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    Your Tuesday Briefing: Xi Meets Putin in Moscow

    Also, a major U.N. climate report and a manhunt in the Indian state of Punjab.This photograph released by Russian state media shows Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at the Kremlin yesterday.Sergei Karpukhin/SputnikXi meets Putin in MoscowPresident Vladimir Putin welcomed Xi Jinping at the Kremlin yesterday and pledged that Russia would study China’s peace proposals for Ukraine “with respect.” But Xi did not mention Ukraine at all in his public remarks.Though the war and the divides that it exposed hung over the meeting, the leaders focused on projecting unity and shoring up their countries’ overall relationship during the three-day summit.“Dear friend, welcome to Russia,” Putin told Xi, who is the highest-profile world leader to visit since the invasion. Putin said that China took a “fair and balanced position on the majority of international problems.” Xi hailed the two nations as “good neighbors and reliable partners,” Russian state media said.The state visit, which is being closely watched by Kyiv and its allies, underscores China’s increasingly close ties with Russia. The U.S. has warned that China could go even further than diplomatic or economic support for Russia, possibly by supplying weapons to use in the war.A peace mission? Chinese officials have tried to cast Xi as a mediator who can broker peace, though Western leaders have expressed doubts. Ukrainian officials have brushed off China’s proposals for peace talks and have insisted that a complete Russian withdrawal is a precondition for negotiations.War crimes: In its first response to the arrest warrant for Putin issued by the International Criminal Court, China’s foreign ministry said that the court should “avoid politicization and double standards.”U.S. reaction: Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Xi’s visit amounts to Beijing’s providing “diplomatic cover for Russia to continue to commit” war crimes.“We are walking when we should be sprinting,” said Hoesung Lee, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesClimate’s ‘rapidly closing window’A major U.N. climate report said that the Earth would most likely cross a critical global warming threshold within the next decade — unless countries made an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels. There is “a rapidly closing window of opportunity” to address climate change, the report said.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which issued the report, said that global average temperatures are estimated to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels sometime around “the first half of the 2030s.” Beyond that point, scientists say, the impacts of climate change — catastrophic heat waves, crop failures and species extinction — will become much harder for humanity to handle. To shift course, the report said, countries need to cut greenhouse gases by half by 2030 and stop emitting carbon dioxide altogether by the early 2050s. If those two steps were to be taken, the world would have about a 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.Practically, that means retiring fossil fuel infrastructure or canceling planned projects. It also means efforts like expanding wind and solar energies, making cities friendlier to pedestrians and cyclists and reducing food waste.However, global fossil-fuel emissions set records last year, while China and the U.S. continue to approve new fossil fuel projects. Under the current policies, Earth’s temperature is estimated to heat up by 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius this century.Analysis: “The report is sobering, gut-wrenching and above all, practical,” my colleague Somini Sengupta writes in our climate newsletter. “Its clearest takeaway: The continued use of fossil fuels is harming all of us, and harming some of us a lot more.”The cost: Governments and companies would need to invest three to six times as much as they currently spend to hold global warming at 1.5 or 2 degrees, the report says.Police officers outside the home of Amritpal Singh in Jallupur Khera, a village in Punjab.Narinder Nanu/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIndia’s manhunt in PunjabIndian authorities have restricted communications in Punjab for a third day as a manhunt continues for Amritpal Singh, a Sikh separatist leader who has called for an independent Sikh homeland. Singh’s rapid rise in the public eye has stirred fears of violence in India’s only Sikh-majority state, which still has vivid memories of a deadly separatist insurgency. The search for Singh began on Saturday. Since then, the government has blocked the internet, restricted mobile communications and deployed thousands of paramilitary soldiers. The manhunt comes a month after Singh and hundreds of his supporters stormed a police station armed with swords and firearms, demanding the release of an aide. Six police officials were injured in the clash. History: For many in India, the clash was similar to the 1980s revolt in Punjab, when thousands were killed during an insurgency organized by Sikh separatists that raged for years.Singh: The 30-year-old self-styled preacher has called for protecting Sikh rights against what he believed to be the overreach of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. He also implicitly threatened Amit Shah, the home minister.THE LATEST NEWSAsia PacificNeo-Nazis have shown up at a number of events in the past few months in Melbourne.James Ross/EPA, via ShutterstockThe Australian state of Victoria moved to ban the Nazi salute after protesters gave the salute at a rally against transgender rights in Melbourne.The Taliban ordered officials in Afghanistan to fire relatives that they had hired to government posts, the BBC reported.Around the WorldLawmakers protested the pension overhaul after the government survived yesterday.Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIn France, President Emmanuel Macron’s government survived a no-confidence vote, ensuring his bill to raise the retirement age to 64 becomes the law of the land.Israel’s government plans to enact the most contentious part of its proposed judicial overhaul next month, but other changes were postponed in a move that was framed as a concession.Twenty years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Times journalists explore the lives of young people who grew up with the traumas of war. An estimated 43,000 people died in Somalia’s drought last year, according to the first official death toll. At least half were children younger than 5.From OpinionThe authoritarian, Hindu nationalist streak of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is worth worrying about, Nicholas Kristof writes.Nan Lin, an activist in hiding, lives a dangerous, lonely life in Myanmar. His apartment “is both sanctuary and prison,” he writes. A Morning ReadNoriko Hayashi for The New York TimesJapan’s exotic animal cafes are popular selfie spots, but a survey found that many contain critically endangered species — and others banned from international trade.Similar cafes have cropped up in other Asian countries. Critics say they could threaten wildlife conservation, animal welfare and public health.ARTS AND IDEASThe “afternoon fun” economyKate Thornton for The New York TimesRemote workers in the U.S. have fueled a surge in midday exercise and beauty treatments during the workweek. With new flexibility, they are opting to extend their leisure time into the afternoon, and tack on extra hours of work after dark — often with the blessing of their bosses.For instance, a new study using geolocation data found that there were 278 percent more people playing golf at 4 p.m. on a Wednesday in August 2022 than in August 2019. One of the report’s authors said that the rise of afternoon leisure could have an under-examined role in driving the economic rebound since 2020.