Danush Parvaneh | Vox

How America can leave fossil fuels behind

2020-09-10T15:06:36-04:00

All of recorded human history has happened during a period in which the average global temperature didn’t change by more than 1°C. But the burning of fossil fuels has triggered a temperature rise projected to exceed 3°C by the end of the century. It will be catastrophic. But it can be avoided if we massively scale back the burning of fossil fuels.

The US isn’t the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, but it has emitted more carbon dioxide in total than any other country. So the US has an important role to play in global decarbonization — the world basically can’t get there without the US’s full participation. But the current US president doesn’t have any plans to do that. His Democratic challenger in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, does.

Biden’s plan is ambitious, setting a goal to completely transition the US to clean energy by 2050. But his plan doesn’t get into the details of exactly how that will happen. For that, we talked to physicist and engineer Saul Griffith, who took us through his incredibly detailed roadmap for how the US could actually walk away from fossil fuels in the next 30 years.

Watch the video to see a detailed walkthrough of the US’s energy consumption and how it could decarbonize by 2050.

This video is part of a series focusing on the stakes of the 2020 US election. We’re looking at key issues and asking what about them might actually change in the election’s aftermath. You can help shape our reporting by telling us what issues are most important to you at http://vox.com/ElectionVideos.

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The next pandemic could come from factory farms

2020-08-18T15:35:45-04:00

In the past half-century, the global production of meat has undergone a seismic shift. While meat was once mostly raised on small farms, today almost all the meat we eat comes from industrialized “factory” farms, known as “concentrated animal feeding operations,” or CAFOs. More than 90 percent of the world’s meat supply comes from CAFOs. And in the US, that figure is closer to 99 percent.

Animals in CAFOs are often packed closely together, which makes the facilities efficient and, for many, ethically dubious. There are also environmental concerns around these industrial farms. But infectious disease experts worry about CAFOs for a different reason: They’re an ideal environment for virus and bacteria mutations that human immune systems have never seen. In other words, they’re a highly likely source for the next pandemic.

Watch the video above to learn how humans have created the ideal environment for pandemic-causing pathogens.

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The big lesson from South Korea’s coronavirus response

2020-08-06T16:50:12-04:00

Both South Korea and the US identified their first positive case of Covid-19 on January 20. But where other countries failed to contain their epidemics, South Korea succeeded. By April, as the US remained in lockdown due to the coronavirus’s unceasing spread, South Korea had begun to open up. Citizens returned to public spaces and businesses began welcoming back customers. Although there have been minor surges in the time since, South Korea’s case rates continue to remain lower than other countries that have experienced a major outbreak.

South Korea’s Covid-19 containment was so successful in part because the country had seen it before. In 2015, South Korea had an outbreak of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) caused by a coronavirus similar to the one responsible for Covid-19. Thirty-eight people died, and South Korea suffered the largest outbreak outside of the Middle East. Based on that experience, the country undertook extensive measures to plan and prepare for the next outbreak.

This time, it was ready. Before the coronavirus arrived in January, South Korea’s government had worked closely with health officials to prepare a plan of action that included a stockpile of testing kits and clear guidelines for identifying and isolating positive cases. The plan’s success prevented the country from suffering death tallies seen elsewhere in the world — and South Korea has become a model, both now and for future pandemics.

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Humans are making pandemics more likely

2020-07-07T15:44:16-04:00

Over the past 40 years, disease outbreaks among humans have become more frequent. The majority of those diseases are zoonoses, or diseases that originated in animals, like Ebola, West Nile virus, and probably Covid-19. But what makes zoonotic outbreaks likelier than ever is actually something humans are doing.

Science journalist Sonia Shah, author of the 2017 book Pandemic, says the expansion of humans onto more of the planet’s land has increased the likelihood of disease outbreaks in two ways. First, as humans move into what were once animal habitats, we end up living closer to animals that might contain dangerous pathogens. Secondly, as we destroy or alter animal habitats, we’re driving away or killing off animals that once served as a “firewall” between those pathogens and us.

And the human land development driving this trend shows no signs of stopping.

Watch the video above to learn more about how human land use is increasing the chance of zoonotic disease outbreaks.

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Protests aren’t what they look like on TV

2020-06-09T11:47:36-04:00

The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery have ignited protests around the world. Those protests have dominated news coverage lately — but when it comes to communicating the demonstrations’ scale, character, and purpose, a lot of that coverage falls short.

Part of that is because of the media’s incentive to highlight the most dramatic imagery; it’s why so much protest coverage has been filled with violent and chaotic scenes of fire, looting, and tear gas. But it’s also because of the nature of protest imagery itself.

In this video, journalism professor Jason Johnson and Vox visuals editor Kainaz Amaria explain that while the news can show you what a protest looks like, it’s a lot worse at telling you why it’s happening.

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Why you should wear a face mask to fight the coronavirus

2020-05-28T12:24:25-04:00

In the first crucial weeks of the coronavirus spreading in the United States, Americans were instructed to wear a face mask only if they were sick. In the absence of widespread testing, that most likely meant you’d wear a face mask if you felt the symptoms of Covid-19.

