It is becoming increasingly difficult for US states to find drugs to execute people with.

Since I think the death penalty is wrong regardless of how it is carried out, I am bemused by the focus on side issues, such as which people are fit for execution and which are not, or the method to be used.

Young Americans increasingly long for a 1950s world in which the men work full time and earn enough to support the whole family, while the women stay at home.

I can understand the appeal of that, in comparison with today's world, in which a couple must both work full time, if they can find work, and even that barely supports a family.

Why have things got worse? Part of the responsibility lies with plutocracy and business-supremacy treaties, which have knocked down wages in real terms for most Americans. Part of it lies with the fact that we are taking from the Earth's ecosphere above its rate of regeneration. Global heating is going to reduce everyone's standard of living, except the rich if they can buy their way out of their fair share of the damage.

The ethical way to shield yourself partially from the effects of this is to avoid having children. The way to fix the problems for real is to defeat plutocracy.

Driverless cars will have trouble dealing with many problems in the surrounding environment, which human drivers can recognize without difficulty.

Don't try using them in Iraq, for instance — they don't recognize shells exploding.

In the long term, California's aquifers keep draining. Wet years don't replenish as much as people take in dry years.

Endangered species protection has saved many species. Here are some new examples.

It can continue to do so, as long as we keep up doing it, and as long as the threats are what we have known in the past.

However, when global heating messes up nearly all the ecosystems on Earth, our protection measures will be unable to cope with that. And we won't have much attention to spare for that when we can barely keep most humans fed.