Outdated Narratives Have Humanity In A Downward Spiral—It’s Time To Tell ‘Stories for Life’

• by: April M. Short

April M. Short

02-24-2024 ~ A short film and narratives project “Stories for Life” seeks to bring about the shift in culture that humanity needs to survive.

The stories we do and don’t tell about ourselves and these times in which we’re living shape the direction of our lives and our cultures. Stories have the power to alter how we interact and relate. Those who study cultural anthropology and the origins of humanity are finding that cultural stories—the things people collectively believe about ourselves and our capacities—have forever shaped human societies, going back to our early hominid ancestors. In shifting those narratives now, they argue, we have the realistic potential to evolve on purpose as a species. Given the dire, multifront crises of our times—from climate disaster to war to poverty—this kind of cultural and social evolution is desperately needed.

An animated short film, which screened between acts on the big screens of each of the four main stages at the Glastonbury Music Festival in 2022, delves into the idea of story as a means for change. It is titled, “Stories for Life,” and it opens with scenes of fire, a child digging through a pile of trash, plastic rubbage floating in the water, and smoke billowing from an industrial tower. A narrator’s voice speaks over the imagery: “Life is in trouble. As a species, we are facing multiple crises that we can no longer ignore. At the root of them all is our economy; an economy designed to destroy life; an economy designed by us.”

As the narration continues, a series of illustrated signs seem to lay out the challenges of our world, one by one: “Capitalism is crashing. Society is dividing. Democracy is degrading. Climate is tipping. Ecology is vanishing. Disease is spreading. Inequity is rising. Protest is pervading.”

The film takes viewers through a brief history of humanity’s relationship with the Earth. It delves into the problems of our current ways of living, then offers the potential to rewrite the story of our values, and begin to create livable systems in which value is based on the well-being of all life.

Over animations of cave paintings, constellations, and wildlife, the film reminds viewers that “our ancestors lived in intimate relationship with the more-than-human world” and told stories about, “nature as our family, our guardian, our guide. But then some of… [our ancestors] imagined and created ways to control the natural world. This made them feel more powerful and superior to nature. Separate from it. The more powerful they felt the more disconnected from nature they became. And so they began to tell new stories. Stories that normalized domination, control, and the oppression of life. About how nature is our slave, there to be captured and exploited. They began to scorch, spoil, and suffocate our world. And as they did so, these stories spread, and became common sense.”

This narration comes with animations of the industrialization and commodification of resources: factories, men in suits and wigs, ships with cargo. The film goes on to explain that such stories have led people down the path of greed, grand, hustle, and blind progress, and made people “feel separate, not only from nature but from each other, in constant competition and conflict.”

Horror Stories, Love Stories
The narrator notes that these stories then became horror stories of ruined lives and a ruined world, as images of refugee camps, rubbage heaps, and melting ice caps show on screen. “But, it doesn’t have to go on like this,” the narrator says. “We can choose to live by different stories: Love stories about interconnection and interdependence. Love stories that measure success by well-being—the well-being of all life including our own. Love stories about interconnection and interdependence.” Now, the scene is blooming flowers, mycelial networks, collaborative groups of people, and brightly colored animal life.

The film outlines how these “love stories” will lead us to reconnection, so that we can regenerate our relationships with nature and each other, and create a steam that nourishes and supports the life we all want to live rather than destroying life. It closes with the reminder that “we all have the power to tell these stories,” and that many people are already doing so.

The concept behind the film is part of a larger website project launched in 2020, also called Stories for Life, aimed at highlighting stories that support ways forward for humanity and all life. It began as a collaboration between the Green Economy Coalition, Wellbeing Economy Alliance, and the Spaceship Earth, and as its website states: “This project was inspired by the question ‘how do we tell the story of a new economy?’”

The eventual Stories for Life project was co-created by Dan Burgess and Paddy Loughman with the purpose of helping to “create stories that contribute to the re-design of a healthier economy. To bring forth new and ancient stories into our culture, which weave a narrative of interconnection and help us design a new type of economy,” as notes the Stories for Life website.

Read more

Understanding Iran’s Non-State Network

• by: John P. Ruehl

John P. Ruehl – Source: Independent Media Institute

02-22-2024 ~ Recent months have brought sharper focus to Iran’s network of non-state actors across the Middle East. While useful for military projection, Tehran has also cultivated them as political entities for decades.

