carry your house in your pockets
Bill Hangley Jr

The liberal blind spot for cars is really showing in the United States right now. We just have no imagination here whatsoever. It is possible to have a reality where cars aren't the sole focus of our transportation policy.
Jerome Alexander Horne

My studied belief is that America’s greatest wealth is its oddballs, weirdos, seers, compulsives and autodidacts. They’ve transformed science, business, religion and the arts. Making more space, not less, for nonconformity and improvisation is the way of prosperous peaceful flourishing
Walter Kirn

there is no such thing as petroleum demand. There is only energy demand.
Mary Annaïse Heglar

not recusing yourself on a case where your wife's text messages are being subpoenaed is comically corrupt
Law Boy, Esq.

Don’t get me wrong – the nomination of Judge KBJ is a historic moment. But why are we normalizing a Black woman being verbally and emotionally abused by a committee for the public to see? Why are we applauding composure during abuse? Why must Black women suffer to make history?
Jalyn Radziminski

I’m sure if the spouse of a liberal justice has repeatedly texted a Democratic president’s chief of staff with pleas to help overturn an election, congressional Republicans wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, and definitely wouldn’t have articles of impeachment drawn up in hours.
Kevin M. Kruse

It’s amazing how asking people to drive less is now considered a bridge too far. During the oil crisis of the 70s, even Republicans urged people to carpool. Now that view gets you labeled an unreasonable hater of working people. We were car-centric in the ‘70s, so it’s not that.
John Lloyd @boyonabike62

"We don't want any activist judges," say Republicans, as one of their justices' wives conspired with the White House Chief of Staff to overturn a presidential election and that justice refuses to recuse himself from any cases on it.
Brian Tyler Cohen

The wife of a sitting Supreme Court Justice is a full-on QAnon cultist with huge influence in "reputable" conservative circles, and tried to pressure the White House Chief of Staff into a coup against the United States. Feels like that should be bigger news.
David Atkins

You may know that U.S. military spending exceeds the rest of the world's total military spending COMBINED. But, did you know that U.S. spending on police is higher than military spending in every other country in the world, except China?


@just_steve_h

Obviously biking is important (see my job title) but way more middle class, car-owning people know how to ride a bike than how to get somewhere on the bus.
Warren J. Wells

We live in human systems that are increasingly no longer suited to the realities of life on this planet in crisis. Winning means making as many parts of those systems as possible  — as quickly as possible and by every moral means available — ready for our new planetary realities.
Alex Steffen

Some people bristle at the prospect of a maximum income. But remember, income represents command over real resources and energy. In an era of ecological breakdown, it makes zero sense to allow the rich to consume as much of our planet — and our collective future — as they wish.
Jason Hickel

Thinking about Rush Limbaugh and how, now that he’s dead, you never, ever hear about him. No one mentions anything he did. Because what he did had no value. It contributed nothing worthwhile to the culture. Nothing of lasting value.
Dana Gould

American motorists drove an average of 14,263 miles a year to accomplish their needs. The next closest country is Canada at 9,562 miles a year in 2018. And we wonder why congestion is so bad and high gas prices hurt so much.
Beth Osborne

Racism always pays off for white male "journalists."
Catherine Valentine-Vassar @Alumna_Vassar

This should indicate that we need some changes:


Institute for Policy Studies

People often say "cynical" when they mean "skeptical." A skeptic thinks and doubts and, in so doing, affirms a vision of the way things ought to be (but aren't). A cynic affirms nothing, takes no action, and ends up helping to perpetuate an objectionable status quo.
Alfie Kohn

Your vacation is possible because the same Navy that is poisoning our water today illegally overthrew the Kingdom of Hawai'i. Tourism and US military occupation go hand in hand.
Joseph Han

There’s such violence in the expectation to be calm through abuse
Benjamin Perry @FaithfullyBP

