Climate Change

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Humanity Is Riding Delusion To Extinction

“I’m rooting for humanity, no doubt, but my own limited life experience has made me unlikely to bet on our species.” By Danny Sjursen Truthdig (12/3/19) Horses sporting gas masks. That, of all things, has been on my mind lately. Bear with me, now. Gaze at the ever-so-cockamamie photo. A horse, wearing a gas mask. Nothing so illustrates the rank absurdity and irrationality of the human condition. It was during World War I—which killed an unheard-of nine million soldiers in just four years—that the armies of Europe still employed horses in an age of machine guns, airplanes (eventually), tanks and poison gas attacks….


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Only Bernie Sanders’ Climate Policy Meets The Climate Emergency Challenge

By Naomi Klein & Sivan Kartha Boston Globe (11/25/19) As Bernie Sanders brings his plans for a Green New Deal to Iowa, one part is proving most resonant: the idea that, as our economy rapidly shifts to renewable energy, power companies should be publicly owned and controlled, and the biggest polluters should help underwrite the costs. Interestingly, this is the part of the Sanders plan, which builds on the resolution introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts, that has received the most pushback from media commentators—who have been quick to dismiss public ownership over renewables as impractical and radical. Yet…


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Chris Hedges: How To (Maybe) Save The Planet & Ourselves

“The corrupt system is going to kill us all unless we rise up.” By Chris Hedges TruthDig (11/18/19) If you read only one book this year, it should be Roger Hallam’s “Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse.” Hallam’s lucid and concise book, which echoes Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense,” says what many of us now know to be true but do not say: If we do not replace the ruling elites soon we are finished as a species. It is a cogent, well-argued case for global rebellion—the only form of resistance…


‘Mother Nature Does A Mic Drop’: Venice City Council Chamber Floods Minutes After Members Vote Down Climate Crisis Amendment

The Venice city council chambers flooded Wednesday evening after a vote on the climate crisis. (Photo: Andrea Zanoni/Facebook) By Eion Higgins Common Dreams (11/14/19) It seemed like divine intervention—or at least the hand of Gaia. Minutes after the Venetian city council voted down a resolution addressing the climate crisis Wednesday, the council chambers were filled with water for the first time in history, the result of unprecedented flooding in the city due to the highest tides in 50 years. “Mother Nature does a mic drop,” tweeted software developer Denis Õstir. As Common Dreams reported, Venice is currently suffering through intense flooding that…


Warning Of Untold Human Suffering Scientists Declare A Climate Emergency

“We declare, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.” By Kyla Mandel HuffPost (11/5/19) More than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries have declared a climate emergency, warning in a new report that “untold human suffering” is “unavoidable” without drastic action. The climate crisis reaches an “emergency” level, according to the study, when “business as usual” — the current action being taken (or not) by society, corporations and governments — is not enough to match the scale of what’s needed to address the situation. In order to avoid a “hothouse Earth” where runaway temperature increases beget further warming,…


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Has The Climate Crisis Made California Too Dangerous To Live In?

As with so many things, Californians are going first where the rest of us will follow. By Bill McKibbin The Guardian (10/29/19) Monday morning dawned smoky across much of California, and it dawned scary – over the weekend winds as high as a hundred miles an hour had whipped wildfires through forests and subdivisions. It wasn’t the first time this had happened – indeed, it’s happened every year for the last three – and this time the flames were licking against communities destroyed in 2017. Reporters spoke to one family that had moved into their rebuilt home on Saturday, only to…


US Military Fears Societal & Economic Collapse Due To Effects Of Rapidly Evolving Climate Crisis

    The Damage Report / The Young Turks (10/25/19) “According to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes. The senior US government officials who wrote the report are from several key agencies including the Army, Defense Intelligence Agency, and NASA. The study called on the Pentagon to urgently prepare for the possibility that domestic power, water, and food systems might collapse…


ExxonMobil On Trial Over Company Hiding From Investors True Business Risk Of Fossil Fuel & Climate Change

