Support Ted’s Work

The TMI Show Ep 18: New Jersey Is Burning

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Ted Rall

“I’m On Fire” by the Garden State’s favorite son Bruce Springsteen could be the soundtrack to a bizarre wildfire season—wild because it’s happening in New Jersey, Connecticut and New York, states that rarely if ever have suffered the extreme drought conditions and sustained unseasonable high temperatures afflicting the Eastern United States and much of the nation. Late last week, New York City was covered with smoke from a brush fire in, wait for it, Brooklyn.

On the TMI Show, co-hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan ask: Is a five-month drought in a part of the country where rain is normal and standard a harbinger of still worse things to come? Donald Trump has just appointed Lee Zeldin, a right-wing zealot, to head the EPA—will Republican policies accelerate humanity’s attack on the environment? Would people take notice of environmental degradation if temperatures were falling rather than rising? Ted and Manila are joined by Dr. Reese Halter, a distinguished biologist, an award-winning broadcaster, environmentalist and writer who advocates for Planet Earth.

Watch the Video Version:

 

DMZ America Podcast Ep 167: Megahurricanes and the Climate Crisis

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Ted Rall

In just two weeks, two huge Category 5 hurricanes slammed into Florida and North Carolina, killing hundreds of people and causing tens of billions of dollars in property damage. The new reality of climate change is that global warming is no longer in the future. It’s here now. The question is: what are we going to do to adjust in order to survive and mitigate the damage?

Two veteran political cartoonists who also happens to be best friends despite having diametrically opposed politics, Ted Rall (Left) and Scott Stantis (Right), focus on the hard decisions America and the world need to be taking going forward. Will some places have to become off-limits? Should insurance companies be allowed to deny coverage to people who live in dangerous place is vulnerable to climate change? What is our responsibility to people affected by these storms?

 

Watch the Video Version: here.

Climate Change Is Pass Fail

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Ted Rall

Although Joe Biden’s website hat-tips the Green New Deal, he is opposed to it. Instead, he wants to achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The problem is, scientists project the end of human civilization by 2050. So it’s a moot point. The environment is pass-fail. Incrementalism is doomed.

January Surprise

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Ted Rall

Hillary Clinton refuses to tell voters whether she’d move ahead with, or cancel, the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline across the United States were she to be elected president. Instead, she’d surprise us when she’s elected. In a way, nothing new there!

LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: We’ll Miss Those California Flowers

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Ted Rall

Tree Flowers
 

I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).

This week:

It looks to be the end of the plastic grocery bag as we know it.

The state assembly appears to have struck a deal in which Californians would pay at least a dime for each recycled paper or reusable plastic bag they get at the grocery store. The currently-ubiquitous single-use plastic bags that have bedeviled litter-control types and environmentalists would be prohibited. That’s a lot of bags. Californians use an estimated 12 billion single-use plastic bags each year.

Plants that manufacture single-use bags would be retooled into recycling facilities, preventing job losses.

Given how hard opponents of a ban have fought over the years, it seemed wrong to this perverse cartoonist not to consider that something (aside from growing the massive plastic trash island in the Pacific Ocean) may be lost. But what?

Following the lead of dark surrealism master director David Lynch, I drank lots and lots of coffee to get my idea juices flowing. This is what I came up with: the plastic bag as weapon.

In self-defense class, they taught me that a folded newspaper can be a surprisingly potent tool for fending off an assailant. (No word yet on whether an iPad can knock a ruffian unconscious.) So can a trash can. What appeals about these strategies is the fact that they’re ubiquitous. Like — you remember the previous use of that word in this little essay — plastic bags. They’re everywhere, hanging from trees! In Africa, people ironically nickname them “African flowers.” What if a “California flower” could be called into service by law-abiding citizens?

Yep. That’s all I got.

Lynch must have drunk more coffee than me.

What He Deserves

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Ted Rall

Under the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Obama’s new trade agreement with Asian countries, environmental regulations would be weakened even more than they were under George W. Bush. The agreement is top secret, but thanks to WikiLeaks we know that, among other atrocities, the practice of “finning” — cutting the fins off sharks and tossing them back into the ocean to die —€” would be allowed to continue.

Los Angeles Times Cartoon: The Great Hunter

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Ted Rall

I draw a weekly editorial cartoon for The Los Angeles Times. With a little luck—and a bigger budget for hiring—this might turn into a staff cartooning job where I’d be doing work about Los Angeles and California throughout the week. If you’re an LA Times reader and you’d like to see me do more work for them, please let them know!

Here is this week’s offering: California Fish and Game President Daniel W. Richards shot and ate a mountain lion in Idaho, where it’s legal. Where will he go next?

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