In his first post-election press conference, President Obama received a question on climate change. What he said was likely reassuring, encouraging, and infuriating–all at once–to the climate concerned community. To understand why, read this post by Will Oremus at Slate. He helpfully translates and boils down Obama’s 601 word response to four short sentences: 1)…Continue Reading…
The contradictions in the climate debate make my head hurt. For years, we’ve been hearing that one of the biggest impediments to action is that people aren’t sufficiently alarmed and informed about global warming. And that this owes, in large part, to a collective media failing. Here’s Joe Romm in 2010: The dreadful media coverage simply…Continue Reading…
The partisan climate debate seems to surprise those who don’t normally swim in its treacherous waters. Joe Nocera, a NYT business columnist, appears taken aback by his experience this week, which he discusses today: Here’s the question on the table today: Can a person support the Keystone XL oil pipeline and still believe that global warming poses…Continue Reading…
Someone I have a lot of respect for says all the Durban bashing is misinformed. To those who argue that the recent climate summit in South Africa produced nothing of consequence, Andrew Light counters: The fact is that not only did Durban produce a package of agreements essential for any hope of a meaningful contribution…Continue Reading…
There’s something remarkable happening this week in the climatesphere. People who routinely thunder that we are on the verge of climate doom have mostly shrugged at the lackluster outcome of the recent climate summit in South Africa. I’m wondering if they’ve self-medicated themselves with sedatives. Consider that, last week Grist’s David Roberts wrote (his emphasis): If…Continue Reading…
I want whatever David Roberts at Grist is smoking. In his latest why-don’t-you-fools-get-it post, Roberts takes aim at his own “climate hawk coalition,” for…um…trying a new approach that backgrounds climate change and refocuses the discussion on innovation, energy security, and economic competitiveness. Now why would they do that? The old (business as usual) approach–Climate doom!…Continue Reading…
Last week, after a second batch of climate science emails were publicly released, I got the sense that most science and environmental reporters assigned to cover the story were holding their noses. They dutifully reported the basics, but were not inclined to treat the latest disclosures as especially newsworthy, much less as a story with…Continue Reading…
Governments of the world’s richest countries have given up on forging a new treaty on climate change to take effect this decade, with potentially disastrous consequences for the environment through global warming. Ahead of critical talks starting next week, most of the world’s leading economies now privately admit that no new global climate agreement will be reached…Continue Reading…
Michael Levi, a climate and energy analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, shoots down Joe Romm and Real Climate in one post. I sense that it pains him to do this, especially with regard to the latter. More on that in a minute. First, I want to point out that Levi’s argument about the…Continue Reading…