Political Climate Articles
The Clunk of Cold, Green Cash
By now, you've probably heard that the government's "Cash for Clunkers" program has been wildly popular, with 250,000 clunker trades in the first week and last-minute action from Congress to fund another 500,000 trades. The program's primary purpose is economic stimulus but, according to figures released by the Department of Transportation last week, it's had real fuel-efficiency benefits, as well:
-- The average fuel efficiency of trade-ins was 15.8 mpg.
-- The average fuel efficiency of new vehicles purchased was 25.4 mpg.
-- 83 percent of the trade-ins were trucks.
-- 60 percent of the new vehicles purchased were cars.
The seven terrors of the world
The world is facing a series of interlinked crises which threatens billions of people and could cause the collapse of civilisation, according to an international report out this week.
Climate pollution, food shortages, diseases, wars, disasters, crime and the recession are all conspiring to ravage the globe and threaten the future of humanity, it warns. Democracy, human rights and press freedom are also suffering.
The report, called 2009 State Of The Future, has been compiled by the Millennium Project, an international think-tank based in Washington DC, and involved 2700 experts from 30 countries.
"Half the world appears vulnerable to social instability and violence," the report says. "This is due to rising unemployment and decreasing food, water and energy supplies, coupled with the disruptions caused by global warming and mass migrations."
The project has been backed by organisations including United Nations agencies, the Rockefeller Foundation, private companies and governments. It provides "invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society," according to the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.
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World's top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: "We have to leave oil before oil leaves us."
"Oil prices leapt above $70 a barrel Monday in Asia on investor expectations a recovering global economy will boost crude demand," the AP reports.
You might call those investors speculators — if speculation can be based on marketplace reality. The UK's Independent opens its interview with Dr. Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA):
Dr. Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years – at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.
The warning is double worrisome because until the last year or two, the IEA had been a bastion of relatively staid and conservative and hence useless energy prognostication (like the U.S. Energy Information Administration still is). Now the IEA and Birol have joined the fact-based alarmists, warning in its World Energy Outlook 2008, "Without a change in policy, the world is on a path for a rise in global temperature of up to 6°C" and proposing aggressive clean energy solutions.
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Climate bill may fall by the wayside
With the fight over health care reform absorbing all the bandwidth on Capitol Hill, Democrats fear a major climate change bill may be left on the cutting-room floor this year.
A handful of key senators on climate change are almost guaranteed to be tied up well into the fall on health care. Democrats from the Midwest and the South are resistant to a cap-and-trade proposal. And few if any Republicans are jumping in to help push a global warming and energy initiative.
As a result, many Democrats fear the lack of political will and the congressional calendar will conspire to punt climate change into next year.
"The reality is [the health reform bill] is going to happen before cap and trade," said House Agriculture Committee Chairman Rep. Collin Peterson, who's been working with farm-state senators on the climate legislation. "Who knows if it will ever come out of the Senate?"
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), a senior member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee, has also publicly questioned efforts to move a Senate climate change bill this year.
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Would You Pay $100 to Reduce Our Climate Impacts?
A new U.S. government study on Tuesday adds to a growing list of experts concluding that climate legislation moving through Congress would have only a modest impact on consumers, adding a bit more than $100 to household costs in 2020.
Under the climate legislation passed by the House of Representatives in June, electricity, heating oil and other bills for average families will rise $114 in 2020 and $288 in 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration, the country's top energy forecaster.
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Leaked Memo: Oil Lobby Launches Fake "Grassroots" Campaign
An internal memo obtained by Greenpeace USA details polluters' plans to launch a nationwide Astroturf campaign, staging fake "grassroots" events to attack climate legislation during the final weeks of recess before the Senate returns to debate the issue in September.
The email memo (download available), which appears to come from the desk of American Petroleum Institute President Jack Gerard, asks API's member companies to recruit employees, retirees, vendors and contractors to attend "Energy Citizen" rallies in key Congressional districts nationwide. API is focusing on 21 states that have "a significant industry presence" or "assets on the ground."
