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From Vox
The most annoying barrier to getting your home off fossil fuels -
Aaron Sinclair, of Dave’s World Heating and Cooling, installs a heat pump at a customer’s home in Standish, Maine, in 2018. | Brianna Soukup/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
So you want a heat pump. But can you find anyone to install it?
Brian Stewart knew he wanted all the gas out of his home. He figured his townhouse in the Portland, Oregon, area was one of his biggest personal contributions to climate change — its water heater, furnace, fireplace, and stovetop all ran on fossil fuels. Switching to electric appliances would be more energy-efficient, and would slash his footprint by plugging into a grid that’s increasingly powered by renewables.
Some of the home changes he knew he could do himself, but to replace the gas furnace and a gas-powered water heater for electric heat pumps, he had to call in contractors. Each one he spoke to tried to talk him out of swapping the furnace and heater. They were skeptical that an electric replacement would be as reliable, and insisted he’d need a backup gas furnace just in case.
“You could be super excited about [electrifying your home], but if the contractor you talk to says, ‘In my house, I wouldn’t do that,’ it’s hard to have the confidence to say, ‘I don’t believe you,’” Stewart said.
But Stewart stood by his research and kept making calls. Eventually, he found a contractor who was enthusiastic about replacing the gas with electric heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). He hasn’t had to pay a gas bill since then, estimating the full project saved him $1,000 a year in natural gas and gasoline bills.
Most people aren’t, like Stewart, climate-minded consumers eager to go renewable. Many home replacements and repairs are unplanned emergencies, like the furnace that breaks in the middle of a winter freeze. Typically, a homeowner might call whoever installed or maintains the gas furnace. And that contractor might not be able to help them go electric — or suggest that they should in the first place.
A federal push is coming to electrify more homes. The residential sector contributes to about a fifth of the US’s greenhouse gas emissions, and many of those homes (about half) still run on fossil fuel for heat and power. If they switch to electricity, they’re slashing those emissions by plugging into an increasingly renewable energy grid.
The cost of changing existing infrastructure, especially inside the home, is a difficult thing to surmount. Democrats this summer approved billions of dollars in federal funding as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to bring down that cost, by including incentives for all of the electric appliances and accessories needed, like heat pumps, insulation, wiring, circuit breakers, and induction cooktops.
The economics are finally all aligning to propel electrification forward. The biggest hurdle yet is the people problem. The IRA’s investments won’t be successful unless the people who will be closest to carrying out its ambitions — the electricians, plumbers, and other kinds of HVAC specialists — are on board with the clean energy transition, too.
Too many contractors are giving out the wrong information about heat pumps
Brian Stewart’s experience with contractors drove him to start a volunteer-based group, Electrify Now, to help others in the Portland area navigate electrifying their homes. He’s heard stories from people across the country who’ve encountered resistance when trying to switch off of gas. And one of the most pervasive myths people seem to hear is that a heat pump won’t work in cold climates.
Heat pumps actually work like a two-way air conditioner, using electricity and a chemical refrigerant to transfer heat into and out of a building. Since heat pumps are up to 4.5 times more efficient than gas, environmentalists have rallied around them as the better alternative to combusting a fuel inside the home. The myth that the equipment won’t work in cold places persists because as recently as about 20 years ago, it was true for most technology.It’s one reason heating oil is much more common in New York and gas furnaces throughout the North. Today, with better refrigerants and compressor technology, these systems work just fine in subzero temperatures (indeed, heat pumps are already thriving in Maine and chilly northern Europe).
This has led to contractors’ understandable, if dated, bias against electric heat pumps. Their advice is simply based on what they’ve always done. They see an old or broken gas or oil furnace and swap it with another, even if the electric replacement could wind up saving the person far more money. In most cases, contractors are just unfamiliar with heat pumps, since only 10 percent of households used them as their main source of heating as of 2015, according to the Energy Department.
Ideally, when a furnace or water heater needs replacing, a contractor and the consumer should consider all the options, including an electric system. They would need to figure out exactly the type of heat pump that may work (there are ductless and mini-splits, for example, or bigger units might be needed to run AC). But an important step that Sealed, a company that finds and vets contractors to electrify people’s homes, says contractors sometimes miss is evaluating the space for insulation and energy efficiency. A heat pump won’t work well if it’s in a space with drafty windows, for instance. Installed incorrectly, the heat pump won’t work well, which then confirms the contractor’s bias that the technology is inferior when they get a late-night call.
