November 20th, 2012 · Comments Off on If your fuel isn’t dirty enough 4U, this hotline is 4U.
Ever had late night urges that your fuel simply isn’t dirty enough to penetrate into your darkest corners? If so, Canada has the fuel for you. And, recognizing the lure of dirty energy, there is now a number to call: the Tar Sands hotline.
Did you know that unextracted tar sands, just like unmarried single women, have an expiry date? According to noted gender studies expert Chen Weidong of CNOOC, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, that’s exactly the fate we can expect for Alberta’s crude if we leave it undrilled and in the ground. An empty purposeless existence.
If you love the Tar Sands and don’t want to see them left behind, watch this video.
After all, unextracted tar sands oil is “like an unmarried woman”, don’t leave it in the ground with bountiful wildlife like an old maid collects cats.
November 19th, 2012 · Comments Off on Climate Reality to a catchy beat …
Last week, the Climate Reality Project (Al Gore) ran a 24 event on “Dirty Weather”. Here, in a few minutes, is a foot-tapping musical outline of why climate change is such a challenge and what we must do in the face of climate reality.
It is the only Earth that we’ll ever have …
This Earth is the one that we need to care about …
In the event that your nights are too tranquil, might I suggest some bedside reading from the (typically) staid World Bank? Turn Down the Heat‘s subtitle is tellingly revealing: “Why a 4 Degree C Warmer World Must Be Avoided”. Bankers — especially international bankers — and banker analysts don’t typically hyperventilate. This tendency underlines why we should take this so seriously:
This report spells out what the world would be like if it warmed by 4 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists are nearly unanimously predicting by the end of the century, without serious policy changes.
The 4°C scenarios are devastating: the inundation of coastal cities; increasing risks for food production potentially leading to higher malnutrition rates; many dry regions becoming dryer, wet regions wetter; unprecedented heat waves in many regions, especially in the tropics; substantially exacerbated water scarcity in many regions; increased frequency of high-intensity tropical cyclones; and irreversible loss of biodiversity, including coral reef systems.
And most importantly, a 4°C world is so different from the current one that it comes with high uncertainty and new risks that threaten our ability to anticipate and plan for future adaptation needs.
“scenarios are devastating … unprecedented heat waves … irreversible loss of biodiversity … ”
While the world is, in some theoretical paper signed way, committed to constraining global warming to 2 degrees Celsias, the business as usual (BAU) scenario puts us on a path toward something approaching 6 degrees (or even worse) by the next century. Without even going to that BAU scenario, Turn Down the Heat lays out in stark terms why we need to take climate change seriously and change the game to something that offers hope for sustaining modern human civilization.
Those of us who focus heavily on climate change issues were uncertain about the appointment of Dr. Jim Yong Kim as President of the World Bank.. There was no uncertainty of his brilliance, of his ability to understand complex problems, and of his passion for fostering real solutions. His career, however, has mainly been in the health world prior to his assumption of academe. Thus, how much would climate change play in the tenure of the first scientist to run the World Bank? This report seems to provide a meaningful answer to that question. In the forward, Dr. Kim concludes the forward with these powerful paragraphs:
We are well aware of the uncertainty that surrounds these scenarios and we know that different scholars and studies sometimes disagree on the degree of risk. But the fact that such scenarios cannot be discarded is sufficient to justify strengthening current climate change policies. Finding ways to avoid that scenario is vital for the health and welfare of communities around the world. While every region of the world will be affected, the poor and most vulnerable would be hit hardest.
A 4°C world can, and must, be avoided.
The World Bank Group will continue to be a strong advocate for international and regional agreements and increasing climate financing. We will redouble our efforts to support fast growing national initiatives to mitigate carbon emissions and build adaptive capacity as well as support inclusive green growth and climate smart development. Our work on inclusive green growth has shown that—through more efficiency and smarter use of energy and natural resources—many opportunities exist to drastically reduce the climate impact of development, without slowing down poverty alleviation and economic growth.
This report is a stark reminder that climate change affects everything. The solutions don’t lie only in climate finance or climate projects. The solutions lie in effective risk management and ensuring all our work, all our thinking, is designed with the threat of a 4°C degree world in mind. The World Bank Group will step up to the challenge.
