Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments →

By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.
Inside the narrow frame within which the talks have taken place, the draft agreement at the UN climate talks in Paris is a great success. The relief and self-congratulation with which the final text was greeted, acknowledges the failure at Copenhagen six years ago, where the negotiations ran wildly over time before collapsing. The Paris agreement is still awaiting formal adoption, but its aspirational limit of 1.5C of global warming, after the rejection of this demand for so many years, can be seen within this frame as a resounding victory. In this respect and others, the final text is stronger than most people anticipated.
Outside the frame it looks like something else. I doubt any of the negotiators believe that there will be no more than 1.5C of global warming as a result of these talks. As the preamble to the agreement acknowledges, even 2C, in view of the weak promises governments brought to Paris, is wildly ambitious. Though negotiated by some nations in good faith, the real outcomes are likely to commit us to levels of climate breakdown that will be dangerous to all and lethal to some. Our governments talk of not burdening future generations with debt. But they have just agreed to burden our successors with a far more dangerous legacy: the carbon dioxide produced by the continued burning of fossil fuels, and the long-running impacts this will exert on the global climate.

Saudi voters elect 20 women candidates for the first time →

One can hope this represents a sea change...

Saudi voters elected 20 women for local government seats, according to results released to The Associated Press on Sunday, a day after women voted and ran in elections for the first time in the country’s history.
The women who won hail from vastly different parts of the country, ranging from Saudi Arabia’s largest city to a small village near Islam’s holiest site.
The 20 female candidates represent just one percent of the roughly 2,100 municipal council seats up for grabs...

The Destination in Paris Climate Talks Was a Journey That Begins Now →

Between the tumultuous breakdown in Copenhagen in 2009 and the cheers and bubbly in Paris on Saturday, climate change diplomacy underwent a grand metamorphosis.
For more than two decades, the world’s variegated nations were — impossibly — trying to undertake a common (but differentiated) journey toward some grand top-down solution. The outcome that emerged in Paris, in contrast, is implicitly a century-long journey, with 195 countries pursuing a safer human relationship with the climate system, but taking varied paths at varied paces to get there.
The new architecture is a far better fit for the momentous, “super wicked” challenges that are emerging in trying to supply societies with adequate, affordable energy without overheating the climate...

How the Justice System Fails Us After Police Shootings →

Two weeks ago, the police officer who shot Laquan McDonald in Chicago was charged with first-degree murder. Since then, the police superintendent was fired, and the Department of Justice announced that it will begin a large-scale investigationinto the Chicago Police Department. Meanwhile, in Baltimore, one of the police officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray is standing trial.
You might think these high-profile cases mark a turning point in the nation’s response to fatal police violence. But 1,058 people have been killed by police this year to date alone, and most of the time, no legal charges follow. In my own state of Georgia, 171 people have been shot dead by police since 2010, and there have been zero prosecutions.
As a former federal prosecutor and a criminal procedure professor, I’ve been studying how prosecutors handle police violence cases. How do they deal with the conflict of interest raised by investigating the police departments they work with? Who determines whether a civilian death is justified, as the vast majority are found to be?
The results are not pretty.

Car calls 911 after alleged hit-and-run, driver arrested →

A driver allegedly involved in two hit-and-run incidents was tracked down after her car alerted the police.
As reported by local news outlets, an unusual 911 call to emergency services took place on Friday in Port St. Lucie, Florida. You would usually expect a human voice on the end of the line, but in this scenario, a Ford vehicle alerted the police to a collision.
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The car's safety features, used by by Ford, BMW and other automakers, make use of sensors and Internet connectivity to shave down the time emergency responders take to get to the scene of an accident.

Will the Paris Climate Agreement Save the World? →

For a quick peak at what's been happening in France:

The Paris conference is in its final hours. France pushed the deadline for a new—potentially final—draft text to Saturday morning, and if all goes well, countries could adopt it later in the day. Jonathan M. Katz, reporting for the New Republic in Paris, breaks down who wants what in the final deal.
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Until then, here’s our progress report on COP21. Blue bars indicate progress toward the goals, compared to yesterday, red bars indicate backward momentum, and gray bars indicate no change:...

I am a Muslim. But Trump’s views appall me because I am an American. →

In his diaries from the 1930s, Victor Klemperer describes how he, a secular, thoroughly assimilated German Jew, despised Hitler. But he tried to convince people that he did so as a German; that it was his German identity that made him see Nazism as a travesty. In the end, alas, he was seen solely as a Jew.
This is the real danger of Trump’s rhetoric: It forces people who want to assimilate, who see themselves as having multiple identities, into a single box. The effects of his rhetoric have already poisoned the atmosphere. Muslim Americans are more fearful and will isolate themselves more. The broader community will know them less and trust them less. A downward spiral of segregation will set in.
The tragedy is that, unlike in Europe, Muslims in the United States are by and large well-assimilated. I remember talking to a Moroccan immigrant in Norway last year who had a brother in New York. I asked him how their experiences differed. He said, “Over here, I’ll always be a Muslim, or a Moroccan, but my brother is already an American.”