Climate Politics

Many political conflicts stem from undue population pressure on water and grasslands

As land and water become scarce, competition for these vital resources intensifies within societies, particularly between the wealthy and those who are poor and dispossessed. The shrinkage of life-supporting resources per person that comes with population growth is threatening to drop the living standards of millions of people below the survival level, leading to potentially unmanageable social tensions.

Access to land is a prime source of social tension. Expanding world population has cut the grainland per person in half, from 0.23 hectares in 1950 to 0.10 hectares in 2007. One-tenth of a hectare is half of a building lot in an affluent U.S. suburb. This ongoing shrinkage of grainland per person makes it difficult for the world's farmers to feed the 70 million people added to world population each year. The shrinkage in cropland per person not only threatens livelihoods, but in largely subsistence societies, it also threatens survival itself. Tensions within communities begin to build as landholdings shrink below that needed for survival.

The Sahelian zone of Africa, with one of the world's fastest-growing populations, is an area of spreading conflict. In troubled Sudan, 2 million people have died and over 4 million have been displaced in the long-standing conflict of more than 20 years between the Muslim north and the Christian south. The more recent conflict in the Darfur region in western Sudan that began in 2003 illustrates the mounting tensions between two Muslim groups -- camel herders and subsistence farmers. Government troops are backing Arab militias, who are engaging in the wholesale slaughter of black Sudanese in an effort to drive them off their land, sending them into refugee camps in neighboring Chad. At least some 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict and another 250,000 have died of hunger and disease in the refugee camps.

The story of Darfur is that of the Sahel, the semiarid region of grassland and dryland farming that stretches across Africa from Senegal in the west to Somalia in the east. In the northern Sahel, grassland is turning to desert, forcing herders southward into the farming areas. Declining rainfall and overgrazing are combining to destroy the grasslands.

Markey on cap v. tax and ways to properly regulate carbon markets

In Houston last week for CERAWeek, Rep. Ed Markey -- chair of the Energy/Environment Subcommittee and the Global Warming & Energy Independence Select Committee -- gave an interview to the Houston Chronicle.

He had this to say on the tax vs. trade question:

Q: A cap-and-trade system is widely assumed to be the form the climate change bill will take, but economists and many others say a carbon tax would be a simpler, more efficient method to reach the same goals. Is the door completely closed on a carbon tax?

A: I think it's much more likely that a cap-and-trade system will be used. They've already reached a consensus in Europe, that 400-million-person continent, that that's the way to go, and it's the overwhelming way we're going with. I understand economists, and how they want to have a debate over what's more efficient, but in the end we can construct it as a cap-and-invest bill that is imposed in a fair, predictable way and will create incentives for innovation. What I use as an analogy is the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Up until then not one single home had broadband access. My goal in that act was to create the incentives for the deployment of broadband that could then lead—because of that huge additional capacity that was constructed—to the creation of thousands of other companies that could use that broadband capacity. I didn't know the names of the companies would be Google, eBay, Amazon, YouTube and thousands of others that created 3 to 5 million new jobs in America. But 10 years later people look back at the black rotary phone era as ancient history, but it's not that long ago. And I think we can do that same thing here. We have the opportunity to create 3 to 5 million new jobs in the energy sector if we unleash a technological revolution, because we have created through a cap-and-trade system a set of incentives that provides that opportunity. And I'm very confident that the same thing will happen. That's been my experience as chairman over telecommunications, chairman over regulation of the financial marketplace: the incentives have to be put in place in a predictable way that creates the incentives for the change that the country needs.

As to the fear of financial speculators, he had this to say:

Money for fossil fuel research in the stimulus could still go to coal

Preliminary analysis of the stimulus deal from Congress available yesterday indicated that funding for “clean coal” had been cut from the package altogether. But it appears that funding in the bill could still go to carbon capture and sequestration projects through the package, which the House approved Friday afternoon. The summary of the bill [PDF] […]

The Fish and Wildlife Service once again hearts critters

Sign No. 1 that the critter-huggers are now in charge at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Agreeing to consider whether they should protect the “boulder bunny” under the Endangered Species Act because climate change is disrupting its Alpine habitat. Sign No. 2: Valentine’s e-cards …

Looking at climate change from a regional perspective

"Climate change poses a tremendous threat to the Puget Sound and Georgia Basin area."

Clear. Concise. Depressing. The quote comes from Patty Glick, senior global warming specialist at the National Wildlife Federation, but it was echoed in the words of all the speakers at the three climate-change panels held Wednesday at the Puget Sound Georgia Basin Ecosystem Conference in Seattle.

Scientists of varying disciplines from all over the region shared their research and forecasts for the future. But one big question for the day arose: How do we take all of this climate change science -- which is primarily based on predictions that are global in scale -- and translate that into local management decisions?

Apollo Alliance chair talks to Grist about green jobs

Phil Angelides. Phil Angelides gained national prominence in 2006 as he went head-to-head with Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over who could be the greenest of them all. His bid for the governorship may have failed, but he definitely made an environmental mark on the state as treasurer from 1999 to 2007. In that role, Angelides […]

L.A. ballot initiative on solar energy faces questions about cost and feasibility

An ambitious solar energy plan for the smoggiest city in America might sound like a hands-down winner, but the Green Energy and Good Jobs for Los Angeles ballot initiative has stumbled over some unsettled questions about its likely costs, transparency, and timing. Angelenos will vote on the plan March 3. If passed, it would add […]

Bernie Sanders to head new green jobs panel in Senate

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been named chair of the newly formed Green Jobs and New Economy Subcommittee of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the senator announced on Thursday. “Today we face the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. There is no better moment to move forward aggressively on energy efficiency and […]

Obama should make like Lincoln and abolish fossil fuels

As the economy tailspins, President Franklin D. Roosevelt has replaced Abraham Lincoln as the favored Great President of commentators, against whom Obama is most often measured (or illuminated).

President Obama still expresses his "affinity" with Lincoln and, as we are learning about this smart and subtle man, he makes the point with small, deft gestures. Seafood stew was served for lunch on Inauguration Day, just as it was for President Lincoln.

So which is he, another Lincoln or an FDR? And which crisis -- the looming secession of the southern states in 1862 or the Great Depression of 1932 -- is the better model for our own terrible straits?

The game plan: The mother of all energy bills

(hat tip to Joe Romm for the title) The next big green priority after stimulus will be energy. It is possible that some of what I describe below will be broken out into separate bills — for instance, Markey and Platts in the House and Bingaman in the Senate have put forward freestanding Renewable Energy […]