The problem of learning curves holds true for more than just heat pumps. EVs have faced a similar uphill climb with the middlemen closest to selling the technology to consumers. Sierra Club in 2019 sent undercover volunteers to 900 car dealerships and discovered the vast majority weren’t selling any EVs and that some “dealerships were not even trained or had proper knowledge of EVs they were selling.”
These kinds of hurdles can make even the most motivated climate-minded consumers doubt what they should do. For instance, Adam Beitman, head of electricity communications at the think tank RMI, has tried to replace his water heater and HVAC system with electricity in Washington, DC. Multiple contractors told him a new system wouldn’t fit. His own research suggested that wasn’t true, and the hunch was confirmed by one experienced HVAC installer.
But when Beitman found a water heat pump through Home Depot, his consultation with an installer sounded straight from a gas industry ad. “I don’t know about climate and all that,” he remembers the contractor saying. “I’m old-school. I like gas. Been doing it 30 years. I think you should reconsider.”
Training for contractors can close the learning gap
There are contractors out there who are excited about heat pumps. Larry Nissman is one of them. As an environmental director for Phoenix Mechanical, he serves the Westchester County area in New York, where oil-burning furnaces used to be far more common than electricity to heat the home, especially in older buildings. In the past five years, Nissman says, the company started getting a lot more requests for electric HVAC systems, another name for heat pumps.
“I use one in my own home, and I probably saved $900 this winter compared to what I would have spent to use oil,” he said. “I use my house as an example to illustrate to people what you might expect.”
Nissman also uses his home as an example because he’s frustrated that utilities and heat pump manufacturers aren’t giving him actual case studies to use with customers. If they did, he said, it would help fight skepticism and ignorance around heat pumps and let him tell homeowners exactly how much they could save.
This isn’t some revolutionary idea. “You get some training from the manufacturers,” he said. “They’ll introduce, for example, a new piece of equipment, a new heat pump, and they’ll come into our office and tell us about it. And then we go out in the field and actually install one at someone’s house and work through the learning curve, mostly with wiring and controls. And then as you do more and more of them, you become more comfortable.”
Soon, contractors will have more incentive to seriously consider electric alternatives. The IRA is spending billions over its 10-year life span to bring down the cost of both EVs and heat pump adoption. In 2023, according to the electrification-focused nonprofit Rewiring America, homeowners will become eligible for a range of cash rebates and tax credits to improve energy efficiency and go electric, including up to $2,000 for heat pumps for water and heating and cooling, $1,600 available for air sealing and insulation, and additional incentives for middle-class and lower-income households, such as$4,000 for electric panels and $2,500 for new electric wiring.
The law also includes $200 million for states to set up new training programs for contractors, on top of $20 million available through the bipartisan infrastructure law. These can be designed by states however they choose, but where experts said the training is most sorely needed is in understanding of the basic benefits of a heat pump, how much it can save consumers, and the climate benefits. There’s an added incentive for contractors to get up to date on their HVAC technology because the law also offers a rebate for every electric HVAC system they install in middle- and lower-income households.
Being a better-educated customer will help
There’s a lot that has to go into fully electrifying the home: While sometimes just swapping out an appliance is enough, in other cases, the electrical panel may need to be able to handle more load, the wiring may need to be changed, and insulation improved. This kind of project is bound to require multiple contractors.
Hopefully, the day is coming when finding an expert to install electric HVAC systems isn’t so hit-or-miss. Ten years down the line, Ari Matusiak of Rewiring America hopes the burden won’t be on consumers to vet contractors, but on policymakers to ensure electric systems win out on their merits alone.
“I think when we look back at the [Inflation Reduction Act], we’ll say that the United States went from being a fossil fuel market to being an efficient electric market,” he said. Households, he hopes, will become the biggest beneficiary of the transition.
In the meantime, though, I surveyed experts about what their advice would be to find a contractor who is enthusiastic about electric technology.
One of the most important questions for a person to ask is how many times the contractor has installed electric heat pumps. If the answer is only a few, or they try to talk you out of it, it’s a sign they don’t have the experience you’re looking for. It’s also important to make sure you’re getting a consultation on how to improve energy efficiency in the home through insulation; Sealed recommends having that done at least once every 10 years.
