NewsTrust - Climate Change - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Climate Warnings, Growing Louder

Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - May. 18 (Opinion) - Given new evidence on carbon pollution, President Obama should get moving on global warming.

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The Coming GOP Civil War Over Climate Change

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

National Journal - May. 15 (Opinion) -

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Climate change 'will make hundreds of millions homeless'

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Robin McKie - May. 12 (Comment) - Carbon dioxide levels indicate rise in temperatures that could lead agriculture to fail on entire continents It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming. That is the stark warning of economist and climate change expert Lord Stern following the news last week that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere had reached a level of 400 parts per million (ppm). Massive movements of people are likely to occur over the rest of the century because global temperatures are likely to rise to by up to 5C because carbon dioxide levels have risen unabated for 50 years, said Stern, who is head of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change. "When temperatures rise to that level, we will have disrupted weather patterns and spreading deserts," he said. "Hundreds of millions of people will be forced to leave their homelands because their crops and animals will have died. The trouble will ...

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Climate change: swift political action can avert a carbon dioxide crisis

Sun, 12 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - May. 12 (Editorial) - Carbon dioxide levels have reached an all-time high. But there is some hope if governments take the figures seriously The news that concentrations of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere reached a level of 400 parts per million last week might not appear to have immediate significance. The level is only a couple of units higher than last year, after all. Yet the development has undoubted importance. With the realisation that carbon dioxide levels have achieved that symbolic 400ppm figure, it is now clear that two decades of warnings from scientists have fallen on deaf ears and that our leaders have failed completely to curtail rising outputs of greenhouse gases across the world. Indeed, they have allowed them to accelerate. In the 1960s, levels rose at 0.7ppm a year. Today, they rise at 2.1ppm, as more and more nations become industrialised and increase outputs from their factories and power plants. As a result, the most conservative of scientific calculations suggest Earth now faces a 50-50 ...

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Does Shale Gas Production Alter Climate Change?

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Ken Silverstein, Contributor - May. 05 (Opinion) - The shale gas industry has long thought that the Environmental Protection Agency may undercut its possibilities. But the regulator’s latest unveiling is now fueling the unconventional natural gas, noting that its heat-trapping emissions are much less than originally thought.

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Burn our planet or face financial meltdown. Not much of a choice

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Will Hutton - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - Last week's collapse of a European carbon emissions scheme makes an agreed approach to climate change all the more urgent The world is going to fry – unless there is change soon. There is weakening political will to make national and international targets for carbon reduction stick, no strong business and financial coalition prepared to lead and a weakening groundswell of public opinion prepared to foot the bill. Instead, the international consensus of 25 years ago – that the world must act to challenge climate change – is dissolving. Individual countries are trying to steal a march on each other in a race to the bottom, dropping whatever scant penalties there have been for burning fossil fuels. This new political geography has been obvious ever since the Copenhagen talks collapsed in 2009 , but last week the speed with which ground is being lost became sickeningly obvious. The European parliament refused to back a stop-gap measure to save the European carbon emissions trading scheme. ...

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Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Damian Carrington - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - Trillions of dollars at risk as stock markets inflate value of fossil fuels that may have to remain buried forever, experts warn The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists. "The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed," said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was "very big indeed" and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it. The so-called " carbon bubble " is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for "dangerous" climate change. If the agreements hold , these reserves will be in effect ...

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Basketball Giant Keeps Pressing China on Rhinos and Ivory

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By By ANDREW C. REVKIN - Apr. 17 (Opinion) - Dot Earth Blog: Basketball Giant Keeps Pressing China on Rhinos and Ivory

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Somaliland gets wind in its sails for revamping power sector

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Nicholas Parkinson, Matthew Newsome - Apr. 15 (Comment) - The region's antiquated, piecemeal power grid is constraining growth – but a new energy bill may change that In 2009, Hassan Ahmed Hussein brought an industrial bread-making machine from abroad to install in his hotel in downtown Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland. Hassan's idea was part business, part self-interest. Wholewheat bread is not available in Somaliland, and he envisioned selling it to small-scale vendors. He baked bread for four months before coming to the unfortunate conclusion that the machine wasn't cost effective. Electricity in Somaliland is too expensive. While the rest of the world pays an average $0.15-0.30 per kilowatt hour, Hargeisa's residents pay $1 per kWh. He abandoned the bakery and, in 2009, bought a diesel generator, poles, wires and transformers to start his own power company, Iftin, which rapidly gained nearly 2,000 customers in a catchment area of 10,000 residents. He has since merged his power stations with the city's largest provider, KAAH, and now ...