“They’re not sneaking away,” the owner of a golf course in New Jersey said. “They’re getting the work done, just not at your typical hours.”PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookBryan Gardner for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.Make these salmon saffron kebabs for the Persian festival Nowruz, which starts this week.What to Read“The Nursery” paints a frightening, honest and claustrophobic picture of new motherhood.What to WatchA rare British romantic comedy with Black leads, “Rye Lane” celebrates love in London.ExerciseTry this 19-minute high-intensity interval training workout for beginners.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Tremble (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. The Times announced its fifth cohort of young career journalists who will join our newsroom for a year on a fellowship.“The Daily” is on U.S. concerns about TikTok.We’d love your thoughts: briefing@nytimes.com. More

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    Dutch Pro-Farmer Party Sweeps Elections, Upsetting the Status Quo

    The surprise victory is widely seen as a protest vote against Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s government and some of his policies, including a goal to slash nitrogen emissions, which many say will imperil farming operations.A small pro-farmers party has swept provincial elections in the Netherlands to become the biggest in the Senate by channeling wide dissatisfaction with the Dutch government, in a sharp challenge to Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s administration.The results put the party, the Farmer Citizen Movement, which has fewer than 11,000 members, according to its website, on track to become a major player in a government body that approves or rejects legislation that comes out of the House of Representatives.Some Dutch voters said they viewed the party’s success as a victory against the country’s elites as well as the government. They said it showed support for the preservation of rural life in the Netherlands and the farming economy, in particular, though voters from all parts of the country, including suburban areas, supported the party.But the victory could make it difficult for Mr. Rutte’s government to pass a strict law to cut nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands by 50 percent by 2030, to fight climate change and place it in line with European Union requirements to preserve nature reserves. The prime minister’s party, which does not have a majority in the Senate or the House, needs a coalition vote to pass laws.The pro-farmers party, known by its Dutch acronym BBB, opposes the plan, saying it could imperil farmers’ operations in a country renowned for its agricultural industry. To reach the government’s emission-reduction goals, thousands of farmers would have to significantly reduce the number of their livestock and the size of their operations, farmers and their supporters say. If they cannot help meet the government’s target, they may have to close down their operations altogether, they say.Mr. Rutte, who is not up for election for a few more years and is one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, having been elected in 2010, called the results a “scream at politics,” according to the Dutch wire service ANP.Caroline van der Plas, the co-founder and leader of BBB, said after the vote: “They already couldn’t ignore us. But now, they definitely can’t.”Ben Apeldoorn, a dairy farmer in the Utrecht Province who voted for the pro-farmers party, said the win felt like “a victory of the common man over the elite.”“I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said. “As farmers, we felt abandoned by the political society.”The Farmer Citizen Movement did not exist until four years ago. The party, which had zero seats going into the election, won at least 16 in the 75-seat Senate, according to exit polls and projections. A bloc formed by left-of-center Labor and Green parties had 15 seats, local news reports said. (BBB holds one seat in the 150-member House of Representatives.)Now, BBB, which presents itself as a party of the countryside, appears to be on track to become the largest party in all but one province, according to the Dutch public broadcaster NOS. Vote counting was still wrapping up late Thursday night.Prime Minister Mark Rutte in Den Bosch, the Netherlands, on Wednesday, called the election results a “scream at politics.”Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/EPA, via ShutterstockIn Dutch provincial elections, held every four years, voters choose the lawmakers for the country’s 12 provinces, who then pick members of the Senate, which will be done in May. With BBB’s victory, the fate of the government’s plan to drastically cut nitrogen emissions is in question.Bart Kemp, the chairman of Agractie, a farmers interest group founded in 2019, says the party’s victory means “the Netherlands has taken a big step toward being more reasonable.” He added, “The government has unrealistic plans.”Research from 2019 shows that the Netherlands produces, on average, four times as much nitrogen as other European countries. The agricultural industry is responsible for the largest share of nitrogen emissions in the country, much of it from the waste produced by the estimated 1.6 million cows that provide the milk used to make the country’s famed cheeses, like Gouda and Edam.Scientists have long sounded the alarm about the urgent global need to reduce harmful emissions. Too much nitrogen acidifies the ground, which reduces the amount of nutrients for plants and trees. That, in turn, means that fewer kinds of plants can grow together. Nitrogen emissions also cause less fungus in the ground, which makes it more vulnerable to extreme weather such as drought or rain.Excess nitrogen in the ocean can also help create conditions in which vital organisms cannot survive.The nitrogen-reduction plan led to nationwide protests last year, with people burning manure and hay bales and hanging upside-down flags along highways.Police officers used a water cannon on environmental activists protesting against tax breaks for fossil fuel use in The Hague this month.Piroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersChristianne van der Wal, the minister for nature and nitrogen in Mr. Rutte’s government and a member of his People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, acknowledged that many Dutch residents were against the government’s nitrogen emissions plan.“We’ve known that for a long time,” she said, calling it a complicated issue that would have a major effect on people’s lives. But, she added, “at the same time, there’s no choice.”Farmers say they have always followed the rules, trying to find innovative and more sustainable ways of producing and ensuring safe and high-quality food. They say the government’s plan, which includes the possibility of forced buyouts, made them feel unwanted.“Everyone in the Netherlands cares about nature, including farmers,” said Ms. van der Plas, who occupies BBB’s only seat in the House. The Netherlands simply has to follow European rules for preserving its nature preserves, she added, even though the bloc has not stipulated how exactly to do so.A Dutch dairy farmer in Oldetrijne, in the Friesland Province, on Wednesday. Farmers say they may have to reduce their livestock under the government’s emissions-reduction plan.Piroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersWhether the government’s proposal will come up for a vote in its current form in the Senate is unclear.Ms. van der Wal, the nitrogen minister, said it was up to the provinces to find policies to prepare for the reduction of nitrogen emissions.“All parties, left or right, pro- or anti- the nitrogen approach, have plans for their provinces: the building of houses or energy transition,” she said through a spokesperson.“But without the reduction of nitrogen emissions,” she said, “that simply won’t be possible.” More