Also be wary of being upsold on technology you don’t necessarily need. Older homes may need new wiring and an electrical panel capable of handling more wattage, but if you already have some electric appliances, like a hybrid gas stove and electric oven, you may not need it, Stewart explained. He suggests asking for a specific test called a load calculation, which will tell the contractor if you really need to spend thousands of dollars on a new breaker box.
The moral argument for going through all these headaches for an electric household is that it lessens your contribution to environmental pollution and climate change. But there’s also a purely selfish reason for it: It saves you in the long term, while making a more comfortable environment inside the home.
In fact, Sealed CEO Lauren Salz is confident that moral arguments aren’t needed. Contractors don’t need to be climate warriors; they just need to be informed on the merits of the heat pump.
“People are getting heat pumps because they think it’s great to have a combined heating and cooling system,” she said. “They like that they’re super quiet. And a lot of homeowners are also concerned about just the health of having oil and gas in their home.” Above all, she said, people are getting heat pumps because they want a “higher quality of life.”
The most important part of Biden’s surprise marijuana announcement -
Christina Animashaun/Vox
The scope of federal pardons is relatively limited. But descheduling the drug could be another story.
In a surprise move just a month before the midterm elections, President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he’s taking considerable steps to overhaul America’s federal marijuana laws — including pardoning everyone convicted of simple marijuana possession at the federal level.
The development was a surprise; although Biden campaigned on decriminalization and expunging cannabis convictions, the administration has largely remained quiet on marijuana reform.
“As I’ve said before, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,” Biden tweeted. “Today, I’m taking steps to end our failed approach. Allow me to lay them out.”
Biden’s first step was to pardon all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession. His reasoning was a nod to the many justice and equity discussions happening around cannabis arrests nationally: “Sending people to jail for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives — for conduct that is legal in many states. That’s before you address the clear racial disparities around prosecution and conviction. Today, we begin to right these wrongs,” Biden tweeted.
Second, he called for governors to do the same at the state level. His third step is to initiate an administrative review of federal marijuana scheduling — the federal classification system that underlies the criminalization of marijuana as a controlled substance at the federal level. “We classify marijuana at the same level as heroin — and more serious than fentanyl. It makes no sense,” Biden wrote.
After Biden’s announcement, other agencies quickly followed suit with next steps. The Justice Department issued a statement that it “will expeditiously administer the President’s proclamation” on pardons, and work with the Department of Health and Human Services to launch a scientific review of how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.
But was this announcement a massive leap forward in federal cannabis policy? Or is it more style than substance, an attempt to drum up support for Democrats ahead of the midterms? Here’s a quick overview of Biden’s action, federal cannabis policy, and the administration’s ever-evolving stance on marijuana legalization.
So just how many people did Biden pardon?
Biden signed an executive order to pardon citizens and lawful permanent residents convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law and DC statute.
Simple possession occurs when a person has a small amount of a substance on their person or available for their own use. The New York Times reported that the pardons will affect about 6,500 people convicted of simple marijuana possession between 1992 and 2021 under federal law, as well as thousands more under DC code, White House officials said on a call with reporters.
That’s a comparatively small number; most convictions for simple possession occur under state and local laws. According to the ACLU, there were 8.2 million marijuana arrests between 2001 and 2010, 88 percent of them for simply having marijuana. The federal government often charges marijuana cases as conspiracies, meaning there was an agreement between two or more people to violate a federal drug law, rather than simple possession: The New York Times reported that, according to the US Sentencing Commission, only 92 people were sentenced on federal marijuana possession charges in 2017, out of nearly 20,000 drug convictions.
Biden’s presidential authority is limited to issuing pardons for federal convictions; he can’t overturn a record for a marijuana offense at the state or local level. However, BOWL PAC founder Justin Strekal, a longtime cannabis lobbyist in Washington, DC, and the former political director for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, says it’s a step in the right direction, no matter how small: “Could Biden have gone further?” he told Vox. “Yes. But now citizens around the country can leverage that example to build pressure on state and local officials to follow in his footsteps, as some governors already have.”
