I don’t understand how someone can call himself a climate change “pragmatic” and entirely dismiss the need for adaptation. Let me see if I get Joe Romm’s logic right: The tragedy of Katrina demonstrated that we can’t do adaptation, so why bother? I understand that Romm and many other climate advocates regard talk of adaptation…Continue Reading…
Earlier this summer, after federal investigators arrested two dozen residents from Blanding, Utah, for looting ancient Indian burials, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was quick to denounce the FBI’s conduct. Hatch called the federal pothunting raid “overkill” and asked Congress to investigate the FBI’s sting operation. A Salt Lake Tribune editorial scolded Hatch for trying to…Continue Reading…
Andy Revkin muses on whether the recession has chastened Americans into becoming de facto minimalists, perhaps unwittingly embracing a more sustainable way of life. Sorry, but it’s way too early to tell. When I see people socking away napkins and ketchups from Wendy’s, the way my grandfather was still doing forty years after the depression…Continue Reading…
Top Interior department officials, including Secretary Ken Salazar, are getting an earful as they tour Indian Country. This Navajo Times article captures both the wish list and complaints from the Navajo Nation. In response, one Navajo Times reader comments: It’s an interesting question – can a tribe truly be said to be sovereign if it…Continue Reading…
The ironies abound in this otherwise poignant story about one elderly woman’s solitary crusade to raise awareness of global warming. She also learns firsthand the core reason why it’s such a tough sell: Mostly people think it is a problem, but mostly they think it will not impact them anytime soon.
UPDATE: [[I should have been more familiar with No Impact Man’s blog–and the scope of his activism– before being so dismissive of him. Thanks to the reader below for providing a larger and fairer context.]] I’m not above stunts myself, especially if it scores me a long feature assignment. The last one I undertook in…Continue Reading…
Looks like retired military brass are fanning out to make the case for a national security angle to climate change. That’s going to add a whole new interesting dimension to the political debate. It also presents a sustained narrative that Marc Morano will have trouble countering at Climate Depot. Many of his headlines and links…Continue Reading…
As this post and this article in Nature suggest, going all-out renewable will gobble up some major habitat–if it’s not done right. There are two money quotes in Amanda Leigh Mascarelli’s excellent Nature piece. The first is from Jimmie Powell, a policy expert at The Nature Conservancy: If we are to prevent serious, damaging climate…Continue Reading…
This is a seductive analogy: If astronomers spotted a huge asteroid with a 99.9 probability of hitting the Earth in 100 years, should we ignore it until we’re 100.0% certain of its trajectory? The only problem is that scientists can’t predict what the worst impacts of global warming will be in 2109. I think the…Continue Reading…
So CAP’s chief global warming propagandist and attack dog will be lecturing on”messaging” next month. I can hardly wait. And here I thought all along that Romm was leading by example with those endless Memos to the Media, nasty hominem attacks, and repetitive self-referencing to his own previous blog posts. There was a recent deceptively…Continue Reading…