Political Climate Articles
Vote Vets tough new ad: Every time oil goes up $1, Iran gets another $1.5 billion to use against us.
Vote Vets launches its toughest ad to date on behalf of bipartisan action on climate and clean energy:
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Development funding done right - How to ensure multilateral development banks finance low-carbon clean energy -- not high-carbon dirty energy
The World Bank Group is the largest and most important multilateral development bank providing critical funding across the developing world to fight poverty and boost economic growth and prosperity. Yet the World Bank and its affiliates direct more than twice as much financing toward fossil fuel-based energy projects than they do toward clean energy and energy efficiency projects despite the global warming crisis that threatens the developing world most severely [see big figure below]
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Arctic Security? Wanting the arctic icecap to disappear
China eyeing perks of ice-free Arctic: study
STOCKHOLM (AFP) - China has started exploring how to reap economic and strategic benefits from the ice melting at the Arctic with global warming, a Stockholm research institute said Monday.
Chinese officials have so far had been cautious in expressing interest in the region for fear of causing alarm among the five countries bordering the Arctic, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said.
"The prospect of the Arctic being navigable during summer months, leading to both shorter shipping routes and access to untapped energy resources, has impelled the Chinese government to allocate more resources to Arctic research," SIPRI researcher Linda Jakobson said.
Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are already at odds over how to divvy up the Arctic riches, claiming overlapping parts of the region -- estimated to hold 90 billion untapped barrels of oil -- and wrangling over who should control the still frozen shipping routes.
Most Europe-Asia trade now travels through the Suez Canal.
Diverting this traffic through the famed Northwest Passage, which according to different predictions could become ice-free in the summer months any time between 2013 and 2060, would cut travel distance by 40 percent.
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STATE PEACOCKS:
Conservative-led state governments are choosing the deficit peacock path, refusing to responsibly raise revenues and instead slashing vital spending that benefits children, college students, and law enforcement. Virginia faces a $2.2 billion budget shortfall over the next two years. Newly elected Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) has promised to veto any legislation that would raise taxes. As a result, McDonnell's budget amounts to a full-on assault on the state's domestic priorities, proposing cutting almost $730 million in K-12 education spending, freezing enrollment in the state's health insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women, and requiring state workers "to take as many as 10 unpaid days off and contribute more to their pensions." These cuts would end the school breakfast program, lead to the layoffs of "thousands of teachers," and close five major state parks. Minnesota, which has to deal with a $1.2 billion budget deficit, is choosing a similar course under the leadership of Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN). Pawlenty has proposed "cutting $347 million from health care and human service programs," which would leave an additional 20,000 Minnesotans without health care coverage. Meanwhile, he has proposed cutting $250 million in aid to municipalities and $50 million in higher education aid.
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Hu says China committed to fighting climate change
BEIJING (Reuters) - President Hu Jintao said on Tuesday China was committed to fighting climate change, both at home and in cooperation with the rest of the world, but stopped short of offering any new policies.
Britain, Sweden and other countries have accused China of obstructing December's Copenhagen climate summit, which ended with a non-binding accord that set a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius but was scant on details.
Chinese officials have said their country would never accept outside checks of its plans to slow greenhouse gas emissions and could only make a promise of "increasing transparency."
Hu told a study meeting attended by senior politicians, including Premier Wen Jiabao, that China took the problem seriously, state television reported.
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Sen. Mark Udall: "I think it's crucial to price carbon"
I continue to believe strongly that if we want to compete with the Chinese and the Indians and Europe when it comes to clean energy, unless you price carbon, you don't send the right signals to the marketplace. I hear that from the utilities-Jim Rogers at Duke Energy and John Rowe from Exelon-and from industry leaders like Dow Chemical, GE, and others. It's a mainstream idea.
It's tempting to believe that a robust energy-only bill like we've passed out of the Energy Committee would reduce our carbon emissions, but based on all the scientific analysis I've seen, it wouldn't. It would drive some innovation; it would send resources into research and development; it would improve our capacity to expand our transmission system. But it wouldn't drive down carbon emissions, and for that reason I'm not willing at this point to give up on a price on carbon.
