Six months since Hurricane Maria battered the island of Puerto Rico, the island is the site of a pitched battle between wealthy investors—particularly from the technology industry—and everyday Puerto Ricans fighting for a place in their island’s future. The Puerto Rican government has pushed for a series of privatization schemes, including privatizing PREPA, one of […]
Dr. James Hansen has been called the “father of climate change awareness.” In 1988, Hansen first warned about the dangers of global warming when he testified before Congress. At the time, he was the top climate scientist at NASA, where he headed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. We speak with world-renowned climatologist Dr. James […]
Is the Trump administration trying to silence government scientists from working or talking about climate change? According to news reports, as many as 50 senior Interior Department officials have been reassigned since Ryan Zinke became head of the department. We speak with Joel Clement, a senior official at the Interior Department. Up until recently, he […]
Oscar-nominated actor James Cromwell is reporting to jail at 4 pm Friday in upstate New York after he was sentenced to a week behind bars for taking part in a nonviolent protest against a natural gas-fired power plant. Cromwell said he’ll also launch a hunger strike. He was one of six activists arrested for blocking […]
In this Democracy Now! special, we spend the hour with the world-renowned linguist and political dissident Noam Chomsky. In a public conversation we had in April, we talked about climate change, nuclear weapons, North Korea, Iran, the war in Syria and the Trump administration’s threat to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and his new book, […]
We are broadcasting from Washington state, where the Department of Energy declared a state of emergency at the Hanford nuclear site after a tunnel storing contaminated radioactive materials collapsed. The collapse, which was discovered Tuesday, forced hundreds of workers to take cover to avoid potential exposure. Hanford is the nation’s most polluted nuclear weapons production […]
The House Science Committee will hear testimony March 29 that will question whether climate change is a human induced phenomenon. The hearing, Climate Science: Assumptions, Policy Implications and the Scientific Method, is a just another prong in the current effort to undo the environmental progress made during the Obama years. It coincides with the efforts […]
A top official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has resigned in protest of a Trump administration proposal to scale back severely the size and work of the agency. Mustafa Ali helped launch the EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice in 1992 and served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Up until last week he […]
President-elect Donald Trump raised the prospect of a new global arms race on Thursday, after he suggested on Twitter he would increase the size of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Trump’s tweet read, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” […]