This week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will begin to release its first major assessment of human-caused global warming since 2013.  The report will be released in a world that has dramatically changed over the past eight years.  The average global temperature has increased from roughly 0.3°C higher in 2013 than the Earth’s average temperature during preindustrial times to nearly 1.3°C above that level today.  As a result, weather has grown more severe, seas are measurably higher, and mountain glaciers and polar ice levels have shrunk sharply.

We’ve all seen the impacts.  Last month, a heat wave triggered Greenland’s biggest melting event of the 2021 season.  Danish researchers found that enough ice melted to cover all of Florida with two inches of water.

These same weather patterns were linked to record-breaking temperatures – and the resulting fires – in Western North America, Turkey, and Greece, as well as flooding seen in Europe, China, and India.  California is experiencing the largest wildfires in recorded history.

Last week, that news was amplified by reports that the human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that circulates Atlantic Ocean currents. 

This circulation is at the heart of Earth’s climate system, playing a critical role in redistributing heat and regulating weather patterns around the world.  It transports warm water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor.  

As the current gains latitude it cools, adding density to waters already laden with salt.  By the time it hits Greenland, it is dense enough to sink deep beneath the surface.  It pushes other submerged water south toward Antarctica, where it mixes with other ocean currents as part of a global oceanic circulation system. 

Climate change has disturbed the balance.  Higher temperatures make ocean waters warmer and lighter.  An influx of freshwater from melting ice sheets and glaciers dilutes North Atlantic’s saltiness, reducing its density.  If these waters aren’t heavy enough to sink, the entire circulation will shut down.

While the researchers did not predict an imminent collapse, their findings suggest that the circulation is weakening, making it more susceptible to disruptions that might destabilize the system.

None of this, unfortunately, should come as a surprise.  Scientists have predicted for decades that the burning of fossil fuels – oil, gas, and coal – were heating up the planet and would lead to the devastating consequences that we are now experiencing.  And some of those scientists worked for the oil companies themselves.

Instead of being a conscientious global citizen, the oil industry embarked on a decades-long campaign of deception that undermined environmental science.  The industry went further, installing toadies throughout the political and civic worlds to parrot those lies.  And it worked: Nothing of significance took place to avert the disasters that the world is now experiencing.

So, what should be done?

In the short-term the world must wean off its addiction to energy powered by fossil fuels.  Also, nations must start building modern infrastructures that can limit the devastation from global warming.

In the U.S. Senate, last week U.S. Senator Van Hollen of Maryland, joined by Vermont Senator Sanders, Massachusetts Senators Markey and Warren, and others, advanced a proposal to make these climate polluters pay $500 billion toward the infrastructure costs the nation faces to address climate changes.

The climate changes resulting from the burning of fossil fuels cost – and will continue to cost – the nation dearly in damages in the form of more powerful storms, intense and frequent heat waves, powerful floods, and more pollution.

The Senators model their legislation on the nation’s toxic waste site clean-up (“Superfund”) law.  The Superfund law uses a “polluter must pay” model.  The aim is to hold fossil fuels companies responsible for costs tied to the climate crisis.  Assessing polluters, whose decisions fueled the climate crisis, to help pay for the nation’s effort to adapt and mitigate the costs of climate change is the fairest and most just way to proceed.

Following the Senate’s announcement, New York Congressional Representative Bowman pledged to advance a matching bill in the House of Representatives.

As the Congress takes the next step in its budget reconciliation process, paying for the enormous infrastructure needs of the nation will move to center stage.  Ensuring that those most responsible for the climate changes that are damaging our roads, bridges, mass transit, and drinking water systems, makes sense.

Make the climate polluters pay.

As we all know, going to college is expensive.  For many families, the cost of attending college has been financed through credit – relying on the government or private lending institutions to provide the money.  While that credit is important to meeting the needs of a college student, that debt does have to be paid back. 

Nationwide, these college loan debts now total $1.5 trillion – far more than any other line of consumer credit outside of home mortgages.

It’s not hard to understand how this impacts Americans: For those who took out the loans, that credit must be paid back and that can undermine financial stability – and future career choices – of those families and the students themselves.

Tackling that problem has been near the top of the Congress’s agenda.  In March, the Congress passed legislation that provided more than $36 billion to institutions of higher education to help with the costs associated with grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic.  Colleges and universities received their funds based on a formula that considered the number of students enrolled, with a weight for lower-income, needy students.

