After his adoptive hometown of New York City was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, former president Bill Clinton railed against Mitt Romney for having mocked the idea of climate action. In a campaign stop in Minneapolis, MN, Clinton criticized Romney for having “ridiculed the president for his efforts to fight global warming in economically beneficial ways.” “In the real world,” Clinton concluded, “Barack Obama’s policies work better.”

Transcript:

I was actually listening closely to what the candidates said in these debates. In the first debate, the triumph of the moderate Mitt Romney. You remember what he did? He ridiculed the president. Ridiculed the president for his efforts to fight global warming in economically beneficial ways. He said, ‘Oh, you’re going to turn back the seas.’ In my part of America, we would like it if someone could’ve done that yesterday. All up and down the East Coast, there are mayors, many of them Republicans, who are being told, ‘You’ve got to move these houses back away from the ocean. You’ve got to lift them up. Climate change is going to raise the water levels on a permanent basis. If you want your town insured, you have to do this.’ In the real world, Barack Obama’s policies work better.

JR: Romney’s mockery of Obama was in his Republican National Convention speech, not the first debate. Sadly, climate never came up in any of the debates.

by Bill Becker

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

That observation by Charles Darwin has interesting implications in these last weeks of the presidential election campaign.  It suggests that both candidates may be missing what’s most important to keeping America safe, strong and competitive in the years ahead.

Jobs, education, tax reform and energy security all are important, of course. But the key to America’s success will be our willingness to adapt to the new realities of the 21^st century.

One of those realities is that economic development as we have practiced it, and as it is now being replicated around the world, is rapidly pushing us toward several critical ecological boundaries and has already exceeded others.  These boundaries are important not only because they threaten some species and some regions of the world; they’re important because exceeding them is an existential threat to continued peace and prosperity. These are not the relatively isolated and repairable environmental problems of the past. They involve global systems that support life, including the oceans, soils and freshwater resources. They also include the atmosphere’s ability to absorb man-made pollution without destabilizing the climate.  The most available way to manage that risk is to reduce and eventually stop burning oil and coal to fuel economic development.

The failure of the two candidates to address these planetary boundaries, and especially the enormous risks of climate change, is one of the profoundly disturbing shortcomings of the 2012 campaign.  It has been an unconscionable omission considering how critical the next four years will be to the future of the country and the international community.

However, the next president will have another opportunity to confront these risks, perhaps early in his term.  Members of both political parties in Washington are talking about reforming the tax system by lowering rates, trimming deductions and, in Obama’s case, asking the wealthy to pay a bit more. Tax reform also is an opportunity to begin de-carbonizing the U.S. tax code.

Sometime soon, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) will issue a comprehensive carbon audit of the tax code – a report ordered by Congress to identify ways our tax system encourages the pollution most responsible for climate change.

Tax policies that encourage carbon emissions range from subsidies for oil companies – the latest proposal on the Hill would cut them by $113 billion over 10 years – to mortgage interest deductions for energy-wasting McMansions. There are many more. Ending or restructuring them will take a level of courage Congress has not exhibited in recent memory.

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In a recent interview with MTV, President Obama said he was “surprised” that climate didn’t come up in the presidential debates. This isn’t a very good excuse for avoiding discussion of the problem, particularly when you’re debating your opponent over drilling for fossil fuels and promoting clean energy.

But is it really a surprise that it didn’t get mentioned by a moderator?

After all, there are virtually no demands from broadcast journalists that political leaders actually talk about the problem. And the climate silence stretches far beyond the presidential debates. Coverage of Hurricane Sandy is the latest example.

Yesterday, while Superstorm Sandy passed over Washington, I hunkered down in front of my television and watched coverage of the storm. As I flipped between cable and network news shows, I was subjected to the same endless parade of reporters swaying in the wind, wading through flooded streets, and talking about projected catastrophic damage. But throughout it all, there were no mentions of the dramatic increases in extreme weather and no mentions of the influence of a warming planet on extreme storms like Sandy. According to tracking from TVEyes, there were only a couple quick references on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Monday morning and nothing on the other networks throughout the day.

This also shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. So little of television news is designed to put issues in context, particularly during times of emergency when outlets are intensely competing for viewers looking for disaster updates.

But there are too many factors to ignore. In September, we saw our 331st month in a row with global temperatures above the 20th century average. Meanwhile in 2012, we’ve seen record Arctic ice loss, and the U.S. has faced two record heat waves, a record drought, an above-average fire season, and now, an “unprecedented” hurricane.

