Political Climate Articles
Long-hated one-child rule may be eased in China
DAFENG, China (AP) -- When asked why she and her husband don't want a second child, Shi Xiaomei smiles at her pudgy 9-year-old son and does a quick tally of the family budget.
Her salary as a cleaning lady and the income from a mahjong parlor in their spare room barely cover their son's school fees and other expenses.
"With just one, we can give him nicer things. But if you tried to split what we have between two or three, they would all end up with nothing," the 34-year-old says at her home in Dafeng, a prosperous but still-rural county 185 miles (300 kilometers) north of Shanghai.
For years, China curbed its once-explosive population growth with a widely hated one-child limit that at its peak led to forced abortions, sterilizations and even infanticide. Now the long-sacrosanct policy may be on its way out, as some demographers warn that China is facing the opposite problem: not enough babies.
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Welcome to Climate Progress, Green Tea Partiers!
Tom Friedman has a new column, "Tea Party With a Difference."
Friedman proposes a Green Tea Party of the "radical center" to supersede the current fringe Tea Party that is lurching to the "hard libertarian right":
Indeed, the Green Tea Party could say, "We've got our own health care plan - a plan to make America healthy by simultaneously promoting energy security, deficit security and environmental security."
"Think about it," said Carl Pope, the chairman of the Sierra Club. "Green tea is full of antioxidants," which some believe help reduce cancer and heart disease. "It's really good for your health." And a Green Tea Party, he added, could be good for the country's health "by harnessing all of its energy and unconventional politics" to end our addiction to oil.
Yes, I know, dream on. The Tea Party is heading to the hard libertarian right and would never support an energy bill that puts a fee on carbon.
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Climate debate gets ugly as world moves to curb CO2
Murderer, liar, fraud, traitor.
Climate scientists, used to dealing with sceptics, are under siege like never before, targeted by hate emails brimming with abuse and accusations of fabricating global warming data. Some emails contain thinly veiled death threats.
Across the Internet, climate blogs are no less venomous, underscoring the surge in abuse over the past six months triggered by purported evidence that global warming is either a hoax or the threat from a warmer world is grossly overstated.
A major source of the anger is from companies with a vested interest in fighting green legislation that might curtail their activities or make their operations more costly.
"The attacks against climate science represent the most highly coordinated, heavily financed, attack against science that we have ever witnessed," said climate scientist Michael Mann, from Pennsylvania State University in the United States.
"The evidence for the reality of human-caused climate change gets stronger with each additional year," Mann told Reuters in emailed responses to questions.
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Challenges to California climate change law
(Reuters) - California's climate change law is the most aggressive in the United States and it faces challenges this election year.
Some of the same forces that may stall federal climate legislation, including oil companies and businesses concerned by higher energy prices, are now taking aim at California's landmark 2006 law.
Known as AB 32, the law includes vehicle and fuel standards, a market for pollution trade (still in the works), as well as "green" building and planning policies.
Its future depends on three factors: the November governor's race, a ballot effort to put the law on hold, and the fate of the federal climate bill.
Following are possible outcomes of the brewing fight.
GOVERNOR'S RACE DECIDES SHORT-TERM FUTURE OF LAW
Democratic candidate Jerry Brown would leave the climate law in place while Republican front-runner Meg Whitman, the former chief executive of eBay Inc, would put key provisions on hold for a year. The two are running neck and neck in polls.
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Green Monster
The gas guzzlers at the Pentagon are under orders to get ecofriendly. The impact could be huge. The U.S. military isn't exactly underworked, what with salvaging Afghanistan, helping out Haiti, fighting off pirates, and getting out of Iraq. But now, it has been handed a new mission: leading the campaign to cut back on foreign oil, in the interests of both national security and saving the planet. The Defense Department certainly has the money, the technology, the intellectual capital, and the pull in the marketplace to make or break the environmental movement. And when it puts its top minds on a problem, there's a long track record of world-changing breakthroughs (the Internet, for one). But will the Pentagon really make the move to go green when there's so much else on its plate?