During a three-day period in January 2024, Iranian-supported militant groups employed an anti-ship missile to attack an oil tanker in the Red Sea, launched rockets into northern Israel from Lebanon, and used a drone strike to kill three U.S. soldiers in Jordan. These incidents marked the extension of attacks by Iranian-backed groups in the Middle East into the fourth straight month since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, 2023.

Largely diplomatically isolated since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, unable to challenge U.S. military power, and lacking the nuclear brinkmanship card held by North Korea, Iran has evolved its strategy of utilizing militant groups for decades. Iran’s Quds Force has provided training, funding, and weapons assistance to various militant groups in the region, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. This strategy has advanced Iran’s geopolitical interests and afforded it plausible deniability, but not all of its associates march in lockstep with Tehran.

Part of Iran’s approach involves transforming militant forces into powerful political actors. Hamas, founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, gained prominence during the First Intifada against Israeli forces. Hamas grew closer to Iran during the early 1990s after the Oslo Accords initiated an ultimately failed peace process, with Iran providing financial and weapons support during the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005. When Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Hamas established administrative control over the territory after winning elections the following year, and has forbade elections since.

Consolidating armed Palestinian opposition under Hamas allows Tehran to challenge Israel directly. But as a Persian and Shia Muslim country operating in a predominantly Arab and Sunni Muslim peninsula, Iran has offset its diplomatic and cultural isolation by using the Palestinian cause to criticize Arab governments growing closer to Israel in recent years. Supporting Hamas against perceived inaction from Arab leaders has been a constant feature of Iranian public messaging. Further normalization between Israel and Arab states is now paused due to the Israel-Hamas war.

While Iran denied prior knowledge of the October 7 attack, it has expressed public support for Hamas since . Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh has meanwhile stated that Iran provides $70 million annually to the group in addition to ongoing logistical and weapons assistance, largely through smuggling operations . However, relations between Iran and Hamas are largely limited to opposition to Israel and the West, and Hamas also receives financial support from Turkey, Qatar, and other sources.

Instead, Hezbollah has emerged as Iran’s most important non-state ally. Established as a Shia militia in 1982 during the Lebanese Civil War, Hezbollah’s significant military forces have been utilized to target Israeli and Western forces in the Middle East. Since the recent conflict’s onset, Hezbollah has launched hundreds of missiles into northern Israel, but the destruction caused by the 2006 Lebanon War against Israel has made it cautious of further escalation.

Hezbollah is also strategically valuable in its role as an envoy to other militant groups. Hezbollah has historically trained Hamas militants in weapons systems and military exercises in Lebanon and Syria. Like Iran, Hezbollah also denied knowledge of the Hamas attack on October 7, but Iranian, Hezbollah, and Hamas officials have since met regularly to discuss strategy and cooperation.

Beyond its military role, Hezbollah has evolved into Lebanon’s political powerbroker. Eight of its members were first elected to the Lebanese parliament in 1992, it joined the government for the first time in 2005, and in 2018 , a Hezbollah-led coalition gained the majority of Lebanese parliamentary seats. Despite losing its majority in 2022, its lingering influence over Lebanese politics indicates that Iran remains close to a state capture-like situation, where external forces and interest groups gain systematic control over a country’s decision-making process.

Additionally, Hezbollah operates clinics, schools, banks, businesses, and other entities that have shielded it from Lebanon’s economic collapse and political stagnation since 2019, maintaining its “state-within-a-state” structure. In addition to weapons and logistical support, Iran is believed to provide $700 million to Hezbollah every year. And when sanctions diminish Iranian assistance, Hezbollah also secures funding from legal businesses to criminal enterprises, activities which span across the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S.

Iran’s militant network in Syria meanwhile surged after the civil war broke out in 2011, threatening Iran’s long-term ally President Bashar al-Assad. Hezbollah and Iran recruited from Syria’s Shia community to form groups like the Mahdi Army and al-Mukhtar al-Thaqafi Brigade, as well as some Sunni groups like Liwa al-Quds, to aid the Syrian armed forces against ISIS and pro-Western forces. The Zainabiyoun Brigade and Fatemiyoun Brigade, largely consisting of Shia Muslims from Pakistan and Afghanistan, have been used by Iran in Syria.

