A group of citizens visit an Obama 2012 campaign office to make it clear that they will only donate and volunteer for the campaign when President Obama stands up to Big Oil and denies the permit for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Just days after Hurricane Irene swept up the East Coast, causing massive flooding in Vermont and leading to almost 40 deaths, Fox Business Network personality Charles Payne just had to ask, is global warming really to blame?
His guest, Bill Nye "The Science Guy," said there is evidence to suggest it is a result of global warming, but that climatologists will need more time to fully connect the dots. Nye went on to lay out in plain terms some of the facts of climate change, including rising temperatures in the Pacific ocean. The two debated a Newsweek story claiming radical weather is the "new normal," with Payne asking Nye if that was "irresponsible, or is there any science behind it?"
Well, Nye said, "there's a lot more science behind it than saying it's not. MORE...
Al Gore pushed the rhetorical envelope yesterday when he compared skeptics of climate change to racists during the Civil Rights Movement. Gore was sitting down for an interview with Alex Bogusky of the Climate Reality Project, and suggested that young people today whose parents do not believe in climate change are asking the same questions now that race-conscious young people in the 60s asked their parents. MORE...Howie P.S.: I believe Al knows what he's talking about on these subjects.
AP:Former Vice President Al Gore is going where few environmentalists – and fellow Democrats – have gone before: criticizing President Barack Obama's record on global warming.In a 7,000-word essay for Rolling Stone magazine that will be published Friday, Gore says Obama has failed to stand up for "bold action" on global warming and has made little progress on the problem since the days of Republican President George W. Bush. Bush infuriated environmentalists for resisting mandatory controls on the pollution blamed for climate change, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible. MORE...
Earlier this year, Republicans in a congressional panel declared, by a majority vote, that climate change caused by humans does not exist. The majority of the House then voted to get rid of federal funding for the world’s finest scientists in the field to study the changing earth, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Blink, blink, just like that — our representatives wished away the future.H/t to Naomi Klein.
The twisters, floods and fires of this year have another say, and remind us that some political gestures are no more relevant than a lone pair of lips flapping in the wind. Of course, among atmospheric scientists there is ambiguity, at best, about whether global warming has anything to do with the worst tornado season in modern times.
But the consensus of fair-minded research — ignored by those who assume to know better in the Republican Congress — is that an earth warmed by an excess of man-caused carbon emissions will cause more weather extremes. Warm air holds more water vapor than cold air — that’s an axiom that a congressman with a set of talking points paid for by Exxon cannot wish away. Torrential flooding in all parts of the world could easily be part of a new phase brought on by just a few upticks in ocean temperatures. The forecast is simple: You ain’t seen nothing yet. MORE...
2011 has already become the deadliest year for tornado outbreaks in the United States since 1953, with more than 500 people killed. Extreme weather has made headlines across the world, as well, with megafloods occurring in Colombia, Vietnam, Pakistan and Australia, even as the Amazon just faced its second hundred-year drought in the past five years. News audiences are seeing the warning "severe weather" increasingly flash across TV screens, but little connection has been made to the role humans have played in driving climate change. We speak with environmentalist Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaign, 350.org. "We’re making the earth a more dynamic and violent place," McKibben says. "That’s, in essence, what global warming is about."Howie P.S.: Here's "A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!" (McKibben's op-ed in the Washington Post).
breathingearth.net (CLICK HERE for the interactive map):Welcome to Breathing Earth. This real-time simulation displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates.Howie P.S.: The quotes at the top of the page keep changing and they are provocative.
Please remember that this is just a simulation. Although the CO2 emission, birth rate and death rate data used in Breathing Earth comes from reputable sources, data that measures things on such a massive scale can never be 100% accurate. Please note however that the CO2 emission levels shown here are much more likely to be too low than they are to be too high. MORE...
Call me old fashioned but I still think democracy is better than corporatist negotiation. And when we have a president as articulate and thoughtful as the one we now have — more capable than almost any occupant of the Oval Office in modern times to educate the public about real challenges and real solutions — he and his advisors do a disservice to the American people when they make the important deals in secret. MORE..."Americans Simply Don't Do Sacrifice Anymore" (Bob Cesca):
If you're angry about the oil spill, organize a car pool, eat less beef, live closer to work and ride a bike. These aren't complicated things to do, but they do require a little effort. Maybe moving closer to work is a pain in neck, but, then again, so is 75,000,000 gallons of oil mixed with a dispersant forming a massive cocktail of poison in the Gulf of Mexico.Howie P.S.: Some comic relief from Conan O'Brien and Robert Reich, video (04:36).
