Political Climate Articles
"Is God Green?" - Video
A new holy war is growing within the conservative evangelical community, with implications for both the global environment and American politics. For years liberal Christians and others have made protection of the environment a moral commitment. Now a number of conservative evangelicals are joining the fight, arguing that man's stewardship of the planet is a biblical imperative and calling for action to stop global warming.
But they are being met head-on by opposition from their traditional evangelical brethren who adamantly support the Bush administration in downplaying the threat of global warming and other environmental perils. The political stakes are high: Three out of every four white evangelical voters chose George W. Bush in 2004. "Is God Green?" explores how a serious split among conservative evangelicals over the environment and global warming could reshape American politics.
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There is a conspiracy to prevent Green Energy
Utilities are vying to build a new power system to stretch across the state that would give six times more capacity than the present systems. The upgraded systems will be needed to help fully harness wind power generation. Another day, another bad Supreme Court move (see "High court unleashes tsunami of corporate cash with Citizens United Ruling"). First-time guest blogger Richard W. Caperton has the story and analysis in this CAP repost.
The Supreme Court last week decided not to review a lower court ruling on electricity transmission, upholding states' ability to deny permits for new transmission lines. This will allow states to prevent anyone—either the government or private businesses—from building new transmission lines. The United States needs these transmission lines. They would enable Americans to consume more clean energy by bringing it from wind- and solar-powered plants to homes around the country. And a report released last week by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that we need 20,000 new miles of transmission lines to move carbon-free wind energy from wind turbines to East Coast consumers alone. The United States can't reap the benefits of clean energy if Americans can't access it, and these developments reinforce the fact that climate and energy legislation must contain a comprehensive transmission proposal to effectively drive the transition to a clean energy economy.
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Ad Spending Slumps in 2008, Projected to Decline Significantly in 2009
Advertising expenditures worldwide fell 2 percent in 2008 to $643 billion, about 1 percent of the gross world product (all figures in 2008 dollars). Of this total, 42 percent was spent in the United States, the lowest percentage since measurements started in 1950. Yet a much greater amount is still spent per person on advertising in the United States than in the rest of the world. In 2008, some $891 was spent per American—nine times as much as the $96 spent per person worldwide.
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EPA makes gains with Energy Star program, but US housing stock remains woefully 'sick.'
EAST LANSING, Mich. - Krista and Micah Fuerst were looking near here to buy their first place together, and had narrowed it down to two houses: One built 25 years ago of standard materials, the other brand new and built to strict energy efficiency standards.
The couple's choice was easy: They picked the Energy Star home, the U.S. Environmental Program's top energy ranking.
But they're in the minority.
About 17 percent of new homes built in 2008 earned the Energy Star label. The proportion - which is expected to reach 20 percent when 2009's figures are tallied - marks a five-point increase from 2007 and "indicates such incredible success," said Sam Rashkin, national director of the program's section for homes.
Home energy use accounts for 16 percent of the United States' greenhouse gas emissions.
Despite the EPA's gains, some 99 percent of American houses are "sick" - damp, drafty, dusty, noisy and expensive to heat and cool - and "could be made at least 30 percent more energy-efficient with highly cost-effective, tried-and-true energy-efficiency improvements," according to Rashkin.
The Energy Star program won't solve this. Energy Star is meant to reflect the cream of the housing stock, and thus, program officers say, will always represent a minority of American homes.
Experts say economics and regulations are the root of the problem: Mortgages are structured in ways that fail to recognize efficiency's benefits, while a patchwork of inconsistent and ill-enforced energy codes provides conflicting signals to industry.
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Chile Water Authority Fears Future Water Shortages
DGA says water shortages in Region III could be a prelude for Metropolitan Region
Water shortages in one of Chile's prime agricultural districts - Region III's Copiapo valley, home to Chile's early table grape deal - have local fruit growers and government officials concerned. Tierra Amarilla and Alto del Carmen communities in Huasco have not experienced a drop of rain for over a year
More than 700 fruit growers rely on the Lautaro water reservoir, fed by the Copiapo River, which has a maximum capacity of 23 million cubic meters of water and normally holds about 10 million cubic meters of water. But today the reservoir is completely dry - the result of prolonged drought conditions and overuse of limited water resources.
Water levels in the Santa Juana reservoir located in the Huasco Valley are also drastically reduced, dropping from 160 million to 130 million liters of water in the last month. In total an estimated 24 million cubic metres of water has diminished in the region's reservoirs in the last year.