Biden urged governors to do as he did and review marijuana possession convictions at a state and local level as well. Some governors were far ahead of him: California’s Gavin Newsom and Colorado’s Jared Polis have already issued pardons for low-level cannabis convictions in their states, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker expunged nearly half a million marijuana arrest records and pardoned thousands more at the end of 2020.
Wasn’t there a bill to legalize cannabis? Does this mean weed is legal now?
Hold on to your lighters — you won’t necessarily be able to spark up in the streets just yet, though cannabis is legal in some form in 37 states.
Meanwhile, federal marijuana legalization has essentially been stopped in its tracks, in part because of the complexities of adopting banking, regulation, and criminal justice reform to accompany legal weed, even though public opinion (even among Republican voters) and state policies are on board with legalization.
However, under the federal Controlled Substances Act, marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 illegal drug with no medical uses, on par with heroin and LSD, and above fentanyl, which is Schedule 2. Rescheduling marijuana for research was an oft-repeated promise of Biden’s presidential campaign.
Biden’s call for a review of marijuana’s scheduling could dramatically reshape federal policy and ultimately clear the way for legalization — but only if it is removed from the law entirely, not just rescheduled as a Schedule 2 drug. This would be the piece that would allow all the dominoes to fall into place for nationwide legalization with sales to adults over 21 without a prescription, allowing banks to do business with the cannabis industry, and more.
In the meantime, there are several pieces of federal legislation attempting to address the myriad issues around cannabis. They include:
The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, which also would deschedule cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and enact criminal and social justice reforms, including the expungement of prior cannabis convictions. It was approved by the House in December 2020, marking the first time Congress moved to end federal marijuana prohibition. (The bill failed to advance in the Senate.)
The Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act, which has been passed by the House six times since it was first introduced in 2013. If the SAFE Banking Act were signed into law, federal regulators would be prohibited from handing down penalties to banks serving licensed marijuana businesses; those businesses would then be able to access financial services like checking accounts and accept payment with credit or debit cards.
The States Reform Act, framed by Republican lawmakers as an alternative to Democratic-led reform proposals. It would end federal prohibition and regulate cannabis under various agencies, including the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration, for growers, consumers, and medical marijuana patients, while allowing states to determine their own policies on commerce and other aspects of legalization. It attempts to bridge the partisan divide by including expungements for those with nonviolent cannabis convictions.
The Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, a sweeping bill that aims to delist marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act while recognizing existing state laws; it would enact banking reform, criminal justice reform, and automatic expungement of federal records for nonviolent marijuana crimes.
Whether Biden’s announcement will goose cannabis reform in Congress remains to be seen, but Thursday’s action was undoubtedly a massive boost to the quest to end federal prohibition.
Didn’t Biden fire people for smoking weed?
Dozens of young White House staffers got a nasty surprise in 2021 when they were dismissed after background checks due to admitted marijuana use; the Biden administration initially had indicated that recreational use of cannabis would not be disqualifying. Employee conduct guidelines were also updated to potentially deny security clearance to people who invested in cannabis companies. “Wait, so do I get my job at the WH back?” one former staffer asked on Twitter on Thursday. That remains to be seen.
I thought President Biden was “tough on crime,” and specifically, anti-weed. So how did he come to support cannabis reform?
Over his nearly four decades as a senator from Delaware, Biden was a prominent Democratic leader in spearheading America’s war on drugs. He has long defended his record of being “tough on crime” — including advocating for large increases in federal funding for the drug war and enacting federal policies that disproportionately criminalized low-level drug offenses.
Under the Reagan administration, he worked to create the Office of National Drug Control Policy and in a now-infamous 1989 television interview at the height of the “Just Say No” era, then-Sen. Biden criticized a plan from President George H.W. Bush to escalate the war on drugs as not going far enough. “Quite frankly, the president’s plan is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand,” he said, calling not just for harsher punishments for drug dealers but to “hold every drug user accountable.”
Other examples of punitive legislation that Biden helped to enact include the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which expanded federal drug trafficking penalties and civil asset forfeiture, allowing police to seize someone’s property without proving the person is guilty of a crime. He sponsored and co-authored the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which ratcheted up penalties for drug crimes and created a massive sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, fueling significant racial disparities in incarceration. And 1994’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, partly written by Biden, imposed harsher sentences and increased prison funding, contributing to the growth of the US prison population from the 1990s through the 2000s.
