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Heathrow owners win climate-camp injunction

Last week in Daily Grist, we reported that BAA, the company that owns Heathrow Airport, had requested an injunction against protesters planning a weeklong Camp for Climate Action in mid-August. The original request was so badly worded that it sounded like 5 million people would be kept away from the airport, but a judge granted […]

The next round of McKibben’s campaign

I forgot some of the coolest (and breaking) news! At my panel earlier today, Bill McKibben "pre-announced" something exciting: On Nov. 3, a year before the presidential election, he will be organizing Step It Up 2: Revenge of the Nerds. OK, I made up the title, but not the news. At the first Step It […]

YearlyKos: My long day

This morning, I woke up early to go to the Energize America 2020 panel. There was far too much information to replicate here — you can see the details of the plan on their site — but as I said earlier, what’s remarkable is that such a collaborative project has produced such a solid, practical […]

YearlyKos: Sometimes conventional wisdom is right

I went to candidate forums (one candidate, small audience) with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama today. News flash: Obama is extremely charismatic. Fantastic with small crowds. Total alpha male. Effortlessly comfortable and confident. Hillary, on the other hand, not so much. She’s much warmer and more human than the typical caricature would have it, […]

YearlyKos: Obama and coal

So, lots to talk about, but for now: I’m in a candidate forum with Barack Obama and he was just asked directly about coal. He dodged and weaved, said there would have to be a "transition," and that there would need to be "investments," etc. etc. Unsatisfying. He did, however, very strongly back the 80 […]

YearlyKos: Energize America

The Energize America 2020 project that emerged from a collaborative effort in the Daily Kos community is remarkable. It’s easily the most impressive thing I’ve seen presented at YearlyKos — and I don’t just say that because it’s my issue. In terms of substance, process, and practical results, it’s an inspiring example of what the […]

YearlyKos: Ugh update

If one wanted to be a responsible adult, one would probably avoid staying out until the wee hours and drinking to excess on the night before one’s panel discussion on global warming politics. Consequently one would not feel like the bottom of a shoe, and would not be croaking like a frog, when one addressed […]

Too many boats are fishing for too few fish

Here's a remarkable fact: Global fishery collapse is financed with tax money.

You already know that many nations are failing to enforce the laws that are essential to keeping our oceans healthy and abundant forever. Instead, they are presiding over a global ocean collapse. According to a report in Science, 29 percent of the world's commercial fisheries have already collapsed.

This is terrible news for the billion people who turn to the ocean for protein, the hundreds of millions of people who need the sea for a livelihood, and the countless extraordinary marine creatures that don't deserve to go the way of the buffalo.

Again

Kind of a good news, bad news story:

President George W. Bush has invited the European Union, the United Nations and 11 other countries to the September 27-28 meeting in Washington to work toward setting a long-term goal by 2008 to cut emissions.

Yet it turns out just to be a meeting full of sound and fury, signifying nothing: "But a senior U.S. official said the administration stood by its opposition to mandatory economy-wide caps."

A meeting aimed at (1) developing voluntary or aspirational targets, (2) for the long-term, (3) by 2008 [i.e. Bush's last year in office]. Three strikes and you are out.

Bush's last chance to be a small part of the solution rather than a large part of the problem came and went at the G-8 meeting, where Bush nixed an effort to set realistic and binding long-term targets.

The only interesting question that will be answered by this meeting is whether the media will be suckered into giving the President the one outcome he truly wants -- positive press coverage on climate change, an area of such catastrophic failure by this administration that it will probably ensure (even more than Iraq) that history judges Bush a failure.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Yup, the Duggars do it again

Remember the Duggar family? Well, they followed through on that promise of more children.