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The U.S. government, businesses and everyday Americans are addressing the climate crisis and improving the environment.
“Communities across America are taking more action than ever to reduce climate risks,” President Biden said November 14, announcing release of the Fifth National Climate Assessment. “We can’t be complacent. We have to keep going.”
The assessment by 300 climate experts highlights steps Americans are taking to address the climate crisis, which is already affecting all regions of the country.
Progress includes an estimated 17% decline in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 to 2021, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Arlington, Virginia.
While emissions spiked during the economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. emissions showed signs of continuing their long-term downward trajectory in 2023.
Declining emissions come as the costs of wind and solar have dropped — by 70% and 90% respectively — over the past decade, and as the U.S. population and economy have grown.
The continued declines in emissions put the United States on track to meet its goal under the Paris Agreement of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
My Administration has released the Fifth National Climate Assessment in our history. It makes clear that climate change is impacting all regions of our nation – but that communities are taking more action than ever to reduce climate risks. We have to keep that action going. pic.twitter.com/s14GbkWe1T — President Biden (@POTUS) November 14, 2023
My Administration has released the Fifth National Climate Assessment in our history.
It makes clear that climate change is impacting all regions of our nation – but that communities are taking more action than ever to reduce climate risks.
We have to keep that action going. pic.twitter.com/s14GbkWe1T
— President Biden (@POTUS) November 14, 2023
U.S. consumers are also choosing more sustainable options. In 2022, homeowners bought 4.3 million heat pumps, which do not produce direct emissions, surpassing sales of gas-powered furnaces for the first time. And in the third quarter of 2023, electric vehicle sales jumped by nearly 50% over the same period in 2022, accounting for 7.9% of car sales.
The U.S. government continues to invest in climate resilience and environmental protection. In November 2023, the Biden administration announced $6 billion in investments to improve America’s electric grid, reduce flood risks, support conservation and advance environmental justice.
Since 2021, the Biden administration has protected more than 21 million acres of public lands and waters, preventing species loss and deforestation, which contributes to climate change. Protected lands include the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska, which stores an estimated 8% of the carbon in all mainland U.S. forests combined.
“Conserving ecosystems in their natural state is the single most effective action for addressing nature deprivation, climate disaster, and the massive ongoing loss of species happening nationwide and globally,” Mark Magaña, founding president and chief executive officer of GreenLatinos, based in Washington, said in a White House statement.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, passed away on December 1 at the age of 93. ShareAmerica is featuring this previously published account of her achievements and legacy.
Since this story’s 2016 publication, women have continued to advance to America’s highest court. Justice Amy Coney Barrett has served since 2020 and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson since 2022. Former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020.
Sandra Day O’Connor knows a thing or two about breaking down barriers. As a girl on her family’s ranch in southeastern Arizona, she had wanted to go to the local cattle roundup, then an all-male event.
And she did. “Changing it to accommodate a female was probably my first initiation into joining an all-men’s club,” she recalled in her 2002 memoir.
It wasn’t her last.
O’Connor overcame barriers as a student, as an attorney and in political life. On September 25, 1981, O’Connor crashed through one final barrier, becoming the first woman to serve as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
O’Connor was born in 1930 and spent her early years learning to rope cattle and ride horses. But she soon became interested in the law. O’Connor attended Stanford Law School in California, completing her studies in just two years rather than the usual three. Despite ranking near the top of her class, she found that most law firms at the time were reluctant to hire a female attorney.
Instead O’Connor worked as a government lawyer until returning to Arizona to open her own law firm and enter local politics. She held a variety of public offices. As an Arizona state senator, she became the first woman to serve as a majority leader in a U.S. state legislature. President Ronald Reagan nominated O’Connor to the Supreme Court in 1981, and after a significant career writing opinions from the high court, she retired in 2006.
O’Connor is widely respected for her commitment to public service and her pragmatic approach to the law. But paving the way for other women in the American judicial system remains a big part of her legacy.
Three female justices have followed O’Connor on the high court: Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Today, about one-third of U.S. federal judges are women, and the number is increasing.
Justice O’Connor’s story reflects women’s improved access to higher education. Education empowers women to become leaders in their fields and in their communities. As O’Connor’s own story shows, it empowers women to shape their country’s future.
Henry Kissinger, who fled Nazi Germany in his teens and served two U.S. presidents as secretary of state, died November 29. He was 100 years old.
Widely regarded as the dominant American statesman and architect of foreign policy in the late 20th century, Kissinger was admired for his intellect and tough negotiating style. His diplomacy ended the Vietnam War and improved U.S. relations with the United States’ two primary Cold War antagonists, China and the Soviet Union.
Yet his ruthless pragmatism earned him critics, in addition to his many admirers. His policymaking approach — dubbed realpolitik — was driven by a belief that foreign policy should be guided by the national interest rather than by ideology.
