Climate Politics

Costa Rica and Guatemala deals could point to common ground on climate crisis

The Bush administration, Costa Rica, Conservation International, and The Nature Conservancy will today announce a "debt-for-nature" swap that could herald something bigger in the future. The United States will write off $12.6 million in debt owed it by Costa Rica. In exchange, Costa Rica will protect some of the most valuable rainforest wildlife habitat in the world.

This follows the Bush administration's support for an even bigger swap with Guatemala. Of course, the sums involved and the area conserved are relatively puny compared to the global forest destruction caused by the Bush administration, especially through its support for tropically grown biofuels that require deforestation to be grown.

But the Bush administration has always had two sides to its tropical forest policy. Although it's happy to help Cargill, ADM, and other agrigiants despoil the last remaining tropical forests, it's also expressed quiet backing for carbon ranching -- allowing polluters to get global warming credit for protecting forests instead of cleaning up pollution at their own facilities. They like it because saving carbon through protecting forests is generally a lot cheaper than cleaning up industrial pollution, and we should like it because that means we can keep a lot more carbon out of the atmosphere a lot quicker -- and save the forests, their wildlife, and their indigenous people at the same time.

Of course, the Bush administration's quiet backing of this concept is completely worthless right now until the Bush administration backs strict, mandatory limits on greenhouse-gas pollution. Until they do, polluters will have no incentive to actually go ahead and protect those forests (or clean up their own pollution). But that support -- and today's forest conservation actions -- signals that forest conservation may provide some common ground between Democrats and the White House on stopping the climate crisis.

Why environmental groups have been slow to fight the border wall

The bobcat turned, looked at me, and jumped into the mesquite brush. It was the first day of a three-day visit to South Texas, and I was exploring the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge along the Rio Grande River. Seeing the bobcat was a treat for me — but the kind of treat that could […]

Notable quotable

“I’m interested in good policy. Kyoto, I thought, was bad policy.” — George W. Bush

A look at Ron Paul’s environmental platform and record

Update: Ron Paul dropped out of the presidential race on June 12, 2008. Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul doesn’t spend much time talking about the environment; when he does address the issue, it’s usually to say that our land, air, and water would be in better shape if the government butted out and let the […]

An interview with Ron Paul about his presidential platform on energy and the environment

This is part of a series of interviews with presidential candidates produced jointly by Grist and Outside. Update: Ron Paul dropped out of the presidential race on June 12, 2008. Ron Paul. Photo: MyTwistedLens Enviros may roll their eyes at a candidate who dismisses the U.S. EPA as feckless and disposable, who believes all public […]

Smart commentary on Gore’s Nobel

“Do I derange you?” Photo: Eric Neitzel/WireImage. Gore’s Nobel certainly brought out the mouthbreathers, but it also inspired some insightful commentary, some of it, mercifully, not about its effects on the presidential race. Most commentators did, however, find it difficult to avoid the Bush/Gore comparison. Here’s a sample of some of the better stuff I’ve […]

Right wing commentators react to Gore’s Nobel

The assault on reason Gore Photo: Eric Neitzel/WireImage. Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize was met with howls of outrage and resentment from the right, which never met anything other than war that it couldn’t drum up some howls of outrage and resentment about. The smear of choice was to mention Gore’s name in the same […]

Chinese prez Hu Jintao promises eco-reforms in big speech

Chinese President Hu Jintao, in a speech to the country’s Communist Party Congress yesterday, promised environmental as well as economic reforms in the next five years. Shying away from specifics in his 2.5-hour speech, Hu said that China’s “ecological and environmental quality will improve notably.” He acknowledged that “[China’s] economic growth is realized at an […]

Al Gore’s commitment to public service in the face of cynicism

“Hey Crichton, won the Pulitzer yet?” Photo: Eric Neitzel/WireImage. I get accused of "hero worshiping" Gore, which I don’t think is right, but I do have immense respect for the guy, so I thought I’d say why. Even now, I don’t think people appreciate what a punch in the gut the 2000 election was for […]

The intelligentsia isn’t helping the public understand the urgency of the climate crisis

Why does the public largely lack a sense of urgency on climate? Maybe because most opinion leaders also lack that sense of urgency. To mark its 150th Anniversary, the Atlantic Monthly (subs. reqd) ...

... invited an eclectic group of thinkers who have had cause to consider the American idea to describe its future and the greatest challenges to it.

Now this one is real easy -- you don't have to be scientifically literate or read the work of James Hansen, you just have to have seen Al Gore's movie or maybe read Time magazine (reading the Atlantic itself is, however, no help, as previously noted).

By far the greatest challenge to the American idea (i.e., unlimited abundance, supreme optimism about the future, global moral leadership, and our special place in the world -- OK, that one's a bit tarnished already -- is global warming.

In fact, if we don't adopt something close to Barack Obama's extraordinary climate plan within the next few years -- and I suspect conservatives will block such an ambitious, albeit necessary, approach as too "big-government" -- then global warming will destroy the American idea, perhaps for a millennium or more.

Global warming means we move from great abundance to oppressive scarcity, from optimism to pessimism (especially if we cross carbon-cycle tipping points that cause an accelerating greenhouse effect in the second half of this century), and finally, as I wrote in my book:

For decades, the United States has been the moral, economic, and military leader of the free world. What will happen when we end up in Planetary Purgatory, facing 20 or more feet of sea level rise, and the rest of the world blames our inaction and obstructionism, blames the wealthiest nation on Earth for refusing to embrace even cost-effective solutions that could spare the planet from millennia of misery? The indispensable nation will become a global pariah.

The Atlantic assembled a who's who of the intelligentsia -- who in the main, though very thoughtful, just don't get it: