Saturday, 31 January 2026

Donald Trump's many foreign policy bluffs come at a political price.

Extract from ABC News

Analysis

By Laura Tingle

A man in a suit, seen from close up, looking on with a serious expression on his face.

As the US president faces domestic consequences for his violent immigration crackdown, his geopolitical bluffs across the world also come at a price. (Reuters: Anna Rose Layden)

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Children living in makeshift tents in Gaza are dying from hypothermia.

Extract from ABC News

By Bridget Rollason in Jerusalem, Cherine Yazbeck, and ABC staff in Gaza
A close up of a sleeping baby on a phone as a child watches on in the bottom left corner.

Maher Al-Basyouni's baby Mohammed died from hypothermia on his first birthday. (ABC News)

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James Hansen - Fix Our Forests Fiasco


Fig. 1.  James Hansen and Chad Hanson in Stanislaus Forest just west of Yosemite in June 2021, in an area “rescued” by the United States Forest Service following the 2013 Sierra Nevada Rim fire.
 
Fix Our Forests Fiasco

30 January 2026
James Hansen
The Senate is on the verge of taking up a bill with the Orwellian title “Fix Our Forests Act.” It is designed to do the opposite, as Dan Galpern and I describe in an op-ed published yesterday in the Boston Globe, which is copied below with permission of the Globe. The bill would result in swaths of the public’s national forests becoming “categorical exclusion” zones open to logging exempt from any environmental review. Thus, the bill would override the purposes for which national forests were set up, including “outdoor recreation, range…watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes.” This sin is rationalized under the pretense that the Act will reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health by “thinning” the forest. This is nonsense, as our op-ed discusses.

Here I draw attention to the harm their unconstrained logging causes for climate. Nature has the potential to be a big part of the climate solution, if we allow it to work (as discussed in our communication[1] in 2021). Fig. 1 is a photo of an area in which the Forest Service allowed logging post-fire, cutting down the “snags” (burned or scorched tree trunks). Logs containing useful lumber were hauled off and less desirable logs, branches and saplings were ground up for biofuel. Trees were planted, but few are growing. Planters replanted a few times, as there are a few trees of varying ages trying to get started.  It is hard for trees to get started in an area compacted by heavy machinery and missing the nutrients that were hauled off for biofuels.

Fig. 2 shows an area burned by the same 2013 Sierra Nevada Rim Fire that was not yet clearcut. Natural tree regrowth was thriving and wildlife was abundant. The snags topple within decades and provide habitat for small scale forest life, as well as water holding capacity and nutrients for the soil. The area in Fig. 2 was slated to be cut like the area in Fig. 1, but it never happened. Perhaps the ruckus that Chad Hanson raised had an effect. Now, however, we are concerned with a much larger area in our national forests. For the sake of drawing down atmospheric CO2 and the health of our national forests, the Fix Our Forests Act should be rejected.
 
Fig. 2.  Hansen and Galpern in June 2021 in an area not then or yet logged -- regrowing on its own.
 
Boston Globe, Jan. 29, 2026 | OPINION [Reprinted with permission]
                       
By James Hansen and Dan Galpern    

A logging bill masquerading as wildfire protection

Despite its name, the Fix Our Forests Act would fast-track logging, weaken environmental safeguards, and do little to protect communities from wildfire or climate harm.
Congressional leaders face pressure from the logging industry to bring a deliberately misnamed “Fix Our Forests Act” to the Senate floor. They should resist. This bill is a Trojan horse, pretending to protect vulnerable communities from wildfire risk and improve forest health. It does neither. Instead, it heeds the command of President Trump’s Executive Order 14225, which calls for the “immediate expansion” of US timber production from lands managed by the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

America is blessed with magnificent national forests that are a source of lumber and other resources. An adequate lumber supply is important for the US economy, but most  of that is provided by private holdings. Timber production is just one of a range of multiple uses for national forests. Other uses include “outdoor recreation, range, … watershed, and wildlife and fish purposes.” Any “yield” from our national forests must be pursued in a manner that maintains “the various renewable resources … in perpetuity … without impairment of the productivity of the land.”

For those ends, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act require the USFS and the BLM to safeguard the public interest, including that of future generations, and to protect rare and endangered species. But the bill that the Senate is considering enables land managers to skirt these laws and fast-track otherwise questionable projects under the guise of wildfire risk reduction by vastly expanding allowable “categorical exclusion” zones that are exempt from review.

