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General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, pictured in Calgary, Alberta, in 2014, told employees last week that GE believes climate change is real and the science is well accepted.

Mike Sturk/Reuters

This story originally appeared on the New Republic and has been republished here with permission.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last weekthat aims to unravel former President Barack Obamas environmental legacy and may torpedo Americas promises under the Paris Agreement to help reduce global warming. In an implicit rebuke of Trump, some of the countrys richest companies issuedstatements reaffirming their commitment to fighting climate change.

Anodyne statements about climate change are a cheap and easy public-relations victory.

We believe climate change is real and the science is well accepted,General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt wrote in a blog post to his employees.Climate change is one of our most significant global challenges and strong action is critical to meeting the serious threat posed by greenhouse gas emissions, declared a coalition of tech giants.Nestl, the worlds largest food company, noted (correctly) that the impacts of global warming could threaten its profits:Our companys success ultimately depends on our ability to reliably source high-quality crops and other raw materials. General Mills said that moving away from coal and investing in clean energy would be key to unlocking new business growth potential for the US and around the world.

Prominent environmentalists rejoiced on Twitter.

To some on the left, nothing is more satisfying than hearing a bunch of billion-dollar corporations tell Trump that hes wrongand for good reason. While Trump has boasted that his executive order will help the U.S. economy, some of the economys biggest players say it makes more sense for businesses to reduce carbon emissions and promote clean energy. The White House claims its not even aware that climate change poses a threat to businesses.

But liberals should check their glee. Anodyne statements about climate change are a cheap and easy public-relations victory. None of the above corporations indicated that they would fight Trumps order; none even mentioned Trump or his executive order at all. They merely said theyd continue their own attempts to reduce carbon emissions, because its good for business. Such rhetoric isnt new. As the New York Timesnotes: Corporations, especially those with strong consumer brands, have been increasingly responsive to customer and shareholder concerns about climate change. Over the years, these businesses have signed pledge after pledge to reduce carbon emissions; some have even filed amicus briefs in court to defend Obamas Clean Power Plan.

Moreover, not all of these companies are environmental heroes in their own right. Amazon, for instance, has been widely criticized by environmental groups for avoiding transparency about its own carbon emissions. It is currently the largest U.S. company by market value to refuse to disclose its carbon footprint to the CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project. According to the Seattle Times, Amazon hasnt responded to CDPs inquiries since 2010. By contrast, Amazons biggest tech competitors are all disclosing their energy consumption levels, and doing a pretty good jobGoogle, Microsoft, and Apple all received A grades in 2015 for making strong actions to mitigate climate change. Amazon received an F.The companys fast-expanding warehouse and logistics operations, as well as its power-hungry data centers, could become growing sources of carbon emissions, the Seattle Times wrote.

Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images

Nestl is the largest bottled water company in the world. As it pontificates about the importance of environmental stewardship, it continues to fight environmental groups in court over its practice of extracting millions of gallons of water from drought-stricken regions of California.Nestlalso still employs Peter Brabeck, a climate denier, as its chairman. Climate change is an intrinsic part of the development of the world, he said in 2014. Since the world has existed we have had climate changes and we will have climate change as long as the world exists. For me the issue is more about what can we do in order to adapt to climate change and perhaps to try to gain more time.

Duke Energy, a veritable coal giant, raised some eyebrows when it vowed to continue to move forward in reducing carbon emissions despite Trumps executive order. But this is the same company thats constantly being cited for violating environmental regulations, thats been fighting tooth and nail against accusations of polluting drinking water in North Carolina, and that has made six-figure contributions to ensure that Republicans who deny climate change maintain their Senate majority.

Many of these companies are making important strides to reduce their environmental footprints.Nestlhas some frankly aggressive goals to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, as does General Electric.Amazon is taking steps to power many of its data centers with renewable energy.Google says it will reach100 percent renewable energy for its global operations this year.Apple CEO Tim Cook has openly said climate change deniers who disagree with his strategy to cut carbon emissions should disinvest from the company.

But such steps dont make these companies moral heroes. They are acting in response to consumer pressure. For a decade, pollafterpoll has shown that Americans want to shop sustainably and that theyll pay more for products that market themselves that way. Consumers also hate waste and environmental abuse. One recent poll found that two-thirds of consumers will avoid a brand they perceive to be hurting the environment. So when companies release generic, politically timely statements about how much they care about climate change, theyre doing it less out of concern for the planet than for their bottom line. The good news is that this empowers consumers to vote with their dollars. Buy American, sure. But more importantly, buy from American companies whose press releases are backed up by their practices.

