“Major environmental groups are coming under criticism from within their own ranks for taking positions that some say are antithetical to their stated missions of saving the planet. In the latest issue of The Nation magazine, the British journalist Johann Hari writes, “As we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters—and burying science-based environmentalism in return…In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate.”
(From Democracy Now) There is money in any issue in Washington, and global warming is no exception. No wonder climate change legislation has morphed into “green jobs and energy” legislation. John Kerry and others are working hard to pass a bill that will (likely) allow coal use to thrive and new oil to be drilled and lots of natural gas to be extracted and burned, at a very toxic cost. Our Congress just doesn’t get it. There should be a moratorium on taking any money from any fossil fuel industries, given what we are facing with global warming. (Yet Nancy Pelosi herself is a big investor in natural gas, for example). Climate change and global warming are the biggest issues humanity has ever faced, and governments are dropping the ball. However, it’s not just governments being corrupted by corporate cash — it’s also the very “Green” groups we depend on for climate action and Congressional pressure!
Consider what we are facing already, according to Johann Hari, a columnist who wrote for The Nation — ‘The Wrong Kind of Green’:
“I have spent the past few years reporting on how global warming is remaking the map of the world. I have stood in half-dead villages on the coast of Bangladesh while families point to a distant place in the rising ocean and say, “Do you see that chimney sticking up? That’s where my house was… I had to [abandon it] six months ago.” I have stood on the edges of the Arctic and watched glaciers that have existed for millenniums crash into the sea. I have stood on the borders of dried-out Darfur and heard refugees explain, “The water dried up, and so we started to kill each other for what was left.”
Flooding in Bangladesh
People don’t realize that flooding and other effects of climate change are already happening. That’s because the narrative, and the media, is focusing on human errors made in a few emails about some bad scientific practices at a little, obscure university that no one depends on for climate data anyway. We have other places where climate data is stored and gathered, including NASA, NOAA and places in Japan and Canada. Who needs East Anglia. The IPCC is now reviewing its practices of collecting data). The real Climategate is that big fossil fuel companies continues to foul the process of coming up with a real way to stop global warming by infusing environmental groups and scientific groups with their influential money. As Hari writes,
“. . . . the addiction to corporate cash has changed the green groups at their core . . . . . . . This pattern was bad enough when it affected only a lousy household cleaning spray, or a single rare forest. But today, the stakes are unimaginably higher. We are living through a brief window of time in which we can still prevent runaway global warming.”
If you are not someone who believes it is too late already to stop global warming, then you know we need to act very fast to stop the planet from further heating. However, even groups like the Sierra Club have been compromised by corporate cash.
But wait, you say, why depend on environmental groups anyway — Democrats control most of our government. That’s true, but as green groups stop pressuring Congress as much as in the past, the people need to do it even more. If you haven’t already noticed, the Democrats get sidetracked by $$$ very quickly themselves. We need to convince them that we support strong action on climate change, because they don’t seem to know that.
Oh YIKES. Kerry and the Gang hold humanity's future in their political hands.
U.S. Senators now hold a large portion of humanity’s future survival prospects in their hands.
I’m very grateful for political climate news from ClimateWire. (A subscription-only service that recently bestowed on me a trial subscription.) There is a very welcome push by the Obama administration lately to get some climate legislation passed this year, but what President Obama means by “climate legislation” is not necessarily what many people would define it as. But if it doesn’t do a lot of harm with giveaways to coal and oil (like many people fear it will) then maybe, possibly, like the health care bill, it’s best to get something passed, crack the door open and later it can be amended and strengthened. But what John Kerry and Lindsey Graham are working on reportedly has a lot of allowances in it for coal, oil and other undesirable energy. Here is some of the latest.
Partisan gridlock has largely kept the Senate climate and energy bill on ice, with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) trying to find a sweet spot on a plan that would limit carbon dioxide pollution from power plants and other major industrial sectors. [This group is not necessarily going to do what is necessary, but at least they are pushing something forward].
