I now seem to be on some media distribution list to gin up early PR. Green publicists of the world, bring it on! 
Here are links to key stories (plus some summaries, from Time):
This Week’s Cover Features a Green Border — Only the Second Issue in TIME’s 85-Year History Without the Trademarked Red Border
(New York, April 17, 2008) — In this week’s issue, TIME managing editor Richard Stengel writes in his Letter to Readers, “This is our latest environment special issue but also a historic first: for this one issue, we’ve exchanged our trademarked Red Border for a green one. By doing so, we are sending a clear — and colorful — message to our readers about the importance of this subject, not just to Americans but to everyone around the world as well.” The cover story — “Green Is the New Red, White and Blue” — written by TIME’s Bryan Walsh, “is our call to arms to make this issue — perhaps the most important one facing the planet — a true national priority.”
(Note: It’s a pretty good story, as one expects from this magazine. That said, I take issue with one of the paragraphs in the cover story — honorable mention to whoever figures out which paragraph it is. I’ll post the answer tomorrow.)
Walsh’s piece lays out a three-point plan for combating climate change that deals realistically with the price of handling — and overcoming — the environmental crisis:
- Establish a price on carbon through a cap and trade system;
- Encourage massive improvements in energy efficiency — what TIME calls an “efficiency surge” — to slow the growth in energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions; and
- Vigorously support research and development into the new forms of alternative energy that will truly make a difference.
(Actually, that’s not quite what the story’s third point is, but such is life … )
Key to achieving these three goals is engaging policy-makers and politicians, TIME’s Eric Pooley writes in a separate piece (here): “Climate leadership will come not from this president but from the next. So how will voters be able to tell which candidate is going to take real action? If there’s a canary in this coal mine, it’s the policy known as cap and trade, an idea Environmental Defense Fund president Fred Krupp calls a ‘silver bullet.’ At an environmental forum in Washington the other day, advisers to all three candidates promised that if elected, their candidate would make global warming a First Hundred Days priority. But if they don’t help sort out the details of it now, they won’t have the mandate they’ll need to pass something quickly. If that impasse happens, it could drag on well into the new Administration.”
Also in this issue (here): United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes, “Every problem of the world finds its way to the U.N., our global crossroads of politics and diplomacy. But if the problems come together at the U.N., so do the often hidden connections among them — and through those connections, the ways to real solutions. Nowhere is that more apparent than in our approach to climate change. Many of the challenges we face, from poverty to armed conflict, are linked to the effects of global warming. Finding a solution to climate change can bring benefits in other areas. A greener planet will be a more peaceful and prosperous one too.”
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