But in later years, Biden softened his stance on drugs; in 2007, he backed the Second Chance Act, which provides monitoring and counseling services to former prison inmates. In his last few years in the Senate, he supported eliminating the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.
In 2020, the number of Americans who supported legalizing cannabis reached a record high, according to Gallup, with 68 percent supporting marijuana legalization. When Biden launched his presidential campaign, his platform reflected the nation’s changing attitude toward cannabis, with support for marijuana decriminalization, rescheduling, and expungements for low-level cannabis convictions.
However, even as he campaigned on marijuana reform, Biden contemplated the possible negative effects of cannabis legalization. “The truth of the matter is, there’s not nearly been enough evidence that has been acquired as to whether or not it is a gateway drug,” Biden said at a town hall in November 2019.
“Biden has evolved a tremendous amount to get to the point where he would take this significant an action,” Strekal says. “And I think this move helps find a pathway to 60 or more votes in the US Senate to agree on a cannabis legalization package.”
Genine Coleman, a longtime cannabis policy activist who serves as executive director of the advocacy group Origins Council, points to a change in an international treaty known as the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as the reason behind Biden’s evolving stance on marijuana.
In December 2020, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs voted to change the scope of control of cannabis and cannabis-related substances following recommendations by the World Health Organization in 2019. “WHO came out with findings that cannabis does indeed have medical use and value,” Coleman says, “so they recommended that the UN Commission consider rescheduling the 1961 convention.”
That prompted a process for signatories on the treaty, including the United States, to review the scheduling of cannabis. “So it’s not totally coming out of nowhere,” Coleman says. “It’s actually something that got prompted about two years ago.”
So is this a ploy to get voter support for the midterm elections? Or is it a real shift in policy direction?
Nishant Reddy, CEO and co-founder of A Golden State and Satya Capital, has served as an advisor to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) on cannabis policy. Reddy was pleasantly — but not entirely — surprised by Biden’s announcement.
“We’re just a few weeks away from midterm elections, so I do think there’s a little bit of strategic political play with this,” Reddy says. “That being said, it’s an exciting step in the right direction for those who are facing the negative consequences of unfair policing regarding cannabis.”
Attorney David Holland, a partner with Prince Lobel Tye LLP and the executive director of Empire State NORML, sees it as Biden moving toward cementing his progressive legacy, rather than attempting to gain voter support.
“Biden doesn’t stand to gain anything by it, per se. This is only the midterm; he’s got another couple years to go,” Holland said. “I think he’s trying to align himself with progressive politics that undo at least some of the harms of the drug war, and to set up a platform for two years from now that shows him to be a leader in causes relating to equity, justice, economic development, and so on.”
News of the pardons is dominating media coverage, but Holland says the most meaningful part of Biden’s announcement is the review and possible change in the federal status of cannabis as a controlled substance. “He’s setting the stage for future action,” says Holland. “There is definitely a paradigm shift coming over the next two years going into the 2024 election.”
Just how worried should you be about nuclear war? Biden says very. -
The reflection of President Joe Biden’s sunglasses as he speaks to the press before boarding Marine One at the White House, October 6, 2022. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The president and the Doomsday Clock.
President Joe Biden traveled to New York on Thursday for an otherwise ordinary Democratic fundraiser.
Except that Biden’s remarks at the private event were a big deal.
The president issued a dire warning about the threat of nuclear war. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he said. It was a signal of the severity of the moment the world is in amid Russia’s war with Ukraine.
As Biden explained, “We’ve got a guy” — Russian President Vladimir Putin — “I know fairly well. He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons.” Putin said several times last month he would use “all weapon systems available” to Russia if its “territorial integrity” was violated, and he said he wasn’t bluffing.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warned even before Russia’s invasion that the globe sits “at doom’s doorstep.” The setting of its Doomsday Clock sits at 100 seconds to midnight, the most ominous position of the dial since its creation in 1947.
The nuclear experts I spoke with agree that Biden’s comments were, without a doubt, attention-grabbing. There’s decidedly less consensus on whether they were helpful or alarmist.
