Climate Politics

Trains are the forgotten mode of transport, at least in the U.S.

"Because if your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down their throats."

Take electrified rail, for instance. Here's a sad report from Dean Baker of The American Prospect, one of the best reporters going today:

I was shocked to discover in a conversation with a congressional staffer that rebuilding the country's train system is a topic that is strictly verboten on Capitol Hill. I was reminded of this when I read that a French train had set a new speed record of 357 miles per hour. Trains are far more fuel efficient than planes. Even at much slower speeds than this new French train, service across the Northeast and between the Midwest and Northeast can be very time competitive with air travel, after factoring in travel times to and from airports and security searches. It is remarkable that politicians don't even have trains on their radar screens.

And, if you haven't seen the video of what an electrified train can do, check this out.

Highlighting security risks of climate change

On April 17, the UK will use the prerogative of the chair of the UN Security Council to devote a day to the security implications of climate change. UK Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett is scheduled to deliver a major address meant to put climate-security links squarely on the high table of security policy.

John Ashton, the UK special envoy for climate change and an adviser to Beckett, has been making the case for treating climate as a security issue since he took up the post last fall.

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes

Let's hope, anyway.

Bipartisan bill calls for intelligence assessment of climate impacts

How might U.S. national security be threatened by mega-droughts, coastal flooding, killer hurricanes, food scarcity, and the other ecological calamities scientists widely predict will occur if global warming continues apace? Is climate change the real ticking bomb? Photo: iStockphoto No one knows, but Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) think it’s time to […]

A big picture statement the world’s big problems

I’m on a listserv, where somebody made the fateful mistake of casually asking me, "from a Gristy environmental point of view, wouldn’t it be a good thing if fossil fuels ran out?" In return, they received … a whole bunch of words. Then I thought, "hey, wait, I just wrote a bunch of words without […]

She Puts the Dud in Dudley

Bush appoints anti-regulation advocate as top regulatory official Mere days ago, we mentioned that President Bush might give Congress the runaround by making recess appointments of industry-tied folk to top environmentally related positions in his administration. Well, that didn’t take long. Meet Susan Dudley, the newly appointed head of the Office of Information and Regulatory […]

Not if experience is any guide

A professor of mine once remarked that while the environmental movement is wide, it is also thin. Nowhere is this more evident than in national elections, where candidates focus almost exclusively on national security issues and bread-and-butter economic agendas. (In contrast, local and state elections often produce clear environmental mandates.)

Despite the perception that Democratic candidates place more of an emphasis on environmental issues, in 2000 Gore talked more about putting the social security surplus in a lockbox than he did about global warming, while in 2004 Kerry barely mentioned the environment or energy policy despite numerous opportunities and the obvious link between our addiction to Middle Eastern oil and terrorism.

Between the sheets in the Abramoff scandel

Italia Federici, the founder of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), is the latest target of investigation in the ongoing saga of Jack Abramoff (whose first name might as well be Disgraced Lobbyist), according to recent press reports. Federici, who at the time was dating the coal lobbyist turned Interior Department official J. […]

I do not think it means what you think it means

President Bush "said he took climate change very seriously Tuesday, a day after the US Supreme Court ruled the government must regulate greenhouse gases." In other news, President Bush "said on Tuesday he planned no new action to impose caps on greenhouse gases blamed for global warming."

So keep it up

Think about this article -- descriptively titled "Legislature flooded with bills about climate crisis; poll driven politicians see need to tackle global warming" -- the next time you get an email asking you to call or email your representative on an environmental issue. You keep it up long enough and they get it: