Contributors to Climate Change, China's Food Revolution, Hoover's King Pursuit, and the Failed F-35

 #Bill Gates, "A Green Premium," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "The biggest contributor to climate change is manufacturing -- making things like steel, cement and plastic -- at 31% of global emissions. Second in line is producing electricity, at 27% of emissions; after that comes growing things like crops, at 19%. Transportation comes in fourth at 16%, followed by the emissions from heating and cooling buildings."

#Charlie Campbell, "The Vegan Dynasty," TIME, February 1/February 8, 2021. - "China is on the cusp of a plant-based-protein revolution that has investors as well as diners licking their lips." "Today, China consumes 28% of the world's meat, including half of all pork. Halving China's annual animal-agricultural sector could result in a 1 billion-metric-ton reduction of CO2 emissions."

"China's government has published guidelines to cut meat consumption in half by 2030 to reduce pollution and combat obesity." "China, like the world, is waking up to the risks of asking our planet to support 7.7 billion people, as well as 677 million pigs, 1.5 billion cattle, 1 billion sheep, 23 billion chickens."

#Anthony Lane, "Surveillance," The New Yorker, January 25, 2021. - "As an internal F.B.I. report read: 'We must mark him [Martin Luther King, Jr.] as the most dangerous Negro in the future of this nation'; but in addition, Hoover also publicly referred to King as ' the world's most notorious liar.' "

"Hoover's F.B.I. was not some rogue outfit, but a core component of the existing social structure, welded firmly to public opinion."

#"The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted the F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed," Forbes, February 23, 2021.

"The 25-ton stealth warplane has become the very problem it was supposed to solve. And now America needs a 'new' fighter to solve that F-35 problem, officials say." "With a sticker price of around $100 million per plane, including the engine, the F-35 is expensive. While stealthy and brimming with high-tech sensors, it's also maintenance-intensive, buggy and unreliable. 'The F-35 is not a low-cost, light-weight fighter,' said Dan Ward, a former Air Force program manager and the author of popular business books, including 'The Simplicity Cycle.' " "Hence the need for a new low-end fighter to pick up the slack in day-to-day operations."

"As conceived in the 1990s, the program was supposed  to produce thousands of fighters to displace almost all of the existing tactical warplanes in the inventories of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps." "The Air Force alone wanted nearly 1,800 F-35s to replace aging F-16s and A-10s, and constitute the low-end of a low-high fighter mix, with 180 F-22s making up the high end."

"But the Air Force and Lockheed baked failure into the F-35's very concept. 'They tried to make the F-35 do too much,' said Dan Grazier, an analyst with the 'Project on Government Oversight' in Washington, DC." "There's a small-wing version for land-based operations, big-wing version for the Navy's catapult-equipped aircraft carriers, and, for the small-deck assault ships the Marines ride in, a vertical-landing model with a downward-blasting lift engine." 

"The complexity added cost. Rising costs imposed delays. Delays gave developers more time to add yet more complexity to the design."

"Fifteen years after the F-35's first flight, the Air Force has just 250 of the jets. Now the service is signaling cuts to the program."