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    Two Evangelical Leaders, Jim Wallis and Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, on ‘Radical Faith,’ Climate Change and More

    For the Taking the Lead series, we asked leaders in various fields to share insights on what they’ve learned and what lies ahead.When Kyle Meyaard-Schaap was in high school, a quote from the Rev. Jim Wallis was emblazoned on the wall of his English classroom: “God is not a Republican or a Democrat.” Today, the two men are leaders in the movement to expand the political imaginations of American evangelicals. Though evangelicals are known for their strong support of former President Donald J. Trump — most polls showed around 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for him in 2020 — and an array of conservative causes, a vocal cohort includes many who find their faith directing them elsewhere.Mr. Wallis, now 74, was raised in what he described as a “very evangelical” family in Detroit, where his parents were lay leaders in a Plymouth Brethren church. He attended an evangelical seminary outside Chicago but was drawn to the radical student politics of his era, and quickly became one of the leading figures in an energetic politically progressive wing of American evangelicalism. That movement — anchored by Sojourners, the organization he founded and led for 50 years, before leaving in 2021 — enjoyed a heady decade until the rise of the Moral Majority and the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, when evangelicals became a reliably conservative voting bloc, which they remain today.That forced Mr. Wallis into the role of opposition leader, a perch from which he has tried to turn the American church’s attention to issues including racism, poverty and, more recently, voting rights. He has written 12 books, has been arrested 25 times for civil disobedience, and was one of a small group of pastors President Barack Obama turned to for prayer and counsel in the early years of his presidency.Mr. Meyaard-Schaap, 33, was ordained as a pastor in the Christian Reformed Church in North America and serves as the vice president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, a ministry that seeks to mobilize evangelicals around environmental issues. He was previously the national organizer and spokesman for Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, another group devoted to mobilizing young evangelicals on climate issues. His book, “Following Jesus in a Warming World: A Christian Call to Climate Action,” will be published by the evangelical InterVarsity Press this month.The two leaders came together for a conversation, conducted in November over a video call, about collaborating with secular leaders, talking to Christians about climate change and capitalizing on being, as Mr. Wallis put it, a “critical minority.”Mr. Wallis was speaking from his office in Washington, D.C., where he is the founding director of the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University, where he is also the chair of faith and justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy. Mr. Meyaard-Schaap joined the call from Grand Rapids, Mich., where lives with his wife and two young sons.This conversation has been condensed and edited.Rachelle BakerHow did you settle on the issues you’ve devoted your careers to?JIM WALLIS For years I was a student activist but not a religious person. We organized, marched in Washington, marched to the Capitol there in Lansing and then were attacked by right-wing groups and all of that. I guess I never quite got shed of Jesus, even though I left the church and they left me. I was studying — like everybody else those days — Marxism, anarchism. My conversion text was the 25th chapter of Matthew, called the “It Was Me” text. “It was me,” Jesus says. “I was hungry, it was me. I was thirsty, I was naked, a stranger, sick, in prison. How you treat them, the least of these, is how you treat me.”That was more radical than Karl Marx and Che Guevara. And so I signed up.KYLE MEYAARD-SCHAAP I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian home. I never really remember calling ourselves evangelicals. But I do remember this overwhelming assumption of ideological and political sameness. When I was in the fifth grade, it was during the 2000 election between Bush and Gore, and we did a mock election at the school where everybody wrote down their choice for president. All day, none of us could pay attention to any of the lessons. The vote came out to like 96, 97 percent Bush, 3 percent Gore. And everybody said, Who the heck voted for Al Gore? It was just inconceivable that a Christian could vote for Al Gore.RUTH GRAHAM Was it you?MEYAARD-SCHAAP No, it certainly wasn’t!You know, we recycled. But if the truck didn’t pick it up at the curb, I don’t know if we would have done that either. I don’t remember derision, necessarily, around climate change or environmentalism. Growing up, what I mostly remember was silence.Key Insights From ‘Taking the Lead’Card 1 of 7Conversations about leadership. More

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    Climate Change Is Now a Defense Matter

    The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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    What Exxon Knew, but Concealed, About Climate Change

    More from our inbox:The U.S. Embassy in IsraelPaying Off Our DebtsWhy Use Real Guns on Movie Sets?Election Deniers Wasting Taxpayer FundsDarren Woods, ExxonMobil’s C.E.O., appeared before the House Oversight Committee via video link in 2021.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Exxon Scientists Saw Global Warming, as Oil Giant Cast Doubt, Study Says” (Business, Jan. 13):Exxon knew that its fuels would contribute to overheating the planet, yet it chose to deceive the public. It’s the very definition of fraud. Fossil fuel interests and their political allies are carrying out a fraud on humanity. They enjoy massive profits while their products are causing disease, death and disruption around the world.More than eight million people die annually from fossil fuel pollution. Societies are burdened by billions of dollars in damages from climate-fueled heat waves, wildfires, droughts, floods and sea rise.How can we hold them accountable? Many cities and states have filed lawsuits against fossil fuel companies seeking damages.We citizens can demand congressional action to end fossil fuel subsidies, enact carbon pricing to make the polluters pay, subsidize clean energy, speed electrification, reform the permitting process for renewable energy, and sequester carbon through healthier forests and better agricultural practices.Robert TaylorSanta Barbara, Calif.To the Editor:The revelation that Exxon scientists in the 1970s