“It’s sort of the crazy stuff we used to talk about during the 1970s and ’80s,” Hans Kristensen, a researcher with the Federation of American Scientists, told me. “It’s pretty insane that three decades after the end of the Cold War, we still have to entertain these kind of thoughts.”
While worries about nuclear war have been present since Moscow invaded Ukraine nearly eight months ago, what’s different now is just how tangible the threat is compared to any point since the end of the Cold War. Between Putin’s menacing comments, Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory even as Ukraine advances,and ever more US support for Ukraine, the danger is concrete enough that Biden is unnerved.
What Biden is telling us
Putin is causing the threat right now. His decision to illegally annex four territories in eastern Ukraine in September raises questions as to how Putin, in his desperation, will treat these contested regions. Fears persist about whether he’d be willing to use a small nuclear weapon over those territories or elsewhere.
But Biden’s words, too, have power.
Nuclear experts agree that Biden’s statement was accurate, but there is not consensus as to whether Biden’s remarks were the right thing to have said aloud.
Biden was “deeply reassuring” by expressing the severity of what’s happening, says James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I think this gives you an idea about where his mind is at. He literally is the president of a country with hundreds of millions of people living in it, during an actual honest-to-god nuclear crisis,” he said.
For Kristensen, however, “presidential statements become mileposts that contribute to the escalation of a crisis.” (White House officials clarified that nothing had changed to prompt Biden’s comment.)
Nevertheless, Biden’s claims may play into Putin’s power. “Putin is looking at this and he’s saying, ‘Well, wow, the US president, he thinks I’m actually going to do this, that means I have a card to play,’” Kristensen told me.
He also emphasized that the Cuban missile crisis was a true hair-trigger scenario. Today US intelligence agencies report that, despite Putin’s rhetoric, it doesn’t appear that Russia has mobilized the parts of its nuclear arsenal that would be used for a smaller strike on the Ukrainian battlefield. So while it’s appropriate to highlight the ongoing danger, Kristensen said that we’re not yet in a direct Russian-US nuclear standoff. By comparing it to the emergency situation of the Cuban missile crisis, where both US and Soviet nuclear arms were loaded, Biden “has gone a bit over the top here.”
The small cabal of nuclear watchers has been warning of the growing nuclear peril even before the current Russia-Ukraine war, among them Lynn Rusten, who served as a senior arms control official in the State Department during the Obama administration and now works at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Rusten thinks that Biden’s warning was warranted. “The Biden administration has been extremely restrained and constrained and how it has handled Russia’s saber-rattling since the beginning of this crisis,” she told me. “He said what we know to be true. And it just makes it clear that it’s important for leaders to find a way out of this.”
The scene of the comments shouldn’t be lost on us. Biden was speaking at the home of James Murdoch, who in addition to being the son of media magnate and Republican booster Rupert is also a major investor in the influential military contractor Rebellion Defense. Murdoch the younger is also a former board member of the TV network Fox, where Tucker Carlson and others have urged appeasement with Russia and limiting US involvement in Ukraine.
Diplomacy is the only way out
Beyond the alarming assessment, Biden said something rather remarkable: He noted the urgency of seeing Russia’s war of aggression from Putin’s perspective.
“We are trying to figure out: What is Putin’s off-ramp? Where does he find a way out?” Biden said. “Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face but significant power?”
Inherent in Biden’s comment is that engaging with the Russian government is crucial to avoiding a worst-case scenario.
“We’ve gotten to the point where we’re starting to treat diplomacy like it’s a reward for good behavior, instead of a tool that you use with your adversaries and enemies,” Rusten told me. “That’s pretty risky. Because I think if you don’t have these channels of communication, I think it’s a lot easier to dehumanize” the adversary than to engage diplomatically with them.
The incredibly challenging task of arms control is crucial for global stability. Biden ought to remind Americans that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, recklessly withdrew from the three-decade-old Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. That accord set hard-won limits on Russian and US missiles.
Still, it’s worth noting that Russia is still some steps away from readying its unconventional arms.
The Kremlin keeps its weapons separately from the systems that would launch them into oblivion, according to Pavel Podvig, an independent researcher who studies Russian nuclear forces. Still, the risk is serious. To Podvig,what’smissing from the US conversation is restraint: too many instant-experts are saying that if Russia uses a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the US needs to be tough by responding to Russia perhaps with a small nuclear weapon. “My take is that you just don’t go there, because that’s not worth it. There would have to be a response, of course, but it would have to be along the lines of the total isolation” of Russia.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said today, “We have not seen any reason to adjust our own nuclear posture, nor do we have indications they are preparing to use them.” And the US has reportedly back-channeled to Russia about the hazardous weight of Putin’s threats. Dialogue like that is key.
