Political Climate Articles
U.S. Paid Over $26 Billion for Oil in November
In his twelfth consecutive monthly update on the level of foreign oil imports in the U.S., energy expert T. Boone Pickens said that based on the latest figures from the U.S. Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration (EIA), the U.S. imported 61% percent of its oil, or 339 million barrels in November 2009, sending approximately $26.4 billion, or $ 591,477 per minute, overseas to foreign governments.
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U.N. Op-Ed: Bracing for the flood
Earthquakes. Cyclones. Tsunamis. Floods. Mudslides. Natural disasters have doubled in frequency over the last two decades. Catastrophes have also become more intense, destructive and threatening to human life. In 2008 alone, some 36 million people were suddenly displaced by these phenomena.
While that is an enormous figure, it is dwarfed by the number of people whose security and livelihoods are being steadily undermined by the longer-term consequences of climate change: droughts and unpredictable rainfall patterns, the degradation and desertification of the land, coastal erosion and salinification.
A particularly disturbing characteristic of these developments is their potential to ignite conflicts within and between states, especially in situations where communities are competing for increasingly scarce resources such as fresh water and grazing land.
Looking a little further into the future, citizens of small and low-lying islands will face the prospect of their countries crumbling into the rising sea, their nationalities, cultures and identities drowned.
Nobody can say exactly how many people will be displaced by natural disasters and climate change in the decades to come. Current predictions vary enormously: from tens of millions to over a billion.
What one can say with considerable confidence, however, is that the impact of climate change will be felt most strongly by those low-income countries that are least responsible for the phenomenon and least equipped to deal with it.
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Japan Betting On Climate Change Profits
As we just heard, there are many players involved in the Copenhagen climate talks, but one country, Japan, has a vested economic interest in the outcome. Reporter Rob Schmitz of member station KQED has this report.
ROB SCHMITZ: Shinya Ocata(ph) compares his factory's commitment to reducing greenhouse gases to the way Seattle Mariners' slugger Ichiro Suzuki plays baseball. Ocata says his blue jumpsuited workers at this plant outside Kyoto rarely hit home runs. Instead, they focus on singles, doubles, individual hits that will make a difference at the end of the game.
Mr. SHINYA OCATA: (Through translator) Each person who works in this factory has made small improvements to our products and manufacturing process. Little tweaks here and there. When you put it all together, it's meant huge savings in energy.
SCHMITZ: Daikin runs this factory. It's one of Japan's largest air conditioner makers. For decades, Japanese companies like Daikin have awarded raises and bonuses to employees who come up with new ways to save energy. By law, each factory in Japan must become at least one percent more energy efficient each year. And they must devote at least one staff member to this endeavor.
This is just one of a laundry list of government regulations designed to place Japan as the most energy-efficient country on the planet. It's not that Japan cares more about the planet than other countries, it saves energy out of economic necessity. Japan has to import nearly all its fossil fuels.
Professor LLEWELLYN HUGHES (George Washington University): That's meant that in Japan you've had a fear of energy insecurity. It's kind of, the, you know, the energy independence idea on steroids, really.
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Paul Krugman debates Bjorn Lomborg on global warming, CNN Sunday
The fireworks should fly for this one. It looks to be Sunday on CNN at 1 and 5 ET. People should post a video when and if it goes up Sunday afternoon. I'll be winging it to Copenhagen then.
This debate is courtesy of Fareed Zakaria (international times below):
Can the Nobel Prize winner in economics out-debate the Danish delayer? I think so.
* Lomborg's main argument has collapsed
* Exclusive: Caldeira calls the vision of Lomborg's Climate Consensus "a dystopic world out of a science fiction story"
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Climate negotiators eye the 'forgotten 50%' of greenhouse gas pollutants
While the U.S. has focused on CO2 emissions, some nations are pushing for measures to curb black carbon, HFCs and methane, which they say will be easier to achieve and will show quick results.
Reporting from Copenhagen - International negotiators are quietly making progress here on steps to reduce "stealth" pollutants that contribute to climate change, including soot, refrigerants and methane gas, which together account for nearly as much greenhouse gas pollution as carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide, of course, is the poster gas for global warming. Disagreements over how to reduce its emission from cars, factories and power plants have dominated the Copenhagen climate talks so far.
But carbon dioxide accounts for only half the world's greenhouse gas emissions. And while top leaders postured and negotiated over a host of issues related to carbon emissions in the first week of the summit here, behind the scenes diplomats have worked toward compromises on a few simple strategies to reduce the other pollutants that cause global warming.