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Stop Praising the Brands Knocking Trump. Corporations Still Prioritize Themselves. - Slate Magazine

CREDIT: AP/Manuel BalceCeneta

Michele Bachmann believes liberal opponents of Donald Trump could bring about the end of the worldby hastening the coming of the Antichrist.

According to Right Wing Watch and the Friendly Atheist, the Republican and former Minnesota congresswoman made the apocalyptic prediction last week during an appearance on a Last Days radio program. The shows host, Jan Markell, asked Bachmann about globalists, a group she says includes American liberals who want a one world system and no borders. Markell said the group lost big time after the election of Donald Trump, sparking Bachman to compare them to the builders of the biblical Tower of Babel.

There has always been two competing ideologies: one that wants to follow the truth of the Lord God, and those who want to rebel against the creator God, Bachmann said, explaining that those who rebel want a manmade, one-world system.

Bachmann then announced that modern-day supporters of a what she called a borderless world she name-checked G-28Davos-types[and] billionairesare setting the stage for the end of the world.

Scripture tells us that in the End Times, that is what [the] Antichrist will behe will be a part of a one-world system, she said. There are people who reject Judeo-Christian truth and instead want to insert and usurp control of all of our lives with a global, economic and political government.

Bachmann, an evangelical Christian, is well known for spouting right-wing theological positions, some of which are common among conservative people of faith (e.g., that homosexuality is part of Satan) and others that are decidedly fringe (e.g., that September 11 terrorist attacks were the result of God punishing America). She is also a longtime supporter of Trump: Bachmann served on Trumps Evangelical Executive Advisory Board during the 2016 campaign, and spoke as a surrogate at his rallies.

But while its unclear what Bachmann and Markell mean by a borderless world, their theological views appear to be out-of-step with the pro-immigrant slant of most religious Americans. Majorities of every major faith group in the country support some form of comprehensive immigration reform according to PRRI, with most backing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Meanwhile, faith groups have also been staunch opponents of Trumps anti-immigrant rhetoric, and a record number of worship communities have pledged to offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants at risk of deportation by his administration. Religious groups have also overwhelmingly opposed both iterations of Trumps now-stalled Muslim ban, which prohibits refugees and immigration from six (previously seven) Muslim-majority countries.

Excerpt from:
Michele Bachmann: Liberals are letting the Antichrist come to power - ThinkProgress

Sacramento Bee

Liberals will rue Becerra's prosecution of Planned Parenthood video producers Sacramento Bee I heard liberals say Donald Trump's victory would endanger our sacred rights. I guess they were right. Perhaps because California Attorney General Xavier Becerra's attack on freedom of the press is focused on a despised minority: a pair of pro-life ... and more »

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Liberals will rue Becerra's prosecution of Planned Parenthood video producers - Sacramento Bee

It took the presidency of Donald Trump to shock them out of their quietude. They emerged from the bunkers, blinking and surprised to find they had so much company.

During the presidential campaign, many Hillary Clinton voters in Atlantas suburbs thought they were alone. That was an easy conclusion to draw because few felt comfortable putting Clinton signs on their front lawns or expressing their political preference at parties. Their neighbors seemed overwhelmingly Republican.

It took the presidency of Donald Trump to shock them out of their quietude. They emerged from the bunkers, blinking and surprised to find they had so much company. Many are now harnessing their distress to their newly discovered numbers and going activist. They are thus giving a 30-year-old novice named Jon Ossoff a fighting chance to win the congressional seat recently vacated by Tom Price, Trumps secretary of health.

This wouldnt be happening without Trump. Todays scenes of environmental degradation and Russian infiltration under the tweeting fingers of a possibly mad emperor would wake the political dead. They have electrified a left prone to battling itself over deviations in liberal scripture but also a center wanting nothing more than a day of normal news.

In other times, #resistance might come off as a bit melodramatic. Trump world has made it feel downright mainstream.

Trump has thus transformed the liberal ranks from stray cats to packs of dogs. Dogs act bolder when traveling in numbers. Dogs want community.

Participants in the womens marches in January recall the events not so much for stoking anger but for providing comfort. The throngs of peaceful marchers overwhelmed the few radicals ready to rumble. Their sense of well-being came from communing with so many ordinary women and men who felt as they did.

