News & Comment

The “war on coal” argument, like the argument from fossil fuel companies, is that the president’s policies on energy development hurt the economy, that the effort to reduce pollution from fossil fuels costs jobs. The argument is much more commonly made during debate on the House floor and at campaign rallies than it is by economists — for good reason. It doesn’t hold up. read more »

Summer is over, but temperatures are still rising, and at least some voters still seem to care. On Monday, the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication released the results of a survey suggesting that undecided voters “say that the presidential candidates’ positions on global warming will be one of several important factors determining how they cast their votes on November 6.” Therefore: “candidates may wish to communicate and clarify their position on climate change as election day approaches.” The catch: Large majorities of undecided voters, according to the Yale Project, believe that global warming is happening and that humans are causing it. But the vast majority of voters who have already decided to cast their ballot for Mitt Romney think otherwise. So there you go, the strong, if unstated, implication of the Yale report: To make inroads with the remaining undecideds, Obama should ramp up his climate change rhetoric! It could seal the deal! read more »

The most extreme climate “alarmists” in U.S. politics are not nearly alarmed enough. The chances of avoiding catastrophic global temperature rise are not nil, exactly, but they are slim-to-nil, according to a new analysis prepared for the U.K. government. Remember, climate change is simple. We’re trying to avoid temperature rise of more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, because anything over that risks severe, irreversible, and overwhelmingly negative impacts. Currently we’re around 0.8 degrees above historical levels. If current trends continue, we could hit up to 6 degrees by 2100. That would likely exceed our ability to adapt, which is a polite way of saying it would lead to massive human die-off. That, in a nutshell, is (as I like to say) the brutal logic of climate change. How much can we feasibly limit temperature rise at this late date? A new research paper tries to answer that question. read more »

As international trade negotiators gathered this week at a posh golf resort in rural Virginia to hammer out details of the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), they sought to project an image of inclusion and receptivity to public input. In reality, this high-stakes global corporate pact, now in its 14th round of discussions, is heavily guarded by paramilitary teams with machine guns and helicopters as it is developed behind closed doors under a dangerous and unprecedented veil of secrecy. What the hell is the TPP, you may ask? While it is among the largest and potentially most important ‘free trade’ agreements the world has ever seen, one can hardly be blamed for not being familiar with it yet. The corporate cabal behind it, including names like Cargill, Pfizer, Nike and WalMart, has done an exceptional job of maintaining an almost total lack of transparency as they literally design the future we will all inhabit. read more »

This summer, as the melting Arctic turned into an hourglass marking the time we have left to address climate change, it became obvious we have reached that “Pearl Harbor moment” on global warming. Actually, it’s been more of a “Pearl Harbor year” — unusually warm winter, destructive wildfires out West, corn-killing drought in the Midwest, record-breaking high temperatures, flooding from Hurricane Isaac. But even if we’re having a Pearl Harbor year with extreme weather, it will have little impact on national policy if most people don’t know where the bombs are coming from. In order for Congress to declare war on greenhouse gases, constituents will need to be keenly aware of the role climate change is playing in these disasters and demand that their legislators apply the brakes on global warming. So, who’s going to connect the dots for everyone? read more »

As members of Congress return from their August recess, they have three options when it comes to the farm bill, the multi-billion-dollar bill that shapes everything from food assistance to farm subsidies to farm conservation. They can pass, renew, or flake. Congress may still pass a new farm bill before the current bill runs out in September, but, frankly, the odds of this happening are awfully low. Though highly flawed, the Senate version of the bill — with its significant but fairly equal cuts to farm subsidies, food stamps, and conservation programs — has begun to look like an impossible dream. And, in the eyes of most sustainable food advocates at least, the version written by the GOP-controlled House is a straight-up nightmare. read more »

On January 27, 2010, one year into his term, President Barack Obama used the occasion of his State of the Union address to issue a warning. The Supreme Court had just opened the “floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.” He was speaking about the ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Court struck down nearly a century of law, granting corporations vast new leeway to influence the outcome of elections.   In the months after Obama’s speech, the American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry trade association that represents hundreds of multinational oil and gas companies, would demonstrate just how prescient the president’s warning was. read more »

As a wildfire/flash flood cycle ravages the American heartland, “the climate bites back” may be the 21st century's karmic rejoinder to the hysterical screams of “freedom!” and “property rights!” when it comes to urban sprawl. No doubt, we've long understood the invisible dangers of such sprawl. For years, we've been warned by researchers of the direct connections between unplanned and gluttonous construction projects and human-created carbon emissions. We've been told specifically that suburbanization's spread of population into ever-larger swaths of wilderness inherently results in more roads, more cars, more carbon emissions, more climate change–and thus, more chances for nature-related disasters. But in go-go America, these scientific truisms were no match for McMansion fantasies. read more »

Hurricane Isaac has inconvenienced a lot of people. Many thousands of Gulf Coast residents have boarded up windows and sought shelter inland. And many others are now facing the prospect of cleaning up and rebuilding flooded homes and businesses. But the inconvenienced people we’ve been hearing about most are the pundits and politicians who gathered in Tampa this week for the Republican National Convention. If you’re been paying much attention to the fairy tales of the far right in the past few years, it should come as no surprise that not everyone thinks it was merely a coincidence that the swirling mass of rain and wind known as Isaac appeared on the radar screen just in time to disrupt the GOP’s nominating party and the news coverage of it. read more »

“Carbon tax”: There’s something in that term for everyone to hate. For lefties and climate hawks, carbon — as in carbon dioxide, the largest contributor to climate change — is public enemy No. 1. And we all know what folks on the right thinks of taxes. Yet the notion of creating a carbon tax in the U.S. refuses to die — maybe because it’s a creative idea that also holds some appeal across the ideological spectrum. It’s a practical scheme to alleviate global warming — and it’s market-based! Here are some answers to the carbon-tax questions we know you have. read more »