Working For Jobs

by Brad Johnson.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

During the two weeks of the international climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, millions of people have been affected by extreme weather disasters. Our poisoned climate is fueling more extreme and dangerous weather,
as the super-heated atmosphere brings heavier rains, harder droughts,
and fiercer storms. These eight climate disasters that took place while
the world’s governments debate whether to address climate pollution have
killed dozens of people, displaced tens of thousands of people, and
disrupted the lives of millions, and yet are far from the most damaging
of 2011:

8. Canada weather bomb

Dec. 8: Hurricane-force winds in a fast-moving “weather bomb”
system, including 92-mph gusts, knocked out power for 68,000 people in
Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.
Heavy snowfall blanketed northern New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Labrador,
forcing schools to close.

7. Scotland weather bomb

Dec. 8: Severe winds of up to 165 mph from another weather bomb battered Scotland and
northern England, forcing hundreds of schools to close, destroying a
giant wind turbine, and leaving more than 56,000 people without power. According to Metro:
“The storm’s winds were so strong as its pressure dropped by 44 [milibars], almost double the qualifying amount
for a weather bomb, in the 24 hours to 6am this morning. The winds today
were stronger than the 80-mph gusts seen when Hurricane Katia hit in
September.”

6. Los Angeles Santa Ana windstorm

Nov. 30: A powerful, late-season Santa Ana windstorm with gale-force gusts “left much of the Los Angeles area strewn with
toppled trees and downed power lines on Thursday, slowing rush-hour
traffic,” canceling hundreds of flights, and knocking out electricity to
over 430,000 residents.
“Public schools in Pasadena and 11 other districts in San Gabriel
Valley, northeast of Los Angeles, were closed for the day.” Thousands
are still without power.

5. Colombia landslide kills family

Dec. 5: “Heavy rains set off a landslide that swept over a home in central Colombia, flattening it and killing seven members of the same family.” “Five women and two young girls died in the disaster, which was caused by heavy rains in the Herveo municipality. The husband of one of the women survived.”

4. Killer Kenya floods

Dec. 2: “Three children were killed in a landslide as the rains drenching the country continue to wreak
havoc. Thousands more have been forced to flee flooded homes.” A total
of 14 people have been killed as bridges and roads have been washed away in “some of the heaviest rainfall [Kenya] has seen in 50 years.” Meanwhile, crippling drought continues in northern Kenya.

3. Record Colombia floods cause bus-burying mudslide

Dec. 8: A Colombia mudslide swallowed a bus, killing six. “One of the victims managed to call for help by cell phone and told relatives she was trapped before she died, said
Cesar Uruena, rescue director for the Colombian Red Cross. The five
other victims of the accident Wednesday night included a police officer
and the bus driver and his young son.” Heavy rains flooded
about 3,500 homes south of Bogota, with waters up to five feet deep in
places. “Up to 10,000 people have been affected by the floods and the cresting of Bogota’s river.” Colombia’s
unrelenting rains have caused at least 127 deaths since September.

2. Indonesia landslide kills 35

Nov. 30: “Heavy rains triggered the landslide on the island of Nias, burying at least 37 houses.” Thirty-five people were killed. “Heavy rains the past three days had caused the hill to crumble. We are now still trying to pull out trapped victims from the landslide,” district disaster management agency official
Robertna Mendeva told AFP on Dec. 1. “It’s difficult as it is still
raining very heavily now.”

1. Durban’s killer climate-talk floods

Nov. 28: 10 people along South Africa’s east coast were killed, 700 houses were destroyed, and thousands were left homeless following torrential rains that struck the city hosting the international climate talks. The
destruction was worst in the shack towns that surround Durban,
highlighting the vulnerability of the poor to climate disasters.

This year’s climate devastation has shattered records. There have
been 14 billion-dollar climate disasters in the United States alone,
costing at least $53 billion total. The floods in Thailand were that nation’s worst. “Weather-related catastrophes in Asia have more than tripled over the last 30 years,” Munich Re reports. “In China alone, weather-related disasters have more than quadrupled since 1980.”

Related Links:

As Durban deadline draws near, big carbon emitters should cut a deal

Tokelau, population 1,500, goes renewables-only

Durban dispatch: U.S. takes ‘recourse to nonsense’

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by Brad Johnson.

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.

With sardonic humor, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) mocked today’s markup of legislation to overturn the scientific finding that fossil-fuel pollution is causing dangerous climate change. Markey,
who championed climate legislation that passed the House of
Representatives in 2009, protested the energy subcommittee’s
consideration of the Upton-Inhofe bill to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules on climate pollution, including its endangerment finding:

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to a bill that
overturns the scientific finding that pollution is harming our people
and our planet.

However, I won’t physically rise, because I’m worried that
Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating about
the room.

