October 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
International efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow climate destabilization have been hampered by concerns that developing countries will not reduce their emissions aggressively enough, so leaving industrialized nations at a cost-competitive disadvantage. But evidence suggests a failure by developing nations to curb emissions expansion could pose the most significant threat to their political and economic stability.
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October 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Even as momentum gathers for major collaborative climate-linked emissions regulatory policy, aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions like carbon dioxide (CO2), some in industry remain convinced of an outdated theory that assumes emissions reduction must be bad for business. The US Chamber of Commerce (CC), a leading business lobby, is devoting $150 million to fight regulation [...]
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October 9, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Pres. Barack Obama, in office just under 9 months, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The award announcement has sent a ripple through world opinion, as critics and supporters clash over whether the award is premature, or whether Obama’s collaborative diplomatic method has achieved important gains for world peace. The prize could signal an endorsement of Obama’s work on comprehensive nuclear disarmament or on achieving climate consensus this fall, or it could be oriented toward affirming the gains made in international cooperation.
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October 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Water resource depletion leads not only to chronic scarcity of clean, safe drinking water for increasing numbers of people, but means arable land is harder to cultivate and to maintain. Persistent drought and accelerated desertification (the expansion of deserts into the farmed and/or built environment) are results of water resource depletion.
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September 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The field of ecological research and reporting is a part of the basic human urge to engage the world through reason and a quest for understanding. It is not about seizing control of society’s urges and services and limiting the freedom of anyone, but rather about making sure we have the information we need to make the best choices, then advocating for those choices, when inertia and custom stand in the way of better health — for individuals and in the manner in which human individuals respond to their social and natural environments.
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September 26, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
After police fired tear gas at demonstrators on Thursday, hitting a CNN reporter, who made clear to the world the harsh effects of the chemical agent used against the crowd, there was concern that marches planned for Friday could turn violent. The situation was tense, police presence was overwhelming, and there were fears police might [...]
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September 22, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Pres. Barack Obama today delivered his first address to the UN General Assembly, promoting cooperation to green the global economy and combat climate change. He pledged the US would lead by example, and called on other nations to find common ground and work to secure the global environment against irreversible degradation.
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September 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The UN General Assembly, which brings together every head of government in the world, to offer their country’s position on issues, their country’s demands regarding trade and conflict negotiations, their country’s hopes for a more harmonious world, this year truly grapples with issues of global consensus. Economic recovery, for many parts of the world, will require an unprecedented expansion of women’s rights and sustained attention to responsible environmental stewardship.
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September 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
One solution for California would be the expansion of its efforts across the region and the nation, to spur the creation of a full-scale renewable resource-based power grid, to optimize both generative capacity and distribution. The question is, now that the decision has been made to shift toward renewables, how can California go beyond the 1/3 threshold and build a strong renewable-energy export economy?
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September 15, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) is reported to be planning to enact the most stringent renewable energy regulations in the nation, requiring public utilities to generate fully one-third of their electric output from renewable resources by the year 2020. California has been pushing for aggressive new standards requiring a transition to renewable energy, but was blocked by the Bush-era EPA from implementing more stringent state-wide emissions protocols and has recently seen a tough battle in Sacramento over the question of imposing on utilities a shift to clean, renewable resources.
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September 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The security of the global food supply is deteriorating rapidly, due to a convergence of forces all related to long-gathering crisis-level erosions of the human agricultural prospect. Desertification, water scarcity, massive toxic runoff and oceanic wildlife collapse, are all putting the global food web under unprecedented stress.
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August 7, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The great Coral Triangle, a region of coral-dense seas demarcated by Malaysia, Indonesia, Timor L’Este, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Philippines, is said to be 10 times as biodiverse as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. 76% of all known species of coral are found in the Coral Triangle, and warming ocean temperatures are causing advanced coral bleaching and endangering the entire regional ecosystem.
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July 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
One day, recently, I saw a fire-engine, crawling its way through a stop light, sirens blaring, hulking its way to provide the noble service of putting out someone’s fire or performing some other rescue operation. It was pouring a dark grey exhaust from one side, looking shiny new and well cared for, but obviously lacking advanced exhaust filtering or clean-energy drive technologies.