If your vehicle’s hood is taller than me then I think you should have to pay an extra tax to drive in the city
Not Bob @StPaulBikeScum

If you're horrified by the treatment of Ketanji Brown Jackson in these hearings, I sincerely hope you know that every Black woman in predominantly white work environments (including yours, academics) has colleagues who treat her that way (and likely worse in private).
Dr. Brigitte Fielder

Republicans keep telling us they want to rule only for the wealthy white men. When will we believe them? And when will we realize there are so many more of us and we can choose for ourselves who is fit to govern in our name?
Anat Shenker-Osorio @anatosaurus

omg:


Christopher Ingraham

The problem with electric cars is ... they are cars
Edward Lamb

New study finds that driver assistance technology (automatic breaking, adaptive cruise control, etc) leads people to drive more, since the task becomes easier. That outcome — bad news for climate and for cities — is exactly what the Jevons paradox predicts.
David Zipper

Democrats try to get elected by insisting that they can work with Republicans.
Republicans try to get elected by insisting that Democrats are Satan worshipping child pornographers.
@Rschooley

Weird that Lindsey Graham hasn’t figured out that the reason Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination is less controversial than Brett Kavanaugh’s is because she hasn’t been accused of sexual assault.
Mondaire Jones

“Living with Covid” is in the same category as “living with Climate Change.” It will get worse and worse because we’re not seriously addressing it.
Brent Toderian

Liberals are always trying to downplay that they want to change the world, and that’s so fucking depressing
@GothamGirlBlue

New research: For the world to have at least a 50/50 chance of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C, wealthy nations must phase out ALL extraction of fossil fuels by 2034.
David Roberts @drvolts

Did you know that there are no Black women—indeed no Black people— who are professional photographers? It’s so weird right:


Imani Gandy @AngryBlackLady

“Present day urban development is ruined, most often, by the hierarchy of decisions in which the road network comes 1st, buildings come 2nd, and pedestrian space comes 3rd. The correct sequence is just the opposite; pedestrian space 1st, building 2nd, and roads 3rd.”—C. Alexander
Brent Toderian

Sojourner Truth's first language was Dutch. Not only did she not speak with a Southern accent, some of her contemporaries recalled she had a slight Dutch accent when speaking English.
@MacCarey1

Which means she never said "Ain't I a Woman?" She wouldn't even speak that way. She gave a speech and white people "slave-washed" it.
@mcgarrygirl78

I was recently honked at by a UPS driver while riding on the paved shoulder. I later saw the driver while he was delivering to a house and asked why he honked. He said it was company policy. I contacted UPS and was told yes, that’s the advice we give.
Bruce Wright @VAbikecommuter

All of these Senators falsely accusing Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of being soft on crime twice voted to acquit a criminal President.
Daniel Uhlfelder

Stop glorifying "the founders' intent." The founders intended me to be in chains.
@RevJacquiLewis

Gas is cheap. Car culture is not:


Fietser Nicole @GoingDutchDEN

Doesn't the far right ever get tired of being Big Oil's bitch?
David Roberts @drvolts

Referring to Covid as a “war” is another indicator that our government has devolved into little more than an arms dealer that struggles to handle anything  unrelated to incarceration or warfare
@BreeNewsome

So POTUS' polling firm has told the White House that they need to declare "the crisis phase of COVID over," so it's not surprising we're seeing Administration officials downplay any threats of a new surge.
Gregg Gonsalves

An unacknowledged reflection of our culture's hyperindividualism: Most of the developmental milestones for children that we identify focus on what they can do on their own, rather than on their growing capacity for deeper connection to others
Alfie Kohn

First, capital seeks to privatize and enclose key goods that we need in order to live – healthcare, housing, energy, transport, etc – making these things increasingly expensive for us to access. This is done *explicitly* in the name of growth.
Jason Hickel

I honestly think we are asking too much of cauliflower.
Abbi Crutchfield @curlycomedy