To have the President of the World Bank write that “climate change affects everything” is, not just to me, a meaningful step forward in the global discussion space.
November 18th, 2012 · Comments Off on Climate Change is Evaporating the Things we Love – Great Lakes at Historic Lows
This is another excellent guest post by Muskegon Critic …
Lake Michigan and Huron are within a couple inches of breaking all time low water levels on record, and now climate change is emerging as the leading cause. It works like this:
warmer weather –> less ice cover in the winter –> more evaporation
[We’re are seeing this, real time, in the Great Lakes … see after the fold.]
November 18th, 2012 · Comments Off on Ken Burns’ Prequel to the Dust-Bowlification of America’s Southwest
This evening, PBS will start broadcasting the latest of film documentarian Ken Burns’ treatises on significant periods and issues of American history.
THE DUST BOWL chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, in which the frenzied wheat boom of the “Great Plow-Up,” followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. Vivid interviews with twenty-six survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom seen movie footage, bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible human perseverance. It is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us—a lesson we ignore at our peril.
This “morality tale” and “peril” cannot be understated, as this documentary is like a laser pointer at one of the major impacts of catastrophic climate chaos, a all-too likely scenario for the American southwest for the near, mid, and long-term future that Joe Romm christened in a Nature article as Dust-Bowlification.
Which impact of anthropogenic global warming will harm the most people in the coming decades? I believe that the answer is extended or permanent drought over large parts of currently habitable or arable land — a drastic change in climate that will threaten food security and may be irreversible over centuries. …
I used to call the confluence of these processes ‘desertification’ on my blog, ClimateProgress.org, until some readers pointed out that many deserts are high in biodiversity, which isn’t where we’re heading. ‘Dust- bowlification’ is perhaps a more accurate and vivid term, particularly for Americans — many of whom still believe that climate change will only affect far-away places in far-distant times.
Prolonged drought will strike around the globe, but it is surprising to many that it would hit the US heartland so strongly and so soon.
The coming droughts ought to be a major driver — if not the major driver — of climate policies. Yet few policy-makers and journalists seem to be aware of dust-bowlification and its potentially devastating impact on food security. That’s partly understandable, because much of the key research cited in this article post-dates the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Raising public awareness of, and scientific focus on, the likelihood of severe effects of drought is the first step in prompting action.
One path, it seems, to such “raising public awareness” is (as per the post) making the linkage — the appropriate, legitimate, defensible — between Burns’ searing documentation of the historical Dust Bowl experience to what is already occurring the Southwest and what scientific work shows will occur in coming years, decades, centuries. While, due to the accumulated impact, the situation will get worse, we have a choice. We can continue with business as usual, assuring that we will only be worsening the situation with each passing moment, or we can do the math and decide to take action to mitigate our climate impacts and seek to reduce the likelihood of irrevocably hurtling over the climate cliff (or, more accurately, the C4: the catastrophic climate chaos cliff). Leveraging the power of communicators like Burns, helping Americans connect the dots between historical experience and the future we are creating, is one tool to help galvanise Americans to work together to turn the tide on Global Warming’s rising seas.
“It was an incredible and heartbreaking story,” said Duncan. “And it’s amazing how they – now in their late 80s and 90s – told the story as if it happened the day before. That’s how raw and vivid the memory was for them.”
It is a raw and vivid and extraordinarily well executed documentary that makes viewers marvel at the overpowering strength of nature unleashed, the arrogance and folly of crafting policies designed to tame the environment rather than live with it, and the resilience of those live through such a preventable disaster and rebuild their lives.
Much of the destruction wrought by Superstorm Sandy resulted from years of over development in low-lying areas without provisions for inevitable floods, and political posturing that ignores ongoing climate change.
Comments Off on Ken Burns’ Prequel to the Dust-Bowlification of America’s SouthwestTags:Energy
While there are many celebratory discussions and pronouncements about reduced U.S. emissions due to natural gas displacing coal, some voices caution that all may not be as it seems. There is a hidden problem that may — or may not — be within the accounting. Errant methane may blow away the claimed greenhouse gains from how much cleaner natural gas burns.