correctly projected the long-term climate impacts of burning fossil fuels, while publicly claiming ignorance, is both unsurprising and infuriating. Rising profits beat rising sea levels every time.Communities on the front lines of the climate crisis have long felt the environmental, economic and health consequences of burning oil, gas and coal. It stands to reason that scientists employed by big polluters would reach the same conclusions.When lead paint and tobacco companies were found to have known the negative health effects of their products, but spent decades concealing them, a public reckoning — with significant monetary damages — followed. It is long past time for the fossil fuel industry to face the same kind of accountability.Zellnor Y. MyrieBrooklynThe writer is a New York State senator for the 20th District.To the Editor:It is indeed unfortunate that Exxon was not forthcoming about its studies and its scientifically accurate projections of global warming. We can use this information to vilify Exxon Mobil, and certainly it deserves criticism, or we can use the information to acknowledge that a great deal of untapped expertise resides in the private energy industry that can be harnessed to address climate change.It would be highly productive if the federal government worked with energy corporations, where so much energy expertise resides, helping them make the socially beneficial decisions that are required to move toward nonpolluting and climate-friendly sources of energy.The government could help fund research and provide economic assistance to construct new infrastructure, which would ease the monetary challenges in transitions.Make the oil and energy industry part of the solution, as opposed to the problem.Ken LefkowitzMedford, N.J.The writer is a former employee of PECO Energy, an electric and gas utility.To the Editor:Thank you for this article, but this is not news. We have known for some time that the oil companies have been deliberately misrepresenting the facts regarding global warming, when they knew better.The Union of Concerned Scientists published “The Climate Deception Dossiers” in 2015. This document is a compilation of evidence that the oil companies knew what greenhouse gases would do to the Earth.In addition, the magazine Scientific American published an article in 2015 that stated that Exxon knew about global warming in 1977.Joseph MilsteinBrookline, Mass.The U.S. Embassy in IsraelThe lot in Jerusalem that is a candidate for a new U.S. embassy.Ofir Berman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Don’t Build the Jerusalem Embassy Here,” by Rashid Khalidi (Opinion guest essay, Jan. 17):Dr. Khalidi’s view of international law, history and politics demands a response.When the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948, the Jewish organizations had embraced the 1947 U.N. General Assembly resolution recommending partition into predominantly Jewish and Arab states. Arabs rejected the recommendation and attacked. If there was a “nakba” (catastrophe), it was of their making.Second, Israel did not wake up one day and decide to march into East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Egypt, Syria and Jordan engaged in armed aggression in 1967 with the stated objective of pushing the Jews into the sea. Israel exercised its inherent right of self-defense under the U.N. Charter.There is not an international right of return law. That argument is an excuse for destroying Israel as a Jewish state.Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem recognized the location of Israel’s capital and sent an important signal to those who advocate the destruction of Israel. Real peace between Israel and the Palestinians will happen when both sides recognize a need to compromise.Nicholas RostowNew YorkThe writer is a former legal adviser to the National Security Council and general counsel and senior policy adviser to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.Paying Off Our DebtsThe Treasury Department is using so-called extraordinary measures to allow the federal government to keep paying its bills.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “U.S. Hits Debt Cap, Heightening Risk of Economic Pain” (front page, Jan. 20):If the debt limit is not raised, then the U.S. will be unable to make payments to some of its creditors, employees and entitlement programs that it is legally obligated to make.How nifty! My wife and I have a mortgage and a car loan. We have decided that our personal debt level is too high. So, we plan to send our bank a letter today saying that we will no longer make our mortgage or car payments.On second thought, scratch that. I know what our bank would say. And it would be right.If we need to reduce our debt as a nation, then — like my wife and me — let’s do it by reducing future spending commitments, not by failing to make current payments that we have already legally committed ourselves to make.Craig DuncanIthaca, N.Y.Why Use Real Guns on Movie Sets?Alec Baldwin on set of the film “Rust” in near Santa Fe, N.M., after the death of the cinematographer Halyna Hutchins in October 2021.Agence France-Presse, via Santa Fe County Sheriff’s OfficeTo the Editor:Re “Baldwin to Face Pair of Charges in Movie Death” (front page, Jan. 20):Why do actors need to use real guns? They use fake props for everything else!If we can send people to the moon and create self-driving cars, you would think that we could create realistic-looking guns, instead of real ones, that actors could use in movies and theaters.If they had done that on the set of “Rust,” the western that Alec Baldwin was filming, no one would have died. It’s a simple solution to prevent anything like this from happening again.Ellen EttingerNew YorkElection Deniers Wasting Taxpayer FundsA ballot cast for former President Donald J. Trump that was part of the county’s recount.Kriston Jae Bethel for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Despite Recount of 2020 Ballots, County’s Deniers Cling to Doubts” (front page, Jan. 16):Sensible taxpayers have the right to ask why their tax funds and the time of civil servants are spent on a request for an additional recount or audit of a verified and certified vote absent any evidence of fraud or irregularity.Where no reasonable probable cause exists for any such recount or audit, then any re-examination should be completely at the expense and time of the party that initiated it, especially when these beliefs are conjured up by conspiratorial fantasies or motivated by bad faith.Government officials and civil servants need to be free to focus on the needs of all, and not just the aims of a divisive and selfish minority.Jim CochranDallas More

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    Your Wednesday Briefing: Shanghai’s Devastating Outbreak