As the Syrian government’s position has stabilized, Iran has attempted to integrate pro-Iranian militant groups into the Syrian armed forces and has used them to increase Iran’s political and economic influence in Syria as it competes with Russia . Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, they have launched numerous strikes against U.S. and allied forces within Syria.

Pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia militant groups have similarly increased rocket attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq since October 7. Their growing strength goes back to the U.S.-led occupation after 2003 that allowed Iran to bring groups like the Badr Organization, funded and trained in Iran, back into Iraq. Iran also organized with other developing “ Special Groups” of Shia militias to attack U.S. forces.

After the departure of most U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, Iranian-backed groups sought political integration into Iraq’s fragile democracy. Alongside the Badr Organization, Kata’ib Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba in Iraq (both distinct from Lebanese Hezbollah), and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH) became some of Iraq’s most prominent political and militant forces. In 2014, numerous pro-Iranian militant groups in Iraq were consolidated into the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to combat ISIS, playing a crucial role in liberating much of the country and elevating their status.

In Iraq’s 2018 parliamentary elections, the PMF became the second-biggest bloc and “achieved one element of state capture” by securing government funding for itself the following year. PMF members now directly or indirectly control crucial government institutions like the Interior Ministry and Supreme Court, and December 2023 elections saw the coalition win 101 out of 285 provincial council seats.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), a leading group of PMF militias, has taken the initiative in attempting to push remaining U.S. forces out of the country. Their attacks since October 7 have intensified discussions within Washington over whether to do so, while Iran denied knowledge of the drone attack which killed three U.S. soldiers in January 2024. Read more

Growing Clues That India’s Central Narmada Valley Was A Key Hub In The Human Story

• by: Saurav Sarkar

Saurav Sarkar –sauravsarkar.com

02-22-2024 ~ In December 1982, a geologist digging in India’s Central Narmada Valley found something he did not expect. Arun Sonakia, who at the time worked for the Geological Survey of India, unearthed a hominid fossil skullcap from the Pleistocene era.

The discovery sent shockwaves through the field of paleoanthropology and put South Asia on the map of human prehistory. Some experts concluded that the skull likely belonged to a member of a predecessor species of ours, Homo heidelbergensis, or perhaps was a hybrid of homo species, while Sonakia himself suggested “an affinity… to Homo erectus.”

The specimen remains the oldest human fossil found in the South Asian subcontinent; while expert opinions vary, testing seems to indicate the fossil was between 250,000 and 150,000 years old. For several decades, it was the only ancient human fossil found in South Asia—despite abundant finds of tools and other relics.

But in more recent years, more than a dozen other fossil bones that have been discovered have shined a light on the Central Narmada Valley as a potential hotbed of human evolutionary activity. Paleoanthropologist Anek R. Sankhyan and his team discovered new fossils between 1983 and 1992, followed by further finds between 2005 and 2010.

Sankhyan shared during an interview that only the Central Narmada Valley has so far yielded human fossils from the Pleistocene period in South Asia. The valley, he says, was a key stop along the migration route from Africa to Southeast Asia for Homo erectus. Homo erectus was an archaic human ancestor that lived between about 1.9 million and 100,000 years ago and adapted to regions from Eastern Africa to China to Southeast Asia. It has not been established whether Homo erectus comprises one species spread wide geographically or multiple species involving local variations.

Sankhyan connects the Narmada Valley with some of the more sophisticated Acheulean stone tool cultures that emerged with Homo erectus in Europe and Africa. Acheulean tools are characterized by multiuse-hand axes used for roles ranging from woodcutting to butchering animals.

In the Central Narmada Valley, Sankhyan’s evidence from his paper—published in Advances in Anthropology in 2020—on the subject seems to show at least two distinct types of hominins represented: the large “robust” line uncovered through Sonakia’s skullcap discovery, and an evolving “short and stocky” hominin line from 150,000 to 40,000 years ago discovered by Sankhyan and his team.

Sankhyan says that the traits of the skullcap found by Sonakia vary among Homo erectus, Homo sapiens , and have features that are unique, making identifying it “confusing.” He concluded that the skullcap is also representative of heidelbergensis, and perhaps might be a heidelbergensis -Neanderthal hybrid. A skull with so many traits is a clue that this region may indeed have been a multispecies melting pot that puts our contemporary sense of human differences to shame.

