As Planned Parenthood grapples with a series of attacks against it by anti-choice forces, the political stakes are intensifying as the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate readies to vote on a measure that would strip all federal funding from the non-profit women’s health organization.

Three covertly-filmed videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing fetal tissue donations have prompted some in Congress to renew the debate over the government’s financial support of the organization. Senate Republicans are gearing up to vote on a bill that would cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood, which already receives limited subsidies from the government and is prohibited from spending taxpayer money on abortions.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and introduced on Tuesday, states: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no federal funds may be made available to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, or any of its affiliates.”

One GOP senator who was familiar with the bill said that under the new legislation, funds would be redirected to “other groups that deal with women’s health,” CNN reports.

It is unclear whether the bill would pick up enough Democratic support to surpass the necessary 60 votes. Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.) both criticized the bill, according to CNN.

“Look, the bottom line is, Planned Parenthood does a great job protecting women’s health,” Schumer said. “And I think, if you look at the polling data, the American people are overwhelmingly in favor of allowing Planned Parenthood to continue funding women’s health.”

The House of Representatives appears unlikely to vote on defunding Planned Parenthood before the August recess despite mounting pressure on Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). And President Barack Obama would almost certainly veto any such bill, although more details on the legislation are expected to emerge this week. 

Pope Francis’s bold call to tackle climate change and save the planet appears to be in conflict with U.S. Catholic churches’ millions of dollars of investments in fossil fuels industries, including fracking, a new Reuters report shows.

Journalist Richard Valdmanis combed through church disclosures and portfolios and found: “Dioceses covering Boston, Rockville Center on Long Island, Baltimore, Toledo, and much of Minnesota have all reported millions of dollars in holdings in oil and gas stocks in recent years.”

“The holdings tend to make up between 5 and 10 percent of the dioceses’ overall equities investments,” Valdmanis noted, “similar to the 7.1 percent weighting of energy companies on the S&P 500 index, according to the documents.”

Furthermore, the investigation finds that, while the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops provides ethical guidelines discouraging investments in firms related to contraception, abortion, pornography, and war, it does not issue similar warnings about fossil fuels stocks.

Russia must compensate the Netherlands for its seizure of a Greenpeace ship two years ago, which led to the arrest of 30 international environmental activists, a court in the Hague ruled on Monday.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled that Russia’s September 2013 seizure of the Arctic Sunrise and the jailing of those on board was unlawful, and said the Netherlands “is entitled to compensation with interest for material damage” to the ship and the crew, who became known as the Arctic 30.

Activists had scaled an offshore oil rig owned by Russian energy company Gazprom in a protest against Arctic drilling. In response, Russian authorities intercepted Greenpeace’s vessel in international waters and took the crew into custody at gunpoint, sparking international outcry over what many saw as excessive and hostile treatment of the peaceful demonstrators and journalists.

Russia returned the ship to the Netherlands last year, but not before detaining the activists for months.

Monday’s ruling found that Russia had violated some of the requirements of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which had ordered authorities to promptly release the Arctic Sunrise and the protesters. Russia must also pay back the bail money raised by the Dutch people to free the detained protesters.

“Russia had failed to satisfy the ‘promptness’ of the requirements of the ITLOS,” the PCA said, adding that this “amounted to a breach of Russia’s obligations under the convention.”

Responding to a growing call to get money out of politics—and strong policy stances by her more progressive rivals—Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton announced Tuesday that should she be elected president, she would work to stem the influence of big-monied donors and overturn Citizen’s United.

“We have to end the flood of secret, unaccountable money that is distorting our elections, corrupting our political system, and drowning out the voices of too many everyday Americans,” Clinton said in a statement released by her campaign. “Our democracy should be about expanding the franchise, not charging an entrance fee. It starts with overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, and continues with structural reform to our campaign finance system so there’s real sunshine and increased participation.”

The full plan, which the candidate will reportedly roll out sometime later this week, calls for “the overturning of 2010’s Citizens United v FEC decision that paved the way for the creation of super PACs; the implementation of a more rigorous political spending disclosure regime; and a new public matching system for small donations to presidential and congressional campaigns,” Politico reports.

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Progressive advocates of campaign finance reform, who have pushed the candidates to take such positions, welcomed Clinton’s announcement. However, more skeptical observers also noted that her history of big-money ties runs the risk of undermining the substance of her rhetoric.

“Clinton is in an awkward position on campaign finance,” writes Los Angeles Times reporter Evan Halper. “She is calling for a reversal of the court’s decision, vowing to nominate justices who would uphold limits on campaign spending. She has also said she would push for a constitutional amendment if the court will not bend.”