Decades ago, the Defense Department was a world leader in developing new sources of energy. In 1961, the Navy commissioned the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Three years later, the sea service began looking into tapping the geothermal energy around its China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station in California. But it took 29 years for China Lake's geothermal plant to reach full power. A few Pentagon-backed alternative-power efforts have been more successful: a massive solar array at Nellis Air Force Base and a sizable wind farm at Guantanamo Bay, for instance. Until recently, however, those projects were the exception, not the rule. Energy efficiency has often taken a back seat to other tactical or strategic considerations.
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The Navy Goes in Search of a U.S.S. Prius
If you think of a puny, 3,000-lb. Toyota Prius when someone says "hybrid," watch out for the U.S. Navy's version: a 40,000-ton behemoth carrying attack planes, helicopters, missiles and more than 1,000 Marines. Much like the Prius, the new 844-ft. U.S.S. Makin Island is powered by thirsty gas-turbine engines for top speeds but uses electrical motors for slower travel.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus raved about the new vessel last week, saying its ability to sip fuel rather than gulp it gives the Navy more punch while making it less vulnerable to unfriendly nations that are turning off the oil spigot. "The whole notion is to make us better war fighters and to quit buying as much energy from potentially volatile places on earth - places that maybe we shouldn't depend on," he said. Ships that need less fuel also aren't tethered as tightly to the oilers that refuel them, giving them added flexibility.
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Tom Coburn's Earth Day Ambush
How one of the Senate's most notorious bill-blockers nearly derailed a resolution honoring the holiday and its founder.
The congressional resolution seemed about as innocuous as they come. It commemorated the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and honored its late founder, Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisc.). But in this highly politically charged Congress, even a minor measure can touch off a legislative scuffle. Such was the case last week, when one of the Senate's most notorious bill-blockers, Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn, almost derailed the Earth Day resolution.
Coburn is among the Senate's most prolific users of the hold, an informal procedure that effectively allows a single lawmaker to hold legislation hostage by preventing it from reaching a full vote. In the past, he's employed this tactic to stall a range of bills, including measures to provide back pay to furloughed federal workers, to aid peace efforts in Northern Uganda, and to create a State Department office to coordinate reconstruction efforts in conflict zones. When Coburn blocks a bill, his reasons are typically fiscal. "Dr. Coburn routinely puts holds on bills, even bills he supports, if they support new money and are not offset," his spokesman, John Hart, told Mother Jones earlier this year.
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Glaciergate: A Pyrrhic Victory for Climate Skeptics
Melting glaciers are the most visible impacts of global warming. Their slow disappearance will affect freshwater reserves for hundreds of millions of people .
Unfortunately, all this got lost over a lamentable scientific error.
Climate change skeptics had a field day when the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to admit its error in assessing the speed of the Himalayan glacier melt.
Himalayan glaciers, the latest IPCC report said, could disappear by 2035. The claim was based on one single misquoted paper but somehow made it through the review process until Indian scientists protested publicly. The ensuing media debate was fuelled by climate skeptics and cast doubt on decades of climate science.
But what is even worse is the sad reality that most glaciers are still melting, in the Himalayas, the Andes, and the Alps alike. One wrong date won't change this, says Wilfried Haeberli, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service.
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Earth Day Founder Speaks Out: All Certified Wood is Not Equal
On the eve of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Denis Hayes - the coordinator of the original Earth Day in 1970 and International Chairman of Earth Day 2010 - has issued a pointed reminder that we must be vigilant in scrutinizing what passes as "green" in our expanding marketplace for eco-friendly products. In a Seattle Times op-ed last week, Hayes, a nationally recognized leader on conservation policy, cautions the U.S. Green Building Council not to let its prestigious Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program be "diluted" by allowing timber industry-set standards for forest management to pass as equal to those of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), "the gold standard for good forestry."
"If the U.S. Green Building Council yields to timber industry demands to include the weaker SFI [Sustainable Forestry Initiative] standards for forest products," writes Hayes, president of the Bullitt Foundation, whose mission is environmental protection and sustainability in the Pacific Northwest, " ... LEED certification would lose much of the green cachet it currently enjoys; FSC would suffer a serious blow; and our forests would be the losers."
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Veterans organization says climate change a security threat
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Robin Eckstein as was an active duty soldier assigned to the 123 Maintenance Support Battalion, part of the 1st Armored Division. Part of the mission of the 123rd was to provide transportation, fuel and water support to troops in position for the assault.