But based on what we’ve learned since then about this novel coronavirus, being symptomatic shouldn’t be the sole indicator that a person is infected. Roughly 25 percent of people with coronavirus are thought to be asymptomatic, and people who catch Covid-19 usually don’t develop symptoms until four or five days after being infected. This is one of the ways Covid-19 has been able to spread within communities, often without us knowing.

That’s why face masks are important for both sick and presumably healthy people, say public health experts Shan Soe-Lin and Robert Hecht. In early April, the US Centers for Disease control reversed their recommendations on face mask use and now advise that Americans should wear homemade cloth masks regardless of whether they are sick or symptomatic.

The inconsistency in recommendations led to a lot of confusion about whether face masks work. They do work, but they shouldn’t be thought of as a panacea in the fight against Covid-19, Soe-Lin and Hecht said. Instead, they should be employed along with social distancing and hand-washing as a three-pronged effort to stay healthy.

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What are the rules of social distancing? We asked an expert.

2020-03-23T14:39:21-04:00

The message from public health officials around the world has been unified and clear: To slow the spread of coronavirus, social distancing is among our best weapons.

The learning curve for how seriously we should be taking social distancing has been steep. Senators have still been using the gym. Spring breakers have still fled to beaches. People in Washington, DC, still flocked to witness the cherry blossoms bloom.

Social epidemiologist Carolyn Cannuscio says there is no happy medium when it comes to social distancing, if we’re doing it right. “I think it’s time for us to take very extreme measures in our personal lives. I think our lives should look radically different right now than they normally do.”

She says we can draw on two different sources of information that prove the efficacy of social distancing and outbreaks. School closures, if done early and long enough, have been effective in slowing the spread of pandemic flu.

The Chinese government’s recent response to the coronavirus is another good source. “The social distancing measures were imposed governmentally, and they were enforced through things like monitoring by drones, monitoring by apps, measures that probably would not be palatable to most Americans.” Cannuscio said.

“But what China managed to do in a densely populated area and Wuhan, where the outbreak originated, was to bend the curve and to really achieve this downturn in the case counts, so that the newly constructed hospitals, for example, are now largely empty. And they had to do that by restricting movement of the population and by emptying the schools.”

In short, Cannuscio recommends limiting our presence in public spaces to only the most necessary outings. Many of her words of caution — don’t go to the gym, concerts, movie theaters — are solved by government-mandated lockdowns of non-essential businesses. Many of us no longer have that option. But it could help us think twice about even small gatherings of friends, whether to succumb to the formalities of a hug or a handshake, or going out for walks or errands during high-traffic times.

“And when we’re under stress, many of us crave the contact and support of our loved ones and friends. So this will be a very hard time for many people,” Cannuscio says. “And I would say that the happy medium is to try to think creatively about ways to engage socially without physically being present, without that face-to-face contact.”

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Delhi’s deadly riots, explained by an expert

2020-03-12T17:42:23-04:00

On December 11, 2019, India’s parliament passed a controversial new law: the Citizenship Amendment Act. The law fast-tracks citizenship for migrants from three neighboring countries, specifically if they are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, or Christians. It conspicuously leaves out Muslims.

Since the law was passed, it’s drawn widespread opposition and protests, and not only because it discriminates against Muslims. The law is also closely linked to another controversial initiative: the National Registry of Citizens, a citizenship list that could potentially leave millions of people, primarily Muslims, stateless.

So far, only the northeastern state of Assam has implemented the NRC. In August 2019, the government of Assam published a citizenship list that left off nearly 2 million residents. And without the citizenship fast-track that the Citizenship Amendment Act grants other religions, the Muslims left off that list are at risk of losing their citizenship entirely.

To understand the law, the national registry of citizens, the controversy they’ve ignited, and what might happen next, watch the video above featuring Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of Muslims left off the National Register of Citizens in Assam. The nearly 2 million people left off the NRC included people of all religions.

How a Bible prophecy shapes Trump’s foreign policy

2020-02-12T15:13:30-05:00

When President Donald Trump authorized the drone strike that killed the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, he wasn’t just flexing America’s muscle in the Middle East.

He was also acting on the advice of a politically powerful group of evangelical Christians who believe the US and Israel are part of the Bible’s plan to bring about the second coming of Jesus.

Once considered a fringe element of the religious right, evangelical Christian Zionists are playing an increasingly visible role in Republican politics. Today, unprecedented access to the Trump administration has given them an opportunity to reshape the Middle East.

Watch the video above to learn more about how the Bible is influencing this politically powerful group of American Christians.

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Why Australia’s fires are linked to floods in Africa

2020-01-17T17:16:51-05:00

Australia’s recent fire season has been hellish, and there’s no end in sight. At least 17.9 million acres have burned, 28 people have died, and an estimated 1 billion animals have been lost.

But while Australia burns, East Africa has been grappling with record-breaking rainfall leading to catastrophic floods. Both have a common cause — and it lies in the Indian Ocean.

Watch the video above the learn how a large oceanic temperature gradient, the Indian Ocean Dipole, affects weather in East Africa and Australia. And how climate change could make this season’s disastrous weather the new norm.

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A previous version of this video had the date January 7, 2019 at 0:11. It has been corrected to January 7, 2020. The source at 0:24 has been corrected to read the Government of Western Australia. The current version also corrects an error at 2:10 and 2:29 where our voiceover mixed up East and West.