I think it's time to inconvenience ourselves for a change. MORE...
President Obama rejected in an interview Tuesday the criticism that he has compromised too much in order to secure health-care reform legislation, challenging his critics to identify any "gap" between what he campaigned on last year and what Congress is on the verge of passing.Howie P.S.: Naomi Klein takes Obama to task for missing three Blown Opportunities "to transform the US into something that doesn't threaten the stability of life on this planet.""Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill," Obama said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Post about his legislative record this year. "Every single criteria for reform I put forward is in this bill.""I think there's no doubt that energy legislation is going to be tough," Obama said. "But I feel very confident in making an argument to the American people that we should be a leader in clean energy technology, that that will be one of the key elements that will drive growth for years to come."As the Senate prepares to pass its version of health-care reform, Obama has come under sharp criticism for the size and shape of the legislation, including most recently from the left wing of his own party.
Former Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean, for one, has said he would prefer that the Democrat-controlled Senate defeat the bill rather than have what he considers to be weak legislation pass into law.
In the interview, Obama offered a vigorous defense of the legislation and the priorities he set out in shaping it, saying he is "not just grudgingly supporting the bill. I am very enthusiastic about what we have achieved."
He said the Senate legislation accomplishes "95 percent" of what he called for during his 2008 presidential campaign and in his September speech to a joint session of Congress on the need for health-care reform.
In listing those priorities, Obama cited the 30 million uninsured Americans projected to receive coverage, budget estimates of more than $1 trillion in savings over the next two decades, a "patients' bill of rights on steroids" to protect consumers from being dropped by insurance companies, and tax breaks to help small businesses pay to cover employees.
Those elements are in the House and Senate versions of health-care legislation, whose competing elements will have to be reconciled in conference committee early next year. The House bill includes a public option, the government-run plan favored by Dean and other progressive Democrats, but the Senate version leaves it out.
Obama said the public option "has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right." But, he added, "I didn't campaign on the public option."
"We don't feel that the core elements to help the American people have been compromised in any significant way," Obama said. "Do these pieces of legislation have exactly everything I want? Of course not. But they have the things that are necessary to reduce costs for businesses, families and the government."
Obama used the interview to outline his legislative achievements this year, a record dominated by the $787 billion stimulus measure passed in February and the eight-month health-care debate. But his record also includes a number of lesser-known measures.
Those include bills to ensure equal pay across gender lines, an expansion of hate-crime legislation and children's health insurance, stronger tobacco regulation, military procurement reform, and consumer credit-card protections.
Together, he said, these bills, many of which are highly popular among his party's left wing, "will make life better for many Americans."
On taking office in the midst of a severe financial crisis, Obama, a former U.S. senator whose senior staff includes many Hill veterans, settled on a legislative strategy that departed from those of his predecessors.
He decided that, rather than pursue big pieces of legislation one at a time, his administration would seek health-care reform, a cap-and-trade bill, financial reform legislation and other measures simultaneously.
"In some ways, we just didn't have an option," Obama said. "Because of the financial crisis, we had to make a series of decisions that, back in 2007 when my presidential campaign began, were not at the top of our list."
"What I thought was very important not to do was further delay work on some of the big-ticket items that I had been elected to achieve and that were critical for our long-term economic growth," he continued.
Obama said he "could have put off" health-care reform, adding that "there are some people who would say that wouldn't be such a bad thing -- the opponents of reform."
But he said delaying on that issue, which has been tied to the country's future fiscal and financial health, would have continued the "double-digit" rise in health-care costs and increase the burden on businesses paying for employee coverage.
"Given how difficult fighting the special interest has been on Capitol Hill, it's clear that, if we hadn't decided to make a bold step forward this year, we probably wouldn't have had the political capital to get it done in the future," he said. "Sooner or later we had to take that on, even though we knew it would be politically difficult."
But Obama acknowledged that cap-and-trade legislation and financial reform -- bills the House passed this year but the Senate did not -- would carry over into the mid-term election year when political calculations always slow down measures before Congress.
We speak with the nation’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen. He wasn’t at the Copenhagen climate summit and explains why he thinks it’s ultimately better for the planet that the talks collapsed. We also speak with with Dr. Hansen about his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth of the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity, and much more.Even as global criticism of the proceedings and final outcome of the two-week climate summit in Copenhagen continues to mount, the United Nations is trying to put a positive spin on the non-binding Copenhagen accord. Speaking to reporters Monday United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon insisted that the accord was “quite a significant achievement.”James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He also teaches at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and has published his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth of the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.
