Barack Obama
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Tuvalu to Obama and the Senate: ‘The fate of my country rests in your hands’ [VIDEO]
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Last week, Ian Fry, the Tuvalu delegate to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, made an impassioned plea for legally binding agreements to be made by world leaders to save his nation and other low-lying island states. The tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu and other small […]
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Final week of Copenhagen, and the last act is not clear
COPENHAGEN – Like all spellbinding human drama the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which today entered its second and last week, represents the accumulated chapters of an urgent script – the fate of the planet. Everybody in every corner of the world has a stake. Island nations, some of them starting to be swamped by […]
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Mr. President, come to Copenhagen early
I wish every American could get lost for a few days in the Bella Conference Center and the events surrounding it in Copenhagen. I wish you could all see and feel the desperate depth of the world’s hunger for America to step all the way up to its responsibilities here. And since at least one […]
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Sunstein Watch: What progressives expect from OIRA
Dear Cass: As you know, we picked a spat with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) last week over Randy Lutter’s supposedly temporary detail appointment to your office. It’s not the first time we’ve criticized the workings of OIRA, and almost certainly won’t be the last. I’ve spoken to a number of people in […]
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No climate action, no peace, says Obama in Nobel speech
President Obama delivers his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Photo: Nobelprize.org In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo today, President Obama touched briefly on the issue of climate change, lumping it in with a laundry list of “soft” issues like economic security, food security, and education. Here’s the excerpt, which came very late in […]
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Obama's broken promises, disappointing and dangerous to farmers, consumers
“And it means ensuring that the policies being shaped at the Departments of Agriculture and Interior are designed to serve not big agribusiness or Washington influence peddlers, but the family farmers and the American People.” President-elect Barack Obama, December 17 2008, Chicago, Illinois. The message was one of hope, the words of a newly elected […]
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Naomi Klein says Obama’s stiffing Africa on climate
Cross-posted from MotherJones.com. Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International.Photo: foei via Flickr A highlight of my time at COP15 so far was a conversation with the extraordinary Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International. We talked about the fact that some of the toughest activists here […]
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Kyoto: Congress’ disgrace, not ‘Al Gore’s mistake’
A specter hangs over the U.S. negotiators at the Copenhagen climate summit: the Kyoto Syndrome. Conventional wisdom holds that the Clinton Administration, and Al Gore in particular, blew it by agreeing to the Kyoto Accords without building the foundation for the Senate to ratify it, which it never did. (See, e.g., “How to Prevent Climate […]
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U.S. charm offensive at Copenhagen climate conference: Will it work?
COPENHAGEN — Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, pushed through a crush of visitors at the U.S. Center late this morning, stepped to the podium in front of a packed meeting room, and became the first of President Obama’s senior advisors to appear at the U.N. Climate Change Conference specifically to make […]