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Pentagon, CIA Eye New Threat: Climate Change
Global warming is now officially considered a threat to U.S. national security.
For the first time, Pentagon planners in 2010 will include climate change among the security threats identified in the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Congress-mandated report that updates Pentagon priorities every four years.
The reference to climate change follows the establishment in October of a new Center for the Study of Climate Change at the Central Intelligence Agency.
But the new attention to climate concerns among U.S. security officials does not mean the Pentagon and the CIA have taken sides in the debate over the validity of data on global warming. As with nuclear terrorism, deadly pandemics or biological warfare, it only means they want to be prepared.
"I always look at the worst case," says one senior intelligence official who follows climate issues. "Whether it's global warming or the chance of Country A invading Country B, I just assume the most likely outcome is the worst one."
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Gorbachev: "The latest scientific research on climate change is extremely disturbing. We have a real emergency."
As the climate change summit meeting moves forward in Copenhagen, it is increasingly clear that more than just the environment is at stake. The global environmental crisis is at the heart of practically all the problems now confronting us, including the need to create a global economic model grounded in the public good.
It is directly linked to security issues and to increasingly dangerous ethnic and international conflicts; to mass migrations and displacements of people, which are already destabilizing politics and economics; to growing poverty and social inequality; to the water crisis and energy and food shortages.
Excuses and pretexts for not taking action on the environment, and assertions that there are more important problems, are simply no longer credible. If we fail on this problem, we'll fail on all the others.
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'Smokey Joe' Barton: Global Warming 'Is A Net Benefit To Mankind'
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), nicknamed "Smokey Joe" for his persistent advocacy on behalf of polluters, sat for an interview with C-Span this weekend to discuss a variety of environmental issues.
Barton expressed concern that regulation of carbon dioxide pollution would restrict his "convenient" and "modern lifestyle." "I don't want to go back to the 1870s where my great-grandparents lived on a dry land cotton farm in Texas with no running water and no electricity and their power source was their own muscles or animal power," Barton feared.
He then argued that the warming of the planet is actually a "net benefit" for humans:
CO2 is odorless, colorless, tasteless – it's not a threat to human health in terms of being exposed to it. We create it as we talk back and forth. So, and if you go beyond that, on a net basis, there's ample evidence that warming generically — however it is caused — is a net benefit to mankind.
Watch it:
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Climate change hits Canada, which says "Bring it on!"
OK, our neighbors up north don't talk that way, as the video below make clear
But they — or, rather, their government, seems to be trying to outdo our last Administration in inviting climate change to do its very worst (see "A Canadian view of Copenhagen").
Here is the last of the five "mouth" videos that I filmed up way too close and personal in sardine-like conditions. This is Rick Bates, Executive Director of the Canadian Wildlife Federation — yes, I was surrounded by an impressive, eclectic international crowd, all brought together in one small place thanks to the incompetence of the UNFCCC in handing out twice as many credentials as the Bella Center could hold!
Watch (but cover your eyes):
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Asked How He Knows The Earth Is Cooling, Michael Steele Says 'I Don't!'
Earlier this year, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele ridiculed the notion that the Earth is warming, arguing instead that the world is actually "cooling," citing the supposed examples of Iceland and Greenland:
STEELE: We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No very long.
"I'm embarrassed for the Republicans," one Discover Magazine blogger wrote of Steele's comments. [Last week], a reporter from the local Fox Tampa affiliate asked Steele how he knows the Earth is cooling. "I don't!" Steele exclaimed:
Q: Global warming, you say the earth is cooling. Michael how do you know for sure?
STEELE: I don't! I don't! But apparently neither does anybody else! Ok? I don't. All I know is every morning I come on, I turn on channel 13 and I'll see what the weather man tells me okay?
Watch it (starting at 7:15):
Steele doesn't know how he knows "we are cooling" because there isn't any evidence to support that claim. It's a political tactic the right wing uses to obstruct meaningful action to address climate change.
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PLAN B 4.0 BY THE NUMBERS - DATA HIGHLIGHTS ON SELLING OUR FUTURE
In Chapter 1 of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown underscores important indicators of global stability and resource consumption. The following are summaries of key datasets that inform these discussions.
Each year, the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine rank 60 "failing states," countries which on some level fail to provide personal security or basic services, such as education, health care, food, and physical infrastructure, to their people. The countries are evaluated using the Failed States Index, a ten-point scale for each of twelve political, social, economic, and military indicators (i.e., a state that is failing completely receives a score of 120).
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Palin vs. Gore Climate Showdown
The former vice president and former vice presidential candidate both offer distortions on global warming.
