
Day 40. Great gouts of oil still rush from the ruptured BP well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. A frustrated president visits the scene of the disaster to literally dab his finger at a tar ball washed up on the Louisiana beach. Television news, enlivened by easy-to-get pictures, sets its stand-ups in strategic positions, broadcasting the drama of competition between spreading pollution and technological…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 31, 2010 at 14:24 —
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On Friday, May 21, President Obama gathered in the Rose Garden the chiefs of his transportation and environmental departments to take the next big step to leverage federal climate policy and clean energy investment to spur new job growth.
The president directed Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson to…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 27, 2010 at 23:20 —
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Cutting EU emissions deeply enough to help prevent dangerous climate change would be significantly cheaper than expected and would also have important benefits for Europe’s economy, the European Commission declared today.…
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Added by Rachel Baird on May 26, 2010 at 17:41 —
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President Obama on Friday directed the EPA and the Transportation Department to develop a national policy to increase fuel efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from medium and heavy-duty trucks in time for the 2014 model year. The action comes almost exactly one year (May 19, 2009) after President Obama set new fuel and emissions standards for new cars and light trucks sold in the United States beginning with the 2012 model year.
The 2009 standards…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 21, 2010 at 21:30 —
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As the expanse of the Gulf slick widened this week and climate advocates reckoned with an American public focused on more urgent risks closer to their front doors, 15 big activist organizations and a coalition of 200 grassroots advocacy groups from across the country, many of them green, lashed the American Power Act.
Greenpeace last Thursday… Continue
Added by Keith Schneider on May 20, 2010 at 23:30 —
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Let's get one thing straight: the “Green Economy” is not a buzz word, nor a sound bite, nor the nom du jour. It is not a distraction to the discussions on sustainable development – it fundamentally underpins sustainable development.
While some may rightly argue that the UN's focus on the Green Economy here at the… Continue
Added by Luke Upchurch on May 19, 2010 at 14:55 —
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Tune in tomorrow (19 May) for a live webcast of a conference called "Coping after Copenhagen: Maximizing Mexico".
The meeting is at the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan and will take place at 13.00-1700 local time.
The keynote speakers are Michael Glantz (University of Colorado) and my colleague Saleemul Huq (International Institute for Environment and Development).
Full details of the…
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Added by Mike Shanahan on May 18, 2010 at 15:00 —
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Talking to delegates and civil society stakeholders here at the 18th Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD18) at the UN’s New York HQ, there is a palpable sense that not enough has been done since the first Rio Earth Summit in 1992. It’s a very real frustration, not… Continue
Added by Luke Upchurch on May 16, 2010 at 16:58 —
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Over 70 years ago, in the General Motors-sponsored Futurama exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair, an estimated 10 percent of all Americans were transported across a landscape of innovation, creativity, and optimism that became the economic and cultural foundation of the great American century. The Futurama exhibit was a huge diorama of a highway-heavy, congestion-free, car-dependent, time-efficient, leafy green urban and suburban all American pattern of civilization…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 15, 2010 at 21:30 —
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The foreboding of the monstrous Gulf oil spill was accompanied this week by the opportune deeds of Washington lawmakers, policy makers, and activists hard at work to fashion a political response, including the Senate introduction of a comprehensive climate and energy bill. The new proposal was generally applauded for its expansive scope by business groups, labor, and environmental organizations,…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 13, 2010 at 23:12 —
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BTCV's Carbon Army is on the march again and during June we'll be kicking off our food growing campaign.

Throughout June BTCV is helping communities and…
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Added by Jane Whitham on May 13, 2010 at 16:02 —
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In a long-awaited proposal designed to secure existing domestic energy sources and develop new ones that begin to reverse the damaging effects of global climate change, New England Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman today introduced comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.
The co-authors of the bill, one a Democrat from Massachusetts and the other an Independent from Connecticut, insisted that its vision is to change…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 12, 2010 at 23:30 —
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While most Republicans wring their hands in anguish over the nomination of former Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court justice to replace Justice Stevens, I shout for joy. Why, you may
ask? Because she and I believe many of the same things about
administrative law. Here are 10:
1. She calls the administrative state in the United States "The Administrative State." See. 114 Harv. L. Rev. 2245.
While most Americans don't…
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Added by Rod Sullivan on May 11, 2010 at 18:01 —
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MAY 6, 2010
CONTACT:
MEGAN MORRISSEY – 202-365-6900
INGRID SABJA – 973-738-2301
Bolivian President Evo Morales to Deliver Results of People’s Conference on Climate
Change to UN Sec Gen Ban Ki-moon
New York – On Friday, May 7th, President Evo Morales of Bolivia will personally
present UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with the conclusions of the World People’s
Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of the Mother Earth, which…
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Added by Hilary Chiew on May 11, 2010 at 5:51 —
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On May 5, in an unusually aggressive response to what they saw as an academic witch hunt, the
University of Virginia Faculty Senate condemned state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s demand to turn over six years of documents…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 11, 2010 at 5:30 —
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“Fundamental changes in the way societies produce and consume are indispensable for achieving global sustainable development” 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, Chapter III
In mid-May 2010 preparations will shift up a gear for the next World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) to be held in Rio in 2012. Held every ten years, this is the seminal event on sustainability and will have huge implications for how…
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Added by Luke Upchurch on May 10, 2010 at 19:52 —
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The one-foot waves today in the Gulf of Mexico were described as “tranquil” as BP started to lower a 70-ton case through 5,000 feet of water to contain
the source of an oil leak that threatens the shorelines of four states. Guiding the steel cover over the well shaft in pitch-black waters at crushing depths, said engineers, is like floating a toy parachute…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 7, 2010 at 22:16 —
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On Tuesday 11 May, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, will give a speech in London hosted by the International Institute for Environment and Development (for the 2010 Barbara Ward lecture, named after IIED’s founder).
You can
follow the speech live online from 1pm UK time at the IIED website -- …
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Added by Mike Shanahan on May 7, 2010 at 15:00 —
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On March 17, two weeks to the day before President Barack Obama laid out a new plan to expand offshore oil exploration in the United States, a government auction of federally controlled oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico was held at the New Orleans Superdome. It took just a few hours for 77 energy companies to pledge $1.3 billion to the U.S. Treasury to look for oil and natural gas across a 2.4 million-acre expanse of bottomlands 200 miles from shore, and in most cases thousands of feet…
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Added by Keith Schneider on May 6, 2010 at 15:49 —
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Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate economist, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for
The New York Times, and friend of most things green wrote a piece over the weekend that should give environmentalists heartache.
In a column about the big Gulf oil spill, Krugman described how the environmental movement has been steadily losing political momentum because it's been so successful in scrubbing the… Continue
Added by Keith Schneider on May 5, 2010 at 4:30 —
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