ENVIRONMENT
Climate Change and Energy News
2026-01-15 “U.S. Emissions Jumped in 2025 as Coal Power Rebounded,” New York Times Climate Forward newsletter, 15 Jan. 2026
After two years in decline of U.S. warming emissions, they’ve started go up again because, per this article, coal power is rebounding (encouraged by Trump) and the demand for electricity is surging, in part because of the expansion of power-hungry data centers.
2026-01-15 Claire Brown, “The Cities That Broke Heat Records Last Year,” New York Times Climate Forward newsletter, 15 Jan. 2026
“Thousands of cities around the world saw their hottest year on record in 2025 . . .”
2025-12-22 Trump’s dismantling of America’s environmental protections and its climate change projects.
“In his first year back in office, President Trump has rapidly reshaped America’s climate and energy landscape. His administration dismantled a wide range of climate and pollution regulations, began to overhaul how the federal government responds to disasters and gave a boost to fossil fuel production and nuclear power while attempting to curtail the growth of wind and solar energy.
“The changes have reverberated far beyond the United States, as the administration has pressured other countries to abandon their own efforts to tackle global warming. Here’s a look at some of the biggest changes in U.S. energy and climate policy in 2025:”
— Brad Plumer, Lisa Friedman, Maxine Joselow and Scott Dance, “How Trump’s First Year Reshaped U.S. Energy and Climate Policy,” New York Times, 22 Dec. 2025 (updated 4 Jan. 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/climate/how-trumps-first-year-reshaped-us-energy-and-climate-policy.html?campaign_id=54
Habitat, Extinction, and Survival News
2026-01-03 Lynda V. Mapes, “Target on Tongass: The wildest national forest may soon lose its protections,” Pacific NW Magazine (special to the Seattle Times), 3 Jan. 2026, Web https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/target-on-tongass-the-wildest-national-forest-may-soon-lose-its-protections/
[Note: This article also contains many beautiful pictures (taken by Amy Gulick) of the Tongass.]
2025-12-14 Mitchell Roland and Amanda Sullender (The Spokesman Review), “State’s bag fee creating more plastic waste, study [a recent Washington State University study] finds,” Seattle Times, 14 Dec. 2025, Print, C3.
“In October 2021, shoppers who didn’t bring a bag started paying 8 cents for a reusable plastic grocery bag [which are thicker than the toss away bags] or paper bag.” “The rate will increase to 12 cents at the start of the new year.” However, according to the study, “consumers are not reusing plastic bags frequently enough to account for the increased bag thickness.”
Per the study, “In Washington, the single-use plastic bag ban has reduced plastic bag use by an estimated 50% and thereby has likely reduced the number of plastic bags littered in the environment. However, the plastic bags that end up being littered are thicker, yielding more plastic by volume in the environment.”
2025-09-05 Saabira Chaudhuri (Guest Essayist), “Throwaway Plastic Has Corrupted Us,” New York Times, 5 Sep. 2025, Web
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/opinion/plastic-trash-disposable.html?searchResultPosition=3
God’s Nature
Humanity’s greatest environmental challenges on Earth . . . and what’s needed:
1. Climate Crisis . . . Climate Action
2. Biodiversity Loss . . . Habitat, Clean Environment, Species Preservation
3. Commodification of God’s Nature . . . Connection and Stewardship
2025-12-17 Scott Doggett, “The Gospel according to Peanut: a Christmas story,” Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader, 17 Dec. 2025, A11.
Some quotes:
“The Bible affirms the living world—its creatures, its wild places, and humanity’s place within it. Scripture doesn’t see nature merely as a backdrop or resource. It considers it as belonging to God, inhabited by beings that praise in languages older than ours, and entrusted to us not as owners but as stewards.”
“Stewardship starts with noticing, listening, and humility.”
2025-09-24 The following essay by Rainn Wilson’s comments on our need to connect spirituality with nature [Rainn Wilson, Opinion-Guest Essay, “ Rainn Wilson: What I Learned at a Fire Ceremony With King Charles,” New York Times, 24 Sep. 2025, Web.]
In the essay is a “20-5-3 rule,” written by the scientist Rachel Hopman-Droste, for spending time in nature. This I think will help me in my habits and planning. The 20-5-3 rule is “Go outside for 20 minutes three times a week, for example, a stroll or time in a park. Spend five hours per month in a semi-wild place such as a forest park, lake, or river. Spend three days once a year off the grid in a cabin, tent or on a boat without a cellphone.” MRM
A list of quotes by spiritual and environmental leaders through history is in The Green Bible. Interesting to see how our wonder at the miracle of God’s nature, though the details may be different, are similiar in different cultures and millennia.