By Meghna Chakrabarti & Stefano Kotsonis On Point / WBUR (10/22/19) ExxonMobil goes on trial over charges it defrauded investors about climate change. Guests: Nicholas Kusnetz, reporter for InsideClimate News. (@nkus) David Hasemyer, reporter for InsideClimate News. He co-authored the 2016 Pulitzer Prize-finalist series “Exxon: The Road Not Taken,” about  (@DavidHasemyer) Link to 47-Minute Audio ***** Bills Criminalizing Pipeline Protest Arise In Statehouses Nationwide By Steve Hom Real News (2/22/19) The oil and gas industry has started its 2019 lobbying efforts with a bang. Eight different statehouses across the nation are considering bills criminalizing protests on property owned by the oil and gas…


Never Mind That A Drowning City Will Host G7, “Climate Change Will Not Be On The Agenda”

  By Jess Nelson Miami New Times (10/18/9) Nobody should be surprised that President Donald Trump selected his South Florida golf resort to host the G7 summit. Ever since this year’s summit wrapped up in France, he’s been pushing the Trump National Doral Miami as a venue and dismissed allegations of Emoluments Clause violations. Miamians know that climate change is real and that it will affect their everyday ways of living. But when acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney took the lectern yesterday for a news conference, he revealed that when seven leaders of some of the world’s largest…


Study Predicts ‘Frightening Future’ For North American Birds, With Two-Thirds Of Species Extinct By 2100 If Earth Warms More Than 1.5 Degrees

“Birds are important indicator species, because if an ecosystem is broken for birds, it is or soon will be for people too.” By Julia Conley Common Dreams (10/11/19) In a new study published Thursday by the National Audubon Society, scientists say that saving hundreds of bird species from extinction by the end of this century is entirely possible—but that without commitment from policymakers to end human-caused global warming, two-thirds of North America’s birds could be gone by 2100. The report, “Survival by Degrees: Bird Species on the Brink,” found that 389 out of 604 North American bird species are at risk of…


The Trembling Empire Strikes Back: Outrage As London Police Use Battering Ram To Raid Extinction Rebellion Building

“No petroleum company warehouse has ever had a battering ram used on it by the police.”  By Jake Johnson Common Dreams (10/6/19) London police on Saturday raided a building Extinction Rebellion activists were using to store supplies ahead of a climate demonstration planned for Monday, a preemptive action environmentalists condemned as an unlawful crackdown on a peaceful protesters. The Guardian reported that “10 people—seven women and three men—had been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause public nuisance.” Video of the raid, which shows police using a battering ram to break into a south London building, quickly went viral Saturday as activists…


10 Ways That The Climate Crisis & Militarism Are Intertwined

  By Medea Benjamin Common Dreams (9/26/19) The environmental justice movement that is surging globally is intentionally intersectional, showing how global warming is connected to issues such as race, poverty, migration and public health. One area intimately linked to the climate crisis that gets little attention, however, is militarism. Here are some of the ways these issues—and their solutions—are intertwined. 1. The US military protects Big Oil and other extractive industries. The US military has often been used to ensure that US companies have access to extractive industry materials, particularly oil, around the world.The 1991 Gulf War against Iraq was a blatant…


Two-Fifths Of Europe’s Native Trees At Risk Of Extinction, Assessment Says

  Irish Examiner / Press Association (9/27/19) Horse chestnut trees, whose conkers [nuts] have been collected and treasured by generations of children, are among scores of European trees at risk of extinction. The latest assessment from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List also reveals three species of whitebeam recently discovered in Somerset are critically endangered at a European level. The European Red List of trees, which covers all 454 species of native trees, found more than two-fifths – 168 species – are under threat of dying out in Europe. More than half (58%) of the trees…


At A Time Of Grifters, Liars, Cowards & Cheats, Greta Thunberg Showed The World What It Means To Really Lead

Her remarks reminded us what leadership, courage and sacrifice look like. By Michael H. Fuchs The Guardian (9/25/19) At the 2019 annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations, a 16-year-old climate activist took the mantle of global leadership usually reserved for the US president. Donald Trump’s decision to not participate in the UN climate summit illustrated just how devastatingly Trump’s climate-denying policies have undermined America’s role in the world as a force for good, and how his actions could contribute to the destruction of the futures of countless billions. Meanwhile, Greta Thunberg called him – and other world leaders –…