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Global warming? Don't blame the car
General Motors executive says solar flares are responsible for climate change, not car emissions or CO2.
Senior General Motors executive Bob Lutz has slammed scientists and environmentalists, saying global warming has little to do with humans and more to do with solar flares and sunspots.
The self-confessed petrolhead and man who proudly claims to be a progenitor of the Chevrolet Volt electric car (due in Australia in 2012) still scoffs at global warming.
Lutz, who in 2008 memorably described global warming as a "crock of shit", once again aired his views while meeting with a group of Australian journalists at the Detroit motor show last week.
"I am not going to give a speech on this because everytime I do I get in trouble," Lutz said, then immediately began explaining his views.
"All I ever say is look at the data, look at the empirical evidence. Look at what they said 10 years ago what would happen with rising ocean levels, it hasn't happened.
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For 2010, it's the economy, energy, and the environment
In July 2009, I wrote that building performance data is golden. I said that, consequently, there would be a greater call for retrocommissioning and ongoing commissioning services, a greater call for dashboard software for reporting status and trends to owners and occupants, and a continued shift in consulting engineering services toward improving the performance of existing buildings. Since then, enough has happened that I'm escalating my assessment that building performance data will be platinum in 2010.
The new construction market continues to muddle through economic concerns such as high unemployment and tight financing restrictions. This means that investments will need more data for justification going in, and more data for verification coming out, for projects that primarily concern reducing operational costs and possibly improving the investment value of buildings.
Meanwhile, energy and environmental regulations and voluntary programs are moving forward.
At the federal level, three concrete climate actions took place that impact buildings. 1) An executive order calls for a 20% reduction of greenhouse gases (GHGs) among federal facilities and vehicles by 2020 and a 26% increase in water efficiency. 2) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mandated GHG reporting to begin in 2010 for facilities that comprise one or more stationary sources (such as buildings) emitting an aggregate of 25,000 metric tons per year or more. 3) The EPA declared that CO2, HFCs, and four other gases "in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations."
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Climate Denial Industry Blowing Hot Air On Himalayan Glaciers
The climate denial industry is once again trying to make a huge to-do about a tiny error by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
With the Climategate Swifthack episode fading from the limelight, after a thorough debunking of far-fetched accusations that scientists made up global warming, the climate science attack machine now wants the world to focus on one paragraph out of a 938-page, three-year-old report.
The contrarians are questioning a single reference to Himalayan glaciers included in a 2007 IPCC report that does not meet the IPCC's well-established evidentiary standards.
Here is their alleged smoking gun: The second of three 2007 reports from the IPCC included a statement that the likelihood of Himalayan glaciers disappearing "by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."
But the reference to Himalayan glaciers melting at that early date didn't originate from a peer-reviewed study, meaning it should not have appeared in the IPCC report.
Sure, that's slightly embarrassing. But it isn't grounds to declare the entire library of climate science a fraud. The IPCC's findings have been validated and substantiated by assessments conducted by leading scientific institutions the world over.
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The Disingenuous Environmentalist offers a solution with no funding model
Bjorn Lomborg, the Disingenuous Environmentalist, is (with the generous assistance of the Washington Post opinion page editor) once again fighting against any tax or regulation that might inconvenience his buddies in the fossil fuel industry. But, perhaps out of character, Lomborg is also proposing a very specific global investment - $100 billion US - in alternative energy research.
This is probably a good idea, although anyone who is even slightly skeptical of government might worry about empowering politicians to try to pick winners when it comes to financing research and innovation.
Smart economists (clearly a group to which Lomborg has no affiliation) tend to agree that the best way to address climate change is to ask the market to do it. You put a price on carbon - a price that begins to reflect the unfunded damage that CO2 (and other fossil fuel pollutants) do to the atmosphere - and let entrepreneurs act on that price signal and seek the most efficient solutions.
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The Skeptic John Coleman: Charming, Grandfatherly - and not the least credible
The increasingly public "skepticism" of aging weatherman John Coleman raises an interesting question: Do you have to be corrupt to be wrong about climate change?
The answer, of course, is no. Notwithstanding the money that Coleman makes as a guest speaker for oily conferences organized by long-compromised groups like the Heartland Institute, he may be sincere, even well-intentioned about his personal campaign to dismiss climate change as "the greatest scam in history."
But that doesn't absolve him of responsibility, especially as he is leveraging a high profile to interfere in a debate about which he is clearly ill-informed. Because given his ability to command an audience, and given the public's tendency to confuse weather with climate and to actually take someone like Coleman seriously as a scientific commentator, there is a real danger that people could believe what he says. And that would be a crime.