My Children Attend an Elite New York City Private School
Here Are My Thoughts on How Public Schools Should Be Run and What They Should Teach
1/87
New York Times Education Pitchbot @GreyLadiesNYC

People act as if 'undecideds' aren't mostly Republicans who are lying about it.
@Needle_of_Arya

A good graphic showing that we can’t just focus on what comes out of the tailpipe - the whole landscape of car infrastructure is what we need to rethink:


@mplsalex

EVs will save the automobile industry, not the planet. Invest in multimodal, public infrastructure now.
Human Centric Design

Bill Barr’s daughter worked at Treasury to protect Trump’s tax returns, and loans at Deutsche Bank. Rudy Giuliani’s son got $363,000 to be WH sports liaison with no experience. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner used the WH as $640 million bonanza. It was never about Hunter Biden.
Andrea Junker @Strandjunker

This constant pressure to secure our futures, when the NOW, the immediate moment is crumbling before our eyes. What future are we exactly “investing” in?
@kofikobs

People who think another person can put a feeling inside of them are always going to be confused about the definition of free speech. They think their own conscience is an external attack. These are the people who say things like “Why should I have to feel bad about ______?” And they really haven’t been able to figure out that they…don’t. You don’t HAVE to feel bad. You just do feel bad. The call is coming from inside the house, friend.
Ashley C. Ford @iSmashFizzle

A member of the Harlem Hellfighters (369th Infantry Regiment) holding a puppy he saved during World War I, 1918:


Black Americans @BLKAmericans_

Kinda funny how this whole free speech/censorship problem sprung up at the exact moment that technology enabled the average NYT Opinion writer to be called a fucked up little donkey one thousand times per day online
Goku Missile Crisis @BabadookNukem

Guardian headline an hour ago: Ottawa truck convoy cost the city more than C$36m – mainly in police expenses [and counting]. The costs were more than twice the amount the city budgeted for affordable and supportive housing.
@tttJackPinettt

If you plant roads, you will harvest traffic.
@Mason_Transport

America does not have a free speech problem. America has a white perfectionism problem. As white folks, it is our work to push ourselves, open up, take action, and stay in motion.
Showing Up for Racial Justice

Remember when Columbus canceled children's connection to their hands when they didn't bring him enough gold? Or when racist folks would cancel whole town's connection to this planet cause Black folks were doing too well? But yeah, cancel culture is limiting your "expression."
@xianb8

so much of the whining about cancel culture is really whining about the fact that power brings responsibility. you can always choose _not_ to pursue more power/influence.
@pentney

still stunned with the abruptness with which "follow your dreams, go to college, see the world" became "maybe you should have become an engineer if you wanted to have teeth and also a house"
@alaskastardust

love how everyone in my generation was apparently supposed to predict that everything would continue to get worse, all of the time
@__wartooth

look, being shamed *is* painful! so is (for example) having to "objectively" debate whether your existence rises to the category of full personhood against people who have never had theirs questioned--or whether or not you should be forced to give birth.
Lili Loofbourow @Millicentsomer

Places w/ higher rates of poverty, don’t have more homelessness
Places w/ higher rates of mental illness, don’t have more homelessness
Places w/ higher rents, *DO* have more homelessness
Bottom line: The root cause of homelessness is housing.
Aaron Carr (graphs for each in the original)

every time you wish your city invested more in (x) or wish there was more city employees to do (y), know inherently that said money and time is instead going into cops and arresting people
@ElSangito


Economics is a Harsh Mistress @DurhamFella

Took my first trip to New Orleans 3 years ago. On every tour we took the guides would mention forced conversion to Christianity made up for enslavement and all its horrors. Plantation tours, swamp boat tour, walking tours in the French Quarter, guides all had the fucked up excuse
@BurqueBeast

It's truly, truly deranged when you think about it: 98% of urban transportation needs could be satisfied by small, light vehicles -- small cars or even variations on trikes and e-bikes. But *every car has to be big and heavy*, because 'Murcans love trucks. Classic collective action problem.
David Roberts @drvolts