“But,” Halper adds, “the candidate herself is taking advantage of the openings the court created as well as the laxity of the Federal Election Commission to raise eye-popping amounts of cash.”

As Jon Schwarz wrote at the Intercept last month:

Indeed, in the second quarter of 2015, Clinton’s campaign raised nearly $50 million—more than any other Democrat or Republican contender. And Priorities USA Action, the primary Super PAC backing her bid, raised $15.6 million in the first half of 2015.

In comparison, Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s top competitor for the Democratic nomination, has from the outset of his campaign refused to accept support from Super PACs. Vox’s Jonathan Allen argues that the surprising success of Sanders’ campaign has pushed Clinton to take such a strong stance on campaign finance reform.

Clinton’s announcement also comes about a week after another Democratic rival, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley signed a pledge by campaign finance advocacy group Democracy Matters to support publicly financed elections—a promise which Sanders has also signed, but the frontrunner has yet to make. Further, O’Malley has made it one of the 15 goals of his campaign to institute publicly financed congressional campaigns within five years.

In a statement following the announcement, Kurt Walters, campaign manager of the money in politics reform organization Rootstrikers, commended the proposal. However, he noted that the former Sectary of State, known for her strong ties to Wall Street, must follow through by surrounding herself with people who also want to advance an agenda of getting money out of politics.

“While it’s encouraging to see Sec. Clinton start to lay out concrete proposals for money in politics reform, it’s important to keep in mind what she wrote last week: personnel is policy,” Walters said. “Sec. Clinton can show she is truly serious about this vital issue—during the campaign and beyond—by putting personnel in place with a track record of advancing reform and standing up to big corporations trying to keep their chokehold over the system.”

And David Donnelly, president and CEO of open democracy group Every Voice, said that her plan makes it clear that Clinton “recognizes that in order to create government of, by, and for the people—not just the wealthy campaign funders—it’s crucial to amplify the voices of regular voters.”

Donnelly added, “That’s why Clinton should actively campaign on this platform and push these solutions to the center of the debate in the days, weeks, and months to come.”

Striking down a state effort to “politically interfere” with a woman’s right to choose, a federal appeals court on Monday declared a Wisconsin law unconstitutional in a ruling reproductive rights advocates say is both a “victory” and an important precedent for an upcoming Supreme Court decision.

In his searing rebuke, Judge Richard Posner with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, said the law was a “clear flouting of Roe v. Wade.”

The ruling applied to a measure signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2013, known as a TRAP law—short for “targeted regulation of abortion providers.” It stipulated that an abortion provider must have admitting privileges at a local hospital, mirroring policies passed in 10 other states.

In the opinion, Judge Posner echoed the concern of medical experts, who argued that the political maneuver both threatened a woman’s constitutional right and endangered her health.

“What makes no sense is to abridge the constitutional right to an abortion on the basis of spurious contentions regarding women’s health,” Posner stated. 

Indeed, during the federal trial, an independent, court-appointed medical expert said of the Wisconsin law: “I think it is an unacceptable experiment to see if you decrease access (to abortion) and see if more women die. It is not acceptable. It is not ethical.”

If he wanted, filmmaker Avi Lewis thinks he could probably scare you into total paralysis.

“I can make the case to you that we’re fucked,” he says over the phone from New York as he spoke with Common Dreams about his new film, the perils of climate change, the inequities fostered by modern capitalism, and the prospects of humanity’s current efforts to make a course correction away from planetary destruction. “I could say that we should just turn on the TV, take our drug of choice, and just tune it out. I could make that case for you and it would be completely convincing.”

But, he then adds, “What on earth is the point of that?”

With his new documentary film——making its U.S. debut this Friday night at the International Film Center in New York City, Lewis says the goal was not to “shock people into action.” Rather, the film was conceived with the idea that if the story of the climate crisis was told with the proper balance of fact-based concern and a very specific view of hope, it could inspire transcendence of the helplessness that prevents many from taking action.

“It’s the balance of cold-eyed realism which shows us that we’re on a truly catastrophic path and that we’re hurtling in the wrong direction as a global society and the importance of choosing to be hopeful, because people don’t act out of despair,” Lewis says.

Put another way: “Despair breeds paralysis. And hope can lead to action.”

Considering the current political moment—just one year after over 400,000 people gathered in New York City for the historic People’s Climate March and just two months before the much-anticipated COP21 UN climate talks begin in Paris—Lewis says the world remains in a crucial period where understanding of the crisis, and the energetic desire to do something about it, must be matched with a new vision for what the world can be. “If you’re going to embrace hope,” he argues, “it has to be credible hope. It has to be hope that’s actually based on something and it has to be hope that is mitigated by an acknowledgement of how bad things are. And that is the very fine balance that I tried to strike in the film.”