The new federal law allowed institutions to cancel debts – incurred during the pandemic – that the students owed to the institutions.  It did not allow institutions to cancel all federal student debt.  Federal student loans account for most of the outstanding student debt, with private loans and institutional debts making up the remainder.  Currently, payments and interest on federally held student loans are suspended until the end of September, providing some breathing room for those with college debt.  New York U.S. Senator Schumer is pushing for an elimination of all student debt, but as yet the Congress has not acted (although hearings on the topic are scheduled for next month).

But Congress’s action earlier this year is impacting the nation: Across the country, colleges and universities are cancelling pandemic-driven debts students owed to those institutions.

Here in New York, college borrowers carry an average balance of nearly $36,000 — though that’s lower than the average borrower in the U.S. (nearly $37,000).  Overall, there are 2.7 million student loan borrowers in New York, with debt totaling nearly $100 billion.  Not all of the student loan borrowers are in their 20s and 30s; many have been forced to extend their student debt well into middle age.

Those attending public colleges and universities typically have less debt, since attending those institutions is less expensive.  In the City University of New York system for example, the average debt balance is about $2,000.  Yet, given that CUNY students are far more likely to be economically disadvantaged, paying to attend can be a strain.

The pandemic has made it worse.  CUNY student debt nearly doubled during the pandemic.

The City University announced last week its program to use federal stimulus money to finance some student institutional debt forgiveness.  All outstanding tuition and fees — such as the technology and activities fees —for the spring 2020, summer 2020, fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters are eligible to be forgiven for qualifying students.

It’s estimated that 50,000 CUNY students will be eligible to have their student debts cancelled under the initiative and that the program will wipe out up to $125 million in unpaid student debt.

CUNY students with proven financial hardship, including students eligible for Pell Grants, will automatically have institutional debt created by tuition and fees covered without the need to apply.  Qualifying students who already paid their tuition and fees will be eligible for a onetime $200 reimbursement.

Students at publicly funded universities typically pay hundreds of dollars in fees each semester, costs that are typically not covered by financial aid or scholarships.  The CUNY program will cover those costs if they are an outstanding debt in a students account.

The State University of New York (SUNY) is also developing its plan to grant relief for outstanding tuition and fees incurred by students during the pandemic.  They have already begun providing relief – SUNY has stated it has provided relief since the beginning of the pandemic totaling over $500 million.  Its institutional debt forgiveness plan is next.

These are undoubtedly important and positive steps to offset the financial hits that college students and their families have experienced since last spring.  But it also raises another issue: Should public colleges and universities be charging tuition at all? 

A century ago, the nation established a system of universal education that helped the nation to transform itself into a world leader.  Given the complexity of modern society, should that goal be extended through college?

We say yes.  But in the short term, giving college students and their families financial relief is a welcome move.

The Biden Administration’s plans to tackle the nation’s infrastructure woes and to combat climate change are among the top policy issues stuck in the U.S. Senate.  The President’s plans have passed the House of Representatives, but the razor-thin Democratic majority in the Senate makes progress slow going.

With Western North America in flames, and unprecedented floods across the globe, you’d think that addressing climate change would be an easy lift – new roads, bridges, and mass transit systems need to be upgraded in order to handle the more savage storms and heat waves that result from global warming.

But it’s not.

The greed of the oil companies and the cravenness of their Congressional toadies muck up any progress.  When our democracy fails to respond to serious crises, it makes sense to examine what’s wrong with the system.

In the same way as the oil companies deceived the public and shoveled money to candidates who mouthed their lies, the propaganda wars over American elections continues to undermine our democracy.

In the same way that the political and public relations consultants helped fuel the war against science in responding to the climate crisis, a new propaganda war is playing out over elections.

Former President Trump continues to pound away on the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, and that widespread voter fraud was the culprit.  And just like the cynical lies used to block measures to combat global warming, the claims of widespread voter fraud simply do not exist.  Yet millions believe those lies.

As a result, states across the nation are debating and implementing new ways to make it harder to vote under the guise of fighting that non-existent widespread voter fraud.  That’s right, even though all Americans over the age of 18 have a right to vote, the Big Lie of a stolen election is being used to make voting more difficult and to get rid of elections administrators regardless of party affiliation who based their actions on facts, not ideology.