Today I’m joined by the scientist who first convinced the world to take notice of the looming problem of global warming back in the 1980s. Yes, I’m talking about the nation’s leading climate scientist James Hansen.
But the outspoken director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies wasn’t at Copenhagen. He decided to sit out the climate conference saying that it would be better for the planet if the summit ended in collapse.
James Hansen also teaches at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He’s just out with his first book. it’s called “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth of the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.”
A new bi-partisan climate bill offers a much smarter way to cut emissions—auction off pollution permits and distribute the proceeds to everyone.December 11, 2009. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced a bill today that is a much better approach to reducing climate change than the cap and trade bill circulating in the Senate. Her bill, which she co-sponsored with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), uses cap and dividend to reduce climate emissions and avoids the pitfalls and boom-and-bust cycles inherent in carbon trading. (Peter Barnes proposed this idea in YES! Magazine in 2001).What's not to like? This is a far better proposal than the cap and trade proposals that has Wall Street salivating. One caveat, though. Carbon reductions proposed in the bill are probably not enough to avert dangerous climate change. But if there is flexibility to step up the reductions as the science get firmer and the public backing grows, this approach could be just right.
Why is this a better idea?
First, polluters would pay for the right to pollute; they would buy carbon emissions permits at an auction, instead of getting the majority of them for free. This sends the right market signal—emit carbon, and you'll have to pay.
Carbon permits would be required at the point where fossil fuel energy enters the economy. The number of greenhouse gas emissions allowances is reduced regularly by amounts that businesses can plan for. There are no offsets—these would be real reductions in climate changing emissions.
Second, American families strained by the poor economy would benefit. Each person would get an equal share of the proceeds from the auction. It works like the oil trust funds in Alaska, where each resident gets about $1,300 per year for their share of the state's oil royalties. As long as our economy remains dependent on fossil fuels, prices for energy and energy-intensive products will rise. But the rebate will offset those price increases—Cantwell says it will mean most families are in about the same place financially. Those who buy carbon-free energy, drive energy efficient cars, or buy products produced locally with little fossil fuels will come out ahead, though, while those who drive gas guzzlers will pay more through the higher price of fuel. So it sends the right signal to consumers, too.
Politically, it should go over much better than cap and trade. Who wouldn't like to get a check in the mail each month that represents your share of the carbon auction revenues? Three quarters of the revenues would be distributed equally to all Americans. The other quarter will go to clean energy research and development, for projects that reduce non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, and for aid to communities and workers who need special help making the transition to a clean energy economy.
And here's the frosting on the cake. Instead of cap and trade, which would set up a massive Wall Street system of buying and selling carbon, this auction is for energy producers and importers, only—not brokers and speculators.
Naomi Klein, columnist for The Nation, asks: "A lot of people say, give Obama time. The guy was just elected - what do you say to that?"
Nnimmo Bassey, the Nigerian-born chair of Friends of the Earth International, says: "Give Obama time? The world cannot afford to give any more time. Now we've come to the brink. It's time for decision." Bassey compares our current situation to a soccer game. We've had plenty of chances to address global warming, but now we're at the moment of "sudden death."
Produced by Chuck Olsen for The UpTake. Special thanks to Naomi Klein and Jacob Wheeler.
The secret draft climate agreement leaked to the Guardian newspaper yesterday sets unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050. This means that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much as those in poor countries. The document also proposes a $10 billion a year fund to help developing nations cut emissions and tackle the effects of climate change. But the fund is far smaller than what many delegates advocate.Howie P.S.: More from Naomi Klein in Copenhagen: "Where Africa Took On Obama" (The Nation).
The Copenhagen deal may turn into the worst kind of disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein said last night.Howie P.S.: Meanwhile, "Ahead of Copenhagen Talks, Tens of Thousands Protest Across Europe Calling for Climate Justice" (Democracy Now! with video). Locally, "Seattle's greenhouse gas emissions in 2008 were below 1990 levels" (Seattle Times). But don't get too happy:In her speech to Klimaforum09, the "people's summit" she told the thousand or so campaigners and activists that this was a chance to carry on building the new convergence, the movement of movements that began "all those years ago in Seattle, fighting against the privatisation of life itself". Here was an opportunity to "continue the conversation that was so rudely interrupted by 9/11".Think of it as the mother of all carbon offsets."Down the road at the Bella Centre [where delegates are meeting] there is the worst case of disaster capitalism that we have ever witnessed. We know that what is being proposed in the Bella Centre doesn't even come close to the deal that is needed. We know the paltry emissions cuts that Obama has proposed; they're insulting. We're the ones who created this crisis... on the basic historical principle of polluters pays, we should pay."