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Climate change: how a warming world is a threat to our food supplies

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By John Vidal - Apr. 14 (Comment) - Global warming is exacerbating political instability as tensions brought on by food insecurity rise. With research suggesting the issue can only get worse we examine the risks around the world Infographic: the impact of climate on food When the Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi , set himself on fire on 17 December 2010, it was in protest at heavy-handed treatment and harassment in the province where he lived. But a host of new studies suggest that a major factor in the subsequent uprisings, which became known as the Arab spring, was food insecurity. Drought, rocketing bread prices, food and water shortages have all blighted parts of the Middle East. Analysts at the Centre for American Progress in Washington say a combination of food shortages and other environmental factors exacerbated the already tense politics of the region. As the Observer reports today, an as-yet unpublished US government study indicates that the world needs to prepare for much more of the same, as food prices ...

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Millions face starvation as world warms, say scientists

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By John Vidal - Apr. 14 (Comment) - World is unprepared for changes that will see parts of Africa turned into disaster areas, say food experts Millions of people could become destitute in Africa and Asia as staple foods more than double in price by 2050 as a result of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts that will transform the way the world farms. As food experts gather at two major conferences to discuss how to feed the nine billion people expected to be alive in 2050, leading scientists have told the Observer that food insecurity risks turning parts of Africa into permanent disaster areas. Rising temperatures will also have a drastic effect on access to basic foodstuffs, with potentially dire consequences for the poor. Frank Rijsberman, head of the world's 15 international CGIAR crop research centres , which study food insecurity, said: "Food production will have to rise 60% by 2050 just to keep pace with expected global population increase and changing demand. Climate change comes on top of that. The annual ...

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US Moves Toward Teaching Climate Change; Britain Does the Opposite

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Christopher F. Schuetze - Apr. 08 (Opinion) - One conservative leader calls the change “unscientific speculation and hype” as some U.S. states seek to teach “both sides” in the climate debate.

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UK locks up people who want to save the planet

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Andrew Simms - Apr. 03 (Opinion) - The climate campaigners should be given a medal for their outstanding bravery and public service, not prison sentences What if, instead of giving Marie Curie and Alexander Fleming Nobel prizes for their life-saving work on radiation and penicillin, they'd been thrown in jail? Or, instead of being awarded the Grand Croix of the Légion d'honneur for his work on the germ theory of disease, Louis Pasteur was imprisoned like Napoleon on Elba? It would be perverse to return the favour of great, public works by depriving people of their freedom. Yet that is just what we're doing in Britain right now. The contributions of the people above were remarkable, but how much greater is the challenge of preserving a readily habitable climate, and how thankful should we be to those prepared to throw their life's energy and creativity at the task? The answer according to the British establishment currently is not at all. Their response is the kind of gratitude a Caesar might hand-out to an innocent ...

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The Tar Sands Disaster

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas Homer Dixon - Apr. 02 (Opinion) - Both the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science. The Conservatives have slashed financing for climate science, closed facilities that do research on climate change, told federal government climate scientists not to speak publicly about their work without approval and tried, unsuccessfully, to portray the tar sands industry as environmentally benign.

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New gas worth nothing if we take climate seriously

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Mar. 14 (Opinion) - There's only one way of knowing whether or not governments are serious about climate change: have they decided to leave most of their fossil fuel reserves in the ground? We have already discovered far more carbon than we can afford to burn, if we are not to commit the world to very dangerous levels of heating. Only if most of it – four-fifths according to a detailed estimate – is left where it sits is there a good chance of preventing more than2C of global warming. Forgive me if you've heard me say this many times before. But it is the only point that is really worth making. It doesn't matter how many wind turbines you build, or energy-saving lightbulbs you install, or more economical cars you manufacture: unless most of our fossil fuel reserves are declared off-limits they will, sooner or later, be extracted and burned. The question of whether it is sooner or ...

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No to Keystone. Yes to Crazy.