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July 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama has proposed a national high-speed rail program that would develop eight to ten regions for high-speed rail (currently, only the so-called northeast corridor, running from Washington, DC, to Boston, through Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, has a regular high-speed service), as part of a phased-in long-term economic recovery plan. The rail project comes into play also as part of Obama’s plans for a comprehensive energy-sector overhaul, aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
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July 19, 2009 :: staff :: 7 Comments
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is back on the world stage, making a major visit to India, to discuss strategic issues, energy, diplomacy and counter-terrorism. She used her arrival to warn India not to make the same mistakes the US has made in delaying action to reduce emissions and combat climate change. She suggested “a great country like India” has the resources and ingenuity to avoid falling into the same traps of political inaction.
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July 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Carbon offsets allow the use of carbon-emitting processes to help fund and develop clean alternatives, which can then compete with and possibly replace the offending carbon-emitters. But there are also ways in which carbon offsetting can be used to combat poverty around the world. If offsets are focused on reducing bad habits, resulting from those engaging in those habits having either no alternative or no training to find alternatives, people living in the poorest conditions can find themselves benefitting from the clean energy revolution.
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July 16, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Labour party government of the United Kingdom has announced plans to establish an aggressive overhaul of national energy markets, shifting to 40% low-carbon energy sourcing, across all industries, by 2020. The energy secretary, Ed Milliband, will be given control of allocation of electricity across the energy grid, in an effort to speed the green-energy revolution to allow the UK to meet its legally-binding agreed emissions cuts of 34% by 2020.
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July 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Biodiesel is a controversial area of energy sourcing. Many believe it is a poor choice for breaking human dependence on carbon-based fuels, since it is essentially, yet another way of burning carbon to produce energy. But others say it is a healthy, incremental step, which can burn cleaner than petroleum fuels and will help diversify the scope of recycling and related inputs to the energy economy. Now chocolate is making its way into the biodiesel game.
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July 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama praised African community values and called Africans to transcend conflict and promote government from the ground up and peaceful transfers of power, democratic values and international cooperation, in his first presidential visit to subsaharan Africa. Addressing Ghana’s parliament in Accra, Obama outlined US policy toward Africa and said endemic conflict was holding back African development.
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July 11, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
At the G8 summit, leaders from nearly thirty nations met to discuss how we will collectively confront the urgent challenges of our time, from managing the global recession to fighting global warming to addressing global hunger and poverty. And in Ghana, I laid out my agenda for supporting democracy and development in Africa and around the world. But even as we make progress on these challenges abroad, my thoughts are on the state of our economy at home. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today.
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July 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI) was announced in L’Aquila by Australia’s premier Kevin Rudd. The GCCSI amounts to a global intergovernmental effort to produce state of the art carbon capture projects to sequester and store carbon produced by industry in the period leading up to a zero-emissions energy infrastructure. Rudd unveiled the project at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, convened by US president Barack Obama alongside the G8 summit of leading world economies.
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July 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
US president Barack Obama convened a G8-parallel Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, comprised of 17 nations representing over 80% of the world’s industrial and consumer greenhouse gas emissions. The goal was to push governments to move their emissions and energy strategies closer to consensus for meeting bold targets for carbon emissions reductions, in anticipation of the September G20 summit in Pittsburgh and the UN climate summit at Copenhagen in December.
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July 8, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
Developing nations have failed to deliver the collaborative consensus sought by US president Obama and other G8 leaders in anticipation of the Copenhagen Climate Conference scheduled for later this year. While G8 leaders agreed global climate policy should be oriented toward avoiding any increase in global average temperatures of more than 3º Fahrenheit, they did not reach agreement on how to cap or reduce emissions to set levels by 2050.
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July 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner have a few things in common, among them that they know the rigors of market economics, the ups and the downs, the arguments for and against regulation. They have both seen duty at high levels during good times and bad. But neither of them has a strong record of pushing to include real ecological math in the standard approach to judging value or resource availability across the economy broadly.
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July 2, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 7 Comments
While some industry allies claim that HR 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) will raise costs for energy-producers and thereby raise energy costs across the board, there are signs that technologies already being tested and implemented could benefit in such a way as to bring about a complete, economy-wide revolution in energy production, distribution and pricing. Renewable resources are now showing themselves to be far more efficient than ever previously thought, and bold initiatives are getting ready to test new limits that would allow even airplanes to be 100% fuel-free.
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June 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The US is considering a climate and energy bill, H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), amid much controversy over competing methods of calculating costs and benefits. Climate skeptics that rule out global climate change as a real long-term cost are concerned that energy-industry economics will be “distorted” by this legislation, leading to massive losses across the economy; environmentalists are concerned that widespread rapid climatic variation could destabilize not only natural ecosystems and reliable agriculture, but political institutions, borders and nation states.