Around the city, opening events were kicking off a fortnight of negotiations, debate and protest. In the morning Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, and Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, opened the conference with a plea for action.
Later, in the centre of town special UN envoy Gro Harlem Brundtland and climate change UN chief Yvo de Boer declared the heavily branded Hopenhagen open, as a globe bearing a large Siemens logos was illuminated. The popular Danish band Nephew kicked off (to bigger cheers than Brundtland or de Boer).
And in the evening Klein joined with Henry Saragih, the general convenor of the Via Campesina movement, and international Friends of the Earth chair Nnimmo Bassey, to declare Klimaforum09 the "real event in Copenhagen".
Saragih called for food sovereignty - greater power for small farmers - and said that changes to agricultural practices could reduce carbon emissions by up to 50%.
Bassey said that crude oil only appeared cheap because we do not pay the true price, and told the audience; "Leave the oil in the soil, leave the coal in the hole, leave the tarsand in the land".
And Klein finished up:We have to be the lie detectors here. Let's not restrict ourselves to polite marches and formulaic panel discussions. If Seattle was the coming out party, this should be the coming of age party. And, as a friend of mine called John Jordan says, I hope that we have grown up to be even more disobedient. Why are thousands of us burning fossil fuels to get here? Because we have to build a global mass movement that will not allow leaders to get away with what they are trying to get away with.
But while Seattle has made strides in trying to stem the growth of the emissions that scientists say contribute to global climate change, it's not at all clear how or if the city will still meet the goal three years from now.
Overall, emissions have actually grown since 2005, thanks to population growth, new development and at least one particularly cold winter. Emissions from the single largest polluting sector — cars and trucks — rose 5.5 percent just since 2005. The recession likely prevented them from climbing higher.
In fact, without significant changes vehicle transportation may prevent the city in 2012 from holding emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels.
"We still have substantial challenges ahead," said Mike Mann, director of the city's Office of Sustainability and Environment.
With the Copenhagen climate summit two weeks away, best-selling journalist Naomi Klein examines the grass-roots movement behind the climate debate proposal that argues all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology—everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies—are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. Klein also discusses the 10th anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests and the 10th anniversary of her first book, “No Logo.” [includes rush transcript]Howie P.S.: Klein also talks about the path from Seattle's WTO protests to the climate summit in Copenhagen next month. The United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place from December 7-18, 2009 in Copenhagen.
Chris in Paris (AMERICAblog):To some degree this is to be expected. The left let this issue completely slip away into the hands of the deniers. Even in the comments of David Horsey's latest, you can see the countdown and then the nutcases who start their usual denier rants.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007; today he focuses on global climate change, sustainable investing and a company called Current TV. His new book, "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis," is a practical guide that calls for us to change the way we think. We'll talk about upcoming Copenhagen climate summit and the sustainable investment company he co–founded.
, Howie P.S.: Naomi Klein talks about the current economic crisisThe other day I received a pre-publication copy of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, by David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit. It's set to come out ten years after a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anticorporate movement.
The book is a fascinating account of what really happened in Seattle, but when I spoke to David Solnit, the direct-action guru who helped engineer the shutdown, I found him less interested in reminiscing about 1999 than in talking about the upcoming United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen and the "climate justice" actions he is helping to organize across the United States on November 30. "This is definitely a Seattle-type moment," Solnit told me. "People are ready to throw down."He cautions, however, that growing up doesn't mean playing it safe, eschewing civil disobedience in favor of staid meetings. "I hope we have grown up to become much more disobedient," Jordan said, "because life on this world of ours may well be terminated because of too many acts of obedience."There is certainly a Seattle quality to the Copenhagen mobilization: the huge range of groups that will be there; the diverse tactics that will be on display; and the developing-country governments ready to bring activist demands into the summit. But Copenhagen is not merely a Seattle do-over. It feels, instead, as though the progressive tectonic plates are shifting, creating a movement that builds on the strengths of an earlier era but also learns from its mistakes.