The following video provides some stark evidence of one part of the ‘errant emissions’ challenge:
November 17th, 2012 · Comments Off on Higher Fuel Efficiency Standards Putting Industrial States Back to Work: A dash of reality
This guest post comes from Muskegon Critic.
Put away the shine and the polish. Put away the talking heads and their excellent hair and confidence opining with a certainty that is inversely proportional to their accuracy.
Give me a guy with callouses on his hands speaking from the heart, a woman speaking from experience, the coffee addled lab researchers talking about how they’re pushing the limits. Show me the folks in the trenches with reports from the day to day world.
How is a higher fuel efficiency standard working for America?
It’s working. It’s putting the Industrial Powerhouse Midwest to work is how it’s working. Here’s a whole website dedicated to real-life stories of real, actual, real-life people getting real jobs and real businesses hiring and innovating BECAUSE OF, not in spite of, the recent increase in fuel efficiency standards. Visit the Driving Growth site. Watch the videos and the stories from the ground.
So what I’m going to be doing over the next several weeks, next several months, is having a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out what can — what more can we do to make short-term progress in reducing carbons, and then working through an education process that I think is necessary, a discussion, the conversation across the country about, you know, what realistically can we do long term to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.
When we consider “an education process,” a critical skill of a quality educator is the ability to see and exploit “teachable moments“. When it comes to climate change, we have had all too many teachable moments just in the United States in 2012. Putting aside record-low Arctic Ice extent and mass, climate-influenced disasters in many nations and regions, the United States has seen dramatic weather events and conditions that reflect human-driven climate change’s increasing impact. These include
A period of heat waves that, in unprecented manner, broke 1000s of high-temperature records throughout the lower 48;
An extensive — and severe — drought that still reigns supreme in much of the nation;
The damaged agricultural system — whether shriveled corn, skyrocketed hay supplies for cattle, or …;
The Derecho that shut down the Federal government and left much of the East Coast without power for days;
Hurricane (Frankenstorm) Sandy with its damage to much of the eastern United States and especially devastating impacts on New Jersey and the New York City area.
These climate disruption teachable moments are having an impact on Americans understanding of and concern about climate change. Sadly, these teachable moments have been ignored — or even worse, essentially repudiated — by the Obama Administration. There have been no serious discussions of how climate change impacts are driving up food costs nor discussion of how the heat wave is portending future weather patterns nor outlining how various storms fit directly within scientific predications as to climate change impacts. Instead, climate silence has dominated rather than skillful seizure of teachable moments to help move the national conversation forward
“to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.”
While the President’s comments Wednesday provided groups for (guarded) hope that the President and the Administration will move down a path toward seizing such teachable moments, comments the next day by White House press spokesman Jay Carney to a press gaggle demonstrate that this process should begin with senior White House staff up to and including the President.
As happened with the President, Jay Carney was launched a softball question related to Hurricane Sandy that offered opportunity to move the nation down the “education process”. Carney response (full question and answers after the fold) might be generously described as a swing and a miss while some might argue that it was an inning-ending strike-out.
Several items drive this. When asked about whether the President would discuss climate change in his speech in hurricane-devastated New York, Carney stated:
The President made clear yesterday that we can’t attribute any one single weather event to climate change.
Yes, the President did make that comment but, as scientists focused on extreme weather event attribution put it in a Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society peer-reviewed article, “scientific thinking has moved on”. The appropriate discussion, especially for non-scientists like the President and Jay Carney and this author, is not “did climate change cause this specific storm” but ‘Did change helped contribute to the conditions in which the weather event occurred and did climate change worsen the storm/impacts”. With Hurricane Sandy, as to that second question, the answer is an unequivocal yes. We can start with the simple fact that sea-level rise from human-caused global warming heightened the storm surge levels. Rather than iterating “we can’t attribute”, White House spokesman Carney could have helped moved the education process forward commenting that:
“As the President said yesterday, we cannot specifically attribute a single weather event’s cause to climate change however we know that we are having an impact on the climate system. Some scientists are using an excellent analogy: we are putting the climate system on steroids. And, just as we can’t say that any specific Barry Bonds’ home run came due to steroid use, it is impossible to look at his home run record without an asterisk as to his steroid use, we can’t look at Hurricane Sandy without understanding that climate change contributed to it.”