That would be a mistake. Mandated environmental review allows challenges to wrong-headed proposals. It also insulates conscientious officials from industry pressure, enabling them to do the right thing by considering the wider ramifications of forest-disturbing proposals.

The pretense of the legislation is that deep forest logging will reduce fire intensity, risk to downwind communities, and climate-damaging carbon emissions. But such “thinning” does not always reduce wildfire intensity. Indeed, considerable evidence establishes that the open conditions created by such logging may lead to lower humidity, higher wind speed, higher temperature, abundant grass fuel, and increased fire intensity. Moreover, thinning may increase forest-derived carbon emissions “by three to five times relative to fire alone,” in part because only a fraction of the carbon in felled trees ends up stored as lumber.

Effective community protection requires planners and policy makers alike to understand “the critical role of individual homeowners and local government.” In brief, in a warming world government at every level needs to help communities become far more ignition-resistant. Updated building codes, neighborhood assessments of fire vulnerability, home-hardening modifications, defensible space pruning, and local government empowerment are all needed, but the Fix Our Forests Act offers none of this.

As to combatting the climate crisis, US forest lands play an important role by storing considerable carbon; moreover, they retain high potential, if left to mature, to sequester much more (as old-growth forests and mature trees durably store more carbon).
Recently, the International Court of Justice ruled that, to address global climate change, every nation is obliged not only to constrain exploitation of their fossil fuel reserves but also to preserve their carbon-rich soils and forests. Congress owes it to our children and grandchildren to pay close attention here.

Many citizen-based community groups have noticed FOFA’s chicanery. More than 100 groups issued a public analysis of the measure’s extraordinary conveyance of discretion to the land agencies, enabling officials to approve logging and clear-cuts even in forests of high ecological value — and for a wide assortment of reasons. A few groups based in Washington, D.C., appear to have been taken in by FOFA’s sophistry, but they should take a closer look at the relevant wildland and urban fire science.

Congressional leaders should decline to bring FOFA up for a vote, but if the measure makes it to the Senate floor, senators should read its content in light of that relevant science. They then can rise up to strike it down.

James Hansen, formerly director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, directs the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. Dan Galpern is general counsel to the Climate Protection and Restoration Initiative and long-time legal adviser to Dr. Hansen
 
[1] Hansen J. Silent Forests, 11 June 2021
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Friday, 30 January 2026

Bluey tops streaming charts in US for second year running.

 Extract from ABC News

By Liana Walker

A still from the animated series Bluey, featuring Bandit laying down and other two characters sitting.

Bluey was streamed more in the US than any adult-targeted show. (Supplied: Ludo Studios)

In short: 

Americans tuned in to watch 45.2 billion minutes of Bluey, Bingo, Bandit and Chilli last year, making it the most-streamed show.  

It is the second year running of Nielsen's ARTEY awards that Bluey has won the title. 

Seth Macfarlane won a newly introduced award for Streaming Icon of the Year. 

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Ukraine, Greenland, and the ghost of a new Cold War.

 Extract from Eureka Street

INTERNATIONAL

 

Great political fractures rarely begin with a single provocation. They begin with a shift in language, a moment when emotion breaks through the diplomatic veil. That moment was on full display last week when Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom urged global leaders to take a stand against President Donald Trump.

“People are rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of kneepads for all the world leaders,” Newsom told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “It’s just pathetic.”

As resistance grew among European leaders to what they saw as an attempt to strong-arm allies through economic and security leverage, Trump announced plans to meet NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and others in Davos, while insisting there was “no going back” on his proposal to take control of Greenland. He also refused to rule out withdrawing from NATO, claiming that “no person or President” had done more for the alliance than himself. “If I didn’t come along, there would be no NATO right now,” he said. “It would have been in the ash heap of history.”

This confrontation over NATO is the continuation of a pattern that first became visible with the war in Ukraine, when the central question shifted from how to contain Russian aggression to calculating the price allies were willing to pay to uphold shared principles.

Following a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing in September, during which Ukrainian allies committed security guarantees to President Volodymyr Zelensky, the differences between the Old and New Worlds became clearer, with the “old” proving more forward-looking than the “new.” Europe framed the war as a test of borders, law, and restraint; an era-defining confrontation. Whereas Washington increasingly treated it as a strategic variable to be managed, traded off against other priorities, or deferred. 

Emphasizing this divergence, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Davos audience that “European independence” was now essential, adding that Europe remained the right place to invest. French President Emmanuel Macron went even further. Taking the stage, he echoed von der Leyen while directly challenging Trump’s trade strategy, and making clear France's refusal to yield to coercion. “We do prefer respect to bullies. We do prefer science to conspiracies, and we do prefer rule of law to brutality,” he said.