The big criticism of the movement the media insisted on calling "antiglobalization" was always that it had a laundry list of grievances and few concrete alternatives. The movement converging on Copenhagen, in contrast, is about a single issue--climate change--but it weaves a coherent narrative about its cause, and its cures, that incorporates virtually every issue on the planet. In this narrative, our climate is changing not simply because of particular polluting practices but because of the underlying logic of capitalism, which values short-term profit and perpetual growth above all else. Our governments would have us believe that the same logic can now be harnessed to solve the climate crisis--by creating a tradable commodity called "carbon" and by transforming forests and farmland into "sinks" that will supposedly offset our runaway emissions.
Climate-justice activists in Copenhagen will argue that, far from solving the climate crisis, carbon-trading represents an unprecedented privatization of the atmosphere, and that offsets and sinks threaten to become a resource grab of colonial proportions. Not only will these "market-based solutions" fail to solve the climate crisis, but this failure will dramatically deepen poverty and inequality, because the poorest and most vulnerable people are the primary victims of climate change--as well as the primary guinea pigs for these emissions-trading schemes.
But activists in Copenhagen won't simply say no to all this. They will aggressively advance solutions that simultaneously reduce emissions and narrow inequality. Unlike at previous summits, where alternatives seemed like an afterthought, in Copenhagen the alternatives will take center stage. For instance, the direct-action coalition Climate Justice Action has called on activists to storm the conference center on December 16. Many will do this as part of the "bike bloc," riding together on an as yet unrevealed "irresistible new machine of resistance" made up of hundreds of old bicycles. The goal of the action is not to shut down the summit, Seattle-style, but to open it up, transforming it into "a space to talk about our agenda, an agenda from below, an agenda of climate justice, of real solutions against their false ones.... This day will be ours."
Some of the solutions on offer from the activist camp are the same ones the global justice movement has been championing for years: local, sustainable agriculture; smaller, decentralized power projects; respect for indigenous land rights; leaving fossil fuels in the ground; loosening protections on green technology; and paying for these transformations by taxing financial transactions and canceling foreign debts. Some solutions are new, like the mounting demand that rich countries pay "climate debt" reparations to the poor. These are tall orders, but we have all just seen the kind of resources our governments can marshal when it comes to saving the elites. As one pre-Copenhagen slogan puts it: "If the climate were a bank, it would have been saved"--not abandoned to the brutality of the market.
In addition to the coherent narrative and the focus on alternatives, there are plenty of other changes too: a more thoughtful approach to direct action, one that recognizes the urgency to do more than just talk but is determined not to play into the tired scripts of cops-versus-protesters. "Our action is one of civil disobedience," say the organizers of the December 16 action. "We will overcome any physical barriers that stand in our way--but we will not respond with violence if the police [try] to escalate the situation." (That said, there is no way the two-week summit will not include a few running battles between cops and kids in black; this is Europe, after all.)
A decade ago, in an op-ed in the New York Times published after Seattle was shut down, I wrote that a new movement advocating a radically different form of globalization "just had its coming-out party." What will be the significance of Copenhagen? I put that question to John Jordan, whose prediction of what eventually happened in Seattle I quoted in my book No Logo. He replied: "If Seattle was the movement of movements' coming-out party, then maybe Copenhagen will be a celebration of our coming of age."
CREDO action:Why is Verizon Wireless co-sponsoring a pro-coal, anti-environment rally on Labor Day?It's called the Friends of America Rally and over 70,000 people have already RSVPed to attend a political event to promote climate change denial and mountaintop removal mining.
Massey Energy, a dirty coal company and the most egregious violator of the Clean Water Act in history, is the moving force behind the event.The rally features speeches by prominent global warming denier Lord Christopher Monckton and conservative pundit Sean Hannity. Ted Nugent will provide musical entertainment.
Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, issued his invitation to the rally via a video onYouTube. In it he says:
"Hello I'm Don Blankenship and I'd like to invite you to a Labor Day rally in West Virginia. We're going to have Hank Williams and have a good time but we're also going to learn how environmental extremists and corporate America are both trying to destroy your jobs."We are not making this up. For more information read check out this blog post from our friends at The Nation.Companies like Verizon Wireless may say they are not making a political statement when they participate in events like these. But it's never just about marketing. After all this is the same company that made a decision to block NARAL Pro-Choice America's text messages from its network. Verizon Wireless has choices. And once again, it's made a very poor one.
Tell Lowell McAdam, President and CEO of Verizon Wireless to issue a public apology and immediately withdraw all support from this extremist, anti-environmental rally.
