by Tom Athanasiou

Posted 18 hours, 29 minutes ago A lot of dreck comes across my desktop. I'm even on a list called "ennui mail," and some of it is utterly irredeemable. But still I took notice when Chuck Norris: Copenhagen Talks To Forge "One World Order" blew in. Read More

Posted 4 months ago Best short film about climate justice ever -- even if it is in German.  (It's got subtitles.) Read More

Posted 5 months, 1 week ago The latest round of climate talks was a big disappointment, and Copenhagen will almost certainly be another. If it is, who will get blamed? Read More

Posted 1 year, 8 months ago Here's something novel: a well-informed and honest article from a significant British magazine (Prospect) that looks hard at the core political challenges of global climate stabilization and then draws some conclusions. And it's written by Simon Retallack, who knows his way around both the climate policy debate and the climate movement. Read More

Posted 1 year, 9 months ago The pressure to soft-pedal is very, very high. I know because I feel it. I'm tempted. I do not wish to be dismissed as an apocalyptic. So when I read, in this fine and even astonishing report, that "politics as usual" must be cast aside, and quickly, there's something in me that balks.

After all, the mainline debate at Bali was about a "25-40% cut by 2020" for the developed countries. Isn't this enough? Doesn't it tell us that we're already moving as quickly as we can? Must we call for emergency mobilization? Must we seek to put all… Read More

Posted 1 year, 11 months ago It's important, this time, to draw conclusions, and to do so publicly. Because Bali has taken us -- barely and painfully -- over a line and into a new and even more difficult level in the climate game we'll be playing for the rest of our lives. In fact, it's not too much to say that, with the realizations of the last year and their culmination at the 13th Conference of Parties, the game has, finally, belatedly, begun in earnest.

First up, we knew going into Bali that if the old routine continued without variation, we'd really… Read More

Posted 1 year, 11 months ago Issue #10 if the Bali ECO is here (PDF). You may need to read between the lines a bit if you haven't been following the negotiations. But it's not hard. Read More

Posted 1 year, 11 months ago The taxi driver that took me from the Bali airport to my hotel in Nusa Dua, the secure "green zone" where the climate negotiations are taking place, didn't speak much English. Just well enough to say, haltingly, that he was "too stupid" to have a better job, he didn't drink, and he was very depressed because he was lonely, but too poor to get married. Oh, and that the Westin, where I was not staying, was the "best" place. Very "luxury." Very "Western."

Now, about a week later, I've been in lots more cabs. I can report that Third World… Read More

Posted 1 year, 11 months ago Since COP13 / MOP3 -- hereafter "Bali" -- has begun, I thought I'd send a brief note on expectations and strategy. Brief because there's too much to say, so I shouldn't try. Besides, I'll try to post again in a few days.

Here's the thing: Bali is freighted with terrific expectations, which are entirely appropriate given the state of the science. We now "know," insofar as we can know these things, that we've got to do everything to hold total temperature increase from global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and that to have a good chance of doing so… Read More

Posted 2 years ago I won't explain how it came to pass that -- only two days after a trip to NYC to present Greenhouse Development Rights at a meeting of the UN's Committee for Development Policy -- I went to Las Vegas.

I will say that that my wife, an Aussie, wanted to see the place, that we have a 11-year-old boy, and that the Hilton contains an installation honoring the United Federation of Planets. (The flag of which has a notable similarity to the one displayed in the UN's own, rather more dilapidated, halls.)

Some quick thoughts: Read More