Heidelbergensis was a species that was the ancestor of both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, and first appeared 700,000 years ago, disappearing 200,000 years ago. It was an intermediate species between Homo erectusand modern human beings and Neandertals. Heidelbergensis was likely the first human species to control fire and hunt large game animals . The hominid fossil found by Sonakia likely used tools like an Acheulian pick axe and was found near a crushed molar tooth of a Stegodon, a large, extinct relative of today’s elephants. Sankhyan says that the ecology of the valley during the Lower Paleolithic was that of a warm woodland forest with megafauna like the Stegodon, during his interview.

The “short and stocky” line has been given its own nomenclature: Homo narmadensis by Sankhyan. This species was widespread in the Central Narmada Valley during the “Middle to Upper Paleolithic [era],” and hunted smaller game animals in a “broken forest ecology.” Narmadensis was discovered near significant numbers of Mode 3 Acheulean tools, which are more sophisticated than the Mode 2 tools attributed to the heidelbergensisline.

Paleoanthropologist Sankhyan speculates that the “short and stocky” hominin line was the “likely precursor to the ‘short-bodied’ ancient populations of India, including the Andaman pygmy.” Interestingly, he believes that the so-called “hobbit” of Indonesia, Homo floresiensis, also descended from this line. Homo floresiensis was a little more than three-feet tall and lived between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

While Sankhyan says that the government organization, Anthropological Survey of India, has not conducted further excavations since 2010, according to him, there have been individuals from other departments who “tried sporadic trial digging,” but those digs have not yielded any significant results.

As research continues in this area, we’re likely to get even more insight into the varied hominin types who lived in the Central Narmada Valley in the last hundreds of thousands of years and how they interacted with one another. Regardless, the establishment of South Asia as a center of human evolutionary activity is likely to have consequences for how the region, and India in particular, understands itself and its prehistory and history.

For decades, nationalists, including representatives of today’s far-right Hindu nationalists in India, have promoted the idea that South Asians and Indo-Europeans as a whole originated from within India. Though this theory is false and unnuanced, the evolutionary history of hominins in the Central Narmada Valley offers new ground for Indian nationalists to make the argument that hominins or primates had their roots in India.

But if there are dangers in linking contemporary India with the prehistory of the subcontinent and its place in the world, there are also opportunities. As with India, fossil evidence in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Georgia, and China indicates that these places were repeatedly home to prehistoric population centers—they all have equal claim to being part of a global and gradual humanization process.

As a result, a nonaligned or regionally connected Global South has a powerful new origin story and better pathways for connections, rooted in evidence outside of the historical narratives imposed on them by the West. Further research will establish what science shows, but it will be politics, geopolitics, and the direction chosen by the world’s people that will contextualize the evidence within the human story.

By Saurav Sarkar

Author Bio: This article was produced by Globetrotter .

Saurav Sarkar is a freelance movement writer, editor, and activist living in Long Island, New York. They have also lived in New York City, New Delhi, London, and Washington, D.C. Follow them on Twitter @sauravthewriter and at sauravsarkar.com.

Source: Globetrotter

The Great ‘Japa’ Movement: A Blessing In Disguise, Not A Cry For Help

• by: Adekunle Olajide

Adekunle Olajide

02-21-2024 ~ Introduction
Many Nigerians have been leaving the country in search of better opportunities in other countries, a trend that is widely known as the ‘Japa Syndrome’. This has caused a lot of controversy and sparked a lot of debate on the popular social media platform, Twitter (now X), where many users have forecasted a bleak future for the economic situation of Nigeria owing to this mass migration.
The recent change of government, with President Bola Ahmed becoming the new leader, is regarded by majority of the youth as the final reason that made them embrace the ‘Japa’ movement – a buzz word that has taken a rightful place in Nigeria’s urban lexicon.

However, those pressing the panic button may not be seeing the bigger picture. Only a few people have looked at the situation in-depth, like a Chess Master who evaluates all the possible scenarios before making his next move. Calling the current trend, a disaster for the Nigerian economy, is like a beginner chess player who only sees the board from one angle.

Have Nigerians actually taken a moment to consider that, beyond the mere surface, this whole ‘Japa’ movement might actually not be a cry for help situation, but rather a blessing in disguise?

If we can just take a step back and distance ourselves from the noise on social media or opinions of internet trolls and consider the long-term prospects of the ‘Japa’ movement. Perhaps, amidst the buzz, we will start to see the movement as the silver lining and driving force for our socio-economic and political resurgence and development.