And, then, since the question focused on the speech of the day, Carney could have added: “In any event, today’s speech will focus on the immediate challenges that those hit by Sandy face and to engage with those helping those damaged by Sandy rather than to engage in the climate change education process that the President committed to yesterday.”
Another failure to seize the teachable moment (and, more appropriately, to use that moment to make a mistaken point) came with this exchange:
Q I’m just speaking of the aftermath yesterday — [President Obama] seemed to almost go out of his way to dismiss the idea of a carbon tax, kind of rule it out. Why did he — why was he so —
MR. CARNEY: We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one. The point the President was making is that our focus right now is the same as the American people’s focus, which is on the need to extend economic growth, expand job creation. And task number one is dealing with these deadlines that pose real challenges to our economy, as he talked about yesterday.
First, why the unilateral disarmament to declare “we would never propose a carbon tax”. Carny could have said that “Of course, we’re hearing all this carbon tax discussion but the White House is not working on it and we have no intention of proposing one.” The first part of the response removes, unnecessarily, this legitimate policy option as something in the White House’s quiver. This seems absurd even if the President doesn’t intend to use it.
Second, and far more importantly, Carney’s response seems to imply that he (that the Administration) buys hook, line, and sinker the utter falsehood that it is ‘environment vs economy’ rather than ‘environment and economy‘. Focusing on Climate + Energy Smart practices and policies, somewhat in line with what the President promised in the press conference to focus on, will have economic benefits. And, as seen throughout our climate disruption disasters of 2012, leaving environmental issues on the policy-making cutting-room floor has huge negative economic impacts.
President Obama’s three key science-related appointments at the start of the Administration were quite telling. Steve Chu (Secretary of Energy), Jane Lubchenco (Director, NOAA), and John Holdren (Presidential Science Advisor) have a very strong career overlap: each of them were serious and accomplished scientists in their fields who determined that the need for better understanding of science issues (most notably related to climate change) demanded that they evolve themselves from ‘simply’ scientists to science communicators capable of communicating effectively with non-scientists (whether policy makers, business community, the general public, otherwise …). And, all three are quite effective communicators and educators with deep and substantive knowledge of climate change risks and opportunities. Considering this, the President’s “educational process” might best begin by having these three foster a deeper understanding in the White House staff along with, then, unmuzzling them for serious engagement with the American public as to how science can inform policy-makers on climate change risks.
NOTE: There are many places to look for effective climate communication, including among politicians. President re-elect Obama could do worse than looking to Presidential Candidate Obama in 2007:
“Most of all, we cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now.
In a state like New Hampshire, the ski industry is facing shorter seasons and losing jobs. We are already breaking records with the intensity of our storms, the number of forest fires, the periods of drought. By 2050 famine could force more than 250 million from their homes — famine that will increase the chances of war and strife in many of the world’s weakest states. The polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted. And if we do nothing, sea levels will rise high enough to swallow large portions of every coastal city and town.
This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.
But if we wait; if we let campaign promises and State of the Union pledges go unanswered for yet another year; if we let the same broken politics that’s held us back for decades win one more time, we will lose another chance to save our planet. And we might not get many more.
I reject that future. I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe that this time could be different.” “The first step in doing this is to phase out a carbon-based economy that’s causing our changing climate. As President, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming — an 80% reduction by 2050. To ensure this isn’t just talk, I will also commit to interim targets toward this goal in 2020, 2030, and 2040. These reductions will start immediately, and we’ll continue to follow the recommendations of top scientists to ensure that our targets are strong enough to meet the challenge we face.”
Now, the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline. We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy. We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.
America can be that nation. America must be that nation.
President Obama held a press conference earlier today. Perhaps due to coming from a city still reeling from a climate disruption fed disaster, Hurricane Sandy, the New York Times White House reporter asked a strong question on climate change. Here is Mark Landler‘s interaction with President Obama:
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Just going to knock through a couple of others. Mark Landler? Where’s Mark? There he is, right in front of me.