World’s Ice And Oceans Under Dire Threat, Shocking UN Report Warns

Hundreds of millions of people in coastal areas would be threatened if climate change continues unabated, the UN’s climate body warned. By Nick Visser HuffPost (9/25/19) Ice sheets are melting, glaciers are shrinking and the planet’s oceans are changing in “unprecedented” ways, according to a shocking new report released by the United Nations on Wednesday, the latest confirmation that climate change is already wreaking havoc around the globe. The findings, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, the leading U.N. body studying human-caused global warming, issue stark warnings for hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying…


La Crosse Students Rally To Raise Awareness On Climate Crisis

“The children are the only adults in the room.” — Protest sign. By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (9/23/19) Students across Wisconsin took to the streets late Friday to express their concern for what the growing climate crisis means for their future. About 250 kids, teens and adults gathered at Burns Park near downtown La Crosse late in the afternoon under the direction of a great group of teen activists to march several blocks to Rep. Ron Kind’s office(D-WI). While nobody from Kind’s office was on hand, the activists gathered signatures on a letter to the congressman calling for…


Update From The ‘Frac Sand Sentinel’ — Danger: Heed Fracking Air Pollution Warnings

How is deregulated natural gas flaring impacting Texas? According to a professional photographer who visited the Bakken in North Dakota, flaring is also occurring there in abundance and pouring pollutants into the air. Watch the video from Texas. “Texas Sharon” Wilson readily uses her Flir Camera to demonstrate the pollution affecting those who live near a hydraulic fracturing area. These pollutants are causing illness among the residents. Link to 4-Minute Video Since the fossil fuel industry is involved in “slowly poisoning west Texas” there is no doubt that pollutants from the Bakken are also polluting North Dakota and nearby mid-western…


Media Ignoring The Deadly Impacts Of Climate Crisis Doesn’t Mean They Just Go Away

[Editor’s Note: This is the original — unedited — version of the writer’s letter that recently appeared in The La Crosse Tribune. — Mark L. Taylor] By Cathy Van Maren Letter to the Editor Media reports about 9/11 first responders and survivors sickened by toxic debris fail to mention that George W. Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency head, supported by his National Security Adviser, ignored science and assured the public that Ground Zero air was safe to breathe. “No Bush administration officials have paid any price for lying thousands to their deaths.” But that’s nothing compared to what will happen if…


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Excerpt Form Naomi Klein’s Latest Book ‘On Fire’, Addressing Mounting Climate Crisis

  The Guardian (9/14/19) ‘On Fire’ by Naomi Klein: On a Friday in mid-March, they streamed out of schools in little rivulets, burbling with excitement and defiance at an act of truancy. The little streams emptied on to grand avenues and boulevards, where they combined with other flows of chanting children and teens. Soon the rivulets were rushing rivers: 100,000 bodies in Milan, 40,000 in Paris, 150,000 in Montreal. Cardboard signs bobbed above the surf of humanity: THERE IS NO PLANET B! DON’T BURN OUR FUTURE. THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE! There was no student strike in Mozambique; on 15…


Profits Roll In For “corporate vultures” As They Pay To Burn Down The Amazon Rainforest

“The only reason these companies are able to keep burning down the forest year over year is because their customers keep paying them to do so.” By Kelsey Hawkins-Johnson & Negin Owliaei People’s World (9/13/19) While the world watches in horror as fires rage in the Amazon, activists are naming culprits. “Put out the flames, we name your names—politicians, corporate vultures, you’re the ones we blame,” demonstrators chanted as they marched from the White House to the Brazilian Consulate on Sept. 5. The fires are no accident. Most have been set by agribusiness and mining interests hoping to make money off…


“We Are Striking To Disrupt The System”: An Hour With 16-Year-Old Climate Activist Greta Thunberg