Nothing is New under the Sun – Not even the Great ‘Japa’ Movement.
The concept of movement is one that has been ingrained in the very fabric of our humanity, a universal trait inherent in our nature that cannot be blotted out. It is often stated that ‘movement is merely a construct of globalization’ and that by nature, humans are peripatetic beings—beings with an instinctual desire to move from one place to another in search of opportunities or desires, be they material or incorporeal desideratum. This stands as both an anthropological standpoint and an undeniable fact!

Against this backdrop, it suffices to say that there, indeed, nothing new under the sun. The mass exodus of Nigerians, or the Great ‘Japa’ Movement, as I comically dubbed it, is not a novel phenomenon but rather a contemporary echo of historical migration patterns. The only distinction lies in the amplified buzz created by social media, turning it into a sensationalized narrative, as if it is the next big thing since sliced bread.

From a historical perspective, the genesis of the ‘Japa’ movement can be traced to the 1980s, a period of military transitions, socio-economic breakdowns, and political maladministration in Nigeria. Following that, the movement took form during the urbanization wave in the country, a period when the ambitious youths migrated from their villages and hometowns to the cities, notably Lagos, Abuja, or Port-Harcourt, seeking improved working conditions and greener pastures. This trend, which was once overlooked despite its impact on agricultural productivity, has taken on a whole new level, and now we want to kick against it? So Nigerian!

Let’s also not forget the darker times, when Nigerians and other Africans, in their quest to find better pastures, undertook life-threatening sojourns and illegal terrains through the great Sahara and crossing the Mediterranean in search of a better life. This movement is neither new nor did it started last years; it started way back!

Legitimacy and Legal Standpoint on Migration.
Moving on from historical records to the contemporary legal landscape, there are clearly established legal policies that fully legitimizes migration.
To begin, Section 41 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria affirms the inalienable right of citizens to move in and out of their homeland. Articles 12 (2) of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) and Section 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) further emphasize the universal right of citizens to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their homeland.

These cogent legal perspectives underscore the legitimacy of citizens to freely move in and out of their home country and the right of people to seek employment and better opportunities wherever they may find them.

Nigeria Deserve your Gratitude.
It is quite disheartening to see Nigerians, both at home and abroad, continually tarnishing the image of the country, describing it as inhospitable, unfavorable and a place where the dreams and aspirations of Nigerians die.

This negative narrative, which is primarily aimed at triggering angst and hatred towards the Nigerian government, is often fueled by half-truths, hyperbolic comments, and warped information. This category of individuals can only be viewed as uninformed, tunnel-visioned citizens with an entitlement mentality.

These entitled critics are not aware of the historical realities of the present world powers, most especially the United Kingdom (UK) that they so much endear as the land of the golden fleece. They are not aware that, at one point in time, countries like the UK emigrated from their country and went about colonizing, conquering, and pillaging the resources of other nations, and bringing it back into the coffers of their homeland. Most of these world powers of today once emigrated to other parts of the world before becoming influential global forces.

These set of uninformed countrymen and women have forgotten that before they left the country to make exploits, Nigeria was their training ground that laid the foundation for them to migrate out of the country. Most of the graduate professionals that are now thriving in diaspora did receive their first-degree education in Nigerian tertiary institutions before leaving. Can they compare the cost of acquiring a competitive degree in Nigeria to anywhere else in the world?

Most people failed to notice that the Nigeria public tertiary education is highly subsidized. Even in the early days, the federal government even sponsored the education of Nigerians studying overseas – our present and past university professors who got to study abroad on federal government scholarships can candidly attest being a beneficiary to the Nigerian government’s beneficiary.

At present, Nigeria’s public university students pay a minimal yearly tuition fee of about $25 to $75 yearly, for a period of 4 to 5 years to earn a competitive degree – an insignificant figure compared to what is obtainable in other parts of the world. Contrastingly, countries like the UK and USA require students to take on substantial student loans in order to finance their tertiary education.

Looking at the net migration figures, the population of Nigerians in the UK is still a fractional and insignificant figure compared to countries like India, Ukraine, Pakistan, and Poland. Latest figures published by the UK authorities showed that Nigeria is ranked in 7 th place in the net migration index.

