A new study shows that human beings are too selfish to endure present pain to avert future climate change. That’s why we need …
climate policy
EcocentricCarbon Policy
Carbon Regulations and Keystone Silence: Previewing Obama’s Climate Speech
President Obama is set to give a major address on climate change today — one that won’t include the Keystone XL pipeline. Will carbon regulations make a real difference?
EcocentricOil
The IEA Says Peak Oil Is Dead. That’s Bad News for Climate Policy
A new report suggests that fresh sources of oil in North America will loosen the global oil market. Will we stay addicted to oil—and will it keep us from fighting climate change?
EcocentricEcocentric
Climate Action: Stopping Global Warming Through the Back Door
Real talk: when it comes to dealing with climate change—and reducing carbon emissions, the top man-made cause of warming—the international community is doing a crap job. The U.N. process is bogged down, with ambitions that …
EcocentricCoal
Clean Coal Canceled Thanks to Poor Policy
If Congress had the wherewithal to establish a robust energy and climate change policy, there might have been a transformative bit of construction underway right now, next to the towering Mountaineer coal power plant, in New Haven, West Va. Mountaineer, like nearly every other coal plant in the world, pours tons of carbon into the …
EcocentricEcocentric
A Roundtable on the Future of Climate Policy
I was fortunate enough to have the chance to lead a symposium on the future of climate policy back in April for the progressive periodical Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. The transcript has just been published. I had great panelists: Joe Aldy, an assistant professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the former White House adviser on energy …
EcocentricEcocentric
The Arctic Meltdown Accelerates
One of the most pressing predictions that must be made in climate science concerns the rate of polar melting. As they warm—and the Arctic and Antarctic regions have heated up faster than most of the rest of the planet—the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica are melting and flowing into the ocean, which then raises sea levels. …
EcocentricPolitics
Canada Turns Away From Climate Policy
As we survey the results of last night’s Canadian federal election, I’ll spare you the jokes about how completely boring Canada is. It’s actually a fascinating, vast nation that I lived in for a year (Scarborough!), one with a mix of cultures and language, a welcoming attitude towards immigrants, a sober banking sector, a fully funded …
EcocentricUncategorized
Can Climate and Energy Become the New Civil Rights Movement?
I’m in Abu Dhabi right now, attending the World Future Energy Summit and getting a chance to check out the first finished buildings in Masdar City. I’ll have more on the summit and the city tomorrow, but I wanted to focus on something else today. I often write on this blog about rapidly the planet has developed over the past few decades, …
EcocentricEcocentric
Climate: Why the Cancun Summit Has Been All About Kyoto So Far
I’m not down in sunny, congested Cancun yet—I’ll be arriving next week for what’s become an annual holiday season trip to the U.N. climate summit. (At least this year won’t be as cold as Copenhagen, though I’ve heard that the food is just as bad.) I’ve already written a preview of the major issues on the table at the summit, which …