“I walk the walk. If I say something, I do it.’ Democracy Now! (11/9/19) In her first extended broadcast interview in the United States, we spend the hour with Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who has inspired millions across the globe. Last year she launched a school strike for the climate, skipping school every Friday to stand in front of the Swedish parliament, demanding action to prevent catastrophic climate change. Her protest spread, quickly going global. Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren around the globe have participated in their own local school strikes for the climate. Since her strike…


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‘The Blob’ — Devastating Oceanic Heat Wave Returns To West Coast

TeleSure (9/10/19) Experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are worried about the reappearance of a gigantic oceanic heat wave in front of the western U.S. coast that threatens a repeat of the devastating effects of a similar phenomenon in 2014. This unprecedented situation, since the start of registering temperatures in 1981, persisted over the next few years causing the death of millions of sea animals. Because of its destructive nature and of the unmeasurable damages to ecology and industry, this phenomenon was named after Chuck Russell’s 1988-movie “The Blob”, the shapeless unstoppable monster. Five years ago as a result of the rising of water temperature all along the coast belt between the Southern…


Exxon Mobil Is Funding Corporate Dem Think Tank Operation By Way Of Rep. Ron Kind’s Third Way

    [Editor’s Note: Keep in mind Rep. Ron Kind is a founding and ongoing member of the Wall Street funded corporate front group Third Way. — Mark L. Taylor] By Kate Aranoff The Intercept (9/6/19) THE PROGRESSIVE POLICY Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank that grew out of the party’s pro-business wing in the 1980s and ’90s, received $50,000 from Exxon Mobil in 2018 via its parent organization, the Third Way Foundation, according to the oil giant’s 2018 Worldwide Giving Report. Exxon Mobil did not return The Intercept’s multiple requests for comment. In an email, PPI Executive Director Lindsay Lewis…


Shifting Subsidies To Renewable Energy Instead Of Propping Up Fossil Fuel Giants Would Prompt ‘Clean Energy Revolution’, Study Shows

  By Julia Conley Common Dreams (8/1/19) After two Democratic candidates in this week’s presidential primary debates called for an end to government subsidies for fossil fuel companies, a new study revealed that even reducing those subsidies—as the world’s wealthiest countries pledged to a decade ago—would kick-start “clean energy revolution.” As The Guardian reported Thursday, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) released a report showing that if just 10 to 30 percent of the annual coal, oil, and gas subsidies were given to the renewable energy sector, the world could see a prompt reduction of fossil fuel emissions by nearly 20 percent. Fossil fuel…


Greenland’s Ice Wasn’t Supposed To Melt Like Last Week Until 2070

The Greenland ice sheet covers an area the size of Alaska with enough ice to raise global sea level by more than 20 feet. By Thomas Mote The Hill (8/4/19) During the past week, temperatures at the highest reaches of the Greenland ice sheet rose above freezing, melting snow at the Summit Station (10,550 feet above sea level) for the first time since July 2012 and perhaps only the third time in the last seven centuries. Across lower elevations around the margins of the ice sheet, bare glacial ice melted at an unprecedented rate, losing 12.5 billion tons of water on Thursday alone, with…


Historic Floods & Drowned Land Brings A Climate Reckoning In The Heartland

[Editor’s Note: It is a mark of the human ability to deny the obvious at how the farmers interviewed in this piece cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the issue of catastrophic climate crisis, even as their farms and machinery are idled by historic flooding and their fields are transformed to vast inland lakes. Let us hope they will come to hear the scientist interviewed in the Democracy Now! interviews below. — Mark L. Taylor] CBS (7/26/19) “A historic flood in March 2019 left much of America’s heartland under water. Partiularly hard-hit were Midwestern grain farmers, and climate experts say storms…


Earliest Ever ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ Shows Humanity’s Consumption Of Planet’s Natural Resources Raging Unabated

If everyone lived like U.S. population, we’d need five planets. By Andrea Germanos Common Dreams (7/29/19) There are more than five months left in the year, but on Monday humankind had already burned through the planet’s ecological resource budget for 2019. It’s the earliest the date—known as Earth Overshoot Day—has ever come, the Global Footprint Network, which tracks the metric, said in a statement. “Systemic change isn’t radical, it’s what we need to survive,” said the Sunrise Movement in response to the milestone. Impacts of the overshoot back up Sunrise’s call for sweeping action. “The costs of this global ecological overspending,” says the Global Footprint…


