It’s been a bummer of a week for climate news. The Senate bill continues to languish behind health care and there have been some disconcerting rumbles that it might now be back-burnered even longer as an increasingly spineless nervous Senate focuses on jobs and deficit. And out of Singapore on Sunday we hear that Copenhagen definitely won’t produce a legally-binding agreement, but will rather be the first piece of a “one-agreement, two-step” process, the controversial (and dangerous (pdf),…

What’s on the table at Copenhagen?

End Goal

The long-term goals of preserving a habitable planet will effectively be boiled down to a single number: the target concentration of CO² in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million. For the past few years, conventional wisdom has called for a target of 450 ppm. But the most recent science points to something more conservative: A 350 ppm ceiling is required if, as the NASA climatologist Jim Hansen puts…

As Morgan noted this morning, word from the APEC meetings in Singapore was that the world will have to wait until sometime next year for a legally-binding international agreement on climate change. Instead, COP15 will serve as just the first part of a “one agreement, two step” process that’ll supposedly be resolved in 2010. And just like that, hopes and expectations for next month’s meetings in Copenhagen have been deflated. And everyone who has been…

We’ve mentioned before that climate change and our dependence on foreign oil represent a couple of the gravest fundamental threats to our national security. So—in honor of Veterans Day—here’s a video of some of our men and women in uniform touring the country in support of clean energy:

These vets of Operation Free took to two buses (yes, they were biodiesel), and rolled across the country talking to the public, political leaders, and fellow veterans about the…

The United States will come under some serious heat this month, but the climate drama won’t be taking place at United Nations talks.

With more than a month to go before the Copenhagen climate talks, the press are practically tripping themselves to write off the talks as a failure. Now, I’m not here to blow sunshine and tell you that all’s going great here in Barcelona, and that we’re well on our way to a fair, ambitious, and binding…

The global grassroots climate movement is finally here, and huge.

Climate activists have been waiting two long decades to see what a global climate movement would look like. As of last Saturday, we know. And as movement mentor and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in an email after watching photos of grassroots actions around the world projecting from the giant, iconic screens of Times Square, “it looked diverse and creative and beautiful.”

Diverse? There were events on every continent…

The United States and other industrialized countries have to face up to historical responsibility.

When it comes to climate change, the burden of historical responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the developed West. There’s no avoiding the fact that industrialized nations, which have grown economies, developed infrastructure, and generated great wealth by burning fossil fuels, have also affected countries throughout the developing world. The impacts of climate change aren’t some future threat—they are happening now, damaging…

It’s been a bummer of a week for climate news. The Senate bill continues to languish behind health care and there have been some disconcerting rumbles that it might now be back-burnered even longer as an increasingly spineless nervous Senate focuses on jobs and deficit. And out of Singapore on Sunday we hear that Copenhagen definitely won’t produce a legally-binding agreement, but will rather be the first piece of a “one-agreement, two-step” process, the controversial (and dangerous (pdf),…

What’s on the table at Copenhagen?

End Goal

The long-term goals of preserving a habitable planet will effectively be boiled down to a single number: the target concentration of CO² in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million. For the past few years, conventional wisdom has called for a target of 450 ppm. But the most recent science points to something more conservative: A 350 ppm ceiling is required if, as the NASA climatologist Jim Hansen puts…

As Morgan noted this morning, word from the APEC meetings in Singapore was that the world will have to wait until sometime next year for a legally-binding international agreement on climate change. Instead, COP15 will serve as just the first part of a “one agreement, two step” process that’ll supposedly be resolved in 2010. And just like that, hopes and expectations for next month’s meetings in Copenhagen have been deflated. And everyone who has been…

We’ve mentioned before that climate change and our dependence on foreign oil represent a couple of the gravest fundamental threats to our national security. So—in honor of Veterans Day—here’s a video of some of our men and women in uniform touring the country in support of clean energy:

These vets of Operation Free took to two buses (yes, they were biodiesel), and rolled across the country talking to the public, political leaders, and fellow veterans about the…

The United States will come under some serious heat this month, but the climate drama won’t be taking place at United Nations talks.

With more than a month to go before the Copenhagen climate talks, the press are practically tripping themselves to write off the talks as a failure. Now, I’m not here to blow sunshine and tell you that all’s going great here in Barcelona, and that we’re well on our way to a fair, ambitious, and binding…

The global grassroots climate movement is finally here, and huge.

Climate activists have been waiting two long decades to see what a global climate movement would look like. As of last Saturday, we know. And as movement mentor and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in an email after watching photos of grassroots actions around the world projecting from the giant, iconic screens of Times Square, “it looked diverse and creative and beautiful.”

Diverse? There were events on every continent…

The United States and other industrialized countries have to face up to historical responsibility.

When it comes to climate change, the burden of historical responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of the developed West. There’s no avoiding the fact that industrialized nations, which have grown economies, developed infrastructure, and generated great wealth by burning fossil fuels, have also affected countries throughout the developing world. The impacts of climate change aren’t some future threat—they are happening now, damaging…

How Obama can overcome incredulous reactions and truly earn his Nobel Peace Prize in Copenhagen.

They’re still scraping jaws off the floors of the U.N. center in Bangkok. For it was at the tail end of the last day of the two-week session of climate change talks, during which the United States stood tall and stubborn as the biggest obstacle to an international agreement to be achieved Copenhagen, that word of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize buzzed…

America can make or break the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen—depending on what happens in Washington.

I’m getting a lot of emails here in Bangkok—where I’m currently tracking the U.N. climate treaty negotiations for TckTckTck’s Adopt a Negotiator project—from folks back home wondering what they can do to help secure a deal. How can concerned citizens back on the home-front possibly impact the high-level diplomatic talks on the other side of the globe? The answer, it turns…

The Alliance for Climate Education teaches the reality of climate change to our nation’s children—with ease.

Not long ago, I wrote that “the kids are alright.” I was talking about the incredible force that the youth climate movement has become over the past couple of years, taking advantage of the web’s networking potential and bringing together like-minded thinkers and activists, often culminating in good old-fashioned, on-the-ground mobilization.

But the youth climate movement is still limited, in its size,…