Thursday, 18 Jan 2007

What a difference an election makes. After years of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, be-really-evil, Congress is abuzz with forward movement on climate change. No less than four bills on climate look poised to go before the Senate, with big names like Sens. McCain, Obama, Boxer, and Feinstein jostling for attention. Just yesterday, Feinstein and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), joined by six electric industry execs, introduced separate bills that would cap emissions from electrical plants. Over in the House, Speaker Pelosi has given Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) a noogie, announcing the formation of a select committee on climate change that would, among other things, steal the spotlight from foot-dragging Dingell's House Energy Committee. David Roberts susses out who's offering what -- and who's doing what to whom -- in the newly active Congress.

Gloom and Doom With a Sense of Doomed-er

Doomsday Clock ticks to 11:55 p.m., thanks in part to climate change

Cue ominous music: We're edging closer to annihilation, according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' famed Doomsday Clock -- a symbolic measurement of how close civilization stands to ultra-mega-doom, or "midnight." Yesterday, the group pushed its famed ticker two minutes forward to 11:55 p.m., adding climate change to its traditionally nuke-based calculations for the first time. "When we think about what technologies besides nuclear weapons could produce such devastation to the planet, we quickly came to carbon-emitting technologies," says Executive Director Kennette Benedict. The clock has been adjusted 18 times since 1947; the nearest brush with midnight was a spine-tingling two minutes in 1953, and this latest tweak is the closest since 1984. Says renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, "We foresee great peril if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change." By action now, he means in five minutes, right?


We don't know about you, but we're still haunted by the "food" we were served in school -- meals with names like Mexican hat and vegetable-legume melange. Apparently we were lucky, though: those dishes were prepared by real live people, while today's kids are served reheated industrial mush more often than not. Why do schools feed our yoots so poorly, what can be done to change that, and what does World War II have to do with it all? Tom Philpott talks with former star chef and current hell-raiser Ann Cooper to find out.

A Speechwriter Behind Every Bush

Content of State of the Union speech remains a mystery -- kind of

Will President Bush crack down on climate change in his State of the Union address? The world may never know -- until, of course, he gives the speech next Tuesday. Mutterings that the administration would embrace a cap-and-trade carbon-reduction scheme were flatly denied by White House spokesflack Tony Snow this week: "If you're talking about enforceable carbon caps, in terms of industry-wide and nationwide, we knocked that down. That's not something we're talking about." Bush's stubbornness is unpopular with, um, nearly everyone. European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and German Chancellor Angela "Backrub" Merkel -- not to mention some of Bush's top advisers -- have all urged the president to get with the cap-and-trade times. Sources familiar with the speech suggest that, instead, Bush will focus on ethanol and recycling -- recycling the tired old "technology will save us" line, that is.

Got the Urge for Knowing

Scientists and evangelical leaders form new climate alliance

So a minister, a scientist, and a horse walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Why the long face?" The horse just chuckles, but the other two begin a thoughtful discussion about how humans are destroying the planet. Sound far-fetched? Not after yesterday, when a group of 28 scientists and evangelical leaders unveiled a new alliance to battle climate change. The partnership -- which includes NASA's James Hansen, biologist E.O. Wilson, and prominent evangelical leaders Rev. Rich Cizik and Rev. Joel Hunter -- seeks shifts in the values, lifestyle, and policies of the U.S. It has sent an "urgent call to action" to President Bush and other politicians and will prepare a pastor's toolkit, all while putting fundamental disagreements aside. "Whether God created the Earth in a millisecond or whether it evolved over billions of years, the issue we agree on is that it needs to be cared for today," said Cizik. "We will not allow the creation to be ... destroyed by human folly." We'll drink to that.