The Senate trio is trying to get a draft bill out before the end of the month, but they face resistance from moderate Democrats and Republicans who are urging a slower, “energy only” approach. . . . .
Among those expected at the closed-door meeting in the Cabinet Room were Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), George LeMieux (R-Fla.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska.). Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) also got an invitation but said he could not go because of a meeting on health care with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Heading into the meeting, several of the Republicans showed little interest in tackling such a sweeping proposal.”
SCIENCE: Man’s climate fingerprints clear — U.K. Met Office (03/05/2010)
The possibility that human activity is not the prime cause of climate change is becoming “increasingly remote,” according to a major review of climate science released by Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office.
The study used computer models of different possible climate change drivers — including solar output, volcanic eruptions, El Niño and the release of greenhouse gases — matched against tangible climate changes over the past decades to air and sea temperature and Arctic sea ice. This technique, called “optimal detection,” showed clear fingerprints of man-caused warming, said Peter Stott, who led the project.
“This wealth of evidence shows that there is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is being dominated by natural factors rather than human factors,” he said.
According to NASA, average atmospheric temperatures have risen by 0.8 degrees centigrade since 1880. But much of the recent warming trends have been found instead in the world’s oceans, Stott said.
“Over 80 percent of the heat that’s trapped in the climate system as a result of the greenhouse gases is exported into the ocean, and we can see that happening,” Stott said.
One possibility frequently cited by critics of global warming is that warming could be driven by increased activity from the sun. However, if that was the case, the Earth’s atmosphere would have warmed more evenly and temperatures would have increased early in the 20th century, rather than later.
“There hasn’t been an increase in solar output for the last 50 years,” Stott said. “And solar output would not have caused cooling of the higher atmosphere and the warming of the lower atmosphere that we have seen.”
The review was published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (Alok Jha, London Guardian, March 5). – PV
Today the EPA approved a permit for surface coal mining in Ohio. This is a big blow to the environment, to future generations of Americans, and to the natural resources of the United States. This is our country, but it seems that Big Coal and other polluters feel they own it, and can ruin our country however they wish.
Read more about this ruling and listen to Lisa Jackson speak at the National Press Club at Climate Files Radio.
EPA Approves Ohio Surface Coal Mine — “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has concluded its review of a Clean Water Act permit application for Oxford Mining Company’s proposed Kaiser Mathias mine in Tuscarawas County, Ohio and has approved the project.”
This is the EPA not relying on science for its decisions. This is the EPA stalling a real decision on surface coal mining, while global warming continues to escalate and the government officials spin their wheels in Washington. Lisa Jackson claims the EPA cannot regulate coal mining. That’s not ‘Yes We Can’, that’s a weak excuse to allow coal lobbyists to continue their choke-hold over the federal government. They are selling out future generations for more coal profits.
It’s time we take our country — literally — back from the polluters.
“We need to acknowledge that there is nothing more important than
preserving the viability of planet Earth. Nothing.”
Photo: Regis Duvignau | An aerial view shows flooded houses and streets in L'aiguillon sur Mer, southwestern France, southwestern France, March 1, 2010, following a major storm named Xynthia.
The Earth has its own set of rules
Our view of nature is based on our human desire for more, and that economic model is broken.
March 02, 2010|By B.E. Mahall and F.H. Bormann
Early in our history it didn’t make any difference how we viewed our environment. We could change it, and if we didn’t like what we did to it, we could move and natural processes would soon obliterate whatever we had done. Over the years, models of our relationship to the environment have been based on religious views, with the world provided for us to dominate and subdue as described in Genesis, and philosophical views, seeing wisdom and virtue in nature as described by Thoreau.
But by far our most prevalent view of nature derives from a rudimentary human desire for more. This is the basis of the economic model that currently directs our relationships with one another and with our environment. It has produced stupendous human population growth and dramatic, deleterious effects on nature. Recognizing these effects, efforts have been marshaled to change the self-serving economic model with notions of Earth “stewardship,” eloquently advanced decades ago by then-Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, and, most recently, to infiltrate the economic model with “ecosystem services” by assigning monetary values to functions performed by the Earth that are beneficial to people.