New Study Predicts Millions Of Americans May Become Exposed To “Off the Charts” Heat

A substantially large part of the planet becomes uninhabitable. The Real News Network (7/25/19) Climate scientist Michael Mann discusses the increasing frequency and severity of heat waves, just as the US, Europe, and India are experiencing this summer. Link to 12+-Minute Video ***** ‘Unprecedented’: More Than 100 Arctic Wildfires Burn In Worst Ever Season Huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska are producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space. By Edward Helmore The Guardian (7/26/19) The Arctic is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, with huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska producing plumes of smoke that…


Scientists To Set Somber Monument To Mark Glacier Lost To Climate Change

Scientists are memorializing Iceland’s first glacier lost to global warming with a poignant “letter to the future.” By Dominique Mosbergen HuffPost (7/21/19) Scientists are memorializing what they’ve described as Iceland’s first glacier lost to climate change with a somber monument and “letter to the future” reminding humans to do better at tackling global warming. “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know if we did it.” The monument is slated to be installed next month at the site of the now-extinct Okjökull glacier — nicknamed the “OK” glacier…


Climate Crisis Activist Greta Thunberg Responds To Questions: ‘They see us as a threat because we’re having an impact’

  By Ali Smith The Guardian (7/21/19) Greta Thunberg. This time last year she was unimaginable. Then, pretty much from nowhere, there she was: small and slight, a girl just turned 16, the way-too-young odd person out on a panel of adults sitting in front of the world’s economic powers at Davos last January. Unshowy and serious, careful, firm, she said it. Our house is on fire. The ancient Greeks had a word for this: parrhesiastes. It means a person who speaks truth to power: you should not be behaving in this way. Don’t. More specifically it suggests someone in whom…


Refusing To Report On Church Rock: “The worst incident of radiation contamination in the history of the United States”

Now 40 years on, I know that the corporate media is still not to be trusted when it comes to covering the nuclear, or any other area of the energy industry.   Editor’s note: In New Mexico, the Church Rock Spill of July 16, 1979 has been called “the worst incident of radiation contamination in the history of the United States.” Catherine Caufield in “Multiple Exposures,” and Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon in “Killing Our Own,” reported that when the earthen dam holding radioactive uranium mine tailings burst, it released 93 million gallons of liquid wastes and more than 1,100…


The Most Dangerous Kind Of Climate Crisis Denial

“The most dangerous form of climate denial is no longer Senator Jim Inhofe throwing a snowball on the Senate floor to prove that global warming isn’t real, or Trump calling climate change a Chinese hoax. It’s liberal and centrist politicians who should know better appealing to “bipartisan consensus,” immediately shifting the blame to other countries when the U.S. has among the highest per-capita emissions in the world, or asking, “How will we pay for it?”” — Thea N. Riofrancos, The Democratic Debates Showcased the Most Dangerous Form of Climate Denial (In These Times, 6/28/19) ***** ‘Completely Terrifying’ — Study Warns Carbon-Saturated Oceans Headed Toward…


Getting A Birds-Eye, True View Of The Devastation Being Done To Wisconsin By Frac Sand Corporations

By Patricia Popple The Frac Sand Sentinel (7/7/19) Over the duration of several years, Henry Boschen from Chippewa Falls has been involved in photographing pictures of a developing mine, processing plant and trans-load station in the Town of Alma in Jackson County using drone technology. He has also photographed many other facilities in the industry to show the impact of destruction on land and water. What you will see is his final product—–the idle Wisconsin Proppants Plant in the Town of Alma. Link to 3-minute video here. Please take a look at Boschen’s LookDownPictures.com to see his work and also take a bit of…