It’s a very bad turn of events.  It is not hard to see the road to authoritarianism if they succeed.

What should be done?  Among the pile of important issues stuck in the molasses of U.S. Senate decision-making is a proposal for the Congress to establish a voting “floor” below which no state can go.  That floor would include basic voting rights that make casting a ballot easier, not harder. 

The measure, introduced as Senate bill 1, matches a House version, which has already passed that chamber.  The bill relies on the nation’s “best practices” when it comes to elections, including automatic voter registration, and nationwide early voting.  The bill also supports restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act, would require independent redistricting in all states, and establish a voluntary system of public financing that relies on small donations – not big campaign contributions.

But it’s stuck in the Senate mud.  In the Senate, the rules in place say that 60 votes are needed to avoid a filibuster that can stop legislation in its tracks.  In the current Senate divide – both parties having 50 members –uniform Senate Republican opposition is blocking approval of the legislation.

Unless something is done about limiting the filibuster, it’s hard to imagine success in approving the elections measure.

But there is a way.  The Senate has trimmed back the use of the filibuster rule in the case of approving federal judges.  Most recently, in April 2017, the Republican Senate majority changed the rule to allow a simple majority to approve US Supreme Court nominees, which enabled the nomination of Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch to proceed to a vote.

Why not apply the same rule for appointing Supreme Court nominees to measures to protect American democracy?

New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer has to decide whether to make such a move.  Of course, he needs all Senate Democrats and the Vice President to agree to the change, and not all of those Senators are on board right now. 

Senator Schumer is the Majority Leader because he is an expert in moving that Chamber.  If and when he makes his move could determine the future of American democracy and world.

With so much at stake, the Senate must act – to both reduce the existential threat posed by global warming as well as to preserve our democracy.  Let’s hope it does.  The alternatives are harrowing.

The world is in crisis: climate change has triggered once-in-a-millennium catastrophic weather events and we are all enduring the second year of a worldwide pandemic. 

There is, unfortunately, another public health crisis that is emerging: the growing inability of antibiotics to kill off infections.  Unless the world responds intelligently to this growing threat, these antibiotic-resistant infections, also known as “superbugs,” could kill more people worldwide than cancer by the middle of this century.

You heard that right:  Experts now predict that unless the threat posed by “superbugs” is curbed, in the not too distant future more will die from currently treatable infections than will die of cancer.

An appropriate response has a two-pronged approach: curb the overuse and misuse of current antibiotics and invest in new therapies that will kill “superbugs.”

How did the world find itself under this new threat? 

The more antibiotics are used, the faster bacteria evolve and develop resistance to them.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 2.8 million people develop resistant infections each year in the United States, and more than 35,000 die.

The pandemic may have made the situation worse.  The early treatment for COVID patients was to use antibiotics as a way to help fend off secondary infections – antibiotics attack bacteria, they do not kill viruses.  Yet, the regular use of antibiotics on COVID patients may have helped accelerate microbial resistance. 

All this to say that the nation – and the world – need to act before it is too late and the current antibiotics lose their effectiveness.  Some steps have been taken.  New York State now requires all hospitals and nursing homes to develop infection stewardship programs to better regulate the use of antibiotics.

There also is a growing recognition of the dangers posed by the overuse and misuse of human-important antibiotics on farm animals – but outside of the states of California and Maryland, little has been done in the U.S.  More on this in a moment.

And despite the obvious urgency, global research and development for new antibiotics is running dry.

Unlike cancer drugs or medicines that people take for years to control chronic illnesses, antibiotics must be used as conservatively as possible to preserve their effectiveness.  Using a product sparingly undermines its profitability.  Given that the antibiotics-making-business is unprofitable, drug companies spend their investment dollars on other therapies with big payoffs. 

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, hospitals and health systems have begun to implement much-needed antibiotic stewardship programs to reduce inappropriate antibiotic use and preserve the drugs’ efficacy.   While those actions are appropriate, a collateral effect is that it reduces the sales of new antibiotics.  Few drug companies find it feasible to spend big bucks to create an affordable drug that is meant to sit on the shelf for as long as possible.

These market factors have led almost every large pharmaceutical company to leave the field in recent years.  In 2014, eight big drug makers had a new antibiotic in the clinical pipeline; last year only two did.