All of these views are fundamentally and dangerously flawed, because all are anthropocentric. They begin and end with humans. This isn’t the way the Earth works.
For anyone who still thinks renewable and clean energy is “too expensive” to implement, it might shock them to find out that ignoring climate change and the ensuing ice melt will be much, much more expensive. And as the Arctic ice melts, it speeds up global warming. Less heat from the sun is reflected off the earth as the ice disappears, and more heat is retained by our climate and planet. This will cause increasing heat waves, droughts, and unpredictable weather, not to mention flooding of coastlines from all that melting ice . . . yet we can still do something about it. But time is running out.
The Arctic Ice is melting and it will cost trillions before it stops.
WASHINGTON – Reuters – Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday.
“Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs,” said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York state who co-authored the report, called “Arctic Treasure, Global Assets Melting Away.”
He said the report, reviewed by more than a dozen scientists and economists and funded by the Pew Environment Group, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts, provides a first attempt to monetize the cost of the loss of one of the world’s great weather makers.
“The Arctic is the planet’s air conditioner and it’s starting to break down,” he said.
The loss of Arctic Sea ice and snow cover is already costing the world about $61 billion to $371 billion annually from costs associated with heat waves, flooding and other factors, the report said.
Anti-government Republicans, lobbyists for Big Coal, Big Oil and others attack the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to keep our air safe and our water clean for everyone . . . . despite these attacks, the EPA’s Endangerment Finding Appears Safe for Now. It is the EPA’s job to keep us safe from pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, just like it’s the government’s job to keep us “safe from terrorism”. Burning coal and forcing other pollution on us is terrorism. Unregulated greenhouse gas emissions are weapons of mass destruction. It’s the government’s job to keep these things from killing us.
Article below is from Solve Climate.
“Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson faced questions today from senators about her agency’s fiscal year 2011 budget request. Although representing only a small portion of the $10 billion total request, the ongoing battles regarding the EPA’s aim to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from some sources took center stage.
The agency seems to be under attack from all angles when it comes to greenhouse gas regulation — House members seeking to overturn its authority to regulate greenhouse gases, senators calling for delays on regulation, states and industry groups attempting to sue. These maneuvers are drawing national attention and dividing Democrats in Congress. However, the chances of permanently preventing the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases appear slim.
“It has been three years since the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that EPA has a legal responsibility under the Clean Air Act to determine whether greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare,” Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) said at the hearing.
She noted that some of her colleagues on Capitol Hill are now trying to subvert the authority of that court finding. “I think this is the wrong approach,” she said. “Legislation overturning the endangerment finding countermands the Supreme Court’s landmark decision.” As directed by that court decision, the EPA found last year that greenhouse gases do endanger public health, making them eligible for regulation under the Clean Air Act.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) joined the hearing late and repeated many of the same assertions she has made in recent months that greenhouse gas regulation would be better done by Congress than by an appointed agency.
CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas to worry about. According to Lisa Jackson of the EPA, the ‘methane expo’ (that ended today) will help us mitigate climate change by finding ways to capture and use it. A ‘methane partnership’ between several countries has been in existence since 2004 and has already been capturing methane (according to the EPA) for years.
Methane comes from a lot of sources. It’s coming up from the melting ocean beds, it’s emitted right now from the melting permafrost, mostly in Siberia and Canada, and global warming is going to make this situation worse. This excerpt is from the Atlantic, today:
“Unexpectedly huge quantities of Siberian methane are being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. The resulting feedback loop could dramatically outpace the climate models that scientists and policy makers have been using as they attempt to roll back emissions.
When it comes to climate change, methane is bad news: It is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing increased atmospheric temperatures. A National Science Foundation study in today’s issue of Science found that melting permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is causing an annual release of nearly 8 million tons of methane. Eight million tons is a relative a pittance compared to the 80 million metric tons produced by livestock around the world each year.”