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The Climate Patriots take up the global warming fight
Many military leaders and Afghan and Iraq veterans have warned that global warming and oil dependence will harm U.S. national security. A new video "Climate Patriots," by the PEW Project on National Security and Energy, warns that climate change is the enemy we've been forgetting to fight. It includes American military leaders and retired officers who are very concerned about the security impact of inaction:
The video underscores the inextricable link between climate change and national security. There are the challenges that the impacts of climate change themselves pose to American soldiers and armed forces abroad. Rising temperatures and changing weather patterns will lead to an increase in humanitarian disasters, like refugee situations, according to the Pentagon's most recent Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). This will put a stress on U.S. military's capability to help after such events. "It's a natural part of American foreign policy to help people who need it," said Captain James Morin in the video, "and as long as that's true, and as long as climate change continues to get worse, it's just going to make the job that much harder."
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NREL: US has three times more wind electrictiy potential than previously thought
Last month, an NREL study showed that America could generate 20% percent of its power just with wind by 2024. That would require about 300,000 MW or 300 GW. The ultimate potential is much, much higher - 30 times higher (!) - as Tom Kenworthy, CAP's Senior Fellow based in Colorado, explains.
Thanks to improvements in wind turbines over the last decade and a half, the United States has the potential to generate more than three times as much electricity from wind as previously thought, according to a new analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
The assessment of onshore wind energy potential found that the U.S. could produce almost 37 million gigawatt-hours yearly. According to the American Wind Energy Association, that's nine times our current annual electricity consumption.
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ANALYSIS-U.S. stands out for climate-change skepticism
* History, religion differentiate U.S. on climate change
* Obama climate bill push faces distrust of 'science'
* Opinion poll confirms Americans' doubts
DALLAS, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Many Americans are skeptical about global warming and that makes it harder to get a bill through Congress.
"My personal leanings are that it's more cyclical than a permanent trend," said Jimmy Pritchard, a Southern Baptist pastor in a Dallas suburb.
"And I think It's a little presumptuous to put so many resources and energy into something that may change direction in the next few years."
Such views, widespread in the U.S. heartland, drive conservative opposition to President Barack Obama's bid to get a bill through Congress that would cap U.S. emissions of the greenhouse gases linked to climate change.
"It's a very different debate in Europe, where there is no discussion about whether climate change is occurring. But in the United States it is about whether it exists," said John Wright of pollster Ipsos.
It is a skepticism that stands in contrast with prevailing views in Europe and has been linked to the influence of U.S. talk radio, the "oil lobby", an enduring love affair with cars, and a history founded on limiting the role of government.
Science can be controversial in a country where evangelical Christians make up a quarter of the adult population. Many, for example, doubt the theory of evolution because they believe it contradicts the Bible.
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Rep. Tom Perriello tells 'spineless' Senate to get 'its head out of its rear end' and confront climate crisis
Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA) is "sick" of the "insider baseball crap" dominating the Senate debate over global warming and energy reform. In an interview with Grist, the first-term congressman stated in no uncertain terms that the country is at risk from global warming and our economy is at risk of losing the clean energy race. Like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Perriello has not one lick of sympathy for those in the Senate who deny these threats:
That's more insider baseball crap. I don't really care. I'm sick of starting with what can we get through the Senate; let's start with what solves the damn problem. Until the Senate gets its head out of its rear end and starts to see the crisis we're in, our country is literally at risk. Our economy is at risk, because these jobs are being created overseas. It should have the same urgency with this problem that it had bailing out Wall Street. We are swearing an oath to do what's necessary to protect this country, not do what's necessary to get a bill through the Senate.
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Alexander hints at interest in climate
Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) said Sunday that lawmakers could advance energy and climate legislation by adopting a step-by-step approach that eschews sweeping measures.
Alexander's comments appear to indicate that he's keeping an open mind about the climate and energy plan that Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are crafting.
Their plan is expected to differ substantially from the "economy-wide" cap and trade bill the House approved last year that Alexander opposes, although it is nonetheless expected to be broad in scope.
Alexander said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that "a lot more is going on than one would think" in the Senate, and noted the bipartisan climate effort and other bills.
"Senator Carper, a Democrat, and I introduced a clean air bill with 11 Democrats and Republicans. We hope we can pass it this year. Senator Webb, a Democrat, and I
... have introduced a nuclear power bill. Senator Graham, Kerry, and Lieberman are working on a climate change bill," Alexander said.
"So if you take specific steps toward goals, we're more likely to succeed," he added. Alexander's remarks came in an interview that focused heavily on health care - he has called for a more piecemeal approach than the comprehensive Democratic plans.