I won’t call for the sunlight of additional hearings, for fear that
Republicans might excommunicate the finding that the Earth revolves
around the sun.

Instead, I’ll embody Newton’s third law of motion and be an equal and
opposing force against this attack on science and on laws that will
reduce America’s importation of foreign oil.

This bill will live in the House while simultaneously being dead in
the Senate.  It will be a legislative Schrodinger’s cat killed by the
quantum mechanics of the legislative process!

Arbitrary rejection of scientific fact will not cause us to rise from
our seats today. But with this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil
imports will rise. Temperatures will rise.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. That is, unless a
rejection of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is somewhere in
the chair’s amendment pile.

Watch it:

After Markey’s remarks, the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House
Committee on Energy and Commerce, chaired by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.),
approved the science prevention bill by a voice vote.

Related Links:

People said stuff, reports New York Times’ John Broder

Waxman rails against Koch’s influence on climate change efforts

Wording change softens global warming skeptics

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

by Joseph Romm.

Poor Carly Fiorina. To make conservative ideologues happy, she has
to abandon science and her previous positions on the key issues of
global warming and clean energy.

But to win election statewide, she has to appeal to the majority of
California voters, who understand that clean energy is the key to the
state’s long-term economic and job growth—and that unrestricted
emissions of greenhouse gases will devastate
California more than most states.

And so in her first debate with climate and clean energy champion
Sen. Barbara Boxer, she simply couldn’t give a straightforward answer to the
simple question of whether she supported the Big Oil funded Prop 23
effort to gut California’s landmark climate and clean energy law, Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32).

Let’s go to the videotape (watch to the end):

Ouch.

You know that you have screwed up as a conservative politician when
the center-right Politico
says so:

Fiorina’s major stumble came on the issue of Proposition
23, which would suspend AB 32.  She said the focus should be on federal
climate legislation and that she had not yet taken a position on the
proposition.

“If you can’t take a stand on Prop 23, I don’t know what you will
take a stand on,” Boxer responded.

Talking to reporters after the debate, Fiorina sidestepped the issue,
  saying she would “probably” take a position on Prop 23 before
November, though it’s not her main priority. She insisted the real
referendum on energy legislation “is on the ballot—and her name is
Sen. Barbara Boxer.”

You’ll note that Fiorina immediately jumps to the old right-wing
talking point created by Frank Luntz for conservatives who want to sound
like they care about global warming and clean energy without actually
having to do anything: We need to fund energy R&D.

As for her claim that AB 32 is a job-killer, not only do 118
economists disagree, but so did Fiorina and rational Republicans just two years ago:

Related Links:

Koch brothers jump into Prop 23 fight

California bags the plastic bag ban but makes solar leap

Latest Gulf oil well explosion was no disaster, but what does it say about offshore drilling?

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist

by Jonathan Hiskes.

This summer a group of
bicycle and pedestrian activists in São Paulo, Brazil, grew tired of waiting on
officials to fix the cities famously traffic-clogged streets. Instead they
formed an “urban repair squad” and painted unauthorized makeshift crosswalks,
bike lanes, and messages such as “Lives: Go Slowly.”

Ballsy. But smart, too—they undertook their improvements during Brazil’s World Cup games, probably
the emptiest the streets were in the last four years. They did their biggest
job when arch-rival Argentina played Germany, painting large crosswalks at an
especially dangerous intersection in front of the botanical garden, Victoria
Broadus reports
at The City Fix.

São Paulo has some of
the most famously traffic-clogged streets in the world, creating the sixth most
painful commute anywhere, according to IBM’s Commuter
Pain Study. It’s got more private helicopters than any city, for the
super-rich to hop from corporate towers to gated estates.

Broadus indentifies a
bit of a trend in guerrilla street-fixing:

The do-it-yourself street makeovers are part of a growing
worldwide trend to make streets more inviting to walkers and bikers…without
waiting on local officials to initiate the work. In New York City, people
recently painted  “guerrilla
bike lanes” and other street signage in Brooklyn, as Treehugger
reported. And in Washington, D.C., street artist Steed Taylor and a group of
volunteers gave the District’s downtown Vermont Avenue a “road
tattoo,” which BeyondDC described as “an installation of pavement art that makes the space seem even
less like a normal street and more a public plaza.” Other “Urban Repair Squads” from Los Angeles to London do their part to fix urban spaces.  So it was only a matter of time before
urban activists resorted to painting guerrilla crosswalks like these in Brazil.

In case you were
wondering (I hope not), guerrilla street-improving is illegal and highly
discouraged by this lawyer.

(Hat tip to The
City Fix, which provides some great global coverage on urban sustainability.)

Related Links:

Giant Greenland iceberg a climate ‘warning sign’

Obama panel urges U.S. backing for clean coal

Mosque near Ground Zero will be greenest in the nation

View full post on Grist – the latest from Grist