Dr. James Hansen’s Report from Norway, of Interest to Canadians
Dr. James Hansen’s experience in Norway, including a letter to the Prime Minister and the government response, have been posted to Dr. Hansen’s website. He condemns the Norwegian government for supporting Statoil’s development of the Canadian Tar Sands.
The Broken Legs of the Biggest Elephant in the Room, the US Climate Bill
A brilliantly written article by Lee Wasserman, director of the Rockefeller Family Fund, writing for the NY Times and Huffington Post. Wasserman recognizes the US Senate climate bill for what it was, born to fail. This is not to say we don’t need legislation to fight dangerous climate change. We need a strong, simple, equitable bill, and we need it now.
Exciting News on the Clear Act: Weekly Policy Update from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network
March 29-April 2 Overview: Despite the U.S. Congress being on recess this past week (and next), interest in and support for the cap and dividend/CLEAR Act approach to climate legislation continues to grow. Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter wrote positively about what he calls cap-and-rebate in his latest column. Mother Jones magazine carried a story on its website blog about The Other Climate Bill. Senator Susan Collins was interviewed by Clean Skies News; during the interview she suggested that the CLEAR Act could be paired with legislation, The American Clean Energy Leadership Act, passed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year. On Tuesday, March 30th, in what is probably the first such action in the country, the Santa Rosa, Ca. City Council unanimously passed a resolution in support of the CLEAR Act. And at the end of the week, on Good Friday, the Philadelphia Daily News came out with an editorial supporting the CLEAR Act.
Warnings of the Approach of Peak Oil and Its Effect on World Food Supply
There’s been a lot of stale argument recently about oil – is it running out? Are we approaching/at/passed Peak Oil (the point when global oil production goes into irrevocable decline)? Business, unsurprisingly, isn’t waiting for the answer; it’s working out what will happen next.
Take the recent report from Deutsche Bank, entitled ‘The Peak Oil Market: Price Dynamics at the End of the Oil Age’. This describes a world where the effect of failing global reserves is compounded by incoherent politics. If the US Government was honest about the cost of oil, for example, it would slap another 50c on a gallon of gasoline to pay the cost of the war in Iraq. Ludicrously, as global oil supplies dwindle, the increasingly precious part that remains is concentrated in the hands of those who give it away to their citizens for almost nothing – Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq.
Governments should be planning how best to manage the limited supply of oil sensibly, for the long-term, the bankers write:
‘We believe, based on the history of the past decades, years, and months, that they will do the exact opposite.’
Corporate Influence on Climate Change and Environmental NGO’s Exposed
By pretending the broken system can work–and will work, in just a moment, after just one more Democratic win, or another, or another–the big green groups are preventing the appropriate response from concerned citizens, which is fury at the system itself. They are offering placebos to calm us down when they should be conducting and amplifying our anger at this betrayal of our safety by our politicians. The US climate bills are long-term plans: they lock us into a woefully inadequate schedule of carbon cuts all the way to 2050. So when green groups cheer them on, they are giving their approval to a path to destruction–and calling it progress.
The CLEAR Act: A Clean, Green and Clear Choice
It’s time for the climate movement to come together, right now, to defend the best option that we have to get decent, badly-needed legislation on climate passed this year, and to push back against the fossil fools. Passage of the CLEAR Act would be a definite step forward, a political tipping point, not the end game but a victory for sure.
Is Cap and Trade Really Dead? Part III
Different models of carbon cap legislation serve different interests. Videos of Parts 4 and 5 of The Real News Network’s coverage of Carbon Cap Legislation. Paul Jay interviews Professor James Boyce of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who is also associated with the PERI Institute
Is Cap and Trade Dead? Part II
Continuing with our coverage of pending Cap-and-Trade and Cap-and-Dividend legislation, here are three videos from the Real News Network on different models of Carbon Cap legislation and the corruption that could be caused by Carbon Offsets and Trading. Paul Jay interviews Professor James Boyce, who teaches at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He’s associated with the PERI Institute, the Political Economics Research Institute. The Real News Network has yet to publish the final one, but we will post it as soon as we get it.
Let us hope a better understanding of this issue will precipitate a new effort on the part government in the Western World to enact honest, equitable, and effective measures to reduce and remove excess carbon from the atmosphere.
James Hansen Against Cap and Trade with Offsets
The proposed climate bills in Congress are loaded with goodies for special financial and corporate interests. These bills would cheat the American public – again. Cap-and-trade was designed in part by Wall Street, which is eager to exploit a trading market expected to grow to two trillion dollars. The revolving door between Washington and Wall Street helped bring the scheme about. Yet Washington appears intent on choosing a path defined by corporate greed. Unless the public gets engaged, the present Administration may jam down the public’s throat just such an approach, which, it can be shown, is not a solution at all.
A Holiday Gift from Climate Scientist James Hansen
For new inspiration and knowledge, we would most like to recognise James Hansen, who with the publication of his book Storms of My Grandchildren has made climate science accessible and interesting to anyone with a high school education.