One thing I’ve learned after reporting on legal battles for a while is that a lot of people think of the law as some sort of objective, rational, independent thing when in fact it’s mostly the ideas and values of the powerful, codified.
Amy Westervelt

For those of us who are Irish American, let's remember that we come from a long line of people who fought against the British Empire, colonialism and the police state. We should chose solidarity with those who are oppressed here in the US, + across the globe. #StPatricksDay
Erin Heaney

If you’re under-informed about how to do community gardening, you are welcome in Gardening Twitter. We are sharing what we know and helping each other save labor, grow food, add another layer to stability. My first advice is: don’t get too complicated. We can make this simple. Second is paths and mulch matter more then anything else.
BUILD SOIL; Plant Chestnuts!

If all the fear was removed from Christian culture, what would be left?
God @almightygod

Misogyny.
Hemant Mehta

"The biggest things we need to do in cities is give people alternatives" –Transportation Secretary Pete Buttegieg
Marla Westervelt

Pedestrian and transit networks should NOT be the “alternative.” We need personal automobiles to be the “alternative.”
Pedestrian Dignity @pedestrianhonor

Data show clearly that owning a car is a huge burden. People across income ranges—especially at the low end—spend much, much more on transportation when they own cars. The increase in gas prices will make this contrast more dramatic:


Yonah Freemark

Reducing car dependency is an anti-poverty initiative.
@ambrown

War is god’s way of teaching Americans geography
@edburmila

American cities are incredibly empty and rich people think they're all "full" because they don't like sitting in car traffic.
'Weird Alex' Pareene

Ever since I was a kid "pain at the pump" has been treated as this urgent, kitchen-table issue and it's never been close to the expense that like housing, medical insurance, or education have been and we're all supposed to pretend that gas taxes are this populist gesture.
Rob Zacny

Those seeking to regulate cyclists "to protect pedestrians" are diverting attention from cars, where it belongs.
David Zipper

Koch Industries is currently the top donor to Sedition Caucus members and still doing business in Russia. We need to be talking about the threat Koch Industries poses to democracy.
Citizens for Ethics @CREWcrew

Elites in the global North have difficulty accepting the idea of ecological limits because on some level they believe they have a right to take everything — a worldview that is anchored in 500 years of colonial ideology.
Jason Hickel

Racism plays a huge hidden role in our housing markets. From appraisals to steering, it gets baked into the values, which big consequences for the wealth gap
Angie Schmitt

When destabilized Earth and human systems interact to make it hard to grow, manufacturer, and ship things, and that shows up in prices, is it inflation though?
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin

Streets are a place to move people and goods, but they are first and foremost a place where people LIVE and DO STUFF:


Henk Swarttouw @copenhenken

Crazy idea #3: Default no turn on red. Turns on red can be allowed with signing, when context makes it desirable. Right turn on red prioritizes the wrong mode, especially in urban/main street settings. "Permitting rights on red increases pedestrian crashes by 60 percent and bike crashes by 100 percent." (usa.streetsblog.org)
Dongho Chang

The single most effective kind of climate advocacy that most people can engage in is climate YIMBYism — pressuring your local government to zone for more housing, approve housing faster, reduce "impact fees," cut parking, fund transit and design streets for people.
Alex Steffen

“I’m trying to electrify my home,” Leah Stokes said. “To get permits is about a year. I’m still burning gas for that year. Now we’re going back and forth about heat pumps. None of the system is oriented around climate being the most important thing.”
Omar Wasow @owasow

Natural gas is a finite resource and will run out eventually. Using it for energy is making species go extinct and making the planet uninhabitable. Expecting gas to be cheap is unreasonable and unrealistic.
Kyle Constalie

I don’t like paying higher gas prices either but it’s incredible that people will buy GOP outrage on gas that’s $5 instead of $3.50—but then excuse GOP for keeping the min wage at $7.25 instead of $15, insulin at $1200 instead of $35, and paid leave at 0 weeks instead of 12 weeks.
Qasim Rashid, Esq.