    Also, the eight warmest years on record and a fragile political alliance in the Philippines.Even the lobby of this Shanghai hospital is crowded with patients. Qilai Shen for The New York TimesCovid rages in ShanghaiIn Shanghai last week, local health officials said that up to 70 percent of the city’s 26 million residents had been infected, and they expressed confidence that its Covid outbreak had peaked.But China’s Covid wave is still deluging its most populous city. The photographer Qilai Shen took pictures of the outbreak.Patients arrive at the emergency room.Qilai Shen for The New York TimesHospitals are overwhelmed. Staff members say they are overworked because many colleagues are absent after testing positive for the virus. Patients are being treated in every available space, including lobbies and hallways.Funeral homes are, too. Mourners grieve in the streets, holding the ashes of their loved ones.Mourners walked by a funeral home.Qilai Shen for The New York TimesContext: Shanghai endured one of China’s most grueling lockdowns last spring. Cots flooded dirty quarantine centers and residents were stuck at home for more than two months, fueling anger and anxiety.Global warming only continuesThe eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2014, European climate scientists said yesterday. Last year was the fifth-hottest year on record; 2016 remains the hottest ever.Despite a third year of La Niña, a climate pattern that tends to suppress global temperatures, Europe had its hottest summer ever in 2022. Eastern and Central China, Pakistan and India all experienced lengthy and extreme heat waves, and monsoon floods in Pakistan ravaged much of the country.Understand the Situation in ChinaThe Chinese government cast aside its restrictive “zero Covid” policy, which had set off mass protests that were a rare challenge to Communist Party leadership.Rapid Spread: Since China abandoned its strict Covid rules, the intensity and magnitude of the country’s outbreak has remained largely a mystery. But a picture is emerging of the virus spreading like wildfire.Rural Communities: As Lunar New Year approaches, millions are expected to travel home in January. They risk spreading Covid to areas where health care services are woefully underdeveloped.Economic Recovery: Years of Covid lockdowns took a brutal toll on Chinese businesses. Now, the rapid spread of the virus after a chaotic reopening has deprived them of workers and customers.A Failure to Govern: China’s leadership likes to brag about its governance of the country, but its absence in a moment of crisis has made the public question its credibility.Overall, the world is now 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.1 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than it was in the second half of the 19th century, when emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels became widespread.“If you draw a straight line through temperatures since 1970, 2022 lands almost exactly on where you’d expect temperatures to be,” one researcher said.The U.S.: Carbon emissions inched up last year, even as renewable energy surpassed coal power.Resources: Here’s a primer on the basic science behind climate change and photos of the crisis.Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the president of the Philippines, and Sara Duterte, the vice president.Ezra Acayan/Getty ImagesA strategic Marcos-Duterte allianceThe children of two former autocratic presidents lead the Philippines: Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is president, and Sara Duterte is the vice president.Critics say their partnership is designed to protect their two powerful political families and shape their fathers’ legacies. Both patriarchs were accused of rights abuses and corruption, and both families face multiple legal challenges.Marcos and Duterte are working to present a united front. Marcos defended Rodrigo Duterte’s vicious war on drugs, and Sara Duterte defended the use of a controversial phrase in a new textbook that refers to the years of martial law under the elder Ferdinand Marcos.But their balance of power is fragile. Duterte, a popular former mayor, has shown she will not serve in Marcos’s shadow. She has set up satellite offices in key cities and could be a strong candidate in 2028.Diplomacy: The stakes are high for the U.S. as it tries to deepen its ties to Southeast Asia, where China is increasingly trying to gain influence. The Philippines is a key security partner and its oldest treaty ally in the region.Families: Dynasties dominate national politics in the Philippines — just a few families constitute up to 70 percent of Congress.THE LATEST NEWSAround the WorldMillions of Brazilians believe that October’s presidential election was rigged, despite analyses finding nothing of the sort.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesDeeply rooted conspiracy theories and mass delusion drove Brazilians to riot.Violent riots in Peru over the ouster of the former president are sweeping the country. At least 17 people were killed on Monday in what a rights activist called “a massacre” by security forces.President Biden is meeting with the leaders of Mexico and Canada in Mexico City. They are seeking to make headway on an immigration surge and the fight against drug trafficking.The War in UkraineSoledar, a small city in eastern Ukraine, is close to Bakhmut, Russia’s ultimate prize. Roman Chop/Associated PressThe fight for the small eastern city of Soledar has intensified, as Russia seeks to gain a foothold around Bakhmut, an eastern Ukraine city.The Wagner Group, a private military contracting company, has recruited prisoners and is leading the offensive for Russia. Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said he would send more troops and arms to the east.Ukrainian soldiers will travel to the U.S. to learn how to operate the Patriot missile system.More than 200 Russian doctors signed a letter urging President Vladimir Putin to give Aleksei Navalny, the imprisoned opposition politician, medical care. They signed with their full names, a rare example of public criticism.U.S. NewsPresident Biden’s lawyers found classified documents in his former office, White House officials said.A 6-year-old who shot his teacher in Virginia last week appeared to do so intentionally, the police said.Heavy rains caused flooding in California.Damar Hamlin, the football player who went into cardiac arrest during a game, was released from intensive care.A Morning ReadThe Sydney Modern is an extension of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.Petrina Tinslay for The New York TimesThe Sydney Modern, which opened last month, doubles the exhibition space of one of Australia’s most important institutions. The modern design, and a new curatorial focus, are an attempt to reframe Sydney as a cultural hub with Indigenous roots and close ties to Asia, instead of looking to Europe or the U.S. for validation.ARTS AND IDEASHarry, unbuttoned“Spare” at a bookstore in London yesterday.Andrew Testa for The New York Times“Spare,” Prince Harry’s memoir, is an emotional and embittered book, my colleague Alexandra Jacobs writes in her review.“Like its author, ‘Spare’ is all over the map — emotionally as well as physically,” Alexandra writes. The entire project is mired in a paradox, she writes: Harry is demanding attention, despite his stated effort to renounce his fame.Above all, “Spare” is a bridge-burner, our London bureau chief writes. Harry frames his family as complicit in a poisonous public-relations contest, dashing hopes for a reconciliation anytime soon. He is raunchy, joking about a frostbitten penis and how he lost his virginity. He’s vindictive: He details fights with Prince William, portraying his brother as ill-tempered, entitled and violent. And he grieves his mother, Princess Diana, his repressed recollections unlocked by therapy and a whiff of her perfume.The deepening rift could complicate King Charles III’s coronation, planned for May. And the memoir may also finally exhaust the public’s patience with the self-exiled couple, even in the U.S. Still, the ubiquitous coverage is unlikely to damage sales, at least in the short term. Here are 11 takeaways from the tell-all.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookDavid Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews.
