Tag Climate change

Entries 23 Total

Australian Prime Minister on climate change sceptics

Nov 8, ’09 12:51 PM

Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter on cli­mate change scep­tics:

… these do-nothing cli­mate change scep­tics are pre­pared to des­troy our children’s future … cli­mate change skep­tics in all their guises and dis­guises are not con­ser­vat­ives. They are rad­ic­als. They are reck­less gam­blers who are bet­ting all our futures on their arrog­ant assump­tion that their intu­itions should tri­umph over the evidence.

My mes­sage to the cli­mate change skep­tics … is this: You are bet­ting our children’s future and the future of our grand­chil­dren. You are bet­ting our jobs, our houses, our farms, our reefs, our eco­nomy and our future on an intu­ition – on a gut feel­ing; on a polit­ical pre­ju­dice you have about science.

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Climate change denial spreading like a contagious disease

Nov 7, ’09 12:13 AM

George Mon­biot spec­u­lates on reas­ons for the spread of cli­mate change denial.

There is no point in deny­ing it: we’re los­ing. Cli­mate change denial is spread­ing like a con­ta­gious disease.

There are some obvi­ous answers … But there might also be a less intu­it­ive reason, which shines a light into a fas­cin­at­ing corner of human psychology ..

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Climate Camp’s open letter to the Met

Aug 26, ’09 12:50 PM

Open let­ter from the Camp for Cli­mate Action to Ian Thomas, the Chief Super­in­tend­ent of the Met­ro­pol­itan Police Ser­vice. Worth read­ing in it’s entirety.

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Capitalist democracy in action: the fossil fuelled campaign for global warming

May 13, ’09 8:15 AM

Here they are, hav­ing weaselled them­selves into a pos­i­tion to dig up hugely valu­able resources from under our feet for a steal, only to flog them off to be burnt and dan­ger­ously pol­lute our only atmo­sphere. When we real­ise how dan­ger­ous it is, they use these stolen pro­ceeds to block any attempt to mend the dam­age by launch­ing a pro­pa­ganda cam­paign and buy­ing off politicians:

Obama’s key cli­mate bill hit by $45m PR cam­paign.

And people call this demo­cracy? These people are the highest of crim­in­als. For­get the war on ter­ror, what we should have is a war on fossil fuel pushers.

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U.S. finally comes in from the cold

Apr 28, ’09 8:14 AM

U.S. finally comes in from the cold, so to speak:

Clin­ton addressed the com­plaints of devel­op­ing coun­tries such as India and China that Amer­ica and the EU, by demand­ing bind­ing emis­sions cuts, want to saddle them with the bur­den of cli­mate change; they argue they did not cause the prob­lem and must pri­or­it­ise growth. She said the US recog­nised indus­tri­al­ised coun­tries bore a respons­ib­il­ity: “Some coun­tries like mine are respons­ible for past emis­sions.” She wanted China and India to grow their eco­nom­ies: “We want people to have a higher stand­ard of living.”

Obama had broken with eight years of denial under George Bush, Clin­ton said. “The United States is fully engaged and ready to lead and determ­ined to make up for lost time both at home and abroad … the US is no longer absent without leave.”

Bet­ter late than never.

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Scientists: world is on the brink

Mar 15, ’09 10:08 PM

2500 sci­ent­ists attend­ing a recent con­fer­ence in Copen­ha­gen have warned we face irre­vers­ible cli­mate change.

Lewis Smith, writ­ing for The Aus­tralarian:

The demands and alerts con­tained in the state­ment were described as a defin­ing moment in sci­ent­ists’ rela­tions with polit­ical lead­ers, rep­res­ent­ing a shift away from their tra­di­tional role of merely offer­ing advice to telling politi­cians to act.

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Pace of climate change exceeds estimates

Feb 16, ’09 9:48 AM

Pace of cli­mate change exceeds estim­ates:

“We are basic­ally look­ing now at a future cli­mate that’s bey­ond any­thing we’ve con­sidered ser­i­ously in cli­mate model sim­u­la­tions,” Chris­topher Field, found­ing dir­ector of the Carne­gie Institution’s Depart­ment of Global Eco­logy at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, said.

… emis­sions from burn­ing fossil fuels since 2000 have largely out­paced the estim­ates used in the U.N. panel’s 2007 reports.