In the days leading up to the invasion, the 123rd moved convoys carrying fuel and water to outposts surrounding Baghdad. The seven-ton trucks were slow moving targets as they criss-crossed the desert with supplies for the forward operating bases. Each day, Eckstein said, she felt it was a roll of the dice as to what they would encounter in what she called a "logistical nightmare." Each day, she said, she realized more problems that come with reliance on foreign oil.
"I'd really like to let people know that our dependence on just one source of energy is not cost-worthy financially, but it's actually risking American lives. It's something we really need to move away from," she said. "If some of these forward-operating bases had solar generators or were a little more energy-efficient, that would mean less risk to American lives."
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Deep Climate exposes more cheating by team Wegman
Plagiarism and poor scholarship rife in statistician's tight circle
The blogger Deep Climate has released another devastating analysis of the shoddy scholarship and obvious cheating that characterized the work of the statistician Edward Wegman and his team, authors of a report to Congress that Deep Climate calls "nothing more than a politically motivated attack on climate science and scientists from the start."
DeepC, surely on of the most careful, thorough and tireless researchers currently working the climate blogosphere, has been here before, collecting evidence that demonstrated massive plagiarism by Wegman and his proteges when they were preparing their Republican-commissioned attack on Michael Mann's oft-vindicated, but still controversial hockey stick graph.
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Sustained Recovery Underway in Twenty-Seven States through March
Economic activity expanded in twenty-seven states in the three months through March January which is persistent enough to assure that a sustained recovery is underway. The economic activity index increased in forty-one state in March from February with the declines in the nine remaining states very marginal. The rise in the state economic activity indexes is consistent with March national data for jobs, consumer spending and factory production which all improved. A broader and stronger expansion likely occurred in April based on early reports for jobs and consumer spending.
The growth rates are the state economic growth indexes calculated by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank from state employment and income data which are benchmarked to approximately track national GDP growth. State growth rates are well below the national growth rate. Most of the 4th quarter gain in GDP and a large share of expected GDP growth in the first quarter were due to reduced inventory absorption. This data is not available at the state level.
State economic activity indexes remain below the 2007-08 peak level in every state. The gap ranges from 2% in Alaska and New York to over 15% in Rhode Island, Idaho, Nevada and West Virginia and 30% in Michigan. Among larger states, the smallest gaps are about 5% in Louisiana, Massachusetts, Texas, Minnesota and Virginia.
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Senior military leaders announce support for climate bill
33 generals, admirals: "Climate change is making the world a more dangerous place" and "threatening America's security"
Generals smallThe Pentagon affirmed earlier this year that "Climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked."
Today an unprecedented 33 retired US military generals and admirals announced that they support comprehensive climate and energy legislation in a letter to Senators Reid and McConnell as well as a full page ad (click to enlarge). The news release points out:
It was the largest such announcement of support ever, reflecting the consensus of the national security community that climate change and oil dependence pose a threat American security.
Here is the full text of the letters signed by these generals and admirals:
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U.S. conservatives vs. U.K. conservatives
If a climate bill doesn't become law this year, the inclination among many progressives will be to blame President Obama for his lack of leadership. And frankly progressives should be critical of Obama: In a bunch of pretty speeches he has repeatedly said the climate and clean energy jobs bill was a signature issue that would determine whether America achieves "lasting prosperity" or "decline" (see "Success or failure for Obama Presidency hangs in the balance" with climate bill).
But two recent stories remind us of who really is to blame for two decades of inaction. The first is "House Republicans Organize to Thwart Climate Legislation" in Roll Call (subs. req'd), which opens, "House Republicans have launched a new 'real-time' e-mail, Internet and media offensive aimed at fueling public opposition to Democrats' climate proposals."
The second is an article in UK's Telegraph, "Britain's silent, green revolution: "All the major parties are signed up to transforming Britain into a green, low-carbon economy to boost growth, as well as to combat climate change."
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Oh, Mann: Cuccinelli targets UVA papers in Climategate salvo
No one can accuse Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of shying from controversy. In his first four months in office, Cuccinelli directed public universities to remove sexual orientation from their anti-discrimination policies, attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, and filed a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Now, it appears, he may be preparing a legal assault on an embattled proponent of global warming theory who used to teach at the University of Virginia, Michael Mann.
