Hello and welcome to the Ekō newsletter. Today we’re covering US
inequality, the war in Ukraine, and the climate crisis.
Dining out while the world burns
Trump gorges himself as Americans go hungry.
As lower income Americans see their benefits suspended due to the
government shutdown, President Donald Trump and his wealthy friends
have been partying like it’s 1791.
Last week, they threw “A Little Party Never Killed Anyone.” On
Friday, attendees dined on filet mignon and held a raffle for
vacations to resorts worth in the tens of thousands of dollars while
listening to live opera.
The out of touch nature of the event wasn’t lost on observers.
And Trump’s administration is giving more tax breaks to the richest
Americans even as SNAP benefits are drying up.
“It looks like Versailles in Mar-a-Lago.”—Eugene Robinson
(MSNBC) (HuffPost) (Daily
Beast) (the New
York Times)
In other news
Power struggles
The war in Ukraine continues, as both sides are entrenched and
attacks continue.
Strikes from Russia have led Ukraine to cut electricity for the
population on a daily basis. Meanwhile, Ukrainian drones are hitting
Russian energy infrastructure as retaliation.
“These are our living conditions. It’s normal. We have
fluctuations with electricity in Kyiv, like everywhere
else.”—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
(Al
Jazeera) (The
Guardian) (The
Guardian)
Cop to it
The COP30 climate conference faces an uphill battle to get
commitments for real action on the environment.
This year, the conference is being held in Brazil. The US is not
sending any representatives at the federal level, though some state
and local officials are attending.
An ICJ ruling that nations of the world are duty bound to deal
with the existential danger of climate change is likely to drive
much of the conversation at the event.
(The
Guardian) (ABC
News) (CNN)
Damage, done
The US has been hostile to climate action for decades, and the
consequences are becoming clear.
Almost one million people fled the northwest of the Philippines
over the weekend ahead of super Typhoon Fung-wong making landfall.
The powerful storm follows Tino earlier this month which also hit
the archipelago nation.
In countries like Indonesia, the dismantling of USAID is having
deleterious effects on attempts to address the crisis.
But the Trump administration isn’t done yet. The White House has
been leaning on nations to curtail their efforts to address the
environment, notably last month, when a landmark deal which would
have cut emissions from cargo ships was scuttled due to Trump’s
involvement.
“It was like a bunch of gangsters coming into the neighborhood
and smashing windows and threatening shop owners.”—Sen. Sheldon
Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island)
(the New
York Times) (NPR)
(PBS)
Here’s your campaign of the day.
From controlling nuclear weapons, to replacing millions of jobs,
to creating deadly viruses—unfettered AI development could have
catastrophic consequences for us all.
And it’s keeping top experts and scientists awake at night. 800
Nobel Laureates, CEOs, faith leaders and public figures have put
their names behind a powerful new call to ban this advanced AI until
it’s safe: the Statement on Superintelligence.
That’s the foundation. Now it’s up to us to build a people
powered campaign so big that our governments have to respond.
Slow down,
superintelligence
Ekō is starting something new.
For more than a decade, we’ve kept you informed about ways we can
use our collective power to push back against corporate abuse and
corruption. And we’ve had a massive impact, filing shareholder
resolutions, changing policies, buying and protecting forests, and
more.