SOCIAL ISSUES
Free Press
2026-02-08 Brier Dudley, Opinion,“Why state Sen. Rebeca Saldaña is working to save local news,” Seattle Times, 8 Feb. 2026, D2.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/why-state-sen-rebecca-saldana-is-working-to-save-local-news/
“Saldaña is now playing a key role in supporting Senate Bill 5400, which would help newspapers get compensated by tech giants.”
“SB 5400 also triggered strong pushback from the tech lobby and others. It would collect around $27 million yearly from large social-media and search companies profiting from news.”
Sen. Saldaña said, “It’s so important, now more than ever, for people to have credible information,” she continued. “I get to meet journalists and see how hard their job is and really believe it’s a fundamental pillar for democracy.”
2026-01-04 Ryan Blethen (Seattle Times publisher), “The Times’ new publisher, Ryan Blethen, reflects on family, community,” Seattle Times, 4 Jan. 2026, Web https://www.seattletimes.com/inside-the-times/the-times-new-publisher-ryan-blethen-reflects-on-family-community/
“A great newspaper needs to put its readers and community first. A great newspaper holds elected officials and the powerful to account and lifts the voices of those left behind or pushed to the margins. A great newspaper has an opinion section that provides the community a place to read and debate differing ideas. It means chronicling this magical place we call home . . .”
Health Care Costs
2026-04-26 Medicare Beneficiaries Score a Big Win with Passage of SJM 8002 (The Retiree Advocate, April 2026, p. 5, by Pam Crone, a retired lobbyist and Chair of PSARA’s Government Relations Committee) [Most of the following was quoted from her article]
Senate Joint Memorial 8002 passed after being signed by the House Speaker and the President of the Senate. The memorial was sent to the Office of the Secretary of State and from there it was transmitted to the President, Members of Congress, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, delivering our state’s [Washington state] message directly to Washington, DC.
SJM 8002 calls for the federal government to
– End the 20 percent copay in Original Medicare and create a reasonable out-of-pocket cap on medical costs.
– Add dental, vision, and hearing benefits to original Medicare—benefits already allowed in Medicare Advantage plans.
– Rein in excessive administrative costs and profits in Medicare Advantage.
– Recover billions lost to overpayments, fraud, and abuse in Medicare
Advantage and return those funds to the Medicare Trust Fud to strengthen and improve Original Medicare.
2026-03-29 “Re: ‘New Medicare program using AI leaves WA patients in pain’ (March 18, Business)
“Medicare is a mutual benefit program—I’ve paid into it my whole working life and depend on it in retirement. It’s also the most efficient health insurer in the country, with administrative costs around 2%, compared to 18%-30% for some Medicare Advantage plans. That gap isn’t inefficiency. It’s profit—money skimmed from care.
“Now Congress is greenlighting a pilot program—the “Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction programs–that hands prior authorization decisions to the same for-profit contractors who plague Medicare Advantage. These insurers use AI to deny claims while refusing to disclose their methodologies or codes. The program’s own name says the quiet part out loud: The goal is reducing services, not saving lives. The experience of Keth Magnuyson, featured in the article, proves it.
“Giving private, profit-driven actors a veto over care in Traditional Medicare—even as a ‘pilot’—opens the door to permanent erosion of the programs. If CMS wants to cut waste, there’s a target-rich environment in Medicare Advantage. Start there.
“There is no benefit to Medicare participants in WISeR. Use health care dollars for health care—not CEO bonuses.”
— Kate Schwarz, Coupeville The Seattle Times, letters to the editor, 29 Mar. 2026, D2.
2026-03-18 “A true driver of health care costs—could it be insurance?”
These are some of the points that Marcia Kelbon makes in her letter to the editor:
The United States significantly outspends many Western countries, but our life expectancy is much shorter. Seven percent of our health care spending [goes] to insurance administration and 74% of our expenditure is funneled through insurance programs.
She relates how a family member’s surgical procedures at Seattle hospital would have cost $45,000, but instead were performed by experience medical staff in Oklahoma at a no-insurance, cash-only ambulatory surgery center for $11,020.
Kelbon proposes that instead of our bickering about how much health care costs should be shouldered by the government that we should instead focus on how we could avoid health insurance and the drain it causes on our health care system.
— source: Marcia Kelbon, letter to the editor. Port Townsend & Jefferson County Leader, 18 Mar. 2026, Print, B8, https://ptleader.com/articles/columns/a-true-driver-of-health-care-costs-could-it-be-insurance/
2026-01 Insurance Companies and Venture Capitalists inserting themselves into government-funded health care.
