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Fight Against Coal Plants Draws Diverse Partners
Susan Moran, New York Times
GREAT FALLS, Mont. – Richard D. Liebert turned his back against a hard wind the other day, adjusted his black cap and gazed across golden fields of hay. Explaining why he is against construction of a big coal-burning power plant east of town, Mr. Liebert sounded like one more voice from the green movement.
“The more I learn about global warming and watch the drought affect ranchers and farmers, I see that it’s wind energy, not coal plants, that can help with rural economic development. Besides, do we want to roll the dice with the one planet we’ve got?”
But Mr. Liebert, despite his sentiments, fits nobody’s stereotype of an environmentalist. He is a Republican, a cattle rancher and a retired Army lieutenant colonel who travels to South Korea to train soldiers to fight in Iraq.
He is also an example of a rising phenomenon in the West. An increasingly vocal, potent and widespread anti-coal movement is developing here. Environmental groups that have long opposed new power plants are being joined by ranchers, farmers, retired homeowners, ski resort operators and even religious groups.
Activists say the increasing diversity of these coalitions is making them more effective.
(20 October 2007)
Worldwide solutions are needed to deal with the effects of climate change
Editorial, Vancouver Sun
Nothing annoys scientists who study climate change more than the question of whether it is really happening. Nothing, that is, with the possible exception of the related question of whether climate change is a man-made phenomenon.
They get annoyed because the scientific consensus is that the world is getting warmer, that the climate is changing in dangerous ways we can’t fully comprehend and that change is being triggered by gases that humans are pumping into the atmosphere. The debate over “whether” is over, they insist. The urgent question now is how we should respond.
But there will always be skeptics of climate change, some more credible than others, just as there were skeptics who refused to accept that cigarettes caused cancer and that a human being was capable of running a mile in under four minutes.
The difference is that in the case of climate change a possibility remains that the skeptics may be right.
The dire consequences that are routinely linked to climate change are still just predictions, based on computer models that are the scientific equivalent of a highly educated guess.
…We should never stop listening to skeptics in what is an evolving scientific consensus, but neither can we afford any longer to allow doubt to stand in the way of action.
… Accepting the need to act still leaves us a long way from knowing what to do. The activities that cause climate change also drive our economy, so we have to move carefully. Even a cursory look at the proposals put forward by Bush, Harper and Campbell shows that, as in many issues in public life, lip service does not lead to effective action.
(20 October 2007)
Contributor Bill Henderson writes:
I’m submitting this as an example of how the language on the skeptics and ‘incomplete information’ will keep us in BAU [Business As Usual] long after we should have been making massive change. I’ve been trying to promote my digital tech peer review innovation and came up with this sports analogy that you might appreciate:
Americans have no trouble reaching consensus on who won the last Super Bowl or who’s still in contention for the World Series. There are no deniers claiming that ManU is really the best baseball team in the world. Put up the bleachers on an electronic highway 61 for a science-based competition and get everybody on the same page about just how serious climate change really is.
Bateman: We need a carbon tax
John Bermingham, The Province
VICTORIA — World-renowned B.C. nature artist Robert Bateman said yesterday people should have to pay a carbon tax on their greenhouse-gas emissions.
Appealing to people’s better nature won’t work, he said.
“I don’t believe in education. I believe in legislation,” Bateman, 77, said yesterday. “You need something with teeth in it. We need something along the lines of a carbon tax. We have to face it.”
And he said B.C. has to stop subsidizing industrial polluters in the energy, farming, fisheries and forestry sectors.
“We are paying with the taxpayer’s money . . . destroying nature and destroying people’s health,” said the long-time environmentalist.
(19 October 2007)
