Climate Politics

Goin’ new school

Old school Cossacks: thundered off the steppes in bloodthirsty hordes, fearsome warriors, rumored to tuck ears of enemies under saddleblankets in lieu of provisions during raids.

New-school Kossacks: more tippety-tap than thundering, not so much with the ear eating, fearsome and effective in rallying support for renewable energy.

HR 550 is the largest, most important piece of solar legislation ever introduced in the U.S. Here is a story about how they are making it happen:

New Monbiot piece

From "The Rich World's Policy on Greenhouse Gas Now Seems Clear: Millions Will Die," by George Monbiot:

Rich nations seeking to cut climate change have this in common: they lie. You won't find this statement in the draft of the new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was leaked to the Guardian last week. But as soon as you understand the numbers, the words form before your eyes. The governments making genuine efforts to tackle global warming are using figures they know to be false.

Read the rest.

Motivation aside, the ad’s still true

West Virginia Dems Rep. Nick Rahall and Sen. Robert C. Byrd are fighting mad over some "despicable" anti-coal ads that have appeared in major publications recently.

The ads, underwritten by a natural gas company called the Chesapeake Energy Corp, show faces smudged with make-up meant to resemble coal dust under a headline reading: "Face It, Coal is Filthy."

Hey, That’s Half the Battle

Bush chats with Merkel and Barroso, agrees climate change is a problem U.S. President George W. Bush met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and E.U. President Jose Manuel Barroso at the White House yesterday, chatting about international trade, air-travel policy, missile shields, and The Most Important Issue of Our Time. Though no climate action steps […]

New report says federal cleanup program wasting away

Image reprinted with permission from the Center for Public Integrity. A drop-off in both government action and funding has all but stopped the push to clean up America’s most toxic sites, posing health and environmental threats all over the country, according to a comprehensive series of reports released last week by the Center for Public […]

New book examines Army Corps ruling

Attention brains: I am contractually obligated, by virtue of having been born, to mention that my father has helped put out a book of essays that look at the Supreme Court’s ruling last year on the Army Corps of Engineers and the Clean Water Act, and at the future of federal wetlands protection. The five […]

How to build a real climate movement

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Campaigns and programs crafted to advance the Bright Lines strategy must also fit real world constraints and political realities on the ground, and take account of external roadblocks to effective action. The following objectives address these issues.

1. Tangible risk. Climate change is like world hunger: it's an issue of concern when media attention is high, just as coverage of periodic famines raises concern about world hunger. Most Americans do not see climate change as an immediate or personal risk, yet, like world hunger, they view it as a problem so immense that it is impractical to think that it will ever be solved.

NGO relief efforts and international governmental aid are widely supported, but are seen as altruistic, charitable actions. Climate policies and programs now advanced in the U.S. are so small-scale they can only be understood in similar terms, as altruistic and charitable acts like huger relief. Measures like Governor Corzine's initiative in New Jersey, for example, take aim at an intangible, global risk with essentially symbolic action.

The problem must be dealt with by establishing the scale of global response and role of the U.S. in advancing a solution, but should also be tackled by defining tangible, local risks. By advancing climate change assessment and remediation, several objectives are achieved:

What the choco-giants are up to.

A couple of weeks ago, we noted here that Big Food is haranguing the FDA to loosen the definition of “chocolate” to allow for adulteration. At the time, I didn’t know why the industrial chocolate giants were agitating for this dubious cause. Now I think I know: cocoa-bean prices rose abruptly last year, pushed up […]

A video compilation

The South Carolina debate among Democratic presidential candidates on Thursday didn’t exactly light my fire, but there were some decent bits. LCV’s Heat Is On program is rounding up all sorts of good YouTube clips relating to global warming, and they’ve got a cut together video of every mention of climate change in the debate:

The Mustache way

The Mustache wants a green pony: In this election cycle, we need to hold a “Green Debate,” devoted only to energy and environmental questions. I would suggest Tulane University in New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2007 — the second anniversary of Katrina. That would give the candidates, Republicans and Democrats, all summer to develop positions […]