    Yakisoba is a Japanese stir-fried noodle dish with a tangy-sweet sauce.What to WatchHere’s what Times staff think should win at the Oscars.What to ReadIn “The Half Known Life,” a secular seeker visits holy sites to study ideas of the world beyond.How to WorkFocus like it’s 1990.Now Time to PlayPlay the Mini Crossword, and a clue: Messy situation (five letters).Here are the Wordle and the Spelling Bee.You can find all our puzzles here.That’s it for today’s briefing. See you next time. — AmeliaP.S. Tell us about your reading goals for 2023.“The Daily” is on the meltdown of Southwest Airlines over the holidays.Questions? Comments? Email me at briefing@nytimes.com. More

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    ‘Where’s My Flying Car?’ Is a Legitimate Question

    In December, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they had achieved on Earth what is commonplace within stars: They had fused hydrogen isotopes, releasing more energy in the reaction than was used in the ignition. The announcement came with enough caveats to make it clear that usable nuclear fusion remains, optimistically, decades away. But the fact that nuclear fusion will not change our energy system over the next year doesn’t mean it shouldn’t change our energy ambitions for the coming years.There are three goals a society can have for its energy usage. One is to use less. That is, arguably, the goal that took hold in the 1970s. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” is the key mantra here, with the much-ignored instruction to reduce coming first for a reason. Today, that ambition persists in the thinking of degrowthers and others who believe humanity courts calamity if we don’t respect our limits and discard fantasies of endless growth.The second goal is to use what we use now, but better. That is where modern climate policy has moved. The vision of decarbonization — now being pursued through policy, like last year’s Inflation Reduction Act — is to maintain roughly the energy patterns we have but shift to nonpolluting sources like wind and solar. Decarbonization at this speed and scale is so daunting a task that it is hard to look beyond it, to the third possible goal: a world of energy abundance.In his fascinating, frustrating book “Where Is My Flying Car?” J. Storrs Hall argues that we do not realize how much our diminished energy ambitions have cost us. Across the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the energy humanity could harness grew at about 7 percent annually. Humanity’s compounding energetic force, he writes, powered “the optimism and constant improvement of life in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.”But starting around 1970, the curve flattened, particularly in rich countries, which began doing more with less. In 1979, for instance, Americans consumed about 10.8 kilowatts per person. In 2019 we consumed about 9.2 kilowatts a person. To a conservationist, this looks like progress, though not nearly enough, as a glance at CO2 emissions will confirm. To Hall, it was a civilizational catastrophe.His titular flying car stands in for all that we were promised in the mid-20th century but don’t yet have: flying cars, of course, but also lunar bases, nuclear rockets, atomic batteries, nanotechnology, undersea cities, affordable supersonic air travel and so on. Hall harvests these predictions and many more from midcentury sci-fi writers and prognosticators and sorts them according to their cost in energy. What he finds is that the marvels we did manage — the internet, smartphones, teleconferencing, Wikipedia, flat-screen televisions, streaming video and audio content, mRNA vaccines, rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, to name just a few — largely required relatively little energy and the marvels we missed would require masses of it.But they are possible. We’ve flown plenty of flying car prototypes over the decades. The water crises of the future could be solved by mass desalination. Supersonic air travel is a solved technological problem. Lunar bases lie well within the boundaries of possibility. The path that Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, outlined for nanotechnology — build machines that are capable of building smaller machines that are capable of building smaller machines that are capable of, well, you get it — still seems plausible. What we need is energy — much, much more of it. But Hall thinks we’ve become an “ergophobic” society, which he defines as a society gripped by “the almost inexplicable belief that there is something wrong with using energy.”Here, Hall’s account drips with contempt for anyone who does not dive out of the way of today’s industrialists. He reaches back to old H.G. Wells stories to find the right metaphor for where our civilization went sideways, finding it in the feckless Eloi, a post-human race that collapsed into the comforts of abundance. The true conflict, he says, is not between the haves and the have-nots but between the doers and the do-nots. “The do-nots favor stagnation and are happy turning our civilization into a collective couch potato,” he writes. And in his view, the do-nots are winning.“Where Is My Flying Car?” is a work of what I’d call reactionary futurism. It loves the progress technology can bring; it can’t stand the soft, flabby humans who stand in the future’s way. There is nothing inexplicable about why country after country sought energy conservation or why it remains an aim. A partial list would include poisoned rivers and streams, smog-choked cities, the jagged edge of climate change and ongoing mass extinction and the geopolitical costs of being hooked on oil from Saudi Arabia and gas from Russia.Hall gives all this short shrift, describing climate change as “a hangnail, not a hangman” (for whom, one wants to ask), and focusing on the villainy of lawyers and regulators and hippies. He laments how the advent of nuclear weapons made war so costly that it “short-circuited the evolutionary process,” in which “a society that slid into inefficient cultural or governmental practices was likely to be promptly conquered by the baron next door.”Hall’s sociopolitical theories are as flimsy as his technical analyses are careful. His book would imply that countries with shallow public sectors would race ahead of their statist peers in innovation and that nations threatened by violent neighbors would be better governed and more technologically advanced than, say, the United States.Among his central arguments is that government funding and attention paradoxically impedes the technologies it’s meant to help, but — curiously for a book about energy — he has little to say about the astonishing progress in solar, wind and battery power that’s been driven by public policy. He predicts that if solar and wind “prove actually usable on a large scale,” environmentalists would turn on them. “Their objections really have nothing to do with pollution, or radiation, or risk, or global warming,” he writes. “They are about keeping abundant, cheap energy out of the hands of ordinary people.”But on this branch of the multiverse, most every environmentalist group of note fought to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which was really the Deploy Solar and Wind Everywhere and Invest in Every Energy Technology We Can Think of Act. And if they had their way, it would have been far bigger and far better funded.Indeed, the existence of Hall’s book is a challenge to its thesis. “Where Is My Flying Car?” is now distributed by Stripe Press, the publishing