Vox: Governors are starting to close their borders. The implications are staggering

As the Supreme Court recognized more than 170 years ago, “we are one people with one common country. We are all citizens of the United States, and as members of the same community must have the right to pass and repass through every part of it without interruption, as freely as in our own states.” The right of all US citizens to travel freely among the states, the Court later explained in United States v. Guest (1966), “was conceived from the beginning to be a necessary concomitant of the stronger union the Constitution created.” [...]

Thus, there are two potential reasons why Abbott’s order may be legitimate. The first is that it applies to Texans and non-Texans alike — a Houston resident who returns home from a trip to Newark will spend two weeks in isolation, just like a New York resident who travels to Dallas to visit a family member. The second is that Abbott has a “substantial reason” for imposing this order. He believes that it will reduce the number of people who enter Texas carrying a terrible disease. [...]

The premise of Edwards — indeed, the premise of the post-New Deal order — is that the federal government would provide a baseline of health, prosperity, and security to the nation as a whole. In return, the states would give up their role as the sole providers of “assistance to the needy,” and with it their power to close their borders to poor Americans.

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Quartz: All the places plastic bags are banned around the world

In America, only two states have conclusively banned single-use plastic bags: Hawaii and California.

Though Hawaii’s ban came first, it wasn’t technically a state-wide ban: all five Hawaiian islands (Big Island, Honolulu, Kauai, Maui, and Pala) individually banned plastic bags at various points—the last of which took effect in 2015. The bans, which aim to fully phase in by 2020, range in definition and severity, but generally still allow for the use of 100% recyclable plastic bags.

California passed a unilateral, state-wide ban in September of 2014, and it went into effect in November of 2016. The law bans single-use plastic bags at all large retailers, and imposed a 10-cent charge for paper bags. Before the law was passed, more than 100 California local laws banning bags were already in place. [...]

At least 32 countries around the world have plastic bag bans in place—and nearly half are in Africa, where plastic bags frequently clog drains, leading to increased mosquito swarms (and, as a result, bouts of malaria). [...]

In Ireland, a 22c plastic bag tax has reduced usage by as much as 90%. Portugal has seen a drop in excess of 85%. And since imposing a tax in 2003, Denmark has seen the lowest plastic usage in Europe, averaging just 4 bags per person per year.

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Quartz: Hawaii pledges to become carbon neutral by 2045—the most ambitious goal of any US state

One of the bills cites a study that found that Hawaii could suffer $19 billion worth of damage to private property because of a rise in sea levels. When public infrastructure is included, the damage will likely be a lot higher. That is why it isn’t surprising that the US state most vulnerable to climate change is the one most keen to mitigate its impact. [...]

To be sure, it’s not clear if the state has thought through how hard a net-zero emissions target is to meet. The bill mentions initiatives such as planting trees and improving soil health as means of sequestering carbon, but not technologies such as carbon capture and storage that are proven to reduce emissions on a larger scale. That’s where the greenhouse-gas sequestration task force will help. It has a 2023 deadline to craft a plan that Hawaii can use to reach carbon neutrality. One of the bills also opens the door for the state to participate in carbon-trading programs, such as the one in California, and to use other market-driven tools to cut emissions.

Before Hawaii’s latest moves, Rhode Island was the state with the most ambitious climate goal: cutting emissions by 85% of 1990 levels by 2050. More importantly, Hawaii can now count itself among the most climate-friendly territories in the world. The Maldives aims to become carbon neutral by 2020, Costa Rica by 2021, Norway by 2030, Iceland by 2040, Sweden by 2045, and New Zealand by 2050. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it clear that more states and countries will need to join this list if the world as a whole is to avoid climate catastrophe.

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Bloomberg: The Way We Get Power Is About to Change Forever

The age of batteries is just getting started. In the latest episode of our animated series, Sooner Than You Think, Bloomberg’s Tom Randall does the math on when solar plus batteries might start wiping fossil fuels off the grid.

The Atlantic: What the Hell Happened in Hawaii?

This is, to be clear, a catastrophic error. It quite justifiably undermines the American public’s confidence in the emergency alert system (EAS) and the competence of government authorities. Given President Donald Trump’s emotional volatility and unitary nuclear-launch authority, paired with North Korea's breakneck technological developments on its ballistic-missiles and nuclear-weapons programs, nuclear anxieties are higher today than at any time since the end of the Cold War. A false alarm, as a result, can inflict serious and undue psychological stress, particularly for Americans already feeling quite vulnerable to an ICBM-armed North Korea. [...]

In February 1971, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) issued a teletype notification to every American radio and television broadcaster warning of an impending thermonuclear war. It later had to retract the message. Information moved slower at the time from government authorities to the American public; broadcasters largely did not pause their programming to relay the entire message. [...]

Issuing a false alert of an impending ballistic-missile strike through a legitimate EAS may be among the most pernicious forms of “fake news.” At a time when state and non-state actors alike are resorting to disinformation operations, it’s all the more important for the U.S. government to ensure the inviolability of critical communication systems like the EAS. The Hawaii and South Korean incidents at least have an important point in common: Both exploit common fears about a possible scenario involving North Korea.

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