Considering the cost of living abroad, as well as the tax burden and educational expenses abroad, it is evident that Nigeria has provided a facilitating platform for success. Nigerians and Africans, when abroad, often excel and achieve extraordinary feats, owing their success to the foundation laid in Nigeria.

So, in the grand scheme of things, the favourable immigration policies, the diplomatic ties Nigeria has built with several countries of the world, the education qualification, work experience, information, and exposure that Nigerians are a beneficiary of, were all made possible by the foundation and groundwork that Nigeria laid over the years.

Now, this article piece is not pontificating that the situation of Nigeria is thriving or that the country economy is all fine and dandy. No! It only aims to set the records straight and establish that the narrative has been brandished and misrepresented by not only the media to sell their stories, but also by some Nigerians in the diaspora who only seek to make worse of the current situation.

Yes, the country is not working as it should, but it is essential to establish that the situation is not as dire as it has been painted to be. Read more

The Evolution Of The Human Pair Bond

• by: Brenna R. Hassett

Brenna R. Hassett – Source: en.wikipedia.org

02-21-2024 ~ Our species stands out from the animal kingdom in many ways. Some of them are obvious: we are big-brained primates who use tools and language, a social species with symbols, culture, and art. These are all artifacts of our evolution, the process by which our ancestors found adaptations that allowed them to succeed in a natural world that is often red in tooth and claw. Often, however, we think of evolution as affecting our physical bodies—changing the shape of our hominin ancestors so they could walk upright, or grow bigger brains. But evolution has other ways to act on a species, particularly in clever, social species like ours. It can shape the way we socialize and bond, the way we pass on learning and care, and even whom we love. This is why we find that one of the most remarkable adaptations our species has ever made lies in our very, very unlikely mating system: monogamy.

Monogamy is a strange word and an even stranger concept. The way we use it in our societies today to imply two people romantically linked for life is a far cry from what a scientist who actually observes primates like us would call it. Monogamy, simply put, is pair-bonding between two animals. Often it is pair-bonding with an eye towards reproduction, but it can also include animals that can’t reproduce together who form a pair-bonded social unit anyway. Perhaps the most famous example, though certainly not the only one, might be Roy and Silo , two chinstrap penguins from New York’s Central Park Zoo who formed a pair bond and even raised a chick together. There are other critical differences between what a scientist would define as a pair bond and what we commonly understand monogamy to be.

While humans tend to define monogamy as a once-in-a-lifetime pairing, with rituals and cultural rules that reinforce the idea of a lifetime bond, even the most pair-bonded of animals rarely are pair-bonded for life. Perhaps the most extreme animal monogamists on the planet are the far-flying seabirds albatrosses and petrels (all from the family Procellariiformes ); almost every single pair is mated for life. However, even in these pairs, factors can intervene to disrupt the pair bond. Beyond simply losing one member of the pair, even allegedly mated-for-life albatrosses have cases of ‘extra-pair paternity’—almost 10 percent of chicks surveyed in one sample had a male parent who was not their female parent’s partner.

Humans, even those with strong cultural proscriptions against adultery, have very similar rates of extra-pair paternity—about 10 percent. While some cultures, particularly those that do not allow a great deal of female agency in choosing a partner, have slightly higher rates than others, this figure seems to be broadly the same across our species. While genetic monogamy—where two individuals breed exclusively with each other—may be elusive, even in the allegedly monogamous sea birds, social monogamy is not. Social monogamy is the type of pair bonding where the partners fulfill all the social roles needed in a pair bond without necessarily producing any genetic offspring—like Roy and Silo, tending a chick that was not their own. This suggests that it is social monogamy that is the most important part of pair bonding for many species—including our own.

Why would social monogamy benefit a species? It must offer some sort of advantage to our species, or we would not have adopted it—and we have indeed adopted it. Despite our very human flair for variety and adaptation,most societies around the world set a pair-bonded couple at the heart of how their members reproduce. Of course, there are examples of polygamy—marriage of one male to multiple females—and even polygyny—one female to many males in our wide array of cultural practices, but the vast majority of our fellow Homo sapiens will have social expectations of forming a monogamous pair bond.

