Humanity is failing to stop the climate crisis. It's now beyond urgent -- the planet is screaming for help.

Right now world leaders are meeting for historic climate talks -- but pledges without real action won't cut it anymore. We need bold, visionary leaders to finally do what's needed to pull us back from the abyss.

I'll be at the talks with inspiring youth leaders like Vanessa Nakate and Dominika Lasota. We'll personally meet dozens of governments -- it's the perfect opportunity to deliver a giant call for urgent action. Join us now: add your name with one click and pass this on.

It can feel incredibly hard to keep hope alive in the face of inaction. But my hope lies in people -- in the millions of us who are rising to save the future. It lies in our marches, in our dogged determination to keep fighting, and in our trembling voices as we speak truth to power. My hope is rooted in action and fueled by a love for humanity and our most beautiful earth. It's what keeps me absolutely convinced that we can do this. And we must do this. Together.

The Build Back Better agenda is supposed to be a game-changer to transition the country to renewable energy and off of fossil fuels by 2035. Yet the Build Back Better Act includes $30 billion of infrastructure spending on subsidies for aging, uneconomical nuclear power plants. This would be a costly, counterproductive, job-killing mistake. Speak up and demand that leaders in Washington take action towards a just transition to a 100% renewable energy future - carbon-free and nuclear-free. We’ve come so far in demanding real climate action instead of the false promises of nuclear power that only enrich corrupt corporations while leaving frontline communities behind. And the good news is that we’ve been winning! Over the last six months, the nuclear bailout proposal has been cut back from as much as $200 billion to about $35 billion.  Now, we have to get it cut completely. It has never been a more important time for you to tell your elected leaders to cut wasteful, corrupt nuclear bailouts in the Build Back Better Act.

A Rotarian has just made me aware that Rotary quietly adopted a policy in June of not investing in weapons companies. This is worth celebrating and encouraging all other organizations to do likewise. Here is the policy, excerpted from a document pasted below:

“The Rotary Foundation . . . will typically avoid investment in . . . companies that derive significant revenue from producing, distributing, or marketing . . . military weapons systems, cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines, and nuclear explosives.”

Now, I’ll admit that declaring what you will “typically” not do is weak compared to declaring what you will never do, but it does create leverage to make sure that in fact the “typical” behavior is at least mostly what is done.

And it is certainly odd that after “military weapons systems” three particular types of military weapons systems are added, but there doesn’t seem to be any obvious way to read that as excluding other types of military weapons systems. They seem to all be covered.

Below is appendix B from the minutes of a Rotary International board meeting in June 2021. I’ve bolded a bit of it:

*****

The lineup of statewide Democratic candidates for remains unsettled.

A few weeks ago, the race for U.S. Senate appeared settled with U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan clearing the field. Then Columbus attorney Morgan Harper entered the fray and Ryan became less than a cinch to gain the nomination.

Democrats can hardly ignore Harper. A progressive Black woman, she took on but lost to U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty in the 2020 primary for the Columbus-based Congressional seat.

Convention wisdom would suggest that Harper give that race another whirl in 2022, though its boundaries have not been decided. Its makeup as a safe Black seat could be altered by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, the Ohio Legislature or the Ohio Supreme Court as the remap drama continues in Ohio.

More conventional wisdom would suggest that the thirty-something Harper run for a lesser office such as state representative or city council to build her political portfolio.

Instead Harper chose to run for an even higher office, the U.S. Senate, also known as the world's most exclusive club. Ohioans voting a Black women into the club would make double history.