Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
The Top 10 Bogus Statements (BS) in the US Climate Debate
In the spirit of improving the quality of the debate and with unapologetic imitation of another political satirist on night-time TV, Bill Becker offers up today’s Top 10 Bogus Statements (B.S.) in the climate debate, each followed by a reality check...
2008
Cut Your Carbon and Save on Auto Insurance
Adam Stern of Terra Pass reports on pay-as-you-drive programs that reward those who drive gently...
2005
Mapping Space, Politics and Possibility
Jamais Cascio takes readers on a tour through a day of map hunting on the web...
Other recent "look backs":
July 22
July 23
July 26
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!
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By Lawrence MacDonald - Perhaps the headline says it all:
Lack of votes for Senate Democrats’ energy bill may mean the end
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 23, 2010; A02
Conceding that they can’t find enough votes for the legislation, Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned efforts to put together a comprehensive energy bill that would seek to curb greenhouse...
Zunia has provided an alert to a new guide for adaptation to climate change in the context of transboundary water resources. Prepared by the Economic Commission for Europe under the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, Guidance on Water and Adaptation to Climate Change provides advice on how to assess impacts of climate change on water...
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), "following the rapid dissipation of El Niño in early May 2010, cool-neutral to weak La Niña conditions have developed in the tropical Pacific."
La Niña is characterized by unusually cool ocean temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacif......
This strategy provides the vision and direction for all UNEP activities for the period 2010−2013 through six cross-cutting thematic priorities namely, climate change, disasters and conflicts, ecosystem management, environmental governance; harmful substances and hazardous waste; and resource efficiency – sustainable consumption and production; each one of them including an "objective" and...
Revkin asks me via Dot Earth, “What if The Public had Perfect Climate Information?” Ahh, the hypothetical question that launches us into an alternative history. Reminds me of that Saturday Night Live routine, “What if Spartacus had a Piper Cub?”
I’d love your answer. Here’s mine.
If the entire public had perfect information on all matters related to climate — the science and the solutions — we would certainly be on a path to below 450 ppm (see, for instance, Scientists find “net present value of climate change impacts” of $1240 TRILLION on current emissions path, making mitigation to under 450 ppm a must).
Indeed, I’d argue that having perfect information on the solutions is at least as important as having perfect information on the problem. Probably the...
Save the date for Agriculture and Rural Development Day 2010: Finding sustainable agriculture solutions to meet food security and climate challenges.
WHEN: 4 December 2010
WHERE: Cancun, Mexico
WHAT: A one-day event parallel to COP16 that shows that agriculture is where climate change, food security, and development intersect. It brings agriculture sector adaptation and mitigation strategies to the forefront of global climate treaty negotiations.
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Looking back one, two and five years ago today (give or take!) on Worldchanging:
2009
Reader Report: The World's First Real Time Carbon Counter
Bryan Mitchiner reports on the launch of the "Know the Number" greenhouse gas emissions counter: the first real-time counter that advertises the increasing amount of carbon in the atmosphere...
2008
350 ppm, the Video
A catchy little video about the need to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at 350 ppm...
2005
Kenyatta Cheese: Citizen Television
Here're a number of community-based video sharing projects that are leveraging the distributed nature of the internet, giving anyone the ability to publish a "video channel" and making citizen broadcasting accessible to all...
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June 23
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Help us change the world -...
By Lawrence MacDonald - Muthukumara Mani, an environmental economist at the World Bank, has written a moving account of the efforts underway in Orissa, one of India’s poorest states, to figure out what to do about climate change—not the future threat of climate change, but the impacts hitting poor people in Orissa NOW:
Lashed by heavy monsoon rains and...
Even after the failure to reach agreement on binding CO2 cuts in Copenhagen last December, the United Nations’ outgoing chief climate negotiator is confident that the world is making progress on global warming. The key, he says, is convincing all nations, particularly developing ones, that tackling climate change is in their long-term economic interest.
by Elizabeth Kolbert
For four years, Yvo de Boer, executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has faced the daunting challenge of persuading nearly 200 nations that it’s in their interests to begin weaning themselves from the fossil fuels that make the world go ‘round. The culmination of his tenure came last December in Denmark, where he and many others tried — and failed — to get...
Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
Climate Debate Overlooks Small Businesses
As the United States debates how it should tackle climate change, "Big Business" has generally received the most political attention. Small companies are mostly disengaged from the climate debate, businesses advocates say, yet environmentally conscious, small enterprises could become influential supporters of climate legislation...
