The President rejected many of the suggestions. What happens now?

Now all support organizations, such as our collective The Citizens Vests (Gilets Citoyens in French), which are organizing to communicate what can be better in peoples long-term daily lives if some of these proposals are adopted. The President said some proposals would be included in one project, of several laws, by the end of the summer, and others can be submitted to the population through a referendum by 2021. He also said that the modification to the Constitution would be submitted through a referendum by 2021. But we dont know if he will respect his commitment, so we need public debate and interest around this to make it happen. The citizens assembly has created an association to keep an eye over their work.

Green parties seem to have done well in many French citieswhats the political mood there now about things like transit?

It is difficult for the President to avoidthe questionof the climate emergency, and some think that people voted for the Greens thanks to the citizens assembly, and because of the social dysfunctions pointed out during the Yellow Vest movement. You can observe now that the government talks a little bit more about climate change than before, but people say this is just strategic, because it notices the actual interest of the population in that question.

If you want a short (and charmingly powerful) video that explains why fossil-fuel divestment is so important, you cant do better than this colorful offering from the young people at the Bay Area Earth Guardians Crew and Youth vs. Apocalypse.

As feedback loops go, this ones pretty simple: heat and drought lead to fire, and when you burn a forest you pour a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. According to the Times, the Siberian wildfires that occurred after temperatures topped a hundred degrees Fahrenheit north of the Arctic Circle apparently released more polluting gases into the Earths atmosphere than in any other month in 18 years of data collection.

Every little bit helps: last week, researchers announced that spreading rock dust on farm fields could pull fairly large amounts of carbon from the air, even as the practice builds healthier soil. When silicate or carbonate minerals in the dust dissolve in rain water, carbon dioxide is drawn from the atmosphere into the solution to form bicarbonate ions, the Washington Post explains. The bicarbonate ions are eventually washed by runoff into the ocean, where they form carbonate minerals, storing their carbon indefinitely. One drawback is the quantity of energy required to crush the rock, which could amount to a third of what it manages to save.

A global team of young people based in Japan has designed a new app to make it easy for people to contribute small sums to forest preservation.

Very useful new thoughts from the Center for Sustainable Economy about how to make sure that fossil-fuel companies cover the risks of oil spills and other accidents, instead of leaving the costs of these disasters for taxpayers.

The first reports from a robotic sub exploring the bottom of Antarcticas vast Thwaites Glacier are not encouraging. An international team of researchers found that warm water from the deep ocean is welling up from three directions and mixing underneath the ice. Thats bad news, since the collapse of that single glacier would raise the global sea level half a metre.

Joye Braun, an indefatigable activist from the Indigenous Environmental Network, reminds pipeline opponents not to slack off in the wake of last weeks Supreme Court rulings. Not only are other pipeline projects likely to continue apace (a fact that Steve Horn points out as well), but, as Braun wrote to me in an e-mail, the construction of man camps along the Keystone-pipeline route seems to still be under way. Such encampments, built for workers on the pipeline, create a particular threat in spreading the coronavirus, and have frequently been linked to sexual violence. Braun writes, On the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation women have formed a Nazhoo (whistle blower but not like DC whistle bloweractual blowing of whistles) society, and they are using social media to spread that idea to other reservations. Meanwhile, a delegation of indigenous womenmeets this weekwith Deutsche Bank, to ask it to stop supplying cash to the companies behind Keystone and other such projects.

Theres really just one number on the scoreboard that truly counts, and it shows how badly were losing. Scientists reported last week that new analyses show were approaching CO2 levels that havent been seen for fifteen million yearsmeaning that our atmosphere is becoming novel for hominids.

The Douglas fir is the state tree of Oregon (and the centerpiece of the best state license plate in America), but its in big trouble as temperatures heat up. The author Tim Palmer suggests that the conifer would be the proper rallying symbol for residents of the Beaver State who want to take on climate change.

Im always looking for little signs that the energy revolution is reaching into key corners of our economy, so it was heartening to read about climate smart solar tractors. They can, the inventors say, be charged by renewable energy and still provide all the power of a comparable diesel tractor. (Of course, thats also a good way to describe a draft horse.)

Data for Progress reports that extensive polling shows climate change should be a winning issue for Democrats in the fall; meanwhile, the group Climate Leaders for Biden managed to raise four million dollars in a single twenty-minute virtual fund-raiser, cordinated by the longtime environmental leader Tom Steyer, Bidens former primary rival. Its apparently Bidens biggest single-event haul of the campaign.

Ive been listening a lot to a new double album, Dialectic Soul, from a jazz combo led by the Cape Town-born drummer Asher Gamedze. Heres a cut. The record is about the unfinished and always unfolding practices and traditions of resistance, and how the motion of these things is imperative to imagining, articulating and building new worlds within worlds.

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