Dion Lee | Vox

What’s actually in the Green New Deal, explained with a video

2019-06-12T09:20:51-04:00

The release of the 14-page Green New Deal resolution was well-timed.

It was shortly after the world’s top climate scientists told us we had 12 years to limit a global catastrophe. It was amid the worldwide student strikes and during the ramp-up of 2020 presidential coverage, which has made climate change one of the top issues in the 2020 Democratic primary.

Yet still, the Green New Deal is kind of hard to understand.

Our video goes over the basics:

What is it? Right now, what we have is the resolution: a road map. It’s a document that lays out the huge things America has to do to avoid a climate disaster — and the principles we should abide by as we do this.

What do we have to do to avoid climate disaster? Our economy is built on burning coal, oil, and gas. If we want to stop doing this, we need to overhaul our buildings, our transportation, our manufacturing methods, and more.

But what about the whole “new deal” part? Overhauling an economy can hurt certain people. If your well-being depends on working for a coal company or an oil refinery, this isn’t going to be fun for you. But overhauling an economy also gives us the chance to fix some economic injustices. So the Green New Deal tries to create some protections that create a path for a more fair and just transition.

Okay, what do I read now? As someone who isn’t a climate expert but spent a lot of time researching this to make the video, I think the following steps make sense:

First, watch our video. We try to lay down the basics.
For some context, read this piece by Vox’s Umair Irfan on the United Nations climate report, where the world’s best climatologists tell us how urgent of a problem this is; and then this piece from Vox’s David Roberts, which shows that world leaders really aren’t taking this urgency seriously.
Finally, you should read this explainer of the Green New Deal, followed by this story (in list form) by Hannah Northey. I also enjoyed this piece, from Kate Aronoff of the Intercept, that imagines a world after the Green New Deal.
If you want to read about this in the lens of the 2020 election, this piece explaining Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposal is excellent. Inslee has the most ambitious climate proposals; it is, as Roberts writes, the Green New Deal translated into policy. Other candidates have also released plans — among them, Beto O’Rourke, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg.

And as always, to watch more Vox videos, follow us on YouTube. I’ll be looking to make more videos on the climate crisis, so email me if you have any stories you’d like to see covered. I’m at alvin@vox.com.

The real reason Boeing’s new plane crashed twice

2019-04-15T12:24:30-04:00

In the past six months, two airplanes have fallen out of the air and crashed shortly after takeoff. Both flights were operating the same plane: the Boeing 737 Max 8.

In October, Lion Air Flight 610 crashed in Indonesia, killing 189 people. And last month, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed in Bishoftu, Ethiopia, killing 157 people.

At first, the story Boeing tried to tell was that it was a software problem; the automated stall-prevention system was malfunctioning, the company said. And the accident reports seem to support this statement.

But there’s a much deeper and scandal-ridden story about how this plane got to market, and it starts with Boeing’s fierce rivalry with Airbus — and their race to put a new engine in their planes.

The video above shows how those business problems led to technical ones — and, eventually, two terrible tragedies.

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False Positive

2019-02-14T12:28:51-05:00

When I sat down with Janine Geske, former Milwaukee County judge and Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, to ask her about the trial of Robert Lee Stinson, she said, “I think I did everything right at the time. But that’s not to say that I don’t feel terrible.”

Daniel Blinka, the former assistant district attorney who brought the charges against Stinson, said, “The sobering fact is, no matter how careful you are, how cautious you are, how objective you think you are in these cases, you can still be wrong.”

Both Geske and Blinka defended Stinson’s trial attorney, Steven Kohn, as an “excellent” and “top shelf” lawyer.

So who is responsible?

Stinson’s 1985 trial ended with a guilty verdict and a life sentence for the murder of his neighbor, 63-year-old Ione Cychosz. The only evidence tying Stinson to the crime was the testimony of two forensic odontologists who claimed that his teeth matched the bite marks on her body. The advent of DNA profiling would reveal that Stinson was innocent, but only after he had spent 23 years of his life in prison.

Those forensic dentists, L.T. Johnson and Raymond Rawson, are now defendants in a civil case alleging that they violated Stinson’s right to a fair trial. They maintain that they gave a good-faith expert opinion based on the state of the science at the time.

If this story sounds familiar, it’s because several forensic disciplines have fallen into disrepute after contributing to wrongful convictions. The Innocence Project estimates that faulty forensic science was involved in more than 40 percent of DNA exoneration cases.

The 30-minute documentary above is our best effort at piecing together how this happens. It shows how cultural and structural norms in our judicial system leave criminal trials vulnerable to unreliable but persuasive scientific evidence. And it explains why progress has been slow to fortify many of the forensic sciences despite dozens of wrongful convictions.