offshoot of the digital payment company Stripe, which was started by two Irish immigrants in California. That state is the home of the postmaterialist counterculture that Hall sees as the beating heart of Eloi politics, and there is little fear of a near-term invasion by Mexican forces. Even so, California has housed a remarkable series of technological advances and institutions over the past century, and it continues to do so. The fusion breakthrough, for instance, was made by government scientists working in, yes, Northern California. There is an interplay here that is far more complex than Hall’s theories admit.But Hall’s book is worth struggling with because he’s right about two big things. First, that the flattening of the energy curve was a moment of civilizational import and one worth revisiting. And second, that many in politics have abandoned any real vision of the long future. Too often, the right sees only the imagined glories of the past, and the left sees only the injustices of the present. The future exists in our politics mainly to give voice to our fears or urgency to our agendas. We’ve lost sight of the world that abundant, clean energy could make possible.The remarkable burst of prosperity and possibility that has defined the past few hundred years has been a story of energy. “Take any variable of human well-being — longevity, nutrition, income, mortality, overall population — and draw a graph of its value over time,” Charles Mann writes in “The Wizard and the Prophet.” “In almost every case it skitters along at a low level for thousands of years, then rises abruptly in the 18th and 19th centuries, as humans learn to wield the trapped solar power in coal, oil and natural gas.”Without energy, even material splendor has sharp limits. Mann notes that visitors to the Palace of Versailles in February 1695 marveled at the furs worn to dinners with the king and the ice that collected on the glassware. It was freezing in Versailles, and no amount of wealth could fix it. A hundred years later, Thomas Jefferson had a vast wine collection and library in Monticello and the forced labor of hundreds of slaves, but his ink still froze in his inkwells come winter.Today, heating is a solved problem for many. But not for all. There are few inequalities more fundamental than energy inequality. The demographer Hans Rosling had a striking way of framing this. In 2010 he argued that you could group humanity by the energy people had access to. At the time, roughly two billion people had little or no access to electricity and still cook food and heat water by fire. About three billion had access to enough electricity to power electric lights. An additional billion or so had the energy and wealth for labor-saving appliances like washing machines. It’s only the richest billion people who could afford to fly, and they — we — used around half of global energy.The first reason to want energy abundance is to make energy and the gifts it brings available to all. Rosling put this well, describing how his mother loaded the laundry and then took him to the library, how she used the time she’d once spent cleaning clothes to teach herself English. “This is the magic,” he said. “You load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books.” There is no global aid strategy we could pursue that would do nearly as much as making energy radically cheaper, more reliable and more available.Then there is all we could do if we had the cheap, clean and abundant energy needed to do it. In a paper imagining “energy superabundance,” Austin Vernon and Eli Dourado sketch out some of the near-term possibilities. “Flights that take 15 hours on a 747 could happen in an hour on a point-to-point rocket,” they write. Vertical greenhouses could feed far more people, and desalination, which even now is a major contributor to water supplies in Singapore and Israel, would become affordable for poorer, populous nations that need new water sources most. Directly removing carbon dioxide from the air would become more plausible, giving us a path to reversing climate change over time.Vernon and Dourado’s definition of superabundance is fairly modest: They define it as every person on Earth having access to about twice the power Icelanders use annually. But what if fusion or other technologies give us energy that becomes functionally limitless? I enjoyed the way Benjamin Reinhardt, a self-proclaimed ergophile, rendered this kind of world, writing in the online journal Works in Progress:You could wake up in your house on the beautiful coast of an artificial island off the coast of South America. You’re always embarrassed at the cheap synthesized sand whenever guests visit, but people have always needed to sacrifice to afford space for a family. You say goodbye to yours and leave for work. On your commute, you do some work on a new way of making high-temperature superconductors. You’re a total dilettante but the combination of fixed-price for infinite compute and the new trend of inefficient but modular technology has created an inventor out of almost everybody. Soon enough, you reach the bottom of the Singaporean space elevator: Cheap space launches, the low cost of rail-gunning raw material into space and decreased material costs made the whole thing work out economically. Every time you see that impossibly thin cable stretching up, seemingly into nothingness, it boggles your mind — if that’s possible, what else is? You check out the new shipment of longevity drugs, which can only be synthesized in pristine zero-G conditions. Then you scoot off to a last-minute meet-up with friends in Tokyo.As you all enjoy dinner (made from ingredients grown in the same building and picked five minutes before cooking) a material scientist friend of a friend describes the latest in physics simulations. You bask in yet another serendipitous, in-person interaction, grateful for your cross-continental relationships. While you head home, you poke at your superconductor design a bit more. It’s a long shot, but it might give you the resources to pull yourself out of the bottom 25 percent, so that your kids can lead an even brighter life than you do. Things are good, you think, but they could be better.The fusion demonstration is a reminder not of what is inevitable but of what is possible. And it is not just fusion. The advance of wind and solar and battery technology remains a near miracle. The possibilities of advanced geothermal and hydrogen are thrilling. Smaller, modular nuclear reactors could make new miracles possible, like cars and planes that don’t need to be refueled or recharged. This is a world progressives, in particular, should want to hasten into existence. Clean, abundant energy is the foundation on which a more equal, just and humane world can be built.“In 100 or 200 years, everything will look radically different,” Melissa Lott, the director of research at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told me. “Folks will look back and be blown away by how we used energy today. They’ll say, ‘Wait, you just burned it?’”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    Outrage Over Trump’s Dinner With Antisemites