Like the tea party right, liberals are flocking to their own media campfires for warmth, talking points and calls to action. On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow is now edging out the troubled king of right-wing palaver, Bill OReilly, in totalaudience. (She has long dominated him in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic.)

On CBS, Stephen Colbert has become the go-to guy for smart and witty late-night commentary from a liberal perspective. As such, he is bringing younger audiences back to network TV.

And in a shoutout to CBS Evening News, let us praise anchor Scott Pelley. His willingness to tell whats really happening with minimal dramatics and apparently little concern about being attacked by the right is refreshing.

The surprise hit podcast of 2017 Pod Save America stars three luminaries from the Obama administration. It offers lively and interesting political chat but nothing that would have seemed earth-shattering before Nov. 8. Now its vacuuming up audiences and advertising.

Speaking of which, it was interesting to see how quickly major advertisers deserted OReillys show after reports of the hosts penchant for serial sexual harassment. In doing so, they must have considered the perils of displeasing his avid fan base. On the other hand, how many millions of women were marching?

The tea partys membership was never huge in numbers, but the movement knew how to turn communal passions into political clout. Members jeered politicians and joined enthusiastic protests. But their real power came from marching as a group to party primaries and other elections that less engaged voters ignored.

Democrats hope to use that strategy in the special election in Georgias 6th Congressional District. Ossoff is currently running against several Republicans. Should he get more than 50 percent of the vote, hed take a storied seat once inhabited by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Political revolutions dont happen on Twitter. They happen when like-minded citizens join to vote.

As jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron famously vocalized, The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will be live.

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Liberals find community, and that could be big - The Seattle Times

It was ten days after Election Day and most liberals were still in full blown crisis mode, wading their way through the fever dream of the post-Trump victory world. The week since the unthinkable had happened had been a whirlwind; the rallies, the recounts, the sense of chaos, loss, and most of all, deep uncertainty. What was certain, however, was the dreamy vision of a progressive American identity many had been so sure of the morning of November 8th had been snuffed out, quite literally overnight. The liberal vision of the election as a significant step towards a more perfect union, the glorious symbolism of the first woman president succeeding the first black president, the long awaited relish of defeating Trump himself, it was all gone. And in its wake was little more than brooding, self-affirmative groupthink about a flawed, bigoted America resistant to progress and pluralism. It was against this backdrop that Saturday Night Live, long a bastion of urban progressivism and fresh off months of mercilessly mocking of Trump and his team, aired The Bubble. The sketch detailed an eponymous planned community for liberals or like-minded freethinkers and no one else to seek refuge from the ravages of Trumps America. To borrow from a successful SNL character, The Bubble has everything: wine bars, raw milk, and WiFi that only connects to liberal blogs. In short, the sketch is chock full of small digs at the modern stereotypes of American liberals. But it goes even deeper. At one point, one of the communitys fictional spokesmen, a white man in Warby Parker glasses, declares that its members dont see color, but celebrate it, prompting an eye-roll from his black female cohort. At another, the starting rate for a one-bedroom apartment is mentioned to be $1.9 million. Even more significant than its playful parody of liberal idiosyncrasies is its nudging at white liberals on the more discomforting (and more politically relevant) issues of their racial insensitivity and economic privilege, suggesting they are not quite as egalitarian and open-minded as they believe.

Coming on the heels of an election whose shock outcome was attributed by many in the media to the supposed insularity of urban and progressive communities, the skit was widely circulated and well-received - across conservative media in particular. But lost in much of the post-November conversation about ideological provincialism, and conservatives celebration of liberals being pilloried for their own, is the stark difference in how the left and right views and attends to their own bubbles. The release this month of Jordan Peeles cinematic tour de force, Get Out, underscores the gaping, and growing, gap between liberals and conservatives ability to critique, confront, and laugh at their own imperfections.

To call Get Out racially charged would be an understatement. From the get-go, the film, premised on a black man meeting the family and entering the world of his white girlfriend, is racially volted, with the very opening scene alluding to Trayvon Martins killing. It is a testament to Peeles distinct talent as an artist that even as the the film descends into a frenzied, bizarre thriller it still manages to incorporate elements of satire, subtlety, and comic relief. Tracking closely with that descent is the tone and breadth of the films statement on race. While racial discrimination and insensitivity are present from early in the film, they initially come exclusively from expected sources Baby Boomer parents, white male police officers. The film is too laden with symbolism and meaning to fully address here, but there is one moment that particularly sticks out. While there are several big reveals, the most thrilling comes when it is revealed that Rose the white girlfriend who had theretofore been distinct from her family and friends racism is directly complicit in the racial subjugation plot of her family. The moment encapsulates the clear message underlying Get Out: that many, even most, of the ostensibly woke, craft-beer drinking liberals that populate SNLs Bubble do in fact reside on the same spectrum of racial oppression as the red state rubes from which they created the community to seek refuge. In itself, the delivery of this message by Peele is a watershed moment in American culture. Never before has such a message been given as big a megaphone or received as strong an affirmation (the film enjoys a 99 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