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June 27, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
One of the main objections made by those who criticize efforts to control carbon emissions is that “carbon dioxide is not an atmospheric pollutant”. This line of reasoning tends to argue that emissions-induced global climate destabilization is an elaborate anti-corporate hoax aimed at creating a one-world socialist government. The problem is that this line of reasoning conveniently, or unknowingly, ignores altogether the crises that emerge not from essential contaminants but from substances crossing a threshold, a tipping point.
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June 26, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Congressman Henry Waxman, one of the main sponsors of the “ACES” climate bill, H.R. 2454, has added the Titus-Giffords-Heinrich amendment, which would require the federal government to steadily ramp up contracted clean energy agreements over the next 20 years. The clean energy amendment had been pushed by a number environmental and progressive advocacy groups, including MoveOn.org, which urged millions of supporters to contact Congress to demand inclusion of the amendment.
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June 24, 2009 :: staff :: 4 Comments
In the past two and half years, the Committee has held dozens of hearings on energy and
climate change policy and has built a detailed factual record on the need for legislation in this
area. The nation’s dependence on foreign oil has significantly increased over the last decade.
Consumers have faced increasing and volatile energy prices. Other countries have overtaken us
in the manufacture of wind and solar energy. Energy company investments are paralyzed
because of uncertainty about what policies the Congress will establish. Meanwhile, global
warming pollution has increased unchecked.
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June 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
Major new climate legislation is pending before the United States Congress. The bill has been called the most important climate-related legislation ever to be voted on by the US House of Representatives, and has been the cause of intense policy negotiations among supporters, opponents and legislators. The League of Conservation Voters has taken the decision that it will not endorse any member of the House of Representatives that does not support the legislation.
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June 22, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
In what is described as “the strongest language” ever to emerge from the White House on climate change, a new 190-page report warns that climate destabilization is happening now, around the world, and beginning to impact every level of the economy and of living standards.
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June 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
There are still skeptics who say that wind power cannot generate enough power to be useful, or that the transition to renewable sources of energy is not really of urgent necessity. Here I offer some ideas to counter that argument. First of all, the US is shamefully behind in developing wind power generation, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen, as some suggest.
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June 17, 2009 :: staff :: 4 Comments
The Energy and Natural Resources committee of the US Senate voted 15 to 8 today to approve a comprehensive energy bill. The legislation, if passed by the Congress and signed into law by Pres. Obama would require that a minimum of 15% of all US electric power be generated from renewable resources, such as wind and solar power.
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June 6, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The European Parliamentary elections are the world’s largest transnational democratic vote, with 375 million people across 27 nations, choosing among 650 parties for 785 seats in the Parliament. It is worth asking what effect these elections, held once every 5 years for all the seats in the European Parliament, will have on EU environmental policy. Will these elections speed the spread of clean energy resources, like wind, solar and wave power, across the EU member states and neighboring states?
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May 2, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Community opposition, legal challenges, and financial uncertainty over future carbon costs are prompting companies to rethink their plans for coal. Since the beginning of 2007, 95 proposed coal-fired power plants have been cancelled or postponed in the United States—59 in 2007, 24 in 2008, and at least 12 in the first three months of 2009. This covers nearly half of the 200 or so U.S. coal-fired power plants that have been proposed for construction since 2000. The vast majority of the remaining proposals are essentially on hold, awaiting word on whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is going to impose limits on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. With further legal challenges ahead and the regulation of CO2 imminent, 2009 may very well witness the end of new coal-fired power plants in the United States.
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April 29, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office have been a flurry of major reforms and of global political and economic strategy. He took the oath of office on 20 January 2009 with the worst recession in 70 years setting in, major banks on the verge of insolvency, record numbers of home foreclosures, two wars in Asia, an increasingly hostile Russia and a predecessor’s policy of using torture to “enhance” interrogations. Not only has he moved forward on the economy, healthcare, security, and energy; he has reformed the entire American diplomatic paradigm, moving toward a “smart power” based on 3d vision: diplomacy, development, defense.
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April 25, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
Former US vice president Al Gore testified Friday in Congressional hearings on the subject of global climate destabilization. The hearings were linked to new legislation being considered that would establish regulatory measures that seek to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Gore said the legislation would serve to protect the environment, as well as national security, and urged unity in the interests of the country and the world.
