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This week on CounterSpin: Reporters covering the pandemic can’t help but note the impact of the digital divide: How do you work from home, or do remote learning, or even register for a vaccine, without not just available, but affordable high-speed internet? Yet a major congressional effort to end that divide is, so far, generating little interest from big media. It’s almost as if the corporate press accepted the existence of information haves and have-nots, because that’s how goods get divided in this country—even if it doesn’t make technological, economic or humanitarian sense. We’ll hear about the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act (AAIA) from Ernesto Falcon, senior legislative counsel at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Transcript: ‘The Digital Divide Is a Choice, and It Can Be Ended’
Also on the show: As with the country’s communication networks, there’s an obvious social win, and cost efficiency, in adapting buildings to climate realities—making them not just energy efficient (right now, they generate about 40% of greenhouse gases), but “future-proofed” against predictable and predicted weather events. Many cities think so, and they were working on building codes to reflect that—until industry groups, including home builders and the American Gas Association, said not so fast. We’ll get this very important but still under the radar story from Alexander Kaufman, who’s been on it. He covers climate change, energy and environmental policy as a senior reporter at HuffPost.
Transcript: ‘City Officials Improved the Climate-Readiness of the Code; Industry Groups Pushed Back’
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at press coverage of the Atlanta hate-crime shootings.
Thank you for highlighting building codes and the reporting of Alexander Kaufman.
I am an Architect and a Climate Activist. In my professional community we wholly support advancing the energy codes to reflect the Climate Emergency. Here in Massachusetts we have the “Stretch Energy Code” which goes beyond the requirements of the International Building Code and we are pushing for the adoption of revisions to that code which make it more closely align with the reality of commercial, multi-use, and residential building GHG emissions and energy use. The pushback from Industry* has stalled our efforts and the Governor has yet to sign the veto-proof comprehensive climate bill that sits on his desk. All Cities and Towns that have been designated as “Green Communities” will be adopting the latest “Stretch Code,” which is optional in other municipalities. This architect would like to see a uniformly adopted energy code that gets the U.S. to Net-Zero well before 2050.
#NetZero2030
*Construction, Developers, Realtors, Utilities…etc.