Climate Politics

Gee whiz

The London Times covers a carbon trading scandal in in India. Like our own New York Times, they bury the lede:

BRITISH companies are handing over millions of pounds to an Indian chemical plant so that western firms can continue to pump out thousands of tons of greenhouse gases.

A fish story in the Telegraph

Update [2007-4-22 12:29:39 by David Roberts]: Gore’s people deny it all. Figured. Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House. So says Tim Shipman in the Telegraph. I suggest a high degree of skepticism. The story […]

Pollan weighs in

Michael Pollan thinks so. Let's hope he's right. Call your Senators and Representatives to make sure.

Mitt Romney (R) endorses Hitler’s energy policy!!1!

New York Sun has the details. (h/t: Wolcott)

Photos and voices from Step It Up 2007 rallies across the U.S.

As promised, albeit a few days late, we've published an audio slideshow of Step It Up Seattle, which also includes some photos from other Step It Up events from around the country. For post Step It Up 2007 action, check out the national website.

Grist would like to produce more multimedia content in the future, so please let us know what you think in comments.

The responsibility era

The editors of The New Republic make a simple point that can’t be made often enough: The conservative notion that reducing GHG emissions in the U.S. is pointless unless China and India do the same is a moral grotesquery. We created the problem. Ethically and geopolitically, we are responsible for leading the way to a […]

Faint Christopher

Presidential contender Christopher Dodd endorses carbon tax The good news: Presidential contender Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) has unveiled a bold energy plan that includes a tax on corporate polluters. The bad news: Christopher who-now? Is running for what? Putting aside Dodd’s snowball-in-hell odds, let’s admire his goals: a per-ton fee on corporate carbon emissions that […]

Oy

A panel of retired generals thinks global warming is an urgent national security threat. The U.N. Security Council thinks global warming is an urgent national security threat. But wait! We forgot to ask Wisconsin Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R)! Sensenbrenner questioned "why global warming has suddenly become an issue of national defense" and afterward accused politicians […]

Bush is working with a much stronger consensus

One argument in defense of George W. Bush's lack of action on climate change is some variation of this: "Bill Clinton wasn't any better ... he never sent the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate."

This is true. But it also ignores one important fact.

The science of climate change has improved dramatically since the mid-'90s. In its 1995 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) summarized our knowledge about climate change by saying ...

... the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on the climate ...

This is weak brew, and given the mixed evidence connecting human activities with warming, it was not at all clear exactly how much action to address climate change was warranted.

Good stuff

I’ll leave it to Gar to judge if the targets are sufficiently aggressive, but either way I’m happy to see new legislation on energy efficiency being proposed in Congress. This stuff isn’t sexy and doesn’t garner much media attention, but — as we keep saying — efficiency is the low-hanging fruit. Time to eat some […]