It’s almost certain that car dependency and suburban sprawl are the most publicly subsidized outcomes in human history:


Brent Toderian

What gives me hope on climate? What gives me hope is that we've barely tried yet. So far, people in the rich Global North have acted, overall, like spoiled little shits. If humanity made a concerted effort we'd halt climate breakdown in a matter of years. But that's a big “if.”
Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman

Despair is a delusion of confidence that asserts it knows what’s coming, perhaps a tool of those who like to feel in control, even if just of the facts, when in reality, we can frame approximate parameters, but the surprises keep coming.
Rebecca Solnit @rebecapedia

"Biden is causing rising gas prices!"
Exxon raked in $23,000,000,000 in profit last year.
Shell raked in $19,000,000,000 in profit last year.
Chevron raked in $15,600,000,000 in profit last year.
BP raked in $12,800,000,000 in profit last year.
Public Citizen

One of the reasons why the American ruling class is so adamantly against free healthcare is that the threat of losing your employer-based insurance is an incredibly powerful disciplining tool to use against the work force.
Alan MacLeod

Not hyperbole:

Seth Abramson

The exact same channels that traffic Big Lie/Qanon/White Replacement/NWO/Deep State conspiracy theories are now peddling Pro-Putin propaganda. And that isn’t a coincidence. Putin and these actors are all part of a growing transnational Right Wing authoritarian movement.
Jared Yates Sexton

You know, someone might want to remind the lawmakers of Florida they are public servants.
Kelly @Kellymag26

If the pandemic remains contained, then the Republicans will boast about saving money. If there is resurgence with a new variant, the Republicans will blame Biden for failing to get the pandemic under control.
Dean Baker

Why DO we subsidize the oil industry? They make billions in profit, why do they need our tax money, too?
Spencer Grace

Early on in my career I sometimes used exercises where I asked students to adopt opposed positions from texts and debate each other. It usually didn't work well. Now I use exercises where I ask students to imagine how they would teach texts to other people. It works well. Curiously, when students “debated” they tended to reduce their assigned position to a clownish caricature and overstatement, even when it matched their true beliefs; while when they “teach” they usually offer a sympathetic and contextualized explanation even when they disagree. Debate is not much of a truth-seeking activity. It’s a parody of truth-seeking in which uncertainty and ambiguity are perceived liabilities. To advocate for a text means omitting whatever careful qualifications its author has made, delivering it as its own reductio ad absurdum.
@gnrosenberg

Folks love to explain how we [Black people] should properly conduct ourselves as second class citizens in the USA
@BreeNewsome

Nothing says “Own the Libs” quite like driving around in circles in great big giant trucks while complaining about the price of gas.
@JoJoFromJerz

The pandemic has killed more Americans than any war in our history, but we spend about 500x less on our health defense than we spend on our military defense.
Dr. Tom Frieden

It’s a problem that you can’t walk to do basic things in like 98% of America
@Cobylefko

for anyone who needs to hear it.... the problem is not a dependence on "foreign" oil. THE PROBLEM IS A DEPENDENCE ON OIL!!!!
Mary Annaïse Heglar

This sign by @justupthepike is better!