2008
The Nexus of Peak Oil, Climate Change and Infrastructure
The creation an efficient, effective and fair U.S. climate policy is utterly important, and overdue. But, as Bryn Davidson, founder of the Dynamic Cities Project, argues, unless we take Peak Oil into consideration, we may end up in a situation that pits energy security against...
Looking back one, two and five years ago today on Worldchanging:
2009
WeCommune: Tech Support for Communes
If people are recognizing the practical potential in post-ownership living, why aren't even more models for collaboration, sharing and product-service systems thriving? According to architect Stephanie Smith, spurring the movement may be a simple matter of providing the tech support...
2008
How Clean Coal Cooks Your Brain
Jeff Goodell dissects the logic of "clean coal." The logic is simple: America has lots of coal. We are a technologically advanced society. Ergo, we can clean up coal. What's the problem? Well, here's one: "clean coal" is not an actual invention, a physical thing – it is an advertising slogan, and one with a dangerous subtext that without coal,...
A new study published in the journal Nature claims that the Himalayan mountains area of South Asia could become food insecure if global warming continues. Rising temperatures could melt the snow packs at the top of the mountains which could eventually dry up the water basins below.From this Associated Press article that we found at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, writer Michael Casey tells us more about the study. Those that do count heavily on glaciers like the Indus, Ganges and Brahamaputra basins in South Asia could see their water supplies decline by as much as 19.6 percent by 2050. China's Yellow River basin, in contrast, would see a 9.5 percent increase precipitation as monsoon patterns change due to the changing climate."We show that it's only certain areas that will be...
By Nancy Birdsall - Here’s a quotation from an op-ed (The Climate Majority) from the NYTimes on June 8.
Large majorities (of those surveyed) opposed taxes on electricity (78 percent) and gasoline (72 percent) to reduce consumption. But 84 percent favored the federal government offering tax breaks to encourage utilities to make more electricity from water, wind and solar power.
So...
By Nancy Birdsall - Here’s a quotation from an op-ed (The Climate Majority) from the NYTimes on June 8.
Fully 86 percent of our respondents said they wanted the federal government to limit the amount of air pollution that businesses emit, and 76 percent favored government limiting business’s emissions of greenhouse gases in particular. Not a majority of 55 or...
Climate change has been described as the biggest market failure of all time, but loss of biodiversity and of nature’s economically important services must surely be running it close, if not equaling it. Year in and year out, the world economy may be losing $2.5 to $4.5 trillion-worth of natural capital as a result of deforestation alone, quite apart from the cost of the losses of other key...
UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) published Financing global climate change mitigation, ECE Energy Series No. 37 (full text, pdf, 8.7 KB). The paper reviews "technical, economic and regulatory conditions in each region" and provides "a summary of main activities undertaken by national govern......
UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) published Financing global climate change mitigation, ECE Energy Series No. 37 (full text, pdf, 8.7 KB). The paper reviews "technical, economic and regulatory conditions in each region" and provides "a summary of main activities undertaken by national govern......
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has published a new report entitled (Dead Planet: Living Planet. Available in (full text, English), and summaries in (French and (Spanish, the report offers rapid response assessment analysis caused by loss of ecosystems and its challenges, in particular to the w......
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has published a new report entitled (Dead Planet: Living Planet: . Available in (full text English), and summaries in (French) and (Spanish,the report offers rapid response assessment analysis caused by loss of ecosystems and its challenges, in particular to the ......
UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) published Financing global climate change mitigation, ECE Energy Series No. 37 (full text, pdf, 8.7 KB). The paper reviews "technical, economic and regulatory conditions in each region" and provides "a summary of main activities undertaken by national govern......
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has issued the 2009 Annual Report: Seizing the green opportunity . The report looks at the broad range of activities carried out by UNEP as it follows its mandate to provide environmental leadership and promote sustainable development.
......
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will celebrate the (World Environmental Day) on June 5 2010. The World Environment Day (WED) was established by the UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/2994 (XXVII) in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. This year Pitt......
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has issued the 2009 Annual Report: Seizing the great opportunity . The report looks at the broad range of activities carried out by UNEP as it follows its mandate to provide environmental leadership and promote sustainable development.
......
Climate change negotiators are gathered in Bonn, Germany this week to re-launch the latest round of United Nations Framework for Climate Change treaty talks. Their goal is to advance negotiations on a document for discussion during the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP 16) in Cancun in early December.
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The thirty-second sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Convention on subsidiary bodies meeting, will take place from Monday 31 May to Wednesday 9 June 2010. The twelfth session of the AWG-KP and tenth session of the AWG-LCA will take place from Tuesday 1 June to ......
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