That’s a lot of methane! It’s true that cows produce a lot of CO2 and methane (they emit both) and there is a fear that some day cows will become illegal to raise for food. I doubt that will ever happen completely, but it’s true that if people stopped eating beef and other mammals the CO2 and methane levels would decrease a lot. There is no need at all for humans to eat other mammals, and mammals bred for meat are responsible for a surprising amount of greenhouse emissions. Many of these emissions could be eliminated by eliminating these animals as a food source, which would decrease their populations, and decrease the pollution commercial animal farms produce too.
In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported that livestock accounted for 18% of greenhouse gases, making livestock emissions “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems.” However recently, Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C. environmental think-tank, reported that livestock emissions actually account for 51% of greenhouse gases. Source.
It’s very clear that we need less cattle in the world raised for food. Also see this from today: Huge methane leak in Arctic Ocean. More on the methane expo after the break . . .
The United States educational system is in trouble. When I read the story linked below, I thought of an old 1950’s car bumping down a rocky hill and crashing into a boulder-strewn riverbed. That’s public school science policy in the U.S. We are not just not making progress on climate change legislation and public awareness here in the U.S., we are going backwards fast. It’s now been reported that the legislatures of 15 states have passed resolutions pushed together by the fossil fuel companies to deny climate change. Lobbying is not limited to the U.S. Congress. These companies are pouring cash into local campaigns and using their new-found money power because of the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision to buy or threaten state and municipal elected officials as well as federal officials. (Info from the Thom Hartmann show.)
One of these states is South Dakota. They have joined the states that want to pass laws to make it legal and even desirable to teach children propaganda against science, or a variation of religion, rather than teaching real science in schools. Of course, parents can already teach their children all the propaganda or lies or whatever they want at home on their own time, but the disturbing trend is for laws to be passed to make that alternate world-view mandatory in public schools, which are funded by taxpayers. Regular people will now be paying for anti-science, political propaganda in these states.
It’s the conservative states pushing this, of course. Their arguments against global warming are now being tied to abortion and religion for purely political reasons. No, the Waxman-Markey bill is not great legislation, but it won’t lead to a rise in abortions or eugenics or end hetero marriage, as many people seem to think. Here’s what happened, according to the New York Times:
In South Dakota, a resolution calling for the “balanced teaching of global warming in public schools” passed the Legislature this week.
“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” the resolution said, “but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”
How much of your city is concrete and parking lots? It’s probably about 25% which is the ratio in many cities. My city is no exception. There are so many parking lots that stand empty and vast expanses of pavement that it seems ridiculous. The problem is that many cities were never actually planned — they were just cobbled together as populations grew, businesses sprouted up and zoning changed. Business zoning means large parking lots. Many of them are not landscaped with “greenery” in mind at all.
One major American city is taking on the parking lots and installing mini-parks or “parklets” for people to enjoy. This adds trees and other carbon sinks to cities that badly need them, and it puts some of the land back to use as nature intended. It’s a true cliche that the earth was never intended to be paved over. Nature abhors a vacuum, and there is no vacuum like a huge parking lot. (Just look at any crack in a parking lot and you will see weeds or grass trying to poke through and grow.) Let’s take our cities back from the pavement lovers and re-introduce some nature with micro-parks, like they are doing in San Francisco (and have done in parts of New York). A greener city is a healthier city too.
Unpaving Paradise . . .
In San Francisco, a handful of parking spaces and public right-of-ways are being remade into mini parks and plazas. Some are lined with trees sprouting from old dumpsters, others are buffered from traffic with large, discarded pipes; inside the improvised borders, tables, small patches of grass and concrete slabs are arranged for seating.
These ‘parklets’ and plazas are part of San Francisco’s new Pavement to Parks initiative, an attempt to transfer some of San Francisco’s public space back to pedestrians.
Mayor Gavin Newsom’s greening director Astrid Haryati recently told the San Francisco Chronicle, nearly 25 percent of San Francisco’s surface is pavement. The Pavement to Parks program aims to change how much of that area is devoted to cars.