In 1938, when he was 15, Kissinger and his family emigrated from their native Germany to the United States, escaping the Nazi persecution of Jews. The family settled in New York, where young Henry (originally named Heinz) worked in a factory while attending secondary school at night.
He enrolled in the City College of New York, hoping to become an accountant, but at age 19 he was drafted into the U.S. Army as the United States entered World War II. He reported for basic training in February 1943 and became a U.S. citizen four months later, at age 20.
During the war, Kissinger’s superior officers recognized his intelligence and fluency in German and steered him to the military intelligence section of the Army’s 84th Infantry Division, where he took on hazardous duties during the Battle of the Bulge.
After the war, Kissinger enrolled at Harvard College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1950. He then earned a master’s degree in 1952 and a doctorate in 1954 from Harvard University.
He joined Harvard’s faculty and wrote about Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich’s efforts to reestablish a legitimate international order in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars of 1803–1815. Metternich would influence Kissinger’s ideas years later, reinforcing a conviction that even a flawed world order is preferable to revolution or chaos.
President Richard Nixon appointed Kissinger national security adviser in 1969.
Kissinger laid the groundwork for Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, which helped to normalize U.S. relations with China.
And, as national security adviser, Kissinger focused on extricating America from the unpopular, costly Vietnam War. Pursuing “peace with honor,” he orchestrated diplomatic initiatives while the U.S. maintained pressure on the North Vietnamese through bombing raids.
Kissinger’s strategy has been considered a mixed success, as it prolonged the conflict for four years, during which thousands of American and Vietnamese soldiers were killed. Kissinger and his North Vietnamese negotiating partner, Le Duc Tho, were jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, although Duc declined his share of the award.
Kissinger was secretary of state (1973–1977) under Nixon and President Gerald Ford.
He was instrumental in accelerating the early 1970s détente between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In 1972, he negotiated the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, easing tensions between the two Cold War superpowers.
After leaving office, Kissinger taught, lectured and authored books, including a memoir (The White House Years), which won the National Book Award. He continued to advise U.S. presidents.
Together with former Secretary of Defense William Perry, former Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of State George Shultz, Kissinger called upon governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Despite his serious demeanor, Kissinger could make people laugh. “There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full,” he once quipped.
Kissinger is survived by his wife, philanthropist Nancy Maginnes Kissinger, whom he wed in 1974; by his children, Elizabeth and David (by his first wife, Ann Fleischer, to whom he was married from 1949 to 1964); and by five grandchildren.
The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 3 women have experienced or will experience gender-based violence (GBV) during their lifetimes.
A study by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that 38% of women have personally experienced online violence and 85% of women know someone who has been targeted for online violence.
GBV prevention and response is central to the U.S. government’s commitment to advancing human rights and gender equality around the world, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Geeta Rao Gupta said at the Women Deliver Conference in Kigali in July.
“Gender-based violence is not just holding women and girls back, with severe consequences for their health and well-being, and economic prospects,” Rao Gupta said, noting that GBV occurs in every country and level of society. “It is holding our global economy back, and it is holding our society back.”
According to the United Nations, gender-based violence includes sexual, physical, mental and economic harm inflicted in public or in private. It can also include coercion, manipulation and threats of violence.
Intimate partner violence; child, early and forced marriage; female genital mutilation or cutting; sex trafficking; female infanticide; and “honor” killings are all forms of gender-based violence.
The WHO reported in March 2021 that incidents of intimate partner violence are highest in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, though this form of GBV remains persistently high across all regions of the world.
“Individuals who face overlapping forms of discrimination are at an increased risk of experiencing GBV, so we really try to take an intersectional approach to our work,” Katrina Fotovat, principal deputy director in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, tells ShareAmerica. “For example, women with disabilities are four times more likely than other women to experience sexual violence.”
In addition to updating the United States Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally, the State Department works with government agencies and the private sector to implement a survivor-centered approach to GBV, which includes:
The State Department also supports efforts to educate community leaders to be advocates for eliminating gender-based violence.
“An essential part of both our foreign policy and assistance efforts is to address the structural inequities and social norms,” Fotovat says. “Our approach includes engaging men and boys in both short- and longer-term prevention efforts, and equipping youth to become advocates in their communities to challenge harmful gender norms and create a more just and peaceful society.”
And as a part of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence — an annual international campaign to educate about GBV — the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues encourages everyone to be a gender champion in daily life and research local organizations to support.
“We need people from all backgrounds and all communities to stand up for gender equality,” Fotovat said. “GBV really is a human rights issue that affects all of us.”
A version of this story was originally published November 21, 2022.
In 1913, Dr. Susan La Flesche Picotte, the first Native American to earn a medical degree, opened a hospital on the Omaha Reservation. For years, she had traveled the northeastern Nebraska reservation and its surroundings, treating patients, both Native American and white.
