GOOD

Texas Sportscaster Takes Down Treatment Of Transgender High School Wrestler

“Someone has to find a better answer”

 Penn Collins
03.03.17

When Mack Beggs won the Texas Girls High School Wrestling championship, he wasn’t looking for fame. He was looking for a shot at the boys’ title, since the wrestler, born female, identifies as such. Instead, he found himself as another face in the controversies surrounding transgender rights and classification.

Fortunately, Mack has found a powerful ally in Dallas-based sportscaster Dale Hansen, who’s known nationally for offering poignant editorials when sports and social issues collide. Last night, Hansen took a few minutes on-air to offer his thoughts and...exasperation.

Texas law currently forces athletes to compete as the sex given on their birth certificate and Hansen’s argument for Mack to wrestle other boys is cloaked in ideology, but it remains a practical one. Mack began his transition in 2015 and, as Hansen puts it, “Mack’s been taking testosterone...and it shows.” This isn’t fair to the girls he wrestles just as it isn’t fair to him to be categorized as something he doesn’t feel he is – a female. It would be a different discussion if this was a transgender teen born a boy wanting to compete against girls, but that’s not the case here.

Hansen doesn’t proclaim to have an answer for the handling of gender identity in sports, offering only “That’s way above my pay grade.” But he does insist “someone has to find a better answer than we’re being given now.”

This isn’t Hansen’s first foray into social controversies in sports. In 2014, he made national news from his local station by offering his thoughts on the falling NFL draft position of openly gay Missouri football player Michael Sam.

Sports figures are often told to “stay in their lane” when it comes to offering opinions on social issues, but Hansen seems to be at his very best when he drifts out.

Sports

Greta Thunberg inspires while Donald Trump is mocked at the UN Climate Summit

via GOOD / YouTube

Last Friday, millions of people in 150 countries across the globe took to the streets to urge world leaders to enact dramatic solutions to combat climate change.

The Climate Strike was inspired, in part, by Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old girl from Sweden who has captured worldwide attention for her tireless work to hold lawmakers responsible for the climate crisis.

The strike gave people across the planet the opportunity to make their voices heard before the U.N. General Assembly Climate Summit in New York City on Monday.

Keep Reading Show less
United Nations greta thunberg trump climate crisis
The Planet

Youth activists gather to fight climate change at UN Summit: 'We need to transform anger into action'

Julian Meehan

Young leaders from around the world are gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York Saturday to address arguably the most urgent issue of our time. The Youth Climate Summit comes on the heels of an international strike spearheaded by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, who arrived in New York via emissions-free sailboat earlier this month.

Translated from Swedish, "berg" means "mountain," so it may feel fated that a young woman with Viking blood in her veins and summit in her name would be at the helm. But let's go out on a limb and presume Thunberg, in keeping with most activists, would chafe at the notion of pre-ordained "destiny," and rightly so. Destiny is passive — it happens to you. It's also egomaniacal. Change, on the other hand, is active; you have to fight. And it is humble. "We need to get angry and understand what is at stake," Thunberg declared. "And then we need to transform that anger into action."

This new generation of activists' most pernicious enemy is denial. The people in charge — complacent politicians and corporation heads who grossly benefit from maintaining the status quo — are buffered from real-life consequences of climate change. But millions of people don't share that privilege. For them, climate change isn't an abstract concept, but a daily state of emergency, whether it comes in the form of "prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa…devastating tropical storms sweeping across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific…[or] heatwaves and wildfires," as Amnesty International reportsare all too real problems people are facing on a regular basis.

RELATED: Greta Thunberg urges people to turn to nature to combat climate change

Keep Reading Show less
climate crisis un summit activists activism
The Planet

The UN Paris Agreement was 3 years ago; here's how countries are doing with their climate goals

Climate Action Tracker

In 2016, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, pledging to combat climate change by taking action to curb the increase in global temperatures. The Paris Agreement requires countries to report on their emissions and what steps they're taking to implement those plans. Now that the countries are coming together again for the U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City, it's worth taking a look at what kind of progress they've made.

The Climate Action Trackerkeeps tabs on what each country is doing to limit warming, and if they're meeting their self-set goals. Countries are graded based on whether or not their actions would help limit warming to 1.5 degrees C.

According to a recent article from National Geographic, The Gambia, Morocco, and India are at the head of the class. "Even though carbon emissions in The Gambia, Morocco, and India are expected to rise, they'll fall short of exceeding the 1.5-degree Celsius limit," the article reads. Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States, on the other hand, get a big fat F. "Projected emissions in Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States are far greater than what it would take to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius."

Keep Reading Show less
climate strike paris agreement global warming un
The Planet

How you can get involved in the Global Climate Strike

September 20th marks the beginning of a pivotal push for the future of our planet. The Global Climate Strike will set the stage for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, where more than 60 nations are expected to build upon their commitment to 2015's Paris Agreement for combating climate change.

Millions of people are expected to take part in an estimated 4,000 events across 130 countries.

Keep Reading Show less
global climate strike greta thunberg united nations climate change
The Planet

The EPA announced it will begin to phase out animal testing

It will be cruelty-free by 2035.

Ottawa Humane Society / Flickr

The Trump Administration won't be remembered for being kind to animals.

In 2018, it launched a new effort to reinstate cruel hunting practices in Alaska that had been outlawed under Obama. Hunters will be able to shoot hibernating bear cubs, murder wolf and coyote cubs while in their dens, and use dogs to hunt black bears.

Efforts to end animal cruelty by the USDA have been curtailed as well. In 2016, under the Obama Administration, the USDA issued 4,944 animal welfare citations, in two years the numbers dropped to just 1,716.

Keep Reading Show less
enviornmental protection agency humane society andrew wheeler Humane Society PETA epa to end animal testing
Science