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A quick, easy-to-follow introduction to the basics of cap-and-trade legislation

Holmes Hummel, a Stanford PhD and Congressional Science Fellow for Rep. Jay Inslee, has put together two PowerPoint presentations, one brief, one longer. She says: "These overview pieces are for The Curious & Concerned, a growing number of people who understand the importance of a federal climate policy but are confused by the framework of […]

Bali conference continues

The news from Bali: When the U.S. Senate Environment Committee approved a bill calling for a mandatory cap in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, some in Bali took it as a sign that the U.S. was budging on its intractable opposition to said emissions cuts. U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson: “We’re not changing our position.” However, one […]

China’s population rapidly rising

The population of China is projected to grow to a staggering 1.5 billion people by not-so-far-off 2033. And they’ll be staggering because they can’t breathe the air.

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U.S., avoiding action at current climate meeting, announces new climate meeting

President Bush has announced a climate-change meeting in Hawaii next month for 17 of the world’s major greenhouse-gas emitters to talk about setting goals for curbing emissions. The meeting is a follow-up to an anticlimactic summit that Bush hosted in late September. Oddly enough, during the pivotal climate-change meeting going on in Bali right this […]

Edwards reacts

John Edwards is the first leading candidate to respond to the advance of the Lieberman-Warner bill:

NASA has bold plans to … send rodents into orbit

A while back I blogged on the folly of NASA's Moon-Mars program, and how it's killing real science the agency could be doing. Yesterday I received an email from NASA alerting me to a new funding opportunity:

Interesting Kiwi story about anti-windfarm sentiment

Apparently being in the antipodes doesn't change how people see wind farms:

What a fossil-fuel free agriculture might look like

At some point in the future, humanity will have to produce its food without the help of fossil fuels and without destroying the soil. In a well-researched and succinct new essay, "What will we eat as the oil runs out?", Richard Heinberg analyzes the main problems with the global agricultural system, and proposes a solution: a global organic food system.

Heinberg lays out four major dilemmas of the current system:

The direct impacts on agriculture of higher oil prices: increased costs for tractor fuel, agricultural chemicals, and the transport of farm inputs and outputs ... the increased demand for biofuels ... the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events caused by fuel-based greenhouse gas emissions...[and] the degradation or loss of basic natural resources (principally, topsoil and fresh water supplies) as a result of high rates, and unsustainable methods, of production stimulated by decades of cheap energy.

He then goes into more detail concerning these four horsemen of the agricultural apocalypse, and shows how, even now, these crises are leading to a decrease in global food production.

Later in this post I will propose a thought experiment solution, based on Heinberg's solution of a fossil fuel-free agriculture:

The real story at Bali

In 2005, at the U.N.'s Montreal Climate Negotiations, a ragtag but sizable delegation showed up at the conference, desperate to make sure that the world heard their call for climate action. The event proved to be a formative time for people involved in the youth climate movement, and many date its launch to that time. In a conference notable for acronyms and obscure policy jargon, the youth activism was like a breath of fresh air.

While delegates bemoaned the lack of action in the United States, there was an outpouring of activism and creative organizing -- like the launch of It's Getting Hot in Here -- that made many of them think if the young people care so much in the U.S., maybe there is still hope to get them engaged.

Well, the youth are back and badder than ever.