2023
April
19
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

April 19, 2023
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Tax Day, meet Earth Day. Earth Day, this is Tax Day.

Maybe it’s because I edit stories about both the economy and the environment, but this year I couldn’t help but notice the proximity of these two days on the calendar. U.S. taxpayers were supposed to file their 2022 returns by yesterday. This coming Saturday is when protecting our planet’s environment will be in focus, globally.

And I’m seeing a connection. Whether you’re thinking about fiscal or planetary health, big issues are currently at stake. Questions of individual and collective responsibility.  

Most Americans do pay the taxes they owe. And most say in polls they support the Paris Agreement goal – which nations formally signed on Earth Day 2016 – of addressing climate change by shifting increasingly toward clean energy sources. 

Yet difficult challenges lie ahead. In coming weeks the Monitor will be covering the U.S. fiscal imbalance. There’s a partisan standoff in Congress over raising the national debt limit, and a deeper issue is fast-rising debt that neither party has successfully addressed.

And we’ve recently documented the incomplete progress worldwide toward those Paris goals

To some extent, maintaining a strong economy and sustainable habitats are intertwined. Even though these are sometimes framed in either/or terms, it may prove hard to achieve one without the other. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, for example, recently described climate change as an “existential threat” from an economic as well as social perspective.

And at a recent conference of business economists, just a few blocks from the Monitor’s Washington office, one fiscal expert urged bipartisan efforts to address the widening imbalance between federal spending and revenues. 

“It’s not the biggest problem out there; it’s the one that weakens our ability to deal with all the others,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

She sees some in Congress pointing toward possible solutions, despite polarization that “is one of the biggest problems we face.” And yes, the same is happening on protecting Earth’s environment.

In fact, amid the challenges, it’s encouraging to take a lesson from the buds and blossoms that emerge around the time of Earth Day in the Northern Hemisphere each year: Under the right conditions, systems like an economy or a biosphere are resilient – more so than many might expect. 


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

Corinna Kern/Reuters
A large picture of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu serves as a backdrop to a demonstration against judicial reforms proposed by his government, in Tel Aviv, Jan. 28, 2023.

Are the pressures on Benjamin Netanyahu manageable? Just over 100 days into his newest tenure as prime minister, he is facing mounting questions over whether he can keep Israel united and secure, his extremist partners at bay, and his government intact.

What does it look like to seek justice in a country that views journalists as terrorists? Kashmiri editor Fahad Shah’s long detention and ongoing trial raise questions about India’s approach to terrorism.

The Explainer

The court case between Dominion Voting Systems and Fox News reached a settlement at the last minute. But the ripple effects on the conservative network’s reputation – and its bottom line – may continue.

Dominique Soguel
Marine biologist Ivan Rusev shows the remains of a dolphin he found at the Tuzly Lagoons National Nature Park, in Odesa, Ukraine, on March 2, 2023.

Ukrainian law defines ecocide – deliberate mass damage to the environment – as a crime. Prosecutors are drawing up a case against the Russian navy, blaming its Black Sea fleet for a sharp spike in dolphin deaths.

Difference-maker

Whitney Eulich
Omar de Jesús Vazquez Sánchez shows his Sargablock solution to the smelly seaweed invasion across the Caribbean shore of Mexico. He makes construction blocks out of it.

It took creative vision to get past the stench of sargassum, but this Mexican gardener has turned the invasive seaweed into a sustainable housing solution. 


The Monitor's View

AP
A sign indicates the availability of a home to rent in Philadelphia last year.

Six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a broad moratorium on evictions of renters. The move was meant to help stem the spread of the virus, and it was supposed to be temporary. Now it has also sparked a debate on new ways to deal with evictions in general.

“All of a sudden, the reality of how precarious so many tenants are across the United States … really hit home for people,” said Colleen Carroll, an organizer for Eviction Representation for All in Portland, Oregon, in a recent local radio interview. “And in the two years where COVID and COVID protections kind of cracked open possibilities, lots more jurisdictions have either created pilot programs or passed real full civil-rights counsel measures.”

An average of 3.6 million eviction cases are filed each year in the United States, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. They come with a disproportionate effect on Black and Hispanic women. They also disrupt communities, schools, health services, and local businesses. And they clog courts and cost tenants and landlords billions of dollars annually.

During the pandemic, 43 states imposed their own moratoriums on evictions. In addition, taxpayer money for rental assistance swelled. The federal government deployed $46 billion to help tenants facing financial hardship – including another $521 million in reallocated funds from the Treasury Department last week. Those measures cut evictions by more than 50% nationwide.

That relief was short-lived. As the eviction bans and other time-limited interventions have expired, eviction filings have gradually climbed back up. In January, the Biden administration set out the Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights for fair and safe housing. Proposals to set rent controls and build more affordable housing are moving through some state legislatures.

The most significant changes are those that balance protections for tenants and landlords without decreasing incentives for new investments in rental properties. More landlords are embracing a mission-driven approach to providing tenants with resources to avoid eviction.

In many cities, like Portland, Oregon, broad coalitions are uniting to provide legal representation to tenants to promote mediated alternatives to eviction courts. The benefit of community-level solutions is measurable. A new University of Texas study based on national eviction data from 2001 to 2016 found that “an addition of ten community nonprofits per 100,000 city residents is associated with ten percent reduction in eviction filing rates.”

Eviction has multiple drivers. But as the costly, short-term pandemic remedies for housing insecurity ebb, new measures that promote trust over adversity provide a scaffolding of compassion for communities.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

In this short podcast, a woman shares how God’s comforting, healing love brought freedom from grief after her husband passed on.


Viewfinder

Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters
Alain Robert, known as the “French Spiderman,” climbs the 38-story Tour Alto skyscraper in Paris’ La Defense business district on April 19, 2023. His climb – done without a harness – was in protest of French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform. “I’m here to tell Emmanuel Macron to come back down to earth ... by climbing with no safety net,” said Mr. Robert, who has scaled structures including the Eiffel Tower, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us. We'll be back tomorrow with a look at affirmative action under Supreme Court scrutiny.

Also, here’s a bonus read today: conversations with two women on opposite sides of the abortion debate who took part in organized discussions for years. Their experience is portrayed in “The Abortion Talks: A Documentary,” which is being released and shown in coordination with the National Week of Conversation.

More issues

2023
April
19
Wednesday

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