The Biden Administration has advanced in its budget plan funding increases for key agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health—which are deeply involved in the fight against antibiotic resistance.  Congress is considering legislation that would offer funding contracts to drug companies, providing them with a fair return on investment for the risk they incur to develop a new antibiotic based on the drug’s value to public health.  Hopefully, action will be taken.

Here in New York, the governor and state lawmakers should also consider measures to reduce overuse and misuse of antibiotics on farm animals.  Nearly one-quarter of all antibiotic-resistant infections emerge from agriculture, putting workers and communities at risk.  The superbug problem needs to be attacked at every level, including in agricultural settings.

There is no time to waste.

For over a decade the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) has been the state’s leading ethics watchdog agency.  Its job is to oversee compliance with ethics standards set for the executive branch, in a limited way to do the same for the legislative branch, and to regulate state and local lobbyists and their clients.  Since its inception critics have charged that the structure of the agency is not independent and it is, in fact, a political agency – one in which the leaders of the executive and legislative branches controlled the actions of the agency.

This week, the state Senate’s Ethics Committee will hold a hearing to examine the work of New York’s ethics watchdogs. 

Unfortunately, the evidence has borne out those criticisms.  While the activities of JCOPE have been shrouded in secrecy (largely the result of state laws), reporting by investigative journalists has shed light on this critically important agency.  And the picture that emerges is deeply troubling.  The hard work of digging into JCOPE has been led by the Albany’s Times Union newspaper, which has devoted considerable resources into getting under the hood of JCOPE to see how it operates.  What little the public knows of JCOPE’s inner workings has been through the media, primarily the Times Union.

One issue currently under JCOPE’s consideration is examining the use of public resources for private gain.  Both of Governor Cuomo’s book deals were approved by the JCOPE staff without, it appears, full Commission approval.  It has been reported that some commissioners now believe that such approval should have gone to the full Commission. 

In both cases, the governor’s office argued that there was precedent for staff to decide the issue without going to the full board that directs JCOPE.  In both cases, the governor’s book deals resulted in significant compensation.  How the staff made their decisions and whether they were aware of all the details of the size of the financial compensation is not at all clear. 

Moreover, when the Executive Chamber’s employees requested approval on behalf of the governor, the correspondence was written on state letterhead and may have been written by a government employee working on public time.  These facts raise questions about where JCOPE draws the line in determining when the use of public resources is appropriate and when it is not. 

JCOPE has been criticized from within as well.  Members of the JCOPE board have alleged that the governor was told of the private discussions about allegations that a former top aide to the governor misused public resources.  Under state law, those discussions are supposed to be secret.  As of today, no one is aware of how the governor and his staff were alerted to these internal discussions.

There have been public complaints made by commissioners that JCOPE’s decision-making hinges on a small number of commissioners working with senior staff.  Again, it is not clear if this is true. 

This week’s state Senate’s hearing should be the place were these – and other – questions get raised and answered by JCOPE officials.  The new Executive Director of JCOPE will testify at that hearing, but it is not clear if the Senate plans on interviewing other members of the Commission or the senior-level staff.

Since the public pays for the ethics agency, they should have a right to know if any of these allegations are true.  The public deserves to get a better understanding of how ethics enforcement works – or doesn’t work – in New York.

Of course, the structure of the agency is the root problem: Commissioners appointed directly by the governor and the Legislative leaders – the very people whose ethical behavior could be questioned.

That simply cannot work.

That’s what government watchdogs and a New York City Bar Association review concluded.  The Joint Commission on Public Ethics (and the Legislative Ethics Commission) should be replaced with an independent ethics enforcement agency that would monitor and enforce ethics for the executive and legislative branches. 

Nowhere is the public’s trust more susceptible to harm than when lawmakers act in ways that skirt not only the letter, but also the spirit, of ethics laws.  New York has seen its share of ethical lapses, yet little has been done.  Prison sentences, convictions, plea deals, scandals and other allegations of ethical misconduct have been on the front pages of the state’s newspapers far too often.  As a result, the ways in which the state regulates political ethics has been a front-burner issue. 

Unfortunately, little is clear when it comes to New York State’s ethics laws.  The laws are riddled with loopholes and poorly – if at all – enforced.  Changes are needed to comprehensively reform the state’s ethics laws.  Let’s hope that the Senate uses its powers to get important questions answered and begins to develop reforms that will both ensure independent, competent ethical oversight and bolster public confidence in state government.