“Ask anyone on Earth if you can have infinite growth on a finite planet and everyone is going to say, ‘Of course not.’ It’s common sense. And yet, our entire global economic system is premised on that crazy idea.”

Citing evidence for this theory of inspiration matched with policy, Lewis cites two individuals who have generated perhaps the most palpable levels of excitement in the U.S. recently: Pope Francis, who just concluded a two-week visit to the Americas, and presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose presidential campaign calling for “political revolution” has ignited grassroots passion not seen in decades.

Both the Pope and Sanders, says Lewis, “are talking about inequality and climate change and making the links between the two—and bing!—they’re resonating crazy across society.” Because those issues are the tandem themes of the film, Lewis says it’s thrilling for them to be getting a larger audience. “But it’s also unsurprising,” he says, “because the fact is, people know. Ask anyone on Earth if you can have infinite growth on a finite planet and everyone is going to say, ‘Of course not.’ It’s common sense. And yet, our entire global economic system is premised on that crazy idea.”

What the film does show, he argues, is that people all over the world “are ready for a deeper, much more systemic critique and much more grassroots, radical solutions.”

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It would be too easy to assume that the new 90-minute documentary is simply a film based on the book of the same name authored by Lewis’ wife, Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein—but that’s not entirely accurate.

Conceived and executed as a parallel project nearly from the get-go, Lewis’ film—which made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month—is just the latest installment of a synchronized and orchestrated endeavor which, though it is narrated by Klein and drew enormous inspiration from her best-selling book, also includes a website and a sophisticated outreach effort (run by a dedicated team of colleagues) which serve to promote and expand the work that has now occupied the last five years of their lives.

“People are ready for a deeper, much more systemic critique and much more grassroots, radical solutions.”

As Lewis explains, “I didn’t have the book to look at, but I was making a movie about a book that hadn’t been written yet.”

Shot over four years on five continents and in nine countries, the film takes a global look at the intertwined crises of corporate greed, neoliberal capitalism, and climate change—but does so by sitting down with and listening to some of the very people who are standing their ground against those forces. Following the New York premiere at the IFC on October 2—which will include a Q&A with both Lewis and Klein—the film will open on the West Coast in Los Angeles on October 16, before a nationwide release—including select theaters, community screenings, and on iTunes—on October 20.

Captured at least in part by the trailer that follows, the film explores the key themes of the book, but does so with a particular emphasis on meeting those individuals and communities from around the world who are confronting—not abstract disparities and economic theories—but actual injustices that have intruded on their lives in the form of polluted water and air, stolen land and traditions, and the systematic erosion of democracy which has been wrested from them by powerful fossil fuel companies and elite interests.

With scientists and experts from around the world telling world leaders with increasing urgency ahead of upcoming climate talks in Paris that “It must be done,” a new report says “It can be done.” 

As the planetary impacts of global warming become more apparent with every passing day, the goal of building and maintaining an energy system run on 100 % renewable power has become one of the driving demands of the world’s environmental and climate justice movements, new research presented by Greenpeace on Monday shows that if the political will can be mustered, there are neither technological nor economic barriers preventing humanity from building a fossil fuel- and nuclear-free world by 2050.

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“I urge all those who say ‘it can’t be done’ to read this report and recognize that it can be done and must be done for the benefit of people around the world.” —Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace

“The phase out of fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy is not only needed, but can be achieved globally by mid-century,” said Kelly Mitchell, the climate and energy campaign director for Greenpeace USA. “In the US, we must prioritize keeping coal, oil and gas in the ground while accelerating the transition to clean energy like wind and solar. Doing so would both create new jobs and ensure a healthier planet for future generations.”

According to the report:

Produced in collaboration with researchers at the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), the new Greenpeace report—titled —is the latest global energy analysis which shows that not only is the transition to cleaner energy sources possibly in the coming decades, the actual financial costs of taking on a such a massive transition would actually be cheaper over the coming decades than retaining the “dirty energy” status quo in the face of climate change.

Greenpeace admits the cost of its plan is “huge” but that “the savings are even bigger.” According to their estimates, the global average of additional investment needed in renewables is roughly $1 trillion a year until 2050. However, because renewables don’t require continuous fuel inputs, the savings over the same period would be $1.07 trillion a year, more than covering the costs of the required up-front investment.

Calling for a strategic phase-out of both fossil fuel and nuclear energy by mid-century, the Greenpeace plan targets the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels first—including lignite and coal—before moving on to less-polluting sources like oil and gas.