Jerome Alexander Horne

Over 70 health centres in Yemen have been destroyed in Saudi coalition airstrikes. Schools and school buses have been bombed, and children are starving. Russian money has no place in English football. The same should go for Saudi Arabia.
Ash Sarkar @AyoCaesar

As Corey Robin explains in his must-read The Reactionary Mind, the thing that binds together all forms of right-wing thought is the idea that some of us are born to rule, and most of us are born to be ruled over.
Cory Doctorow

Trucks account for only 4 percent of U.S. vehicles, but they generate 23 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution from transportation, half of the smog-forming NOx emissions and 60 percent of the fine particulate pollution.
Inside Climate News

You know what, if you're gonna be accused of "radical" climate action no matter what you do, may as well take some action amiright? @POTUS @SenateDems @HouseDemocrats
Amy Westervelt

NEW: Harris County, Texas confirms that they ended up rejecting 25-30% of absentee ballots in last week’s election. Prior to Texas’ voter suppression law, this number was ~1%.
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen

My grandchildren, to me: “Pappy, will you tell us again about the precedented times?”
Hank Green

The GOP slid from "No one should get between parents in their kids!" in Virginia to "We're going to arrest parents we don't like!" in Idaho and Texas and "Your parents don't exist!" in Florida, giving away the game. They only believe in your freedom to practice their religion.
LOLGOP

I can't remember who pointed out to me the difference between how we use the words "foreign" (bad, invading) and "international" (sparkly, exciting) — but it's striking.
Lisa Johnson @lisasj

When someone says “nobody uses the bike lane,” I sometimes hear it as “I don’t care about the people using the bike lane”:


Alex Fisch

P1: US should consist in multiple cultures and demographics living alongside one another, governed by a common rules-based system.
P2: US should be dominated by a particular demographic and religious culture, extending rights/privileges to others (or not) as it sees fit.
How a culture based on P1 can accommodate people with position P2 — the "paradox of tolerance" — is a difficult question. But let's be clear, people who believe P2 exploit that paradox opportunistically. They don't give a shit about tolerance and do not extend it when in charge.
David Roberts @drvolts

Thank God the party that unanimously voted AGAINST reducing childcare costs and pre-K costs and insulin costs and prescription drug costs is looking out for us when it comes to gas costs. Phew. Funny how Americans are gladly willing to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars more than European countries for healthcare, but we draw the line at paying all of 50 cents more for gas.
Brian Tyler Cohen

And by “states’ rights,” they mean that if you’re born in the wrong state you have no rights.
LOLGOP

Me: We need fewer cars, less driving and better cities.
Strawman: We could never completely ban cars.
Anecdoter: How will I get my kid to hockey or get to work from my car-dependent suburb?
Tech booster: cars will be electric in blank years anyway…
Me again: Listen carefully…
Brent Toderian

Every time conservative college students whine about not being able to speak their minds I think about the Black professor I had that I really liked, whose student reviews grumbled about how he “brought race into everything,” and how he didn’t get tenure
@LouisatheLast

Obligatory "transit in most of America sucks." i know and thats a choice. Vote for people who support public transit and wont continue the 80/20 split of federal funding that goes to highways over transit
Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

The nuclear family isn't a family. It is a man with free child care, maid service, laundry, cook, psychologist, social coordinator, arm candy, private shopper, and familial obligation buffer. It was never meant to be a family. It was meant to give poor men what rich men have.
@KSomaliRose

People who find success by following the rules that were designed for THEM to find success always feel like the people who had to work harder, without access to the same resources, are getting away with something.
Ashley C. Ford @iSmashFizzle

In February 2022, the Arctic was +4.09°C warmer than the average February of 1951-1980. Data source: Copernicus Climate Change Service:


Antti Lipponen @anttilip

What if society invested in innovators who moved slowly and fixed things? Just a thought
Jaime-Jin

More folks need to wake up and realize that the over-investment in policing is directly connected to the underfunding of everything else and contributes to our failing infrastructure and overall public health
@BreeNewsome

Framing continued masking as “hesitancy” ignores that many who are at low individual risk share households, workplaces, classrooms, and other essential spaces with those at high-risk. Many of us mask out of collective care, not individual fear.
Anne Sosin

Common objection to bike infrastructure is "not everyone will bike, not everyone will bike all year."  We didn't need everyone, just more.
@kar_nels