Receiving less attention but even more significant than the films content itself is what it tells us about bubbles and insularity. Given the films entire message is a strong criticism of progressives, in particular white progressives, it is significant it has been received positively by liberal critics and audiences alike. Get Out is the biggest indication yet that, for all the snowflake flak they get, American liberals choose to both create and expose themselves to artistic content that critiques themselves on some of the most emotional and explosive social issues, no less. Indeed, once one gets past the meme of liberal insularity and sensitivity, it becomes clear that the entire narrative is dubious at best and utterly fallacious at worst.

Think for a second about the last television show or movie created by, directed at, and critical of conservatives. Youll ponder in vain. They simply do not exist. Many on the right would indignantly protest that they are underrepresented in the studios and boardrooms of Hollywood and Manhattan, and this is at least partially true. But the past few years have seen a veritable explosion in conservative media. Mike Huckabee, for example, has produced nearly a dozen movies, including The Gift of Life, Gods Not Dead, and Gods Not Dead 2 (in case there was any ambiguity remaining). Kirk Camerons Saving Christmas, even after earning the dubious distinction of being ranked the worst movie of all time by IMDB, banked $2.5 million in 2014. Glenn Becks media flagship The Blaze is worth nearly $100 million and saw fit to construct a full-scale replication of the Oval Office from which Beck broadcast during the 2016 GOP primary. Just last year, Miracles from Heaven, a story of a chronically ill little girl who supposedly ascended to heaven and returned, grossed $70 million at the box office off a budget of $13 million. In other words, the capital is there. The tools are there. The audience is there. Conservatives simply choose not to utilize any of them to produce any content that is even remotely critical of any aspect of their ideology. Even Lena Dunham, the most reviled example of liberal decadence to the American right, looks like a bona fide Joan Rivers-Christopher Hitchens love child when compared to conservative media; her HBO opus Girls is itself centered around living caricatures of white, liberal millennials.

The separation between conservative and liberals is only underscored when one considers the yawning gap between the mainstream acceptability of their ideologies. Per polls from the past year and a half: 57% of Americans acknowledge human activity to be a driver behind climate change, 7 in 10 Americans support Roe v. Wade, 55% support increased gun control, and a (mind boggling) 88% support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. In short, the entire modern conservative movement is organized around a series of political positions wholly out of step with middle America. Even if conservatives and liberals did live in equivalent bubbles, the latter would still be less isolated given they are overwhelmingly more in touch with the center of American society.

The bottom line: despite their frequent denigration of liberal safe spaces, and sensitivity, it is demonstrably true that conservatives live overwhelmingly more homogenous and insulated lives. The position du jour of many effete elites that conservatives and liberals alike exist in equally aloof two Americas flies in the face of all evidence and logic. In Trumps America, the left is producing and processing media that examines everything from innocuous idiosyncrasies to real, systemic hypocrisies. Meanwhile, conservatives are incapable of challenging even the most fantastical of statements by Trump and his advisors. From his claim of five million illegal immigrants voting in the presidential election to his recent allegation President Obama executed an intricate, secret, criminal conspiracy to wiretap him during the election, the grotesque falsehoods and absurdities of President Trump and the lack of pushback from any prominent conservative voice or elected official is a living, breathing embodiment of the unparalleled bubble around which modern conservatism is organized.

As the pain and shock of the morning of November 9th showed, progressives do have blind spots. Acknowledging that does not necessitate capitulating to bigots or admitting ones way of life is somehow inferior to a heartland conservatives. What it does take is self-awareness, honest self-appraisal, and a firm insistence on the concept of objective reality not coincidentally, all characteristics modern conservatives are lacking. They are also the precise tools that, if utilized, will lead progressives, and America as a whole, to the future we envisioned the morning of November 8th. With projects like Get Out, theres hope for that future.

The rest is here:
'Get Out' Is The Type Of Bubble-Burst Liberals Need - Huffington Post