Until a few months ago, government
targets for cutting greenhouse gases at least had the virtue of being
wrong. They were the wrong targets, by the wrong dates, and they bore
no relationship to the stated aim of preventing more than 2C of global
warming. But they used a methodology that even their sternest critics
(myself included) believed could be improved until it delivered the
right results: the cuts just needed to be raised and accelerated.
Environmental activists based at the Climate Camp in London blockaded the local headquarters of Royal Bank of Scotland today, supergluing themselves together on the bank's trading floor as part of a series of direct-action protests around the City.
WASHINGTON - Carbon dioxide will soon be declared a dangerous pollutant - a move that could help propel slow-moving climate-change legislation on Capitol Hill, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told reporters that a formal "endangerment finding," which would trigger federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, probably would "happen in the next months."
Everyone needs something to believe in, and for many Latin American progressives, that something for years has been Costa Rica. The country has long been cited as a beacon of progressive tranquility in a region better known for violence, inequality and poverty. Following an uprising in 1948 led by Jose Figueres Ferrer, the country embarked on its own unique path of social democracy, involving extensive progressive taxation, universal health and education availability, and no armed forces.
At noon tomorrow thousands of activists will swoop on London for this summer's
Climate Camp.
I sat on the tall stool, facing the class of 9th graders. I put a cigarette between my lips and flicked on the lighter.
"Anyone mind if I smoke?"
Yes, they did mind: "That's disgusting." "It's against the law to smoke here." "There's secondhand smoke and it smells bad."
Researchers say this could be evidence of a predicted positive feedback effect of climate change.
As
temperatures rise, the sea-bed grows warmer and frozen water crystals
in the sediment break down, allowing methane trapped inside them to
escape.
The research team found that more than 250 plumes of methane bubbles are rising from the sea-bed off Norway.
Dear GeorgeOn the desk in front of me is a set of graphs. The horizontal axis of each represents the years 1750 to 2000. The graphs show, variously, population levels, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, exploitation of fisheries, destruction of tropical forests, paper consumption, number of motor vehicles, water use, the rate of species extinction and the totality of the human economy's gross domestic product.
Back when Barack Obama was running for president he liked to say that he was inspired by what Dr. King called "the fierce urgency of now." He told a South Carolina crowd in 2007 that, "I am running because I do believe there's such a thing as being too late. And that hour is almost here."
Well, for many scientists and environmentalists that hour actually came and went almost ten years ago. The no going back turning point in global warming.
In the early morning of October 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above a coal-fired power plant in Kent, England. While other activists cut electricity on the plant's grounds, they prepared to climb the interior of the structure to its top, rappel down its outside, and paint in block letters a demand that Prime Minister Gordon Brown put an end to plants like the Kingsnorth facility, which releases nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day.