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Wal-Mart presses vendors in China to meet higher standards
SHENZHEN, CHINA -- Benny Fung, the head of Hong Kong-based soap and cosmetics maker Lutex, seems to have an eye for detail. The meeting room at his factory here in southern China is lined with neatly packed gift baskets. His jacket has a thin purple velvet accent around the lapel to match his purple tie.
Now Fung's biggest customer -- Wal-Mart Stores -- is urging him to pay attention to other details. Environmental details. Energy-saving details. Not just everyday low prices, but low greenhouse gas emissions.
As a result, Lutex has been paying attention to more efficient light bulbs, better ventilation and less packaging. It switched from Styrofoam to recycled paper and saved enough Styrofoam to cover four football fields. And Lutex, which has been here since 1991, says it treats four tons of wastewater that it used to dump into the municipal sewage line. That water was supposed to be treated by the city, but like three-quarters or more of China's wastewater, it almost certainly wasn't.
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In China, Wal-Mart presses suppliers on labor, environmental standards
SHENZHEN, CHINA -- Benny Fung, the head of Hong Kong-based soap and cosmetics maker Lutex, seems to have an eye for detail. The meeting room at his factory here in southern China is lined with neatly packed gift baskets. His jacket has a thin purple velvet accent around the lapel to match his purple tie.
Now Fung's biggest customer -- Wal-Mart Stores -- is urging him to pay attention to other details. Environmental details. Energy-saving details. Not just everyday low prices, but low greenhouse gas emissions.
As a result, Lutex has been paying attention to more efficient light bulbs, better ventilation and less packaging. It switched from Styrofoam to recycled paper and saved enough Styrofoam to cover four football fields. And Lutex, which has been here since 1991, says it treats four tons of wastewater that it used to dump into the municipal sewage line. That water was supposed to be treated by the city, but like three-quarters or more of China's wastewater, it almost certainly wasn't.
"We heard that in the future, to become a Wal-Mart supplier, you have to be an environmentally friendly company," Fung said. "So we switched some of our products and the way we produced them."
Wal-Mart has more than 10,000 suppliers in China. In addition, about a million farmers supply produce to the company's 281 stores in China. If Wal-Mart were a sovereign nation, it would be China's fifth- or sixth-largest export market. So the company hopes that small measures taken by all suppliers start to add up. Its 200 biggest suppliers in China have already trimmed 5 percent of their energy use.
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Pew's Gulledge discusses research and reporting of climate science - Video
With the recent inquiries into the science and reporting of climate change, how will research and media coverage of climate science change? During today's OnPoint, Jay Gulledge, senior scientist and director of the Science and Impacts Program at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, discusses the recent inquiries into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report. He also assesses the media's role in the reporting of the "Climategate" controversy.
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US Senate's top climate sceptic accused of waging 'McCarthyite witch-hunt'
The US Congress's most ardent global warming sceptic is being accused of turning the row over climate science into a McCarthyite witch-hunt by calling for a criminal investigation of scientists.
Climate scientists say Senator James Inhofe's call for a criminal investigation into American as well as British scientists who worked on the UN climate body's report or had communications with East Anglia's climate research unit represents an attempt to silence debate on the eve of new proposals for a climate change law.
Inhofe's document ends by naming 17 "key players" in the controversy about CRU's stolen emails, including the Britons Phil Jones and Keith Briffa.
"I think this is like a drag net, just to try and catch everyone whose name happens to be on this list. It's guilt by association and I thought those days were over 50 years ago," said Michael Oppenheimer, of Princeton University, who is on the list of 17 scientists. "It looks like a McCarthyite tactic: pull in anyone who had anything to do with anyone because they happened to converse with some by email, and threaten them with criminal activity."
Inhofe is also accused of further fuelling a spike in hate mail and politically motivated freedom of information requests in the three months since the emails of climate scientists were stolen from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit.
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PLAN B 4.0 BY THE NUMBERS - China's Changing Energy Economy
In Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Lester Brown presents a plan to dramatically reduce carbon emissions by increasing energy efficiency and replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. In the push to reduce emissions, all eyes are on China, the world's most populous country and now also the world's top carbon emitter. Here are some highlights from the Plan B 4.0 datasets on China's energy economy:
Over the past several decades, China has largely relied on coal to provide energy for its rapidly expanding economy. Coal consumption has grown quickly in recent years, doubling from 2002 to 2008. Although it accounts for a smaller share of electricity production, natural gas consumption has been increasing even faster, nearly tripling over the same period. Oil, largely used for transportation, is also on the way up, growing by an average of 7 percent each year.