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The Dirty Air Dem Revealed: Mary Landrieu of Katrina-ravaged, sea-rise-threatened Louisiana
The state that stands to suffer the most from human-caused global warming has elected leaders who want to stop efforts to avoid its inundation (see "Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100"). That's true of the Governor and presidential hopeful (see "Jindal Tries to Block Climate Change Regulation"). It's true of GOP Sen. Vitter who tried to block climate change response centers. We've known for a while that Sen. Landrieu wants to jettison cap-and-trade. Now we know she is joining Sen. Lisa Dirty Air Murkowski (R-AK) in her campaign to prevent Clean Air Act regulation of global warming pollution , as Brad Johnson reports in this Wonk Room excerpt:
Yesterday, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) has announced that she is the Murky Dem supporting the lobbyist-directed effort to prevent action by President Obama to slow global warming. Because she "believes the Clean Air Act is not meant to be applied to carbon dioxide emissions," Landrieu is collaborating to craft what environmentalists are calling the Dirty Air Act:
"I am considering that right now," Landrieu said when asked whether she backed Murkowski's plan. "I have been working with her on it."
Landrieu, like Louisiana's Republican governor Bobby Jindal and Senator David Vitter, has pledged allegiance to the pollution interests who have given her over $1.5 million instead of her own people. Last month, Jindal "filed objections with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson" over the proposed climate rules, claiming the standards would have "profound negative economic impacts on the state of Louisiana." In September, Vitter submitted an amendment to block funding for centers that study and prepare for the impacts of climate change.
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Clean Air battle: Murkowski takes EPA fight to Senate floor
Sen. Lisa Murkowski took her battle with the Environmental Protection Agency to the floor of the Senate Thursday, saying she was left with no choice but to fight a federal agency she believes is "contemplating regulations that will destroy jobs while millions of Americans are doing everything they can just to find one."
The Alaska Republican announced she would seek to keep the EPA from drawing up rules on greenhouse gas emissions from large emitters, such as power plants, refineries and manufacturers. Murkowski did it by filing a "disapproval resolution," a rarely used procedural move that prohibits rules written by executive branch agencies from taking effect.
On Thursday, she threatened dire economic consequences if the EPA, rather than Congress, writes the rules for how to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Both the White House and congressional leaders have said they prefer to write a law that would cap and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but while the House of Representatives has passed such legislation, it has stalled in the Senate.
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An argument against Murkowski's radical attempt to overrule EPA scientists
Today one of my Republican colleagues introduced a proposal to brazenly overturn sound scientific work done by our nation's leading public health experts and prohibit the Environment Protection Agency from doing its job to protect the health and welfare of the American people. This extremely damaging proposal is a political stunt designed to effectively strip the EPA's power to curb harmful air pollution.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) proposal takes the form of a "Resolution of Disapproval" under the Congressional Review Act. It is so extreme that it would legally overturn scientists' very conclusion, based on decades of scientific study, that greenhouse-gas emissions threaten public health and the environment, and it would have the effect of prohibiting the EPA from making the same conclusion in the future. It could block any action by the EPA to protect our families, our communities, and our economy from greenhouse-gas pollution.
This resolution represents an irresponsible attempt to take away the power of an independent agency whose sole purpose is to protect the health of our families, friends, and neighbors and the environment we live in.
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Future wars could be fought over lakes, rivers
Water is one of the most sought after natural resources in Africa. Many wars, especially among pastoralist communities, have been fought over it while global warming and reckless human activity have taken a heavy toll on the continent's major lakes in the past decades.
A UNEP-produced Atlas of African Lakes shows the drastic depletion of the continent's major water bodies by comparing and contrasting past satellite images with contemporary ones. Complicating matters further, some of the biggest natural lakes in Africa are usually spread across national borders, which means the responsibility of ensuring there is a sustainable usage of their waters is shared between nations.
But more often than not there is a sort of scramble, with the countries involved selfishly trying to outdo each other in siphoning the lacustrine resources without giving much thought to a common and sustainable operating policy. Where agreements are drawn they are rarely honoured.
The state of Lake Chad is probably the best illustration of this madness. Once Africa's largest fresh water body supporting the livelihoods of about 30 million people in Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger, the lake has shrunk by 90 per cent from 25,000 square kilometres in the 1960s to less than 1,300 square kilometres today.
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