The New York Times asks, "It also raises an uncomfortable question: Why did it take a full-blown attack on civilians to speed up climate action?" The climate disaster IS a full-blown attack on civilians.
Extinction Rebellion

We have a mental health crisis because people feel they lack meaning and purpose in their lives. And a planetary emergency that needs everyone to engage to literally save the world. I wish we could connect these better
Dr Charlie Gardner

Seen in Saint Paul (March 5):


Mary Morse Marti

On top of saying "shit's still bad and getting worse!" the latest IPCC report also made clear: "y'all could stop this at any point." *that's* what makes me rage stroke rather than collapse in despair when I read these things
Amy Westervelt

Do you ever think about the amount of collective dissociation among both powerful and ordinary people that has allowed us to get this far into climate chaos without substantive course correction.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin

Republicans bitch about oil/gas prices that rise and fall with demand globally.
Democrats propose solutions to move away from oil and gas so it’s no longer an issue.
Republicans work extra hard to block every single one of those solutions.
The cycle repeats.
#gasprices
@BubblegumOut

how incompetent are democratic messengers that this is the first time i've heard this or seen this chart:


Andrew Lawrence

I can not stress enough this point: Literally every last person in the United States who complains about how “crowded” our cities are, is talking about cars. America is not crowded, anywhere. Half the land in our cities is four-lane roads and parking lots!!!!!!!!!
Matthew Lewis @mateosfo

Also anyone who complains about noise in cities. 80% of the time they're talking about vehicles (inc sirens/music), 10% of the time it's rude loud drunk folks outside apartments as they head to their cars, 8% poor sound insulation in apartments, 2% annoyed by others' lives.
@happifydesign

Too many business majors, that’s what’s wrong with the world.
ABOLISH POL(ICE) @gabsthehuman

Me: I would like to safely ride a bike in my city.
My city: Whoa, tone it down, zealot.
Queen Anne Greenways

it’s weird how the same public pension officials saying they can immediately divest from Russian assets have also spent years insisting they somehow can’t possibly divest from fossil fuel companies waging a war on the livable ecosystem
David Sirota

folks keep saying "culture war" and "social issues" when the conversation is about human rights
stacy-marie ishmael

Useful chart from @iduncan showing traffic death rates across US states. Note that dense, transit-rich states like MA, NJ, and NY are comparably safe. Ian did this the right way, looking at deaths/population, not deaths/miles driven (preference of many highway engineers):


David Zipper

I'd like to see the balance sheet of the fossil fuel companies with full climate and health damages  incorporated in the accounting. Also send them the bill for all the "national security" spending to protect the flow of oil for decades.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin

Have you ever thought about genuinely mercenary it is that there's a billion dollar industry built around telling us that the only meat sack we will ever have on this earth is bad, wrong and must be changed? All of those people are going to hell.
@battymamzelle

So many people defending their unmasking with “I would still mask up around anyone high risk.” Uh… then you should be masked up every time you are in a public indoor place? High risk folks exist EVERYWHERE you exist. And we aren’t all labeled with signs or anything. The irony of seeing the same people who once raged on about “HIPPA” [sic] and how it was a gross violation of privacy to ask for vax proof, now say that the onus should be on high risk people to offer the details of our diagnoses to strangers to convince them to mask up around us.
@StephTaitWrites

When they said “History repeats itself,” I wasn’t expecting all of the twentieth century in two years.
Jennifer Wright @JenAshleyWright

Just can’t get over this graph:


The Urbanist @UrbanistOrg

Fossil fuels are inherently linked to human rights abuses. You cannot have one without the other.
Sommer Ackerman @lifewithsommer

Somebody has thrown red dye under the bridge of St Petersburg's Griboiedov canal. It is right in front of the Church of the Savior of Spilled Blood — the site where Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in March 1881. The message is clear:


Visegrád 24

You can bet when a Republican shouts “political theater” they are in fact performing political theater
Paul Thomas @plthomasEdD

