Climate Climate & Energy

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  • Roberts, take 1: Coal is in short supply, expensive, and cannot be made clean

    This is the second entry in a series of six email exchanges between two climate-change experts on the future use of coal. The series was originally posted here. Editorial note: Roberts argues that the key question is not “how can we best reduce carbon dioxide emissions?” Rather, we need to confront a more fundamental question […]

    David Roberts Climate & Energy

  • Mackler, take 1: Clean coal is a necessary part of fighting climate change

    This is the first entry in a series of six email exchanges between two climate-change experts on the future use of coal. The series was originally posted here. Editoral note: While Sasha Mackler agrees that coal is one of the primary contributors to detrimental climate change, he argues that using current technology to develop low-carbon […]

    Sasha Mackler Climate & Energy

  • Live at Coal River Mountain rally with Bob Kincaid

    As Google Earth takes world leaders at the Copenhagen Climate Summit on a virtual flyover of Coal River Mountain today, besieged residents and citizens groups from Coal River Mountain and across West Virginia and the Appalachian coalfields, along with their national allies, will hold a 2 pm EST rally at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in Charleston, W.Va., calling for an immediate halt to the reckless mountaintop removal blasting on Coal River Mountain.

    Jeff Biggers Climate & Energy

  • ‘Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation’

    Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for […]

    The Guardian Climate & Energy

  • The world needs a dramatic climax in Copenhagen, not a lame dress rehearsal

    “Calm before the storm” is how my colleague Jamie Henn described Copenhagen today. “‘Hopenhagen‘ advertising everywhere, people setting up a outdoor concert venue in downtown, a few anarchist posters wheat-pasted on signs, and I even saw a 350.dk license plate on a bicycle!” I’m still in the United States, but packing for the trip to […]

    Bill McKibben Climate & Energy

  • Will Copenhagen save the rainforests?

    In the midst of decreasing expectations over a global climate deal, saving forests has been held out as the one thing that might be achieved over the next two weeks in Copenhagen. Says Newsweek: “One of the few tangible achievements expected from the climate talks in Copenhagen this month is agreement on a program called […]

    Margaret Swink Climate & Energy

  • Stemming global deforestation emissions: Copenhagen (part 4)

    There was an extensive debate in the lead-in to the Kyoto Protocol (and after) about whether incentives for reducing deforestation would be recognized as a part of the agreement. For a number of reasons countries didn’t agree to include deforestation incentives, but did agree to allow increased forest cover to count. Unfortunately a lot of […]

    Jake Schmidt Climate & Energy

  • From Bhopal to Copenhagen

    I tried, unsuccessfully, to learn if anyone from Bhopal, India, would be speaking at the climate summit in Copenhagen. It seems unlikely, but the delegates gathering in Copenhagen need to hear what only someone from Bhopal can properly tell them. They need to know what it was like 25 years ago this week, when a […]

    Osha Gray Davidson Climate & Energy

  • ‘Climategate’ is a diversion

    Magicians divert us with wands and puffs of smoke. Bullfighters fool steers with flashes of cape at just the right moment. Even Shakespeare understood: Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs. The human brain likes movement, and that makes it poorly equipped to think about climate change. Scientists warn that, on […]

    Ben Strauss Climate & Energy

  • Hamlet’s lessons for climate negotiators

    I’ve been threatening my editors with a post on what Shakespeare’s Hamlet can teach the diplomats gathering next week to draft a new international climate treaty. Hamlet being a fictional Danish prince, and Copenhagen being in Denmark and … OK, it’s a flimsy hook. Don’t care. As I write this, I’ve got 12 hours of […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Climate & Energy