Climate Politics
All Stories
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How Obama could use his jobs speech to win both domestically and internationally
Obama is under pressure on two fronts: the international community wants him to commit to serious greenhouse gas emission reductions and American voters want him to spur job creation. Unemployment is hovering at 10 percent and there is populist anger afoot in the country, not just among tea baggers but among people from both parties […]
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ClimateGate is Watergate redux
Some environmental leaders have been working to minimize the scandal of ClimateGate, by focusing on the fact the hacked email archive of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit has nothing, besides a few cherry picked quotes taken out of context, that casts a shadow of a doubt upon validity of modern climate science. They are wrong. […]
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A skeptical take on efficiency money in Obama’s jobs plan
King Solomon, reputed to be the wisest man who ever lived, had the difficult job of deciding which of two women was the rightful mother of a baby they both claimed to be their own. Amidst their cries of claims and counterclaims, Solomon did something unique, unexpected, and very, very wise. He acted based on […]
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Will the EPA’s greenhouse-gas decision affect the Copenhagen climate talks? [UPDATED]
Will the EPA’s greenhouse-gas decision affect the Copenhagen climate talks? On Monday, as expected, the U.S. EPA officially declared that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health (the so-called endangerment finding), which means the agency is now “now authorized and obligated to make reasonable efforts” to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. We asked our expert panel […]
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Copenhagen day 1: Scandal! Bullying!
What better way to open the Copenhagen climate talks — the meeting of the UNFCCC that is supposedly going to decide the fate of the entire world — than with broad civil society outrage at the egregious lack of democracy in the process. Here’s the inside scoop: the Danish presidency is desperate for a positive […]
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Google Earth tours Coal River Mountain at COP15
As a special presentation at the Copenhagen climate summit, Google Earth took world leaders on a virtual flyover of Coal River Mountain, selected as one of a handful of “global crisis hotspots.” Narrated by coal miner widow and Coal River Mountain resident Lorelei Scarbro, the tour looks at both the costs of mountaintop removal and […]
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The physics of Copenhagen: Why politics-as-usual may mean the end of civilization
Cross-posted from TomDispatch. Most political arguments don’t really have a right and a wrong, no matter how passionately they’re argued. They’re about human preferences — for more health care or lower taxes, for a war to secure some particular end or a peace that leaves some danger intact. On occasion, there are clear-cut moral issues: […]
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The ‘small problem’ with GMOs and Africa
Drought in Ethiopia.The Des Moines Register‘s Philip Brasher is in Africa reporting on the potential for GMO crops to help alleviate hunger in the developing world. The current focus is on drought-tolerant crops for obvious reasons: I grew up in western Texas and covered the Midwest’s devastating drought of 1988. I know what a drought […]
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What does it mean that Obama is going to Copenhagen at the end of the climate talks? [UPDATED]
We asked our expert panel about the significance of President Obama changing the timing of his visit to the Copenhagen climate talks, from Dec. 9, the middle of the first week, to Dec. 18, the big finale at the end of the second week. Is this a big deal? What does it mean? Here are […]
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At Copenhagen Climate Conference, an undercurrent of theft and deceit
Among the hundreds of riders on this city’s automated, energy-efficient Metro rapid transit system was Isakwisa Mwamukonda, an environmental policy manager for the vice president of Tanzania. We had half a dozen stops between the tight-cornered streets of Copenhagen’s downtown and the Bella Center, site of the U.N. Climate Change Conference, to explore the promise […]