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN - Mar. 09 (Opinion) - If the oil pipeline is approved, President Obama will need to make it up to his green base.

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George Shultz Presses Congress to Act on Climate Change

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Ashley Southall - Mar. 09 (Opinion) - Mr. Shultz, who was the secretary of state, labor and the Treasury, urged lawmakers to support the development of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, and alternative energy.

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Editorial Board: Environmentalists are fighting the wrong battles

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Editorial Board - Mar. 05 (Editorial) - PRESIDENT OBAMA began his second term with a promise to push harder on energy and climate change. The events of the past week remind us that he won’t have to contend just with Republicans and coal-state Democrats determined to oppose reasonable measures to combat global warming. He will also have to sidestep environmentalists demanding that he fight the wrong ...

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Carbon Power Politics

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - Mar. 05 (Opinion) - The next EPA chief and next phase of the Obama green agenda.

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Wanted: A Bob Geldof for climate change

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New Scientist - Mar. 03 (Comment) - Wanted: A Bob Geldof for climate change

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Environmentalists still waiting for Obama to act on climate change

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Suzanne Goldenberg - Mar. 01 (Opinion) - Energy adviser Heather Zichal – like others before her – fails to deliver any concrete details of the president's plans for action It's been 114 days since Barack Obama promised on the night of his re-election to protect future generations from – in his words – "the destructive power of a warming planet". It's been 38 days since he renewed and expanded on that promise on inauguration day, 16 days since he told Congress straight up in his State of the Union address: act on climate change or I will. But when it comes to spelling out the actions Obama intends to take on climate change, exactly how he intends to use his executive power, it's been a very slow reveal. The White House energy and climate change adviser, Heather Zichal, failed during a talk at a Washington thinktank this week to provide specifics on the kinds of actions – or the time frame – Obama has in mind for dealing with what he has repeatedly described as an urgent problem. If anything, Zichal, like other White House ...

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Op-Ed Contributors: The Right Way to Curb Power Plant Emissions

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By DANIEL F. BECKER, JAMES GERSTENZANG - Feb. 27 (Opinion) - President Obama should require existing power plants to reduce their emissions by at least one-quarter by 2020.

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Low emissions are no justification for Kansas scaling back renewables

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dana Nuccitelli - Feb. 21 (Opinion) - Is the 'Saudi Arabia of wind' willing to sacrifice the economic benefits of clean energy for the sake of the coal industry? To date, 29 states in the US have set standards requiring a certain percentage of electricity production to be met by renewable sources. Soon that number may fall to 28. In 2009, Kansas passed legislation establishing a renewable energy standard requiring 10% of the state's electricity production to come from renewable sources by 2010, and 20% by 2020. The state, the "Saudi Arabia of wind" , met the 2010 requirements by exploiting its wind power potential, which is second only to Texas in the US. Republican congressman Dennis Hedke, the chairman of the Kansas Congressional joint committee on energy and environmental policy – who has ties to the oil and gas industry – arranged for his committee to hear arguments to delay or eliminate these requirements. This Thursday, the commitee has its final hearing on the subject. The main argument against the renewable energy ...

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Dirty fossil fuel exports will come back to bite Australia

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Graham Readfearn - Feb. 21 (Opinion) - Australian coal and gas is being shipped and burned around Asia at record rates – but at what cost to the climate? Australia just loves to share, regardless of whether or not the world might universally benefit from what it's got to give. There's been Kylie Minogue, a certain beer that nobody in Australia actually drinks, unplayable spin bowlers, those mini plastic alopecia-ridden clip-on koalas and pictures of "wish you were here" beaches. But there's another, less famous Aussie-born export: fossil fuels. Lots of 'em. I know, I know. Australia is tackling the world's greatest market failure with its legislated price on greenhouse gas emissions . One tonne can be yours for AU$23 (£15.50). Al Gore has said the laws introduced in 2012 by the Labor prime minister, Julia Gillard, had "inspired the world" because "carbon polluters are being held accountable for the global warming pollution they pour into the atmosphere every single day". Barack Obama has described the policy as ...

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Op-Ed Contributor: How Not to Fix Climate Change

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Joe Nocera - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - Stopping the Keystone XL oil pipeline is actually counterproductive in more ways than one.

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