Final Episode of BBC World’s “Hot Cities” Available
Los Angeles is one of the most polluting cities in the world thanks largely to its love affair with the car. It is a city built on consumption. Each person produces around 20 tonnes of emissions per year – twice as much as anyone else. Now they are about to reap what has been sown. In LA there has been a big increase in wildfires, water supplies are under threat, rising sea levels could have a massive impact on LA’s huge port and destroy thousands of homes. “Hot Cities” goes to LA just as the city launches its adaptation strategy.
56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages publish the same editorial calling for action from world leaders on climate change
Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.
State of Climate Science: Videos of US Senate Select Committee Hearing
With the international climate change talks in Copenhagen fast approaching, there is real urgency to reach diplomatic consensus on a planetary solution. In a hearing hosted by Chairman Edward J. Markey on December 2, 2009, the US Senate Select Committee explored with climate scientists from the Obama administration, Dr. John Holdren and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, the urgent, consensus view on our planetary problem: that global warming is real, and the science indicates that it is getting worse.
James Hansen says whole approach at Copenhagen is “so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation”
In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world’s pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.
“I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it’s a disaster track,” said Hansen, who heads the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
A Debate on Climate Change, the Most Important Topic of our Time
Be sure to watch Elizabeth May and George Monbiot debate Bjørn Lomborg and Lord Nigel Lawson today beginning at 6:30 PM EST in Toronto.
A Message from James Hansen on Hope of Cutting Global Carbon Emissions
Is it feasible to phase out coal and avoid use of unconventional fossil fuels? Yes, but only if governments face up to the truth: as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, their use will continue and even increase on a global basis. Fossil fuels are cheapest because they are not made to pay for their effects on human health, the environment, and future climate.
Intergenerational inequity is a moral issue.
The Deadly Game of Climate Change Denial
Part of the solution to climate denial is to provide information to people not just into the science of climate but the science of our minds. Currently, there are no social scientists on the IPCC, yet all the effort, time and expense of proving the science is wasted if it is falling on deaf ears. As Gifford remarks, “It’s not always about the data. People want their beliefs confirmed. And if that means, that the world is fine and things can go on as normal, then that’s what they’ll hear.
“Hot Cities” from BBC World News – Entire Eight-Part Series
We highly recommend these powerful and informative videos of the documentary, Hot Cities, aired this fall on BBC World News TV. This is an excellent eight-part series about the present effects of global warming in cities around the world. If you haven’t caught these segments on television, you can watch them on your computer. Each runs about 45 minutes.
The effects of dangerous climate change are already happening, and people everywhere are finding ways of dealing with the changes this is causing in their lives. Witness the courage, tenacity and ingenuity of people suffering from disease, heat and lack of water, as well as high winds. You are certain to be amazed and inspired.
The PSA “Moms Against Climate Change” – How and Why It Was Made
PSA Moms Against Climate Change depicts a global warming demonstration by kids, which takes us back to the surreal nature of the whole issue — that, based on the facts of climate change, this kind of action should be happening in our streets on a daily basis.