Free HBO Movie ‘Ice On Fire’ Shows We Have The Know-How To Reverse Climate Chaos

Image from HBO movie “Fire on Ice”. “We have the solutions at hand. But the question still remains, can we mobilize and take collective action before it’s too late.” [Editor’s Note: The first 30 minute or so of this excellent movie outline the status of the climate crisis. After that they begin looking at possible interventions. — Mark L. Taylor] HBO Produced by Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio, George DiCaprio and Mathew Schmid and directed by Leila Conners, Ice on Fire is an eye-opening documentary that focuses on many never-before-seen solutions designed to slow down our escalating environmental crisis. The film goes beyond the…


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‘We Are Unstoppable, Another World Is Possible!’ — Hundreds Storm Police Lines To Shut Down Massive German Coal Mine

Hundreds of climate activists break through police lines at German coal mine. (Photo: Jens Volle/flickr/cc/Ende Gallende) “Thanks to all the thousands of brave ones.” By Jon Queally Common Dreams (6/22/19) Hundreds of climate activists stormed a massive open-pit coal mine in Germany on Saturday, entering a standoff with police inside the mine while thousands of others maintained separate blockades of the nation’s coal infrastructure as part of a week-long series of actions designed to end Europe’s dependency on fossil fuels. Coordinated by the Ende Gelände alliance, the campaigners targeting the Garzweiler mine in the German state of North-Rhine Westphalia as they evaded security forces across…


Green Blood: Environmental Journalists Facing Increased Harassment & Murder

“Investigative reporting on the environment can be as dangerous a beat as reporting on narco smuggling.” By Juliette Garside & Jonathan Watts The Guardian (6/17/19) Thirteen journalists who were investigating damage to the environment have been killed in recent years and many more are suffering violence, harassment, intimidation and lawsuits, according to a study. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which produced the tally, is investigating a further 16 deaths over the last decade. It says the number of murders may be as high as 29, making this field of journalism one of the most dangerous after war reporting. On every continent reporters have…


Tipping Point? Researchers Alarmed As Canadian Permafrost Thawing 70 Years Early

“This premature thawing is another clear signal that we must decarbonize our economies, and immediately.” By Matthew Green Reuters (6/18/19) LONDON (Reuters) – Permafrost at outposts in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted, an expedition has discovered, in the latest sign that the global climate crisis is accelerating even faster than scientists had feared. A team from the University of Alaska Fairbanks said they were astounded by how quickly a succession of unusually hot summers had destabilized the upper layers of giant subterranean ice blocks that had been frozen solid for millennia. “What we saw was…


Bananas: Another Victim Of Growing Climate Crisis

By Tom Levitt HuffPost (6/11/19) There’s a reason why bananas are the world’s favorite fruit. They are cheap to buy, soft and easy to eat and full of fat-free nutrients. Frequently found in our lunchboxes, breakfast mix and often one of the first foods babies eat, they are a household staple. More than two-thirds of U.S shoppers include them in their regular grocery shopping. But the much-loved banana is in trouble. Two damaging diseases are destroying our favorite yellow food and threatening to wipe out the bananas eaten by consumers in the U.S. “Banana production as it stands is facing an…


Missed Opportunity: Why Do The Democrats Refuse To Hold A Climate Change Debate?

By Andy Kroll Rolling Stone (6/10/19) WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee is facing a growing backlash in the wake of its refusal to host a 2020 presidential debate focused solely on solving the climate crisis. Last week, the DNC not only dismissed the idea of hosting a debate on the existential threat of our time but vowed to bar any 2020 candidate who participates in a non-DNC climate debate from participating in future official debates, according to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who was the 2020 Democratic candidate to call for a climate-only debate. Inslee called the DNC’s decision “extremely disappointing” and the blacklist “totally unacceptable.”…


Youth Climate Case Against The Government Moves Forward

Third or fourth flooding of kids playground in Ferryville, Wi., Vernon County, spring 2019. By John Schwartz New York Times (6/4/19) Three federal judges heard arguments Tuesday about whether young people have a constitutional right to be protected from climate change. In the lively, hourlong hearing, the judges, from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, pushed skeptically on the arguments of both sides. The closely watched lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, was scheduled to begin last October, but the court granted the Trump administration an unusual pretrial appeal. Their decision could have important implications for this and other attempts to use…