Q: Thank you, Mr. President. In his endorsement of you a few weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg said he was motivated by the belief that you would do more to confront the threat of climate change than your opponent. Tomorrow you’re going up to New York City, where you’re going to, I assume, see people who are still suffering the effects of Hurricane Sandy, which many people say is further evidence of how a warming globe is changing our weather. What specifically do you plan to do in a second term to tackle the issue of climate change? And do you think the political will exists in Washington to pass legislation that could include some kind of a tax on carbon?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, as you know, Mark, we can’t attribute any particular weather event to climate change. What we do know is the temperature around the globe is increasing faster than was predicted even 10 years ago. We do know that the Arctic ice cap is melting faster than was predicted even five years ago. We do know that there have been extraordinarily — there have been an extraordinarily large number of severe weather events here in North America, but also around the globe.
And I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. And as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.
Now, there are many things to note about this exchange.
Landler’s question is thoughtful and pointed on a climate change issue. Such questioning of the President has been all too rare from the WH press corps. It will be interesting to see whether other reporters seek to raise C3 (‘climate catastrophe cliff’) even as the punditry builds tension over the created ‘fiscal cliff’ crisis.
The President made what he, almost certainly, see as a strong statement affirming climate science.
When climate scientists like me explain to people what we do for a living we are increasingly asked whether we “believe in climate change”. Quite simply it is not a matter of belief. Our concerns about climate change arise from the scientific evidence that humanity’s activities are leading to changes in our climate. The scientific evidence is overwhelming.The President continued to respond to Landler with the following:
Now, in my first term, we doubled fuel efficiency standards on cars and trucks. That will have an impact. That will take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere.
Need to take a moment for an editorial comment.
First, the Obama Administration deserves serious credit for the fuel efficiency standard work. This was a major achievement that will have significant impact.
Second, this is simply false: “That will take a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere.” There is an important differentiation between the work “take” and “keep”. While the fuel standards mean that drivers will pollute less, they still will be burning fuel while driving — they will be polluting, still, with each mile driven even if polluting less. E.g., the fuel efficiency standards “will keep a lot of carbon out of the atmosphere” would have been a correct statement. This seemingly pedantic point has meaning — a 50 percent reduction in polluting, per mile driven, helps move us forward by reducing our polluting impact — it does not, however, solve our problems and it does nothing to “take carbon out of the atmosphere”.
We doubled the production of clean energy, which promises to reduce the utilization of fossil fuels for power generation. And we continue to invest in potential breakthrough technologies that could further remove carbon from our atmosphere.
But we haven’t done as much as we need to. So what I’m going to be doing over the next several weeks, next several months, is having a conversation, a wide-ranging conversation with scientists, engineers and elected officials to find out what can — what more can we do to make short-term progress in reducing carbons, and then working through an education process that I think is necessary, a discussion, the conversation across the country about, you know, what realistically can we do long term to make sure that this is not something we’re passing on to future generations that’s going to be very expensive and very painful to deal with.
This is an important commentary — that the President is going to spark a national “education process” to build support for the policies and actions determined as necessary to deal with climate change. One might reasonably be scratching one’s head right now: we just finished a multi-year election campaign which should have been about laying out the differences between the two parties and outlining policies that each is proposing. And, in fact, the President’s comments about the coming months and education are eerily echoing comments he has made in the past (here and here and …). If the President and the Obama-Biden campaign had, as many had advocated, laid out climate change clearly over the past two years, that education process would be well underway and the President’s resounding electoral victory would have been a clear mandate for taking these actions.
I don’t know what — what either Democrats or Republicans are prepared to do at this point, because, you know, this is one of those issues that’s not just a partisan issue. I also think there’s — there are regional differences. There’s no doubt that for us to take on climate change in a serious way would involve making some tough political choices, and you know, understandably, I think the American people right now have been so focused and will continue to be focused on our economy and jobs and growth that, you know, if the message is somehow we’re going to ignore jobs and growth simply to address climate change, I don’t think anybody’s going to go for that.
Huh … Why is the President going out of his way to assert “that’s not just a partisan issue” when, at the core, climate change is one of the most partisan of all issues when it comes to the science (even as there a few ‘coal’ Democratic politicians who strive to ignore or reject the science).
