The Truth Is Out There

So: a one day Climate Summit at the UN on Tuesday. New hope or more of the same?

In the UK, where the Climate Crisis is covered more consistently and prominently, the BBC led its story: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says a one-day climate change summit in New York has given fresh impetus to efforts to tackle global warming. He says the momentum has shifted in favour of reaching a deal at December's crucial climate meeting in Copenhagen."

Also in the UK, the Guardian led on a positive note with China: The world inched closer to an elusive deal to combat climate change yesterday, when China, the world's biggest polluter, made its most substantial commitment yet to curb its carbon emissions and invest in clean energy."

But in the US, the New York Times (which also published a CC denial piece filled with bad science, according to Climate Progress) had a much more dour approach: World leaders gathered here for a global summit meeting on climate change made modest proposals on Tuesday for combating the problem, underscoring the way domestic political battles still trump what United Nations officials had hoped would be a sense of global urgency."

When you get right down to the nitty gritty, the reports in the Guardian and the NY Times aren't that far apart, but the difference in tone says volumes. Even though what China has actually proposed falls short of what climate experts say is needed at minimum, there is good news in that China (and India) are officially recognizing the problem and the urgency. That alone makes it a bit easier for the US and Europe to move forward, since one common objection has been that their efforts would be useless without China and India. But the US in particular should be squirming as well, because if China actually commits to greenhouse gas reduction and especially clean energy, then the economic as well as environmental leadership of the 21st century goes to them.

President Obama is trying to keep the US in the game. "The threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing. Our generation's response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it - boldly, swiftly, and together - we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe," he said. After acknowledging that the US has been lax until now, he added: "But this is a new day. It is a new era. And I am proud to say that the United States has done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than at any other time in our history."

That's certainly true, but we're far from critical mass--it's still an uphill climb to get the US to really commit to clean energy and addressing the Climate Crisis. The first critical test are Copenhagen and the climate bill now in Congress.

Anyone who cares about the survival of our planet should start praying that Barack Obama gets his way on reforming US healthcare, writes Jonathan Freedland in Worldchanging. The reason is political: this insane health care debate, that (as President Obama said on Letterman Monday night) other advanced nations can barely comprehend since they all have universal healthcare, is taking all the time, energy and attention, while the climate legislation languishes. Moreover, if Obama can't win on healthcare, he is unlikely to prevail on climate. And that's the key to Copenhagen. Freeland continues:

The science is now clear that if we do not manage to keep the increase in the earth's temperature below 2C, we risk facing the effects of catastrophic climate change – with all the flooding, drought, mass migration and human suffering that it would entail. The experts tell us that the only way to stay below that 2C limit is for global emissions to peak in 2015 – and then start falling. In other words, we have set ourselves up at a nice corner table in the last chance saloon. Copenhagen is that last chance. "

While no one really can foretell when the "last chance" will be--or if it has already gone by--it's certainly close to that. And here's another possible last chance: Not for the first time, the fate of the world rests in the hands of US domestic politics, Freedland writes. But if the US doesn't take leadership and China is prepared to do so, it could be the last time. It will be a long time before the US is irrelevant, but it is in danger of moving in that direction.

Failing to truly solve the multiple problems of health care more than signals a steep decline, which probably has already begin. The incredible ignorance demonstrated by the visible opposition (as opposed to the insurance companies who are orchestrating both the public and behind the scenes machinations) is just one clear manifestation. Here's another, according to former President Bill Clinton: "In the last eight years, we went from first to tenth in terms of the percentage of 25 to 34 year olds holding a bachelor's degree. That's the most important unknown statistic out there... We are headed into long-term economic decline if we don't do something about it."

Though once again big money from vested interests is fueling and inciting opposition to not only measures to address the Climate Crisis, but to acknowledging that the crisis exists, that opposition is characterized not by clever and deceptive arguments, but once again by lies and loudly proclaimed ignorance.

And while we roil in this poisonous nonsense, the facts and scientific studies delineate a Climate Crisis that is worse than previously believed. New research indicates that the world will warm 150% faster in just the next five years than the UN climate panel last predicted. Yet another Pentagon report warns that the Climate Crisis will pose significant strategic challenges, including the possibility of resource wars.

One of the largest glaciers in Antarctica is thinning four times faster than it was 10 years ago. But a lot of attention is being drawn to the Arctic. New research there strongly suggests that greenhouse gas pollution from the start of the Industrial Age reversed a cooling trend and started the Arctic warming. Arctic ice continues to thin, melting both from above and below. The effects of global heating, felt most strongly so far in the Arctic Circle, are already being widely felt, disrupting animal and plant life for thousands of miles. This isn't speculation. It's observation.

Once again the fires in California and the obvious drought conditions in Texas and the Southwest are not only accumulating problems, but supporting predictions of what the Climate Crisis would look like. New CC models see drought impact eventually hitting the American Midwest the hardest.

The truth is out there, and so are the blind and the ignorant. The willfully ignorant, blinded by ideology, prejudice and fear.

President Obama did announce some concrete steps on Tuesday, as reported in American Progress: a first ever program to track the amount of greenhouse gas pollution emitted throughout the country and the United States will propose a phase out of fossil fuel subsidies at the G-20 meeting later this week in Pittsburgh, PA. But these, along with green energy initiatives, will probably stall unless the Congress passes some minimal Climate Crisis bill that at least doesn't do the wrong things and does do some things right, and unless the US can help forge a global agreement in Copenhagen.