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April 22, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Redford notes that it is young people who will inherit the world we are making and their views, their concern about whether it will be stable and livable in their prime, is vital for planning now in a conscious and ethical way.
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April 17, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will regulate greenhouse gas emissions, after a comprehensive policy review shows real dangers posed to human health and wellbeing by the effects of accumulating greenhouse gases. The Clean Air Act will, for the first time, be applied as the basis for instituting national regulations on carbon emissions and other gases that could contribute to climate destabilization.
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March 3, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama today visited the Interior Dept., noting it was once called in jest “the Department of Everything Else”, a government agency with responsibility for nearly 1/5 of the entire land area of the United States. He professed his intention to task the Interior Dept. with taking major steps to help build green infrastructure for an energy economy based on solar-voltaic and wind-turbine-generated energy.
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January 26, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
Pres. Barack Obama today addressed a room full of invited guests from the business community, to outline his position as to economic stimulus, energy innovation, climate destabilization and dependence on high-polluting combustible fuels. The president then signed more executive orders raising fuel-efficiency standards and ordering a review of the EPA’s barring California from raising tailpipe carbon-emissions standards. Striking a defiant tone, Obama declared that “America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet”.
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January 19, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: 2 Comments
Facing an economic crisis of historic proportions, and with the nation reeling from several years of soaring fuel prices, in the face of mounting risks from climate destabilization, President-elect Barack Obama may issue an executive order to require fuel-efficiency be raised on all new vehicles.
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December 21, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
There are over 230 million people suffering from hunger or undernourishment in India. No other nation has so many people suffering chronic malnutrition, and the undernourished in India represent 27% of the worldwide hunger-stricken population. While India’s economy develops and the potential for an expanded middle class takes root, the total number of Indians going [...]
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December 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The climate change conference currently underway in Poznan, Poland, seeks to build on the Bali agreement, adopted by 180 countries in 2007, in hopes of achieving a global emissions regime. A sweeping economic downturn overtaking North America and Europe, and now hitting China’s manufacturing and export base, it is feared, will hamper efforts to implement comprehensive green industrial and economic reforms.
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November 25, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The issue is not, as so many would like to believe, whether carbon-based fuels are affordable to the end-user. They are not. The total costs per gallon of gasoline are estimated at more than $11, covered by government subsidies, public-private research funding, tax incentives, military spending, public health funding, and funds devoted to cleaning up the ill effects of pollution. Capitalist markets need not be dependent on unsustainable excesses in resource use, but we are in the current global economic crunch, because they have been.
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November 17, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
The cloud of soot and smog choking India and China and their neighbors is worsening. The massive brown cloud hovering over Asia now poses serious long-term health risks and environmental dangers to much of the continent, according to a new UN report. The world’s largest pollution phenomenon already drastically reduces the amount of daylight reaching ground level in many Chinese cities, and there is concern the sunlight-blocking effects could impede agricultural production.
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July 18, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
The former vice president of the United States, Al Gore, yesterday announced an ambitious goal, which he says the nation can meet, of transitioning its entire domestic energy production to clean resources by 2018. The speech marks a major moment in the process of transition to the green technology boom, which will be the next step in the ongoing economic development of the United States and the world. Gore, however, warned that failing to meet the challenge to date means “the United States of America as we know it is at risk”.
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July 17, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Former US vice-president Al Gore is calling on the nation to marshal its resources and divorce itself from the combustible fuels economy. Gore says the US can produce all its energy requirements from renewable resources within 10 years, if action is taken. The bold initiative is designed to drive debate on the topic and move discussions about how to deal with high fuel prices toward the new opportunity they provide for funding renewable infrastructure development.
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July 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
The chairman of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Stephen Johnson, says the Clean Air Act is “ill-suited” to fighting the greenhouse effect, and that Congress should pass laws mandating the regulation of carbon emissions, with global warming in mind. The move may lead to a more comprehensive regulatory regime, but as the Guardian newspaper notes: “Last year’s Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court ruling had found that greenhouse gases can be regulated under the U.S. Clean Air Act. The decision pressured the EPA to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks.”
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July 9, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
After many accusations and much speculation, a US government whistleblower has said the vice-president ordered testimony altered to hide findings of the negative impact of carbon emissions and the threats from global warming. VP Cheney is accused of demanding that official EPA findings be altered and that sworn testimony before Congress be “redacted” to exclude [...]
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