Unex­pec­tedly large amounts of car­bon diox­ide are being released into the atmo­sphere as the res­ult of “feed­back loops” that are speed­ing up nat­ural processes.

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Obama on revamping the way America uses energy

Nov 12, ’08 1:41 PM

Green polit­ics has come along way in the past ten years.

Barack Obama on revamp­ing America’s energy use:

I was just read­ing an art­icle in the New York Times by Michael Pol­len about food and the fact that our entire agri­cul­tural sys­tem is built on cheap oil. As a con­sequence, our agri­cul­ture sec­tor actu­ally is con­trib­ut­ing more green­house gases than our trans­port­a­tion sec­tor. And in the mean time, it’s cre­at­ing mono­cul­tures that are vul­ner­able to national secur­ity threats, are now vul­ner­able to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in com­mod­ity prices, and are partly respons­ible for the explo­sion in our health­care costs because they’re con­trib­ut­ing to type 2 dia­betes, stroke and heart dis­ease, obesity, all the things that are driv­ing our huge explo­sion in health­care costs. That’s just one sec­tor of the eco­nomy. You think about the same thing is true on trans­port­a­tion. The same thing is true on how we con­struct our build­ings. The same is true across the board.

For us to say we are just going to com­pletely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with cli­mate change, deals with national secur­ity and drives our eco­nomy, that’s going to be my num­ber one pri­or­ity when I get into office …

(via Fro­gb­log)

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Michael Hanlon’s Eternity a red herring

Nov 7, ’08 1:24 PM

I received a link from Amazon today tout­ing a new book by Michael Hanlon:

Human­kind is not doomed, we may be around for mil­lions of years yet. We have already sur­vived one of the most extraordin­ary planet-wide cata­strophes — the Ice Ages. … The sub­ject of the book is very much in the news at the moment — will we be wiped out by cli­mate change, war or pes­ti­lence? Han­lon is say­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent, that the spe­cies will sur­vive as the planet changes around us. This dif­fer­ent point of view is refresh­ing, and some sec­tions of the book are very con­tro­ver­sial, which should get the atten­tion of the media. Not only is human­kind not doomed, but that we may be around for mil­lions, if not hun­dreds of mil­lions of years. We have already sur­vived one of the most extraordin­ary planet-wide cata­strophes — the great Ice Ages. Equipped with the simplest tech­no­logy, Homo sapi­ens sailed through the great gla­ci­ations, and profited from them.

Except that the “news at the moment” isn’t simply “will we be wiped out by cli­mate change, war or pes­ti­lence.” It is do we want to sur­vive in such a world and what can we do to avoid these things?

The premise of the book is a red herring.

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The 11th Hour, a must see documentary

Oct 20, ’08 9:58 PM

The 11th Hour film posterThe 11th Hour is a doc­u­ment­ary film, co-written and nar­rated by Leonardo DiCaprio, but don’t let that put you off. This is one of the best envir­on­mental doc­u­ment­ar­ies I’ve seen and DiCaprio does a fine job.

Inter­mingled with a rous­ing mont­age of earthly images and audio, the back­bone of the film is a series of inter­views with over fifty politi­cians, sci­ent­ists, and envir­on­mental act­iv­ists — includ­ing Stephen Hawk­ing and David Suzuki—who clev­erly explain the com­plex bind we’re in, how we got here and how we might get out of it.

It’s a treas­ure trove of quot­able dia­logue, and after detail­ing the down right depress­ing situ­ation we’re in and the obstacles we need to over­come, the most inspir­ing stuff comes in the last seg­ment where we are presen­ted not only with prac­tical ideas and solu­tions for the future but with a whole new way of look­ing at our situ­ation; this gem from Paul Hawken:

The great thing about the dilemma we’re in is that we get to reima­gine every single thing we do. In other words there isn’t one single thing that we make or sys­tem that we have that doesn’t require a com­plete remake, and so there are two ways of look­ing at that. One is, like, oh my gosh, you know, what a big bur­den. The other way to look at it, which is the way I prefer, is what a great time to be born, what a great time to be alive, because this gen­er­a­tion gets to essen­tially com­pletely change this world.

If I was a film­maker this is the film I’d like to make.

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