So why have we evolved to have these bonds? It is not at all automatic that pair-bonds would be of adaptive value. In species that have evolved to sexually reproduce, the distribution of risk and reward for breeding behavior depends on how much each partner will need to invest in reproduction in order to produce a successful offspring. For the partner that makes the small gamete (sperm), investment costs are lower from the get-go, meaning strategies that maximize opportunities for reproduction. In fact, pair bonding is an incredibly rare phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Outside of birds, who are uncommonly fond of the state—90 percent of bird species create pair bonds—only 5 percent of animal species settle for ‘the one’ and form pair bonds. About 15 percent of primates, however, opt for pair-bonding. Read more

Why Is The US Producing More Oil And Natural Gas Than Ever Under Biden?

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

Michael Ash ~ University of Massachusetts Amherst

02-21-2024 ~ US crude oil production reached an all-time production high in 2023 — the hottest year on record.

The current year has a one-in-three chance of being even hotter than 2023, which was already the world’s warmest year on record, according to analyses conducted by scientific organizations such as NASA and Copernicus Climate Change Service. And there is a 99 percent chance that 2024 will rank among the five warmest on record, according to scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In the meantime, U.S. crude oil production reached an all-time production high in 2023, solidifying the position of the U.S. as the No. 1 global oil powerhouse. So much for President Joe Biden’s vows of “strong” climate action; he has in fact approved nearly twice the number of oil and gas permits for wells on federal land that former President Donald Trump did in his first three years in office.

Unfortunately, according to a recent Center for Biological Diversity report, “The emissions that will result from the Biden administration’s fossil fuel project approvals are larger than the emissions reductions from the Inflation Reduction Act and other climate policies.” Moreover, the full effects of the emissions reductions promised by the Inflation Reduction Act will only be felt decades down the road, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. On top of that, the U.S. government has yet to effectively address greenhouse gas, water and air pollution from the country’s major emitters, as economist Michael Ash reveals in this exclusive interview for Truthout. But perhaps this is not surprising, as the federal government ranks No. 6 on the list of greenhouse gas polluters. Ash is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-directs the Corporate Toxics Information Project of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), which publishes information about the major U.S. polluters and the effects of pollution on communities.

C. J. Polychroniou: Since 2010, climate scientists have set 1.5 degree Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, as the climate threshold the world should not cross if we hope to avoid dramatic climate disruptions which will make heat waves longer, more extreme and more frequent, increasing in turn the risk of wildfires and exacerbating droughts by drying out soil. A warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius will also lead to other large-scale catastrophes on people, wildlife and ecosystems. Yet, one major dataset suggests that we already crossed the threshold in 2023 as the world failed again to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels. In fact, the U.S. produced record amounts of oil and gas in 2023, and those records are expected to be shattered again in 2024 and 2025. Why is the U.S. producing more oil and natural gas than ever under Biden?

Michael Ash: The core problem is the economic and political power of the fossil fuel industry. This industry has spent decades and billions of dollars investing in political and media campaigns of misinformation and astroturfing hostility to converting the U.S. energy system to an efficient and renewable basis.

A decade ago, I attended Transformational Trends, a conference sponsored by Foreign Policy magazine, and Jack Gerard, then-president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, observed that technological innovation (fracking and other unconventional extraction technology) had “changed the landscape.” I think it was a slip of the tongue that revealed more than intended. But he was correct that we are now in the remarkable situation that the U.S. has become a net fossil energy exporter.

It’s true that U.S. households as well as industrial and commercial users rely heavily on fossil fuels as well as electricity powered by fossil fuels. That reliance can make people think that expanded oil and gas production is a demand-side consumer problem. But enormous advances in renewable generation, efficiency and storage put transition within reach. It’s crucial to put fossil fuels out of reach and to do it in an equitable way that ensures access, affordability and environmental justice.

I’m sympathetic to people who would like to get the entire transition done by making efficiency, renewables and storage so cheap and accessible that no one would even imagine choosing to use dirty and unjust fossil fuels. Those investments in efficiency, renewables and storage are crucial, but it’s also essential that we stop burning fossil fuels very soon.

There are excellent policy instruments available for reducing the use of oil, natural gas and coal. My preferred instrument is a strict and shrinking cap on the total amount of fossil fuels introduced into the U.S. economy, with permits auctioned and the auction proceeds distributed equitably as carbon dividends. There are other approaches, such as carbon taxation, that achieve similar ends. These approaches are not a set-it-and-forget-it solution; they need monitoring for compliance, for fairness and for environmental justice. But they are an important step, and there really must be a “no to carbon” as well as a “yes to alternatives.” Read more