A dramatic revision to how patients access traditional government Medicare is being instituted in the continued process of insurance and affiliated venture capital firms using their influence and leverage to “self-deal” themselves into government funded health care. The revision will require the same prior-authorization restrictions—authorizations processed by self-serving corporations—that plague patients using private Medicare Advantage.
This insight was provided to me by the January 2026 issue of The Retiree Advocate monthly newsletter, pp. 1 and 11, which reprinted this article from the newsletter Health Care un-covered: Seth Glickman, MD and Rachel Madley, PhD, “Inside CMS’s Troubling WISeR Vendor List and the Power It Hands to Private Contractors,” Health Care un-covered, 20 Nov. 2025, <https://healthcareuncovered.substack.com/p/inside-cmss-troubling-wiser-vendor>. Glickman and Madley found that “CMS’s chosen WISeR vendors include firms tied to insurer-backed venture funds, former Big Insurance executives and private equity.”
CMS: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
WISeR: Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction Model, which was begun in 2026
Legislation, Politics, and Democracy
2026-04-29 Representative Adam Smith cogently describes the Iran War, it’s lack of strategy, and its impact on America and other countries.
U-Tube video is at <https://www.youtube.com/live/pE-dV4BtK6Q>, “I FIND THAT ABSURD”: Adam Smith Blasts Pete Hegseth Over Iran War Strategy | Times Now World, 29 Apr. 2026
The text is at House Armed Services Committee Press Release, “Ranking Member Adam Smith Opening Statement for Full Committee Hearing on ‘Department of Defense FY27 Budget Request,’” 29 Apr. 2026, <https://democrats-armedservices.house.gov/2026/4/ranking-member-adam-smith-opening-statement-for-full-committee-hearing-on-department-of-defense-fy27-budget-request>.
2026.02.19 Robert Kagan, “Every Nation for Itself,” The Atlantic, March 2026, pp. 55-60.
online version: “America vs. the World,” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/03/trump-national-security-greenland-spheres-of-interest/685673/
My thoughts after reading this article:
Trump, in trashing our allies and breaking apart NATO, has catalyzed a major reshaping of the relatively peaceful order of nations under the American umbrella, democratic processes, and treaty alliances that were painstakingly created after World War II—a system that has benefited the world for the last eighty years in which there have been no world or regional wars and aspirational respect for state sovereignty—including that of small- and medium-sized nations. We’ve been thrust back into the each-nation-for-itself selfishness and power struggles, with the regional (and sometimes global) wars that go with them, that existed throughout most of the rest of history.
“Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.”
— Sam Rayburn (former Speaker of the House of Representatives)
2026-02-01 Trudy Rubin (Syndicated columnist), “Trump’s denigration of fallen allies speaks volumes,” Seattle Times, 1 Feb. 2026, D1 & D4,
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/trumps-denigration-of-fallen-allies-is-beyond-belief/
Regarding President Trump’s comments to allies in Davos, Switzerland, Rubin writes that “Trump, a man who avoided Vietnam service by claiming he had bone spurs, spat on the sacrifices of European soldiers who died fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan,” which she describes as “an insult so outrageous that it has probably alienated the British and other European publics more than any previous Trump attacks.”
As a former Marine said later in the article: “It’s reprehensible. It’s gross.” Rubin notes that, “It’s even more grotesque given that, during his first term, Trump sneered at Americans who died in war as ‘losers and suckers,’ and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades.”
2026-01-29 “Alienating Allies,” PBS News Hour, 29 Jan. 2026 This night’s newscast is sobering. The world order has been dramatically reshaped as our allies depart commitments and trade deals with the United States, a consequence of the wrecking ball that is Donald Trump. In a very short time, the United States’s role on the world stage has been weakened significantly.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/january-29-2026-pbs-news-hour-full-episode
time segment: 28:38 – 39:52.
“Tis the time’s plague when madmen lead the blind.”
⸺ William Shakespeare, King Lear
2025-11 The American Revolution. A film by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt that started airing on PBS in November 2025.
.https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-american-revolution
I learned from this excellent series what a messy course was the process to create our country–with its government-by-the-people, rights-of-the-people, rule-of-law republic–that is still a work in progress. How encouraging that, during our current chaotic and divisive times, we have the example of the good our forefathers and mothers did when times were worse. We also learn from this series that we, their descendants, are responsible for carrying that good work forward.
Now & Then & Etc 