This is a fascinating development in the evolution of thought around city streets and who gets to use them. In 2009, New York City took on a similar (yet larger) project — transforming Broadway to be far more pedestrian friendly. . . .
My power went out this afternoon unexpectedly for several hours. I know other people in some countries go through this or worse all the time, but it threw off my entire day. I went to a nearby coffee shop to use my smartphone to at least read online, but then discovered my phone was quickly running out of power too. It made me realize how much we depend on our electricity and how easy it is to become completely disrupted when power is turned off for a few hours.
The coffee shop had free wi-fi and was packed with people working on laptops. It got me to thinking that we need more reliable power than we have. If this had been January, people would have been freezing in their homes. The U.S. power grid is overtaxed and meant for an earlier era, not 2010 where so much is demanded of it. It was meant for 50 or 100 million people, not 300 million, who are using it more than ever. And we need uninterrupted power. Anyone who thinks we could transition to living more simply, without electricity, without power, is dreaming. Our brains and work habits are now wired for the internet and the increased use of it will take more power, not less. That means that we will have a difficult time conserving energy in the future. There are more appliances and heating systems in use in the United States by far than 20 years ago and it increases every year. Add a few million electric cars to that and the amount of power needed will grow even more.
We don’t have to have a future of less power. Why conserve solar power or wind power if there is an abundance of it. If we start using renewable power all the time, conservation won’t be an issue. The sun and wind and geothermal power are sources that are free and infinite (at least as far into the future as we can imagine). We need to jump start renewable power and a better more reliable way of transporting power to people. If we don’t, power outages and brownouts will become common everywhere.
We need more power in the world — but not coal. There is good news about the rebellion against the coal industry, from Ted Nace, originator of Coal Swarm. He has a new book out called Climate Hope, and was recently interviewed by Alternet.
Discussing his books Gangs of America and Climate Hope, Coalswarm founder Ted Nace talks about the rise of corporations and Big Coal, the growing network of grassroots movements against coal, and why, despite the non-binding resolution coming out of Copenhagen, we should have hope.
Christine Shearer:Especially since in that 1886 case, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, “corporate personhood” came not from the actual judicial decision but from the court reporter’s notes on the case.
Climate change deniers and skeptics are still out there, but now there are great resources (besides the scientific organizations) such as Skeptical Science and the Climate Crock of the Week videos. One of the latest videos is above, but there are many more, and you can see them all here.
Now you can win any skeptic or denier climate change debate with the 3 resources in this post. Skeptical Science has put together an answer for the 242 skeptic claims it has amassed so far. It’s an amazing and impressive list and you can see the claims and the answers to all with links here. I included many of the arguments from scientists in a podcast on the climate science recently, and you can listen to it at Climate Files Radio.
Collin Peterson -- See what this clueless Democrat is doing, below.
This is a positive development, if it’s true. Cap and Trade was never going to get us to where we need to be on climate change. If they can get something like this through the Congress it would be a better way forward than the cap and trade bills in discussion until recently. But a “radical overhaul”? I’ll believe that when I see it.
Senators to Propose Abandoning Cap-and-Trade.By Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson,WashPost, February 27, 2010. “Three key senators are engaged in a radical behind-the-scenes overhaul of climate legislation, preparing to jettison the broad ‘cap-and-trade’ approach that has defined the legislative debate for close to a decade. The sharp change of direction demonstrates the extent to which the cap-and-trade strategy — allowing facilities to buy and sell pollution credits in order to meet a national limit on greenhouse gas emissions — has become political poison. In a private meeting with several environmental leaders on Wednesday, according to participants, In a private meeting with several environmental leaders on Wednesday, according to participants, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), declared, “Cap-and-trade is dead.”
Despite the inability of the U.S. Congress to get much done recently, Al Gore is still fighting for climate change legislation. What he is fighting for is what he feels is politically possible, but it’s probably not going to be adequate to stop our climate from changing. Gore says there is a new bill being drafted and a bipartisan group of senators is working on its content. Just the fact that it’s bipartisan is bad news — Republicans tend to not believe that anything needs to be done about climate change, but they want jobs to result from some type of bill.
