US President Barack Obama came to office
promising hope and change. But on climate change, he has followed in
the footsteps of his predecessor George W. Bush. Now, should the
climate summit in Copenhagen fail, the blame will lie squarely with
Obama.
Nearly two decades after writing a book that popularized the term "global warming," MoJo contributing writer Bill McKibben founded 350.org. He is chronicling his journey into organizing with a series of columns leading up to the global climate summit in Copenhagen this December. You can find the others here.
The other day I received a pre-publication copy of The
Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, by David Solnit
and Rebecca Solnit. It's set to come out ten years after a historic
coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in
Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anticorporate movement.
It's been a year
since Barack Obama's historic election as our first African-American
president. That night, many Americans shed tears of joy, exchanged
congratulatory embraces, and voiced high expectations for real change.
Thirty-one Greenpeace activists remained on the roof of the Palace of Westminster this morning protesting about climate change, the environmental group said.
Another
23 protesters have been arrested, three of whom remained in custody,
according to a Metropolitan police spokesman. Greenpeace said there had
been 24 arrests in total.
BANGKOK - Poorer countries are helping shape a broader
pact to fight climate change but their efforts are being stymied by
rich nations' lack of commitment on finance and tougher emissions cuts,
the U.N. said on Thursday.
Funding to help poorer nations is a make-or-break issue in
negotiations to seal a broader climate pact to replace the Kyoto
Protocol at a summit in Copenhagen in December.
The US threatened to derail a deal on global climate change today in a public showdown with China by expressing deep opposition to the existing Kyoto protocol.
The US team also urged other rich countries to join it in setting up a
new legal agreement which would, unlike Kyoto, force all countries to
reduce emissions.
The White House has said for the first time that it does not expect to see a climate change bill this year, removing one of the key elements for reaching an international agreement to avoid catastrophic global warming.
In
a seminar in Washington, Barack Obama's main energy adviser, Carol
Browner, gave the clearest indication to date that the administration
did not expect the Senate to vote on a climate change bill before an
international meeting in Copenhagen in December.
For those of us who care desperately about the climate, President Obama's speech
on Tuesday-the first to the world body by this most admired of world
leaders-was a dud, a towering disappointment. Coming at the beginning
of what the UN has dubbed "climate week," the speech marked the
beginning of a three-month push towards the global climate conference
at Copenhagen.
