1/11
Last week General Motors announced plans to be carbon neutral in its global operations by 2040 & to offer only zero-emissions vehicles even by 2035. #velshi
2/11
I’ve had my share of things to say about GM's poor corporate responsibility & leadership for years but now, it seems, even GM sees the writing on the wall: the future is about cutting emissions, transitioning to electric vehicles or other zero-emissions technologies #velshi
3/11
America is less than 5% of the world’s population, but uses 20% of all the oil produced in the world every day. Gasoline for driving accounts for half of that. #velshi
4/11
General Motors has done the math. Getting to zero-emissions as quickly as it can is where GM can have the biggest positive environmental impact. With this announcement, we may witness an America where gas stations eventually become charging stations. #velshi
5/11
The upside to doing any of this is clean air, a healthier earth, stopping the warming of the earth, moderating the effects of hurricanes & floods & wildfires, all by transitioning away from an energy source that kills the planet to produce it & to burn it. #velshi
6/11
With initiatives & goals like this from a major company like GM, it begs the question as to why some lawmakers work so hard fighting against renewable energy. The fossil fuel lobby is why. #velshi
7/11
In his first 11 days in office, Pres. Biden is getting back in the business of cutting emissions that choke the planet, but he’s made no friends of some GOP lawmakers who call him & his policies “divisive,” “illegal,” “radical,” & a “wrecking ball”. #velshi
8/11
Biden, like GM, is simply looking ahead at the inevitable energy transition and, in some cases, opting to make some hard choices. #velshi
9/11
A 2020 analysis by BW Research shows the U.S. oil & gas industry lost 118k jobs between March & August. Much of that was obviously due to the pandemic but many of those jobs haven’t & won’t come back because the industry is changing & has been changing for years. #velshi
10/11
The last four years have been an unmitigated disaster as it relates to climate, and America’s role in it. Some think we may never undo the damage the Trump administration and it’s fossil fuel-funded, science-denying decisions did. #velshi
11/11
We CAN change the #climate trajectory if we recommit to it now. It’s time to take the #climatecrisis – and the dangerous role that fossil fuels play in it seriously. #velshi
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1/15
By now you have undoubtedly seen the craziness going on in the stock market, with a selection of stocks surging hundreds if not thousands of percent in a matter of days or even hours, along with a whole bunch of financial jargon. So what exactly is going on? #velshi
2/15
One major term you have heard is "shorting" - which is just placing a bet that a stock will go down in price. #velshi
3/15
An investor can make money on this type of gamble by borrowing shares from a broker, w/o initially paying for them, selling them immediately & then later buying the shares at a lower price & returning them to the broker, keeping the difference in price as profit. #velshi
1/13
President Biden signed an executive order phasing out the federal govt's use of privatized prisons. It instructs the Justice dept. NOT to renew contracts with privately-operated prisons; a policy that was first implemented under Obama, then reversed in 2017 by Trump. #velshi
2/13
Private prisons are a stupid, amoral idea. So how did we end up with them in the first place? For starters, the U.S. is the most prolific incarcerator on the planet. That is a fact & it is not new. #velshi
3/13
2018 figures show the U.S. ranks number one when it comes to the total number of incarcerated people. It has roughly 300,000 more people that have been sentenced to prison than China does... which has literally one billion more in population. #velshi
1/13
This past week, before he did an interview with a top-rated AM radio station in St. Louis, and THEN being interviewed on CNN, Senator @HawleyMO wrote an Op-Ed for the fourth highest circulated newspaper in America. #velshi
2/13
In all of those extremely high-profile appearances, he repeated his grievance that he is being quote "cancelled" and quote "muzzled." That's rich. #velshi
3/13
Hawley freely discussing his being "muzzled" seems lost on him as he writes about how "corporate monopolies and the left team up to shut down speech they don't like and force their political agenda on America…” #velshi
1/11
It may sound counterintuitive to be having a conversation but there are some issues that just don’t have two sides. Nobody is in favor of tornadoes, or cancer, or against pizza – maybe pineapple on pizza, but not pizza itself. #velshi
2/11
There are, in fact, things that we can all agree upon. Unanimously. Or at least within a very VERY small margin of error. What led to the second impeachment of the former president is one of those things that doesn’t have two sides. #velshi
3/11
There are many who claim to be against the 2nd impeachment but, when you examine those claims, they are political, or maybe even constitutional when considering impeaching a president whose no longer in office. #velshi
1/13
I have watched every presidential inauguration that I can remember, since I was a little boy, and long before I ever imagined I would live in America. But I had never watched one the way I watched the inauguration of Joe Biden. #velshi
2/13
I’d never considered the details leading up to an inauguration. I watched this one like a nervous parent, making sure everything went as planned. #velshi
3/13
Thanks to the last four years, everything is different, now. Our demons are on full display, our Union is certifiably imperfect. Our nation is divided. #velshi
1/9 Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr day and, in a year marked by constant and tremendous racial strife, the meaning of a day honoring a man who was committed to PEACEFULLY fighting for civil rights is even more poignant. #velshi
2/9 Signed into law in 1983 by Ronald Reagan, #MLK day has become a national day of service during which people volunteer to help others in their community, which is fitting because it took a community to make #MLK day happen in the first place. #velshi
3/9 The campaign to create a federal holiday in his name began just 4 days after Dr. King’s assassination in 1968 when Michigan Congressman John Conyers introduced a resolution to make it happen. It failed. #velshi