Taking a page from the playbook of Astroturf campaigners currently crashing health care town hall events across the country, API hopes to similarly sully productive communications between Congressmembers and their actual constituents. Gerard states that API is ready to bus in company members and provide logistical support, and reveals that API has retained "a highly experienced events management company that has produced successful rallies for presidential campaigns, corporations and interest groups."
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Why Do the Same Groups Oppose Health Care and Energy Reform?
Health care reform seems a long way from climate change but they share something very important in common: well funded interest groups that want to keep things just the way they are.
Take the Manhattan Institute. They are railing against proposed health care reform, churning out a dizzying number of reports and op-eds about why "Obama-care" is wrong for America. They also expend abundant effort slagging climate science, last year feting Danish doubter Bjorn Lomborg. The Manhattan Institute received $235,000 from ExxonMobil, as well as funding from various other conservative organizations.
Or the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog that has received $257,500 from ExxonMobil, and regularly gripes about how biased the US media is towards the "theory" of climate change, or the need to overhaul the health care system.
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Crock of the Week
All Wet on Sea Level Rise
Sea level rise will be one of the most important and destructive effects of climate change, so naturally, Deniers have something grossly in error to say about it. See the Video
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Coal industry flack says mountaintop removal solves 'lack of flat space' in Appalachia
The coal industry front group embroiled in an Astroturf scandal is now arguing that mountaintop removal coal mining helps communities "hampered because of a lack of flat space." Joe Lucas, vice president of communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), told the Guardian that dynamiting the tops off of mountains — far from being the "rape of Appalachia" — is actually a boon to rural communities:
I can take you to places in eastern Kentucky where community services were hampered because of a lack of flat space — to build factories, to build hospitals, even to build schools. In many places, mountain-top mining, if done responsibly, allows for land to be developed for community space.
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Coal lobby hires top GOP voter-fraud company to run massive "grassroots" efforts to undermine climate and clean energy action
The coal industry lobbying outfit the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is pressing forward with an aggressive astroturfing campaign going after U.S. senators — despite the recent revelation that it was responsible for forged "grassroots" letters to lawmakers, attacking the American Clean Energy and Security Act:
Paid staff will both call people already on the group's list and talk to other people at public events, asking them if they want information or T-shirts or would be interested in asking a question at a town hall meeting. "This is the purest form of grassroots," Lucas said. "It's facilitating constituents to talk one-on-one with members of Congress.
The new project will use 225,000 volunteers dubbed "America's Power Army." They will visit town hall meetings, fairs and other functions attended by members of Congress and ask misleading questions about energy policy.
ThinkProgress has discovered that ACCCE has subcontracted its astroturf operations to the Lincoln Strategy Group, a GOP-tied firm notorious for voter fraud. The LinkedIn profile for Lincoln Strategies staffer Courtney Forrester reveals that her employer is engaged in a massive effort to recruit supporters on behalf of the coal industry. Steve Gates, communications director for ACCCE, told ThinkProgress that Lincoln Strategy Group ran their grassroots campaign last year as well.
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Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security
WASHINGTON - The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.
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New York State Puts Long-Term Emissions Goal on the Books
NEW YORK, N.Y. - New York Gov. David Paterson signed an executive order yesterday that establishes a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
The order calls for the creation of a Climate Action Council comprised of state agency top brass to draw up a draft Climate Action Plan by September 2010. A range of actions are to be undertaken by the council, such as the creation of a greenhouse gas inventory, economic analyses of potential strategies, identifying emissions reduction opportunities and constraints, setting timelines, and coordinating efforts with the state energy planning board.
"Climate change is the most pressing environmental issue of our time," Gov. Peterson said in a statement. "By taking action, we send a signal that New Yorkers will do our share to address the climate crisis and we will do it in a way that creates opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship to flourish."
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