Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Feeding off of a failed UN Summit late in 2019, the almost daily release of reports updating and confirming climate science studies, student strikes, a continent on fire, and the already prominent place of climate in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2020 looms as a watershed political year for national climate policy.
The big news of the week—kind of—was Trump’s starting the paperwork for getting the US out of the Paris Climate Accord (Accord). Although Trump announced his intentions in June 2017, the rules of the Accord prohibited any formal action before a few days ago. The US won’t actually be off the Accord until November 4, 2020—a day after the next presidential election.
Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee pledge to release comprehensive climate legislation by the end of the year that would transition the United States to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Democratic Sens. Tom Udall of New Mexico and Michael Bennet of Colorado have introduced a resolution calling for a national conservation goal of protecting at least 30% of the country’s lands and waters by 2030.
Impeachment has been the big dog on the political porch this week. It promises to be there for quite some time–possibly through the end of the year. Stonewalling by the White House and the arrest of two colleagues of the president’s lawyer, Rudi Giuliani, suggests there’s a lot of information around that needs to be gathered and gone through.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres drew praise Wednesday for taking what supporters called a “powerful stand” to address the climate crisis. Guterres will reportedly exclude major economies, including the United States, from talking at the upcoming U.N. Climate Action Summit because of their failure to produce appropriately ambitious climate plans and their ongoing support for coal.
The way forward for any climate defense plan—moderate or progressive—will be cluttered with the flotsam of the Trump administration, e.g., rolled back regulations, extant lawsuits, and the loss of the many experienced government professionals needed to implement a pro-environment agenda.
Congress is back from its August recess. It appears the break did nothing to cool tensions—either between Congressional Republicans and Democrats or between Hill Democrats and Trump. If anything, inter-party relations are more acrimonious than before.
The rise in the percentage of young Republicans that are concerned about the future of Earth’s climate and its populations is a critical bit of information. It speaks to a better future.
It will be interesting to see if the youth on the right and left are any better able to cooperate than the generation that has gone before.
Although Trump is not single-handedly responsible for today’s pejorative politics, his reliance on invectives instead of facts has set a tone that others are willing to follow to the detriment of the nation.
The latest addition to President Trump’s reelection campaign’s online store is a 10-pack of plastic straws each emblazoned with “Trump.” The listing features a photo of an unwrapped, solitary red straw, which Trump supporters might want to purchase, it suggests, because “liberal paper straws don’t work.”
Filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the niece of John F. Kennedy, and Aileen Getty, granddaughter of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty, are among numerous prominent founding members of a Climate Emergency Fund that will send everything from cash to bullhorns and other supplies to grass-roots activists gaining momentum across the country and around the globe.
