How inexpensive can renewable energy get?

This is headlined "Offshore Wind Is on the Brink of Becoming So Cheap, the UK Will Pay People to Use It." I don't know about that, but it is an intriguing and positive read.

The fossil fuel industry and its allies love saying that renewable energy increases utility bills. But in the UK, new research shows that coming offshore wind farms could actually make bills more affordable.

In the short term, previous renewable energy projects have increased bills because they’ve been built with government subsidies. But a study published in Nature Energy on Monday found that the country’s latest approved offshore wind projects will be built so cheaply that they’ll actually be able to pay money back to the UK government. That money will go towards reducing household energy bills.

“Energy subsidies used to push up energy bills, but within a few years, cheap renewable energy will see them brought down for the first time,” Malte Jansen, research associate at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, said in a statement. “This is an astonishing development.” - Earther

How loathsome can the greedheads get?

Exceedingly loathsome indeed. And it needs to be made right.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deep inequalities and massive failures in our economic system, leaving tens of millions of people in the United States without jobs, devastating public services, and bankrupting countless small businesses,” Irit Tamir, director of the private sector department at Oxfam America, said. “Yet at the same time, thanks to a combination of government assistance and pure luck, a handful of corporations are raking it in and making already rich shareholders even richer.”

“...Profit is not a four-letter word, but when such dramatic and excessive profits are made during a time of global crisis and distributed to the wealthiest, the situation is not just fundamentally unjust, it is also economically inefficient,” Niko Lusiani, senior advisor on corporate advocacy at Oxfam America, and lead author of the analysis, said. “Corporations like Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Facebook, Pfizer, and Visa, flush with billions in pandemic profits and disproportionately benefiting from taxpayer-funded economic relief, now have the opportunity to gobble up smaller companies and deepen their market power at the expense of true competition. Taxing these windfall profits is a fair, time-tested way to rebuild better.” - Nation of Change

Whimpering, groveling servitude to the war pigs

Some may find that title offensive, but at times you just gotta tell it like it is.

Anti-war groups vowed to keep fighting to slash the bloated Pentagon budget after the House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a proposal to cut U.S. military spending by 10% and invest the savings in housing, healthcare, and education in poor communities.

The final vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendment sponsored by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) was 93-324, with 139 Democrats joining 185 Republicans in voting no. The failure of the Lee-Pocan amendment means the final version of the House NDAA will propose a $740.5 military budget for fiscal year 2021, a more than $2 billion increase from the previous year. - Common Dreams

What a great time to change our food system for the better

Unfortunately Big Ag, Big Meat, etc., still hold way too much political power. But there are grounds for hope.

Community groups and small enterprises have stepped up during the pandemic, utilising their networks to look after the vulnerable, and generally strengthening the fabric of social safety nets. This has happened despite years of cuts.

Organisations and initiatives, are going beyond their original purposes to deliver services and care, including food. Community supported agriculture schemes, food banks, and food hubs can do this because they are already networked locally and can rely on emergency helpers. Their adaptability means they are fleet-footed, and capable of picking up the slack of an inflexible, industrialised food system.

This is not to say that supermarkets should not be applauded for their recent actions. But they are inexorably linked to industrial agriculture systems. These pose a dual risk, potentially both triggering global crises and failing to deliver provisions. For our own welfare, we should ensure that there is more to the food landscape than industrial agriculture, large-scale processing, and mega-retail. - In These Times

Child care money crisis

Though this is potentially a huge thing, there hasn't been much about it in corporate media.

Workers in the U.S. are staring down the precipice as lawmakers fail to address the economic ravages of the pandemic. Even as some 21 million people remain unemployed, the $600 per week in additional unemployment insurance created by Congress’s coronavirus relief package, the CARES Act, is set to expire on July 31. Student debt payments will resume on October 1 for the 34 million federal student loan borrowers whose loans were suspended by CARES. But perhaps no cliff is as steep as the early care and education sector, which may be cut in half by the time the pandemic is over. To save it, the sector will need an infusion of at least $50 billion. But so far, despite how essential child care is to restarting the economy, Congress has been unwilling to meet the crisis with the resources required to stave off a crisis. - Truthout

So now, underpaid, disrespected teachers are supposed to save the economy for Trump

Potentially risking their lives in the process. It would be good if corporate media would more frequently note that Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump are remarkably ignorant, foolish people.

What’s sadly ironic about all this sudden newfound appreciation for teachers as essential to the economy is that government leaders and policy makers, from both major political parties, have spent years attacking the economic well-being of public schools and teachers.

School districts have never recovered from budget cuts states imposed during the Great Recession that started at the end of 2007. In an article for the Progressive, Nicholas Johnson from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted, “School districts have never recovered from the layoffs… [states] imposed back then. When COVID-19 hit, K-12 schools were employing 77,000 fewer teachers and other workers—even though they were teaching two million more children, and overall funding in many states was still below pre-2008 levels.”

Teachers now make 4.5 percent on average less than they did more than 10 years ago, according to the National Education Association, and public school teachers earn 17 percent less than what comparable workers earn, according to the Economic Policy Institute. - Jeff Bryant/Citizen Truth

DeVos contemplates grotesque, despicable abuse of power

If she does follow through, this would likely quickly fall to legal challenges. But that it's being considered is another indicator of what loathsome sociopaths are now running the federal executive branch.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Tuesday that she is “very seriously” considering withholding federal funding from schools that don’t reopen in the fall...

She told (Tucker) Carlson on Tuesday that fears of coronavirus transmission from public health officials was an example of “fearmongering.” - The Hill

"If schools reopen this fall, more people will likely die. Full stop." - Truthout

Put responsibility for plastics pollution where it belongs

The misinformation, and outright propaganda, fomented by the greedheads on this issue is ubiquitous.

In the midst of a mounting plastic crisis, the biggest plastic polluters keep pushing better consumer recycling behaviors as the solution. The plastic waste problem is not going to be solved by doubling down on our efforts to educate the public to recycle better. It can be solved by policies that prevent hard-to-recycle items from ever being created and requiring producers to take responsibility for the waste their products become...

These companies have been shifting responsibility for their waste onto consumers since the 1970s by publicly blaming litterbugs and emphasizing personal responsibility to recycle while quietly squashing legislation that could actually help reduce waste, like bottle bills that would require companies to collect, reuse, or otherwise process the containers they sold. Public outcry over waste in public spaces is also not new. The mounting accumulation of packaging and disposable goods prompted more than 1,000 legislative attempts to ban, tax, or incentivize the return of disposable items in the 1970s. The beverage and packaging industry successfully spent millions of dollars fighting these regulatory efforts, saddling us with the problem of dealing with the waste their products inevitably become. If this sounds familiar, it’s because these companies have simply taken a line out of Big Tobacco and Big Oil’s playbook: addict, deny, obfuscate. - Earther