Summary
On Dec. 9, an op-ed by Sarah Palin on climate change ran in the Washington Post. Al Gore responded to Palin's piece and made some fresh claims of his own later that day in an interview with MSNBC. We find that both engaged in some distortions and have been rightly called out by experts in the field.
* Gore said that 40 percent of the polar ice cap is already gone. That's an outdated figure — it has recovered in the last two years, and is now about 24 percent smaller than the 1979-2000 average.
* Gore's claim that all Arctic ice would "go completely" over the next decade is greatly exaggerated. The scientist he is citing was actually talking about nearly ice-free conditions, and only in the summer months.
* Gore and Palin both left out information when discussing the economic impact of climate legislation. Gore dodged a question about job losses, and Palin ignored the potentially severe effects of doing nothing.
* Palin misrepresented the contents of the leaked e-mails from the Climate Research Unit, saying that they show "fraudulent scientific practices." That's not the case.
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Jim Inhofe gets cool reception in Denmark
Sen. Jim Inhofe flew across the Atlantic and — on little sleep — braved the snow, the cold and the dark to deliver his skeptical message at the international climate conference.
What he found when he got here: a few aides and a single reporter.
"I think he's going to be a little disappointed," one of his aides remarked.
Inhofe was at least impatient.
The ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hoped to spread two messages in Copenhagen: Global warming is a hoax, and there's no way the Senate is going to pass a cap-and-trade bill.
But it was early morning when he arrived at the Bella Center, and the halls were still half-deserted. He walked quickly, brushing off an aide who suggested that he slow down and take a breath.
"I don't want to breathe — I want to get something done," he said.
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Heated debate in Nova Scotia over proposal to harvest trees and burn wood for energy
HALIFAX, N.S. - A debate is brewing between the Nova Scotia government, focus groups and environmentalists over the sustainability of harvesting trees and burning low-grade wood to meet the province's energy needs.
This energy source, known as biomass, has been used for heat and electricity in Europe for years and, on a small scale, in many Canadian provinces.
It is being recommended by a government-commissioned consultation team as a component of a province wide renewable energy strategy, but some worry that Nova Scotia doesn't have the necessary regulations in place to go ahead with any large-scale forest biomass projects.
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Dutch have a simple answer to energy crisis - working together
WHILE tens of thousands of politicians and activists gathered hopefully in Copenhagen last Friday, a minor success was scored by eight men in wellingtons, standing on a barge beside the Afsluitdijk – the dyke that stops the North Sea from flooding the Netherlands.
The focus of attention was a small, two-bladed tidal Tocardo turbine which has been spinning in one of the sluice channels between the freshwater IJsselmeer and the saltwater North Sea for the past 18 months.
A sensor in the turbine was dislodged during repairs to the sluice gates, and watching the massive effort needed to reconnect that single wire, the extra costs associated with marine energy became crystal clear.
But, strange to relate, the final success of Copenhagen could rest heavily on this tiny sputnik of a machine.
The Tocardo will be one of the technologies deployed in an ambitious plan to reverse global warming, fossil-fuel dependency and colossal power company profits if Hans van Breugel and Fred Gardner have their way.
A farmer and an engineer, these two Dutchmen have been building on the expertise that's kept the Netherlands above sea level for seven hundred years with new marine energy devices.
Now they are building on the human interdependency that life below sea level has encouraged. The co-operative spirit is in with the bricks in the Netherlands – or rather in with the dykes. If one farmer builds a sea-wall, he's still vulnerable to flooding if his neighbour does not.
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After "truth squad" fizzles, Der Spiegel reporter tells Inhofe: "You're ridiculous."
Sen. Inhofe (R-OIL) has mostly become a laughingstock on this continent. He's made absurd statements attacking military leaders trying to warn about the dangers of human-caused global warming (see Inhofe trashes generals who advocate for bipartisan clean energy legislation: They crave "the limelight"). Heck even the Palin-embracing Washington Post mocks Inhofe as "the last flat-earther." Not it turns out he's a laughingstock on two continents now, as made clear in this Think Progress repost.
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Eco-fraud Gingrich flip-flops on CO2 emissions
In 2007, Newt said "My message I think is that the evidence is sufficient that we should move towards the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon loading in the atmosphere.... And do it urgently, yes."
Newt Gingrich wrote a column in the Washington Examiner yesterday addressing climate policy. In the op-ed, the former House Speaker attacks the Environmental Protection Agency's move to classify CO2 emissions as a dangerous pollutant:
The Obama administration has been explicit about how its decision to have the Environmental Protection Agency regulate carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant was meant as a threat to Congress.
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