She braved bad weather and often worked 20 hours a day. “My office hours are any and all hours of the day and night,” La Flesche Picotte once said.
The hospital, the first on Native American land that was not funded by the federal government, was a testament to her dedication as a health-care provider to her people and to those in surrounding communities.
Born on the Omaha Reservation in 1865, La Flesche Picotte chose to become a doctor after witnessing a sick Native American woman die after a white doctor refused to come to her aid.
She was admitted to the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, one of the few medical schools in the United States or elsewhere at that time that accepted women.
La Flesche Picotte graduated in 1889, a year early and first in her class, according to the U.S. National Park Service. At 24, she returned to the Omaha Reservation and served as the sole medical provider for its residents. She also worked to address public health crises affecting Native Americans, including tuberculosis and alcoholism.
“I shall always fight good and hard, even if I have to fight alone,” she said. La Flesche Picotte died in 1915. The hospital she founded is now a museum named in her honor.
The United States is mourning the death of former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died November 19 at 96. The wife of the 39th U.S. president, Jimmy Carter, Rosalynn was first lady from 1977 to 1981 and championed causes including mental health research and equal rights.
“Rosalynn Carter exemplified hope, warmth, and a steadfast commitment to doing all she could to address many of our society’s greatest needs,” President Biden said.
Flags at U.S. government facilities will fly at half-staff in her honor from November 25 until sunset November 29, the day of her burial. Here are images from the life of this extraordinary American.
Rosalynn Carter visits a boarding school in New Delhi January 2, 1978.
From left, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, President Jimmy Carter, Margaret Trudeau and Rosalynn Carter at the White House in Washington February 21, 1977.
Rosalynn Carter testifies before the U.S. Congress February 7, 1979, on the need to improve mental health care. She was the second first lady to testify before Congress, after Eleanor Roosevelt.
Rosalynn Carter (right) and President Jimmy Carter meet with Mexican President José López Portillo and his wife, Carmen Romano de López Portillo, February 14, 1979.
Former President Carter and Rosalynn Carter were decadeslong supporters of Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit that builds safe, affordable housing in more than 70 countries. Above, the two work on a Habitat project in Memphis, Tennessee, November 2, 2015.
Keith Harper has always believed his Native American heritage helped him better represent the United States abroad.
“The extraordinary advantage we have in the United States is our diversity,” Harper told the audience at a November 15 event held at the U.S. Department of State’s National Museum of American Diplomacy in honor of Native American Heritage Month.
A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Harper served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council from 2014 to 2017. Harper was part of a U.S. delegation to the U.N. that also included ambassadors of African and Asian descent. “No other country had this kind of representation in Geneva,” he said.
Harper said that while the United States has considerable capabilities to promote human rights and sustainable development around the world, it should wield its influence with humility and fairness. “Being a Native American gives you a certain set of tools, as a diplomat representing the world’s sole superpower,” he added.
During his tenure, the diversity of the U.S. delegation often served as an icebreaker with other nations’ diplomats, Harper said, noting some had never met an American Indian. At the U.N., where progress often happens slowly, connections that spark communication can lead to compromise.
“We’re always working to build up alliances,” Harper said. “And the more you can make an intimate, one-on-one connection with someone — of whatever heritage, for whatever reason — the easier it will be to find common ground and advance towards your goals.”
“Diplomacy is about relationships,” he added. “We’re all just human beings; you represent your country, and I represent mine. We won’t agree on everything, but let’s work to get some things done.”
Ensuring the U.S. government reflects America’s diversity is a continuing priority. After taking office in January 2021, President Biden assembled nearly 1,500 people from previously underrepresented minority groups to serve in high-level positions in the executive branch.
While waiting for the turkey roasting in the oven for their Thanksgiving dinner, many Americans watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on television or the internet. And millions forgo the comfort of their homes to get in on the excitement by lining the parade route along New York City streets.
Tom Turkey (in the photo above) is the parade’s most famous float and always opens the event, sponsored by Macy’s department store. Here’s a brief history of the parade in pictures:
The first parade was held in 1924, and in the early years it featured live animals from Central Park Zoo. In 1927, officials substituted large helium balloons in the shapes of animals, a change that must have made things a little bit easier.
Today, the parade attracts 3.5 million people along the 4-kilometer route and millions more who watch the spectacle unfold on screens. A menagerie of floats, soaring helium balloons, clowns, marching bands, performers and celebrities roll, float or step down the city streets.
Above, handlers guide Andy the Alligator along the New York parade route in 1933.
Parade floats in the early years mirrored Macy’s Christmas window displays of popular nursery rhymes, such as Little Miss Muffet, shown at left. In 1934, Walt Disney and Tony Sarg, a German American puppeteer and the parade’s creative director, helped Mickey Mouse make a grand debut as one of the parade’s inflatable balloons. Twenty-five handlers — dressed as Mickey and Minnie Mouse, of course — escorted the 12-meter balloon during the parade.
