Philly Inquirer ‘fact checks’ Obama’s State of Union claim about China’s climate ‘commitment’
…GOP Knives Come Out Against US-China Carbon Pact, Paris Climate Talks
Climatologist Dr. Pat Michaels Mocks Obama’s climate claims: ‘Sea levels have been rising since before the end of the last ice age, about 11,600 years before the Industrial Revolution’
…UK Guardian: 2015: ‘The beginning of the end for climate skeptics’
Once the world starts setting hard limits on emissions, all the business plans of all the oil majors in the world become obsolete, wishful thinking and the global economy starts adjusting to a low-carbon future in earnest. From that day forward fossil fuels go into permanent retreat. So expect to see a frenzied last-ditch defence of the fossil fuel economy, with climate science under greater attack than ever before. With trillions of dollars at stake, don’t expect a clean fight. …
Warmist love affair with China stumbles: ‘The spirit of constructive cooperation of the U.S.-China agreement seems to have come to a full stop’
…Watch: Morano on TV urges Canada to stand strong against ‘self-interested UN’ climate treaties – ‘Nothing will be accomplished for the climate — this is all about empowering UN bureaucracy’
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White House Official: Obama Will Use Executive Powers To Meet Climate Goals
White House Official: Obama Will Use Executive Powers To Meet Climate Goals
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/04/3599564/podesta-obama-executive-powers-climate/
President Barack Obama and White House counselor John Podesta, left, walk across the ellipse in Washington as they head towards the Dept. of Interior, Wednesday, May 21, 2014. CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais The Obama administration is doubling down on its commitment to aggressive climate action despite an incoming Republican Congress that will undoubtedly oppose it, White House senior adviser John Podesta said Wednesday, saying the President can use his executive powers to meet his carbon reduction goals. The comments, reported by the Financial Times, were reportedly meant to assure other world leaders that the United States can still meet the ambitious climate goals set out under its historic agreement with China, even with a Congress led by a party that largely believes climate change does not exist. Under that agreement, the U.S. pledged to emit 26 to 28 percent less greenhouse gases in 2025 than it did in 2005. China, still a developing country, promised to get 20 percent of its energy from non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030, and to peak its overall carbon dioxide emissions by that same year. “We’re building our game plan around authorities that exist in current law,” Podesta said, “not in the need to get a major, massive new climate reduction program put in place by the Congress.” Using Presidential power to address climate change is far from a new theme in the Obama administration. Indeed, when Obama made his landmark climate speech in June of 2013 — months before Podesta was appointed his adviser — he specifically announced his intention to bypass a deadlocked Congress and direct the Environmental Protection Agency to issue strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. “I don’t have much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the flat earth society,” Obama said at the time. “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.” Podesta, in addition to the team that’s been working on these issues for years, has undoubtedly added fuel to that fire. When he left his post as the chair of the Center for American Progress in 2013 to advise the President, media widely speculated climate change would become a laser focus of the administration — that …
‘A Quarter Of The Energy We Use Is Just In Our Crap’: Black Friday And The Destruction Of Planet Earth
‘A Quarter Of The Energy We Use Is Just In Our Crap’: Black Friday And The Destruction Of Planet Earth
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/11/28/3597347/black-friday-climate-hypermaterialism/
CREDIT: AP Black Friday has become an orgiastic celebration of unbridled consumerism. And earlier this month, Pope Francis wrote a letter to world leaders saying, “There are constant assaults on the natural environment, the result of unbridled consumerism, and this will have serious consequences for the world economy.” Black Friday is a sort of reverse “Hunger Games,” an annual ritualized competition, but one built around overabundance, rather than scarcity. It is perhaps the inevitable outcome of a country whose citizens are commonly referred to as “consumers.” So what better time to think about how the global economic system is a Ponzi scheme, an utterly unsustainable system that effectively takes wealth from our children and future generations — wealth in the form of ground water, arable land, fisheries, a livable climate — to prop up our carbon-intensive lifestyles? We cannot stop catastrophic climate change — in the long term and possibly even the medium-term — without a pretty dramatic change to our overconsumption-based economic system. We have already overshot the Earth’s biocapacity — and the overshoot gets worse every year. “A quarter of the energy we use is just in our crap,” physicist Saul Griffith explains in his detailed discussion of our carbon footprint. You can watch the MacArthur genius award winner soberly dissect his formerly unsustainable lifestyle here and here. Or listen to the MSNBC interview of “Reverend Billy Talen of the Church of Stop Shopping.” Seriously (sort of). Or you can read the Onion’s black humor, “Chinese Factory Worker Can’t Believe The Shit He Makes For Americans.” The tragic irony is that much of this holiday shopping is supposedly for our kids — and yet this overconsumption is a core part of our climate inaction, which, as President Obama has said, is a betrayal of our children! Now it’s true, as I’ve said, that if we ever get really serious about avoiding catastrophic climate change, we could dramatically cut national and global emissions for decades under the auspices of our basic economic system. You could use a high and rising price for CO2 plus smart regulations to encourage efficiency at a state and national level. Also, the end to hyper-consumerism is not something amenable to legislation. It is most likely to come when we are desperate — when …
Analysis: ‘Obama Just Got Punked by the Chinese: They Won’t Honor New Climate Change Deal’
Obama Ignored US Embassy’s Warnings On Climate Change Speech
Obama Ignored US Embassy’s Warnings On Climate Change Speech
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/23/obama-ignored-us-embassys-warnings-on-climate-change-speech
Obama’s Climate Fiasco Drives Aussies Closer To India & China Barack Obama defied the advice of his embassy in Canberra to deliver a stinging attack on the Abbott government’s climate policies in Brisbane last weekend. The US embassy, under the leadership of ambassador John Berry, advised the President, through his senior staff, not to couch […]
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