In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli's office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann's receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann- now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State- was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.
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Coalition of 17 states, plus N.Y.C., asks that Cuccinelli's latest EPA argument be rejected
Has Virginia's lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency become the Civil War of civil litigation?
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli crowed in March when 12 states joined his suit against the EPA's attempts to regulate greenhouse gases as an endangerment to human health because they cause global warming. Since then, a couple other states have also joined Virginia, with at least 14 now facing down the EPA.
But the battle lines are being drawn on this one. Seventeen states and the New York City have now joined the EPA in facing down Virginia. In fact, it's that coalition, led by Massachusetts, as well as New York City that that filed a motion with the court today asking that Cuccinelli's latest motion in the case--dealing with the EPA's new fuel standards for cars--be rejected.
Earlier this month, Cuccinelli cited the fuel standards, which were also formulated on the grounds that emissions cause global warming, as a sign the EPA has already rejected his administrative request that it review its finding that greenhouse cases hurt human health. Based on those new rules for car emissions, he asked that a judge remand the case to the EPA and require the agency to review the case.
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Labor Department Plans to Make Companies Obey Labor Law, Chamber of Commerce Outraged
In a move that will affect most American corporations, the Labor Department plans to require companies to prepare and adopt compliance plans aimed at ensuring they do not violate wage, job safety and equal employment laws.
The effort, aimed in part at reducing the incidence of employers not paying overtime and improperly classifying workers as independent contractors, will require them to document many of their decisions and share that information with their workers and the government.
In announcing the department's intentions on Thursday, Deputy Labor Secretary Seth Harris said his department wanted to foster a culture of compliance among employers to replace what he described as a "catch me if you can" system in which too many companies violated employment laws.
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How good do the Bush tax cuts look now?
The chart to the left, from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, should give deficit hawks something to smile about. Much of the current deficit can be assigned to (potentially) non-recurring expenditures. The recession adds about $300 billion to the deficit, in large part due to decreased tax revenues, but it will end. The Bush tax cuts add from $300 billion in 2009 to about $800 billion in 2019 to the deficit, but they will expire if Congress doesn't reenact them this year. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan add about $200 billion per year, but they too will end (Iraq is already winding down). TARP is now projected to be profitable.
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PROMISES, PROMISES: Rich farmers get most cash
WASHINGTON – Lawmakers crafting a sweeping farm bill in 2008 promised it would cut government payments to wealthy farmers. Two years later, little appears to have changed.
Data being made public Wednesday shows that the wealthiest farmers in the country are still receiving the bulk of government cash, despite claims from lawmakers that reforms in the bill would put more money in the hands of smaller farms. At the same time, a series of exemptions written into the bill has made it more difficult for the public to find out who is receiving what.
Lawmakers writing the $290 billion bill included several provisions aimed at cutting down on government subsidies to the wealthiest farmers. They sought to eliminate a loophole that allowed farmers to collect higher payments and they set income limits for those who received subsidies. Though those new laws may have cut down on payments to some farmers, others have been able to find ways around them.
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Triclosan, a potentially dangerous chemical, may be lurking in many cosmetic products
A study by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group revealed that triclosan is in more than 120 hand soaps.
The consumer labels trend for products is a great way to help people make smarter purchases, but many consumers may find themselves scratching their heads over the most common ingredients. Triclosan, for example, is used in lipstick, deodorant, facial cleanser, liquid hand soap, and toothpaste, among many other products. In fact, a study by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group revealed that triclosan is in more than 120 hand soaps. But what is it? And why did the Food and Drug Administration recently announce a safety review of it? Lauren Wyner has the story in this CAP repost of CAP's Easy Being Green Series.
Triclosan was first developed as a surgical scrub in 1972. It's a synthetic, broadly used antimicrobial agent that is most often used to kill bacteria on the skin and other surfaces, and can be used to preserve a product against deterioration due to invasive microbes.
There are more than 700 home-use products that contain triclosan today, but there is no current data to prove any extra health benefits from its use. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, says that antibacterial soaps are not necessary for everyday use and washing hands with ordinary soap and warm water is effective enough to ward off bacteria and infections.
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