    More from our inbox:Inciting Mass ShootingsThe Supreme Court, in TroubleClimate and the G.O.P.Long Lines to VoteFormer President Donald J. Trump addressed the Republican Jewish Coalition’s conference in Las Vegas on a video call this month.Mikayla Whitmore for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Jewish Allies of Trump Recoil After He Hosts 2 Antisemites” (front page, Nov. 29):Your article about Jewish Republican supporters “slowly peeling away” from Donald Trump raises the question, Why has it taken this long?In the days after he was elected, spray-painted swastikas appeared all over the country. It’s been five long years since the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va., during which hordes of white supremacists chanted “Jews will not replace us!” and Mr. Trump infamously said there were “very fine people on both sides.”As Jews, we of all people should know better than to let the fervor (and denying) mount for this long. We know the consequences.Nora ZelevanskyBrooklynTo the Editor:Donald Trump’s recent dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist leader, is another example of the former president’s proclivity to grant an audience to anyone who feeds his ego.Mr. Trump did much for the Jewish people and Israel during his presidency. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved our embassy to this ancient city. The Abraham Accords are the most significant peace development in the Middle East since Camp David in the 1970s. On a personal level, the president’s daughter Ivanka is a convert to Judaism.But apparently, all it took were a few kind words of flattery for Mr. Trump to grant an audience with two notorious antisemites. Leaders from Russia, China and North Korea will undoubtedly exploit this personal tendency of Mr. Trump’s to their advantage should he regain office.In 2024, voters must ask themselves if they can stomach Mr. Trump’s transactional notion of “friendship” for another four years.David WedenDover, Mass.To the Editor:A few Republican politicians are speaking out against the former president’s dinner with two men with offensive views. Is this because those politicians are suddenly aware of Donald Trump’s previous antisemitic statements, or because he is apparently beginning to lose voter approval?Joann Green BreuerBostonTo the Editor:Very few topics infuriate me as an American Jew more than hearing prominent American Jews defending Donald Trump, particularly in the wake of his latest foray into antisemitic behavior. Mr. Trump made blatant antisemitism acceptable after he indirectly lauded those chanting “Jews will not replace us!” in Charlottesville.His bigotry is not confined to Jews, and his vitriol has led to sharp increases in violence against Asian Americans, Black people and Latino immigrants. His track record of bigotry and hatred violates everything Judaism teaches, and his cozy dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes should not, cannot, be glossed over and tolerated.I am a Jew, but I am an American first and foremost, and I care about the values that our leaders espouse and display to the world.The near-universal disdain that Mr. Trump is viewed with around the world should tell you everything you need to know about this dangerous man. I would classify him as a clown, but there is really nothing funny about him.Bill GottdenkerMountainside, N.J.Inciting Mass ShootingsPhotos of the victims of the Club Q attack were placed at a memorial near the scene. Joanna Kulesza for The New York TimesTo the Editor:America is experiencing a contagion of mass shootings that gun rights advocates repeatedly assert is due to mental illness. But the rates of mental illness are much the same throughout the developed world, while countries such as Britain and Australia, with strict gun controls, have almost no such incidents.Even a casual look at the genocides of the 20th century and current events demonstrates that human beings are capable of extremes of brutality and cruelty. These are kept in check by a thin patina of civilized values that may prove no more protective than a tinfoil hat under the relentless incitement of politicians who use bigotry and hate as political tools.Gail Collins reminds us (column, Nov. 24) that Donald Trump went after Glenn Youngkin, governor of Virginia and a potential rival for the Republican nomination, by saying: “Youngkin … Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?” What relevance could the sound of Mr. Youngkin’s name possibly have other than as a dog whistle cue to the next bigotry- and hatred-laden loner waiting in the shadows, angry with Asians for being … well, Asian?Constant calumny against Nancy Pelosi leads to calls for her death and a break-in and assault on her husband. Derision of the L.G.B.T.Q. community spews from extremist mouths, disinhibiting and inciting the susceptible to horrific massacres.“Good guys with guns” have shown us that they cannot stop the shooting while bad guys with big mouths go on fomenting it.Harold I. SchwartzWest Hartford, Conn.The writer, a psychiatrist, served on the Connecticut governor’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission.The Supreme Court, in Trouble“I think that every justice should be worried about the court acting as a court and functioning as a court,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in 2006.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Roberts’s Early Court Agenda: A Study in Disappointment,” by Adam Liptak (Sidebar, Nov. 22):The aspiration of Chief Justice John Roberts — to preserve the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as a venerated institution and to safeguard the credibility of its decisions — has been seriously undermined by the majority of justices currently on the court. His disappointment can be traced to two overarching factors.The conservative justices, despite their earlier assurances, have abandoned their respect for precedent, the bedrock of any worthy judicial system. That same conservative majority also ignores the time-honored mandate of the court, to decide only issues raised by the litigants and to decide them as narrowly as practicable.This court has an obvious agenda, which it pursues by reaching out for issues beyond the scope of cases being considered — the very essence of judicial activism — and then promulgates decisions that unnecessarily overturn firmly rooted constitutional protections.When the public perceives that the court’s decisions are detached from enduring legal principles and seem only to reflect the political preferences of individual justices, respect for the court is shattered and the rule of law is put in dire danger.Gerald HarrisNew YorkThe writer is a retired New York City Criminal Court judge.Climate and the G.O.P.Finding shade in cement pipes for construction in Allahabad, India, on May 31.Sanjay Kanojia/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Extreme Heat Will Change Us” (news article, Nov. 25):The parched land and heat-stressed people described in this article are the heartbreaking reality our children and grandchildren will soon face everywhere. The resulting migrations to escape the worst effects will become a tsunami.I do not understand why Republicans and others unwilling to invest in the infrastructure and lifestyle changes necessary to mitigate the severity of this outcome haven’t figured out that unless we address the climate crisis, the waves of immigrants pressing our borders in years to come will dwarf the current border “crisis” they decry.Judith Farris BowmanBennington, Vt.Long Lines to Vote Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Now that this election is over, can we please stop arguing over giving water to people standing in line to vote and instead discuss why there are such long lines to vote, and what we can do about it? Seems to me that waiting in line for more than 15 or 20 minutes should not be acceptable.J. Danton SmithHamilton, N.J. More