If this is the bill that contains allowing drilling for oil and lots of money for carbon capture and sequestration technology, it’s worthless. Coal will never be clean. The use of it has to simply stop. Oil will never be clean. We need to stop drilling for it and use instead some of the many kinds of clean and really renewable energies that are available to us today, right now. Our Congress seems to be unaware of the ramifications of climate change and even unaware of the importance of renewable energy, so I have little hope they will pass anything meaningful that addresses climate change. For that reason, I’m not going to call my Congressman. (What’s the point?) Instead, I’m going to send an email to Al Gore (through his action fund) and tell him to use his influence to fight harder for a real climate bill, not one that includes the fallacy of “clean coal” and drilling for more oil.
Today Gore sent out this email:
Winston Churchill said, “Sometimes doing your best is not good enough. Sometimes you must do what is required.”
Now is that time. Our elected officials must rise to face the challenge of the climate crisis. And we must demand that they do what is required before it is too late.
That’s what I wrote yesterday in the New York Times, and today I need your help to make sure our Senators pass a strong climate bill this year. The good news is we could be very close. A bipartisan group of Senators is drafting a bill right now that could be introduced within weeks — and critical negotiations over its content are taking place right now.
“Three of nine boundaries – climate change, biodiversity and nitrogen fixation – have been exceeded.”
Unnaturally heating and cooling the planet (Image: Mauri Rautkari/Rex Features)
A hotter earth is a situation that that will lead to many other issues very soon, like lack of water and food, extinctions, change in air quality, and more. In a new article in New Scientist these issues are separated into nine individual challenges that people will have to soon deal with. (Never mind getting some people to even admit they exist). This particular list is about Earth’s nine “support systems” and how they are being threatened by human activity.
Every year or so someone puts together a list like this to bluntly point out to people, very clearly, what is at stake. In 2008 there was a list of the 9 critical tipping points we are approaching with climate change, and I have read others that are similar. Which list is more important to you is probably based on whether or not you are concerned about the future effects of climate change, or are worried about the planet, or are worried about animals, etc. I like this list because it emphasizes the bottom line of climate change: how far can we push the earth’s systems before they will no longer support human life? Personally, I’m not as worried about the particular animals or fish or trees as I am about people. The planet will likely be OK no matter what we do to it, with new species evolving to take the place of others that go extinct, but it’s very possible that humans will cause their own extinction. If we ruin this planet, our only home, to the point where it can no longer support us, that’s it for us. We have no where else to go.
Because there are so many people who deny climate change is even happening right in front of their eyes and therefore pushing for no action at all, things could get very ugly in a few years. The saddest thing of all is that it doesn’t have to be that way. If we were taking aggressive steps now to prepare for climate change’s worst effects and strongly curbing emissions, we could transition into a hotter world a little easier, and there would be less loss of life. But it’s not happening that way. Here is what to look out for in the coming years. Each segment leads to its own article.
UP TO now, the Earth has been very kind to us. Most of our achievements in the past 10,000 years – farming, culture, cities, industrialisation and the raising of our numbers from a million or so to almost 7 billion – happened during an unusually benign period when Earth’s natural regulatory systems kept everything from the climate to the supply of fresh water inside narrow, comfortable boundaries.
This balmy springtime for humanity is known as the Holocene. But we are now in a new era, the Anthropocene, defined by human domination of the key systems that maintain the conditions of the planet. We have grabbed the controls of spaceship Earth, but in our reckless desire to “boldly go”, we may have forgotten the importance of maintaining its life-support systems.
“Major environmental groups are coming under criticism from within their own ranks for taking positions that some say are antithetical to their stated missions of saving the planet. In the latest issue of The Nation magazine, the British journalist Johann Hari writes, “As we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world’s worst polluters—and burying science-based environmentalism in return…In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate.”
Recent Comments