Store officials originally decided to hold the parade to draw shoppers to Macy’s flagship store on 34th Street. Macy’s employees, many of whom were first-generation European immigrants, suggested it, recalling the festivals they knew and loved in Europe. During the first parade in 1924, the store’s workers participated as clowns, cowboys, knights and other characters.
Clowns, like this one from the 1949 parade, have always engaged with the audience, adding to the excitement for spectators.
Members of the all-women precision dance company The Radio City Rockettes have performed in the parade since 1957. Over the years, the New York-based dancers have also kicked up their heels for soldiers abroad during wartime and at presidential inaugurations. Here they perform a dance routine in the 2014 parade.
High school and college marching bands from across the United States perform at the parade. Every year, the Macy’s Band Selection Committee decides which bands get to perform. The application package includes video footage of the band in action at a halftime show or competitive event. This year, the parade will feature nine high school and college marching bands.
Here, the West Virginia University Marching Band walks along Sixth Avenue during the 2016 parade.
Floats and giant balloons — including Grogu, popularly known as Baby Yoda, a character from The Mandalorian television series, and Peanuts comics’ Snoopy, the parade’s longest-running giant character balloon — head down Central Park West in 2021.
The parade has been held every year on Thanksgiving Day except for three years during World War II, when the U.S. military needed helium (used in large balloon figures floated above the parade) and rubber (used in tires on parade vehicles) for the war effort. In 2020 the parade took place but, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, without spectators along the route.
The parade regularly features famous performers, from the 96-year-old singer Tony Bennett to the 26-year-old actress/singer Zendaya. Above, in 2021, as the parade participants once again were able to interact with viewers along the route, Grammy- and Oscar-winning musician Jon Batiste waves from a float that honors the state of Louisiana.
Macy’s has hired Santa actors to welcome children to its flagship store since the 1860s. And Macy’s even looms large in Miracle on 34th Street, the 1947 film about a girl who finds the real Santa Claus — known as Kris Kringle — working in the store.
In the early years, the parade was called the Macy’s Christmas Parade. And while more emphasis has been put on Thanksgiving Day in recent years, tradition still dictates that Santa Claus closes the parade to usher in the holiday season. Many children know to watch the entire parade to get a glimpse of Santa, and the New York crowd gives Santa rounds of hearty applause.
A version of this story was originally published on November 17, 2022.
For Jeneba Ghatt, jollof rice, a traditional dish from Sierra Leone, is such a big part of her family’s Thanksgiving that the holiday tradition isn’t the same without it.
When Ghatt’s mother was ill last year and unable to cook the rice dish prepared with tomato sauce and served under a stew of beef, chicken or fish, the holiday felt incomplete.
It was like “we failed at Thanksgiving because there was no jollof rice,” says Ghatt, who came to the United States from Sierra Leone as a young child and now lives in the Maryland suburbs of Washington.
Ghatt has now learned to cook jollof rice and will serve the dish alongside a Thanksgiving turkey when her husband, children and three siblings celebrate this year. “It’s home, it’s comfort, it’s family,” she said, describing jollof rice’s place on her Thanksgiving table.
Ghatt is one of many Americans who incorporate recipes from their ancestral homes into Thanksgiving. Some Chinese American families add sticky rice stuffing to their Thanksgiving meal, while some Mexican Americans serve up tamales.
Nataliya Mikhnova brings Ukrainian borsch, a beet soup, to Thanksgiving meals. Her family received two invites last year to their first Thanksgiving after settling in the United States following Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
Mikhnova says she loves the mix of cultures that was a part of her first Thanksgiving in a new country. Her family arrived in Ukrainian dress and learned how to cook traditional Thanksgiving dishes.
“It’s a warm family holiday,” Mikhnova said. “This celebration is appropriate for us now because we have so many things to be thankful for. We are in safety.”
Rosemarie DeLuca’s Italian heritage has long been at the center of her family’s Thanksgiving meals. Her father refused poultry after eating raw chicken while stationed overseas with the Army in the 1950s, so the family’s “turkey day” became synonymous with homemade lasagna.
Cooking from memory a recipe from the family’s ancestral home in Naples, Italy, DeLuca’s grandmother piled on luscious layers of cheese and pasta for lasagna served with sausage links and meatballs steeped in a homemade sauce.
DeLuca’s mother eventually learned the recipe. Yet DeLuca says because of gluten sensitivities in the family, lasagna is now reserved for those big Thanksgiving celebrations when her siblings visit. But growing up DeLuca never missed the turkey dinners other families ate on Thanksgiving. “We thought ‘we are the cool ones’,” she said. “We’re Italian. We eat pasta.”
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