And, why is the President using language that fosters the false economy versus environment framing so beloved by polluting industries? It is well past time to connect, strongly, the Obama Administration’s clean energy and green jobs efforts with their implications for climate science.
I won’t go for that.
Who – in terms of serious players in the US political discussion — “would go for that” tackling climate change with zero regard for employment implications. Bill McKibben and the 350.org crowd, far from anyone’s concept of a pansy and weak-willed group when it comes to climate issues, certainly are aware of jobs issues and don’t advocate action in ignorance of economic performance implications.
If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader, I think that’s something that the American people would support.
And, that “agenda” has been laid out multiple times over. See here …
So you know, you can expect that you’ll hear more from me in the coming months and years about how we can shape an agenda that garners bipartisan support and helps move this — moves this agenda forward.
Q: It sounds like you’re saying, though — (off mic) — probably still short of a consensus on some kind of — (off mic).
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I — that I’m pretty certain of. And look, we’re — we’re still trying to debate whether we can just make sure that middle-class families don’t get a tax hike. Let’s see if we can resolve that. That should be easy. This one’s hard. But it’s important because, you know, one of the things that we don’t always factor in are the costs involved in these natural disasters. We’d — we just put them off as — as something that’s unconnected to our behavior right now, and I think what, based on the evidence, we’re seeing is — is that what we do now is going to have an impact and a cost down the road if — if — if we don’t do something about it.
The President is partially right. We are already facing these costs, seriously, and it will be far worse than “a cost down the road if we don’t do something about” climate change.
One might question as to whether the President did, in fact, answer the question. Landler asked quite directly about the President’s intent during the second term for climate-related legislation and other Federal action. And, Landler asked for the President’s perspective on the political environment for action on climate change. Both of these quite significant issues were left, at best, partially addressed.
For several months now, Forecast the Facts has led a campaign called “climate silence“, which chastised President Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney for their failure to address climate change seriously in the Presidential campaign (and elsewhere). In essence, they have sought to have serious discussion of climate change from two angles:
Discussing climate change as a real and serious issue meriting action.
Laying out what they planned to do, in light of the above, to address climate change.
In considering that campaign, one might see Landler’s question as providing a prompt for the President to ‘end’ that climate silence. The President’s response, however, responded to just the first element (acknowledging climate change as serious) and did not provide a solid response to the second in terms of specific actions. One might suggest that something like this would deserve description as ending the climate silence:
This is what it would sound like if Obama broke his climate silence:
“Most of all, we cannot afford more of the same timid politics when the future of our planet is at stake. Global warming is not a someday problem, it is now.
In a state like New Hampshire, the ski industry is facing shorter seasons and losing jobs. We are already breaking records with the intensity of our storms, the number of forest fires, the periods of drought. By 2050 famine could force more than 250 million from their homes — famine that will increase the chances of war and strife in many of the world’s weakest states. The polar ice caps are now melting faster than science had ever predicted. And if we do nothing, sea levels will rise high enough to swallow large portions of every coastal city and town.
This is not the future I want for my daughters. It’s not the future any of us want for our children. And if we act now and we act boldly, it doesn’t have to be.
But if we wait; if we let campaign promises and State of the Union pledges go unanswered for yet another year; if we let the same broken politics that’s held us back for decades win one more time, we will lose another chance to save our planet. And we might not get many more.
I reject that future. I would not be running for President if I didn’t believe that this time could be different.” “The first step in doing this is to phase out a carbon-based economy that’s causing our changing climate. As President, I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming — an 80% reduction by 2050. To ensure this isn’t just talk, I will also commit to interim targets toward this goal in 2020, 2030, and 2040. These reductions will start immediately, and we’ll continue to follow the recommendations of top scientists to ensure that our targets are strong enough to meet the challenge we face.”
Yet, the President’s comments today certainly imply (if not directly state) an intent to end climate silence.
The President’s commitment to speak on climate issues and spark a real national discussion to help foster support for necessary actions is welcomed and something could lead to substantive change in the months and years moving forward.
As to the post’s title, an interesting tidbit on the President’s press conference: the New York Times Washington Bureau evidently didn’t consider their own reporter’s question to be newsworthy as the Times’ report on the press conference is silent on climate issues.