After he was released in 2009, Stinson received only $5,000 for every year he spent in prison. His civil trial is scheduled for June 2019.

You can find this video and all of Vox’s videos on YouTube. And if you’re interested in supporting our video journalism, you can become a member of the Vox Video Lab on YouTube.

Why we imagine aliens the way we do

2018-03-16T14:57:51-04:00

When you picture an alien, what do you see?

No one really knows what aliens look like, but we all have similar ideas about them. It’s often a creature with a big head, long arms and legs, and big, buggy eyes. We see these common images of aliens depicted in movies, books, and on TV shows — which are made by us.

Science fiction stories often explore the relationship between humans and aliens. So we find extraterrestrial creatures endowed with relatable human features. According to Charley Henley, a VFX supervisor who worked on Ridley Scott’s Alien series, “A lot of [Scott’s] designs are tied in with the human anatomy, and I think that is the common theme. We put a lot of humans into the aliens.” In our stories, we naturally anthropomorphize these creatures — so they end up looking, acting, and feeling just like us.

But when you talk to scientists actually looking for extraterrestrial life — and not imagining it — it’s a whole different story. Andrew Siemion, the director of SETI Research Center at UC Berkely, believes that if there’s any life out in space that’s similar to humans, they’d be using technology in a similar way as we do. So he and his colleagues conduct astronomy experiments to detect signs of technology out in space. But that doesn’t mean he has a better idea of what these creatures would look like. He said:

It’s science fiction. I mean, as of now, hopefully, someday we will detect life on another world — maybe many examples of life on many worlds — and then we can have more accurate science fiction. But I think as of now, a guess of a science fiction novelist is as good as a scientist. Science fiction is one expression of our profound sense of awe and wonder about whether we are alone in the universe.

Watch the video above to see how we humans perceive aliens and how that shapes our imagination of life beyond our planet.

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How Adam Rippon chooses his music

2018-02-16T19:30:05-05:00

During the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Adam Rippon skated to Ida Corr’s “Let Me Think About It” for his short program. It was fun, powerful, and most of all, different. This is the first Olympic Games at which figure skaters have infinite creative freedom with their music, as they now can skate to music with lyrics.

Figure skating was not always woven in with music and artistry — it was very much a technical sport. The skaters had to literally carve figures into ice. As figure skating evolved, it leaned more toward performance. For decades, figure skaters skated to the classics like “Swan Lake” and “Carmen.” They chose these pieces not only because it’s great music but because of the clear storyline and the quality of the characters in them. With operas, in particular, it is easy to take the audience on an emotional journey.

Hugo Chouinard, a music designer who mainly works with figure skaters, says, “The most important is that the skaters like the music. Because if they don’t like the music, they don’t feel the music; there’s no emotion to convey to the public.”

And that is what Adam Rippon did for his musical choices for the Olympics. During the interview, he said:

I like to have two different moods for the programs, just so that I can show that I can skate to anything … that I can interpret whatever piece of music. So for [a] short program, I want to do something that is really upbeat, that would get the crowd on their feet — everybody clapping. Short programs are only two minutes and 50 seconds, so you have not a lot of time to make a big impression.

And then in free skate, I wanted to show the softer side and I want to show off my lyrical skating style … something with long, sweeping edges and something that really made it seem like I was flying around the rink. I’m 28 and I’m going to my first Olympics; I’m going to skate to something that I really want to do. I wanted to really represent who I was. And I’m a fun-loving guy, so I just wanted to bring that to the competition.

To learn more about how figure skaters choose their music, make sure to watch the video above.

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Why there aren’t any great white sharks in captivity

2017-07-26T11:21:44-04:00

Aquariums have made dozens of attempts since the 1970s to display a captive great white shark. Most of those attempts ended with headlines like this:

By the 2000s, the only group still trying was the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which spent a decade planning its white shark program. In 2004, it acquired a shark that became the first great white to survive in captivity for more than 16 days. In fact, it was on display for more than six months before it was released back into the ocean.

In the following years, the Monterey Bay Aquarium hosted five more juvenile white sharks for temporary stays before ending the program in 2011. It was an expensive effort and had come under criticism due to injuries that some of the sharks developed in the tank. Responding to those critics, Jon Hoech, the aquarium’s director of husbandry operations, said:

We believe strongly that putting people face to face with live animals like this is very significant in inspiring ocean conservation and connecting people to the ocean environment. We feel like white sharks face a significant threats out in the wild and our ability to bring awareness to that is significant in terms of encouraging people to become ocean stewards.

Check out the video above to learn why white sharks are so difficult to keep in captivity and how the Monterey Bay Aquarium designed the only program that could keep them alive.