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Progress Energy abandons dirty coal front group
Utility giant Progress Energy is the latest in a stream of companies to abandon the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), the scandal-ridden coal-industry front group that has dirtied the debate on climate legislation. Progress Energy - "a Fortune 500 energy company with more than 21,000 megawatts of generation capacity and $9 billion in annual revenues," serving 3.1 million customers in the Carolinas and Florida - quietly quit the group last year, following Duke Energy, Alstom, Alcoa, and First Energy in the exodus. Its move away from coal propaganda mirrors its recent decision to shut down coal plants and move to cleaner power:
Progress paid $1 million to ACCCE in 2008, putting the company among the group's biggest contributors. But the company has been backing away from coal of late, announcing in December that they are shutting down 11 coal-fired power plants. Instead, they would move toward natural gas, a less greenhouse-gas intensive fuel source. A state paper hailed the move as evidence of "the beginning of the end of the era of cheap coal."
Spending over $40 million a year to promote the "clean coal" myth, ACCCE has exploited veterans, covered up fraud, and promoted mountaintop removal as a solution to the "lack of flat space" in Appalachia.
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After Sanders Compares Climate Deniers To Nazi-Era Isolationists, They Deny There's A Threat
Earlier this week, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works considered the 2011 budget request for the Environmental Protection Agency. During the questioning of EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) responded to the litany of Republicans denying the science of global warming:
The reason that this debate is so important is that it reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the 1930s. And during that period with Nazism, fascism growing - a real danger to the United States and democratic countries around the world - there were people in this congress and the British parliament saying don't worry, Hitler is not real. It'll disappear. We don't have to be prepared to take it on. Fortunately, there were other people in this country, Roosevelt, Republicans who said, "You know what, we are going to have to be prepared for a war." Winston Churchill in England led the effort there. But because we were as slow as we were, millions of people probably died unnecessarily. Global warming is real. If we do not get our act together there will be devastating impacts for our kids and our grandchildren, causing among other things trillions of dollars in order to repair that damage if it is repairable at all. And the longer we delay, the longer we have this senseless debate, the less prepared we will be.
Watch it:
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Juan Cole's advice to climate scientists on how to avoid being Swift-boated
"Any broadcast that pits a climate change skeptic against a serious climate scientist is automatically a win for the skeptic, since a false position is being given equal time and legitimacy." Climate Scientists continue to see persuasive evidence of global warming and climate change when they speak at academic conferences, even though, as Andrew Sullivan rightly put it, the science is being 'swift-boated before our eyes.' (See also Bill McKibben at Tomdispatch.com on Climate Change's OJ Simpson moment).
This article at mongabay.com includes some hand-wringing from scientists who say that they should have responded to the attacks earlier and more forcefully in public last fall, or who worry that scientists are not charismatic t.v. personalities who can be persuasive on that medium.
Let me just give my scientific colleagues some advice, since as a Middle East expert I've seen all sorts of falsehoods about the region successfully purveyed by the US mass media and print press, in such a way as to shape public opinion and to affect policy-making in Washington:
That is U. Michigan history professor Juan Cole writing on his blog, Informed Comment, Sunday. Cole is "an American scholar, public intellectual, and historian of the modern Middle East and South Asia," as Wikipedia puts it.
The full title of Cole's piece is "Advice to Climate Scientists on how to Avoid being Swift-boated and how to become Public Intellectuals." I'll excerpt it below with my comments. The main issue I take with his piece is that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists don't want to become public intellectuals, in part because that is perceived as the kiss of death for their scientific careers.
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Budget puts climate action on ice
The Harper government has taken a pause in financing federal action on climate change.
In his budget speech Thursday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was literally silent on the issue - climate change was not mentioned, though the government has in the past described it as one of the major challenges of the age.
Rather than provide new spending for programs to reduce Canada's greenhouse-gas emissions, the government is standing pat as it prepares to regulate emission reductions in transportation, electricity and industrial sectors.
Environmental groups say Ottawa is failing to stimulate the development and adoption of the technologies that are needed if Canada is to meet its emission targets.
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