As Rusten put it, “We may all have a lot of divergence, but arguably we still have a mutual interest in not blowing each other and the world up with nuclear weapons.”
From The Hindu: Sports
Sanjeet shows his class to outwit the young Harish -
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Forseti, Stormy Ocean, Shan E Azeem, Pinnacle Point and Mark One shine -
Pakistan wins again in tri-series, beats New Zealand by 6 wickets - Pakistan captain Babar Azam struck an unbeaten half-century in a six-wicket win over New Zealand in the Twenty20 tri-series
Women’s Asia Cup | Tight spells from spinners, Shafali’s fifty help India defeat Bangladesh by 59 runs - Shafali (2/10) and Deepti (2/13) led Indian bowling from the front with their spin
From The Hindu: National News
Engineers’ Conclave 2022 to be held at ISRO centre in Kerala’s capital from October 13 to 15 - The focus will be on the themes of ‘Space for national development’ and ‘Making India a manufacturing hub.’
Andhra Pradesh: Empowered committee to look into aquaculture sector issues - Move follows complaints by farmers about traders’ syndicates harming their interests
Genco to submit report to MoEF on aspects raised by NGT on YTPS - Authorities plan to comply with tribunal directions
Adivasis threaten dharna seeking internal reservation - There are fears that the benefits of hike in reservation will be cornered by the dominant groups
Watch | On 90th Air Force Day, IAF gets new weapon systems branch - A video on the Air Force Day parade to mark the 90th Air Force Day celebrations
From BBC: Europe
Crimea bridge: Russia says three killed by explosion - Ukraine’s defence ministry likens the explosion to the sinking of a Russian missile cruiser in April.
Crimean bridge: Excitement and fear in Ukraine after bridge blast - The sight of the crippled bridge is a morale boost - but fear remains, writes the BBC’s Paul Adams.
Eurovision: Liverpool will put on best party ever, mayor says - Liverpool promises to put on the best party ever for Eurovision, after the city is named as 2023 host.
Belarus, Ukraine, Russia activists win Nobel Peace Prize - The peace prize goes to Ales Bialiatsky, Russia’s Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties.
Complutense University: ‘Macho, repugnant’ - Spanish PM condemns students’ chant - Videos have circulated for days of male students chanting obscene misogynistic abuse in Madrid.
From Ars Technica
How green are biofuels? Scientists are at loggerheads - Replacing gasoline with ethanol has changed landscapes across the globe. - link
The actor who claims he co-created Mortal Kombat - Mortal Kombat’s digitized martial artists went to court for more credit in the ’90s. - link
Neuroscientists unravel the mystery of why you can’t tickle yourself - New study shows how tickling, playfulness can address key questions about the brain. - link
The stage is set for a war between worlds in His Dark Materials S3 teaser - “We cut off the head, and the rest will crumble.” - link
Unpatched Zimbra flaw under attack is letting hackers backdoor servers - The flaw has been under attack since at least early September. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
A co-worker is in the hospital after eating a giant bacon cheeseburger. -
Vladimir Putin was being briefed by one of his top generals. -
“I’ve good news and bad news for you this morning, sir.”
“Let’s hear the good news,” the president replied.
“Intelligence reports indicate that the latest additions to the Ukranian arsenal are damaged and outdated, and many won’t pose any threat to us at all.”
“That’s excellent! Finally, things might be starting to turn our way! What’s the bad the news?”
The general shifted in his seat and looked down at the table. “A large amount of our best weapons and munitions have just been captured, sir.”
She yells, “No, I won’t sleep with you tonight, you pig!” -
Everyone in the bar stops and stares.
Completely embarrassed, the guy slinks back to his table with a red face.
After a few minutes, the woman walks over to him and apologizes.
She smiles and says, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. I’m a graduate student in psychology, and I’m studying how people respond to embarrassing public situations.”
To which the guy responds as loudly as possible, “What do you mean $200 for a BJ?”