The bizarre physics of fire ants

2017-07-25T13:59:44-04:00

Red imported fire ants are regarded as pests throughout the Southern US, where they’ve thrived since they were inadvertently introduced from South America in the 1930s or ’40s.

But at a Georgia Tech laboratory, the question at hand is not how to get rid of fire ants, but rather what we can learn from them. These ants build large structures with their bodies without a leader directing the colony.

Those ant aggregations display some interesting material properties, which is why they’ve attracted the attention of mechanical engineers.

Check out the video above to learn more, or watch on our YouTube channel.

The origin of the ’80s aesthetic

2017-06-30T14:07:37-04:00

The ’80s was the decade of crazy patterns, vibrant colors, and feathered hairstyles. The time had such a distinctive style that the mere mention of “the look of the ’80s” conjures up specific visuals. The look was so influential that it continues to inspire design today.

The essential elements of the ’80s look were created by the Memphis design movement, led by Italian architect Ettore Sottsass. The collective included designers and architects from all around the world — Italy, Japan, Britain, Austria, France, Spain, and America. They set out to break out of modernism, a style that required designers to follow many rules. George Sowden, a co-founder of the Memphis Group, said in an interview that “a lot of people felt trapped within these rules.”

The Memphis Group’s first show took place in Milan, at the Salone del Mobile Milano, in 1981. It featured the “Bel Air” chair, which had a plastic ball as a part of the leg, and the colorful “Carlton” bookcase that cascaded outward. The show crowded the streets so much that on his way to the venue, Sottsass thought a bomb had gone off in downtown Milan. The New York Times wrote that the show “appalled some and amused others but put everyone attending the fair in a state of high excitement.” According to Glenn Adamson, a senior scholar at the Yale Center of British Art, the design trend caught on very quickly:

It was this huge phenomenon, and then you saw it caught on very, very quickly as the look of the ’80s. How that happened is fashion, you know. I always think it’s important that it happened virtually simultaneously with MTV, which also launched in 1981. And if you think about the logo of MTV with all those colors and patterns and the scratchy graphics, that clearly is close to the graphic designs coming out of Italy that were in context of which Memphis emerged.

To learn more about the Memphis Group and how it inspired the look of the ’80s, check out the video above. For more Vox videos, subscribe to our channel on YouTube.

How dead is the Great Barrier Reef?

2017-05-22T11:40:05-04:00

Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world and the only living structure visible from space. Although ecosystem managers in Australia have worked hard to preserve the reefs, the past couple of decades have brought a new threat that can’t be solved by any one country alone: human-induced global warming.

Rising ocean temperatures have caused mass bleaching in coral reefs around the world, from the Caribbean to the South Pacific. The Great Barrier Reef suffered back-to-back mass bleaching in the summers of 2016 and 2017, highlighting the fact that the increasing frequency of bleaching will leave little time for the reefs to recover. Scientists now consider bleaching to be the biggest threat that coral reefs face — and they face many, including overfishing, pollution, storm damage, and invasive species.

To learn how coral reefs work, and why rising temperatures are such a threat to this ecosystem, check out the video above, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer videos.

Meet the designer cats with wild blood

2017-03-13T13:00:07-04:00

For several decades, cat breeders have been working to develop a pet cat with the appearance of a wild feline, such as a leopard or tiger, but the temperament of a domestic tabby. Some breeds, such as the Bengal and Savannah, were developed by breeding domestics with other species to create hybrid cats. Other breeds, like the Toyger, were created from selectively breeding domestic species. In both instances, the process has been complicated and continues to this day.

As Bengal breeder Anthony Hutcherson sums up in this video, “All cats are beautiful, but I’m not trying to make all cats. I’m trying to make a specific cat.” For Anthony, that means a specific cat with qualities that replicate the exotic patterns found on leopards, ocelots, and other wild species. In order to develop those qualities, breeders have bred domestic cats with other feline species, such as the Asian leopard cat and the serval.

Scientists have created hybrid species, too, to study their perceived resistance to feline leukemia. By understanding how cats are affected by leukemia heredity factors, scientists hoped to develop treatments for “understanding and combatting leukemia in human beings.” After they were bred for research, early generation hybrids were then given as pets to breeders who used them to create “little leopards.”

In the years since, breeders have continued to work toward their goal, while animal rights activists question the ethics of the breeding process. As Bengal breeder Vicki Jeffers notes, “People are convinced that there are too many cats in the world, and there are an awful lot of cats in rescue. … And, I mean, they have a point. They have an important point. But if you look at these cats, they justify the breeding because they are just wonderful, wonderful animals.”

To learn more and to see the cats for yourself, watch the video above.