As the Greenland crisis pushed Ukraine to the margins of news coverage, Kyiv seized the opportunity to reassert its place in Europe, not in the shadow of Capitol Hill. President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he would not attend the World Economic Forum, choosing instead to remain in Ukraine following a new wave of Russian attacks poised to deepen the country’s energy crisis. “Undoubtedly, I choose Ukraine rather than the economic forum,” Zelensky told journalists.

 

“Against this backdrop, Europe’s continued support for Ukraine has become more than allied solidarity and has become a statement of European self-definition. A Ukraine that withstands aggression would stand as Europe’s defining achievement of this decade, affirming that commitment to law, restraint, and long-term resolve can still function as a credible form of power in a fractured international order.”

 

His decision came amid the aftermath of a mass Russian strike on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on January 20, which left nearly half of Kyiv’s apartment buildings — around 6,000 — without heating, and caused widespread power and water outages during freezing temperatures. “For now, I have a plan to help people with energy issues,” Zelensky said.

While justified, the decision to not attend Davos also carried political weight. Zelensky’s refusal to meet with Trump could be interpreted as a response to the U.S. president’s clumsy peace initiatives and proposals that effectively sought to pressure Kyiv into capitulation. “Meetings with America should always end with concrete results — to strengthen Ukraine or to move closer to ending the war,” Zelensky said. “If the documents are ready, we will meet.”

These words underscored a rupture that has been forming since the war’s early stages. In 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion, the West still acted as a unified political and strategic alliance. The United States and Europe shared the burden of supporting Ukraine not only materially, but morally. By the end of the war’s first year, Washington had committed roughly $75 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian assistance, while European countries pledged a comparable $70 billion. The message, that Ukraine was a common cause, not a regional problem to be managed, was clear.

Political language reflected that unity. Leaders across Washington, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and London spoke in near-identical terms about defending the “rules-based international order” and rejecting rewarded aggression. When President Joe Biden pledged to stand with Ukraine “as long as it takes,” European leaders echoed him. Olaf Scholz insisted that “Ukraine must not lose this war,” while Macron stressed that “Russia must not win.” The emphasis on endurance, deterrence, and moral clarity was consistent.

But that consensus was later broken, deliberately and repeatedly. Trump accused Zelensky of responsibility for the war itself, arguing that it could have been avoided through territorial concessions or negotiations on Moscow’s terms. Moral responsibility was inverted, the aggressor faded into the background, while pressure was placed on the society that was under attack.

The European Union and the United Kingdom rejected this reframing, uniting in the face of a new challenge emerging not from the East, but, paradoxically, from the West. What began as a disagreement over tactics revealed itself as a dispute over principle.

But as the war drags on, Europe’s strategic position is increasingly under strain. As American political support for Ukraine becomes less certain, increasingly shaped by domestic fatigue, electoral calculation, and transactional diplomacy, Europe is confronting the consequences of a security architecture substantially outsourced to the United State, which it long took for granted. As American power underwrote European peace, much of the continent demilitarised its armed forces, alongside its strategic instincts.

A Europe long accustomed to American guarantees now finds itself hurriedly attempting to rearm out of belated recognition that a de-fanged continent cannot rely indefinitely on a protector whose commitments are no longer assured. Calls for strategic autonomy and increased defence spending reflect an increasing awareness of that vulnerability, and an awareness that any claims to moral clarity must eventually be matched by material capacity.

Against this backdrop, Europe’s continued support for Ukraine has become more than allied solidarity and has become a statement of European self-definition. A Ukraine that withstands aggression would stand as Europe’s defining achievement of this decade, affirming that commitment to law, restraint, and long-term resolve can still function as a credible form of power in a fractured international order.

The fate of Greenland is arguably being shaped not by world leaders in Davos, but on the battlefields of Ukraine and in freezing cities where ordinary people are setting an example of resilience. This war began in Ukraine, and it will end not with Putin’s or Trump’s triumph, but with the failure of the logic they both promote: that borders can be redrawn by force. Whether Europe can sustain that failure and translate solidarity into lasting security will determine whether this marks the renewal of the postwar order, or marks its unravelling.

 

Sergey Maidukov is a Ukrainian writer, author of Life on the run and Deadly bonds, written for US publishing house Rowman & Littlefield (Bloomsbury). Both were written in English in the midst of war. His journalism has appeared in numerous Western publications.

Main image: Chris Johnston illustration

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