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.
Mobilizing for Climate Justice
The Mobilization for Climate Justice was founded to link the climate struggle in the U.S. to the growing international climate justice movement, with an eye toward building for actions around the Copenhagen climate summit and beyond. Its objective is to provide a justice-based framework for organizing around climate change that opens space for leadership by representatives of communities in the U.S. that are most impacted by climate change and the fossil fuel industry.
The increasing urgency of the climate crisis has clearly hit a nerve among people of many walks of life, all around the world. While the outcome of this fall’s events remains highly uncertain, it is clear that such a flowering of creative and determined popular responses is precisely what is needed to reverse decades of willful inaction by the world’s elites and reach beyond the limits of politics-as-usual.
Will Dangerous Climate Change Be Mitigated In Copenhagen This December?
Even though the science concerning climate mitigation is clear, “political and ethical complexities remain as contested as ever,” and a December deal in Copenhagen “is not guaranteed,” a new report, “Tripping Points,” warns.
The Real Cost of Our High CO2 Emissions Lifestyle
Germanwatch has produced a short film about Carbon Debt–whereby developing countries pay, through climate change impacts, for the Carbon-intensive lifestyles of developed countries. It’s one of the greatest challenges of our time, and one of the reasons that a truly global deal in Copenhagen is so important.
“If global justice means anything”, rich West must make deeper emissions cuts
“Carbon offsetting makes sense if you are seeking a global cut of 5% between now and for ever. It is the cheapest and quickest way of achieving an insignificant reduction. But as soon as you seek substantial cuts, it becomes an unfair, impossible nonsense, the equivalent of pulling yourself off the ground by your whiskers. Yes, let us help poorer nations to reduce deforestation and clean up pollution. But let us not pretend that it lets us off the hook.”
Jim Hansen Blames Waxman-Markey Climate Bill for US Failure to Get Necessary Emissions Targets at G-8 Summit
With a workable climate bill in his pocket, President Obama might have been able to begin building that global consensus in Italy, but it didn’t take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama’s agenda to achieve meaninful greenhouse gas targets
With so many ACES in the Waxman-Markey climate bill, have we been dealt a bad hand?
We need a strong, not just any, climate bill. We need to take what happened yesterday in the House and turn it into something that history will record as not so much the culmination of our many years of hard work but a breakthrough that opened the way for a flood of people power, a broad and deep clean energy revolution in the months and years ahead.