It's not just that Tucker Carlson is racist, it's how obviously racist he is, and how comfortable he is doing it, and how it's gained him an enormous audience.
A.R. Moxon @JuliusGoat

A reason often raised for not taking actions to reduce GHG is protecting lower income people. We will "protect" them into rising heat, drought, hunger and malnutrition, flooding and fire, malaria and dengue, water scarcity, dislocation, refugees and more.
Beth Osborne

'Why don't Russians just overthrow Putin to stop this horrible war?' is a really interesting question for Americans to ask.
Michael @OmanReagan

Absolutely top-notch doomscrolling this morning: climate breakdown and imperial wars on every continent. This is collapse; everybody knows it. Our politicians offer no hope of better days, just ever grimmer economic servitude and empty nationalism as we march towards the abyss:


jamzbrux

NYPD is one police department for a single city with a $10.3 BILLION budget. For context, the entire Ukrainian Military gets $6 billion. Police can’t be funded anymore than they’re already being funded, let’s get real.
Olayemi Olurin @msolurin

Another day, another traffic engineer telling me that narrowing lanes to 10 feet "creates a false sense of security."
Warren J. Wells

It never ceases to infuriate me that Gallup lumps "environment/pollution/climate change" under "non-economic problems." It's just grotesquely misleading in a dozen different ways.
David Roberts @drvolts

We spend $107,575,000,000 more on police than on public housing. Police are funded. Our communities aren't.
Raheem

15 kids on a 6 foot strip of pavement while 60 feet sits unused next to it. This is why the bike train is one of the best tools in advocacy because it shows how misaligned our priorities are and what needs to change:


Megan Ramey @BIKABOUT

We call it ‘consultation’ when people who have homes delay the building of new homes in order to so-called ‘protect’ their property values. What about future generations? What about newcomers? How are they represented in the process? Read: Re-orienting our housing policies to place more weight on those who have been left behind and those who will live here in the future would take us a long way down the road to addressing today’s housing crisis.
Jennifer Keesmaat

I’m starting to call transit, walking, and biking “traditional” transportation modes, because they all did, indeed, predate the automobile/car/SUV.
Lou Miranda @TheNewLou

New data shows ~46k US traffic deaths in 2021, up 18% in just two years (death rate per mile also rose 19%). Driver-focused answers like "COVID makes people crazy" don't explain why traffic deaths *fell* across Europe and E Asia. The US is an outlier.
David Zipper

The key point people are missing is that we have to *remove* car infrastructure at the *same time* that we add traditional transportation modes such as transit, walking, and biking. And zoning for mixed use means destinations will be closer and walkable
Lou Miranda @TheNewLou

Heckle and Jekyll:


Ragnarok Lobster @eclecticbrotha

Wall Street investors break up corporations all the time to serve their own interests. Last year, according to Dealogic, investors broke up 56 large companies. It’s high time that we restore government-led breakups as a tool for serving democratic interests.
Stacy Mitchell

My therapist just said 'kids are very resilient' and I said 'why do all adults need therapy then?' And she just looked into the middle distance for a bit + seemed to reassess quite a lot of things
Amy Mason @AmyCMason

Total employment in oil industries, worldwide: ~6 M
Number of people who live in "contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change" (IPCC 2022): up to to 3,600 M
There's nothing "just" about putting oil employees ahead of the billions who face transapocalyptic futures.
Alex Steffen

Okay, this is an awesome idea. Instead of natural gas utilities pivoting to biogas or hydrogen — which is a super-dumb idea — these gas utilities are proposing to use their pipeline infrastructure for geothermal district heat. Badass:


David Roberts @drvolts

I don't think we should ever forgive 21st century corporate education reformers for making us care about test scores. Serving test scores has never made our kids smarter, but it *has* made our schools worse and justified a generation of dehumanizing educational practice.
Nick Covington @CovingtonEDU