The climate factors behind individual events like Superstorm Sandy are complex. But one thing is clear: the extra energy in the atmosphere from greenhouse gases increases the probability of extreme weather events.

“This isn’t the atmosphere I grew up with,” explained meteorologist Jeff Masters during this spring’s record heat wave.

“The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about,” said University of Arizona scientist Jonathan Overpeck, speaking to the Associated Press about this summer’s extreme weather.

Scientists have coined two really effective metaphors for communicating this change. NASA’s James Hansen likes to call it “loading the climate dice.” And others have compared the influence of greenhouse gases on extreme weather to a baseball hitter taking steroids. Both effectively illustrate how heat-trapping gases increase the probability and intensity of drought, heat, and storms.

These are good tools for reporters when explaining a very complex issue like climate change. However, rather than use them, reporters continue to ignore the problem altogether — choosing instead to focus on easy stories like flooded streets and electricity outages. Of course, these are important for getting people messages to keep them safe. But throughout the day yesterday, no outlet made an attempt to connect climate and extreme weather.

Research from Media Matters for America shows just how ridiculous this climate avoidance gets.

During this July’s extreme heat wave, only 8.7 percent of television news coverage mentioned climate change; over the summer, television news outlets covered Paul Ryan’s P90-X workouts three times more than the record loss of Arctic sea ice; and between 2009 and 2011, coverage of climate change on television news outlets plummeted by 90 percent — with every network covering Donald Trump more than climate issues.

After one recent presidential debate, CNN’s Candy Crowley inadvertently revealed how many television news reporters feel about climate. During the post-debate analysis, Crowley regretted not asking a question “for all you climate people” — dismissing climate as a fringe issue that doesn’t have any bearing on anything else being discussed.

And therefore, you get the kind of television coverage we’ve seen around Superstorm Sandy: anchors talking for hours about a broken crane in New York City; reporters sitting for hours in the middle of a flooded street saying very little new about water levels; and the complete avoidance of any scientific explanation of the factors driving extreme weather.

If we want our political leaders to start talking about climate change, we also need reporters to do the same when the opportunity arises. This was yet another failed opportunity.

Note: there are some outlets making a good effort on this issue. Check out the yesterday’s Sandy segments from Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks and Jennifer Granholm of The War Room — two shows on Current TV that often draw a very clear climate connection to stories. In addition, Chris Hayes of MSNBC had an extensive climate segment earlier this month, in which he called out the candidates for their climate silence.

by Michael Conathan

As Hurricane Sandy spins its way north across the eastern Great Lakes and into Canada, the northeast coast woke up today to find at least 25 people dead, almost 10 million without power, and monetary damages likely to approach the $20 billion mark. Wall Street is dark, coastal icons like the Atlantic City boardwalk have sustained heavy damage, and homes are flooded from Maine to the Carolinas.

First of all, we should all take a moment to thank the brilliant and tireless forecasters at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service. Without their remarkably accurate and timely forecasting capabilities, these numbers could have been so much worse. Unfortunately, if Congressional Republicans and Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan get their way, next time they will be worse.

Our nation’s environmental satellites are aging, and replacements have been slow to come online. When Congress passed last year’s spending bills, cutting more than $150 million from President Obama’s request for the satellite program, the Government Accountability Office predicted that “there will likely be a gap in satellite data lasting 17 to 53 months” between the time the old satellite shuts down and when its replacement can come online.

In his proposed budget, GOP Vice-Presidential nominee Paul Ryan recommended further cuts to environmental programs—14.6 percent across the board. If these cuts were distributed equally, NOAA’s satellite program would lose more than $250 million from its 2012 funded levels.

And according to multiple sources, including the Washington Post, Palm Beach Sentinel, and the Center for American Progress’ Senior Fellow Scott Lilly, the sequestration process looming over Congress’ lame duck session would cost the program an additional $182 million.

So what does this gap in service mean for our prediction capabilities? NOAA ran an analysis in 2011 that found without data from the satellite closest to the end of its shelf life, the accuracy of its forecasts for major storms like blizzards and hurricanes would decrease by approximately 50 percent. This means more uncertainty about the storm’s intensity and direction.

Unless we somehow decide that weather-monitoring satellites are no longer necessary, and that we should just forgo building them all together, we will have to replace them. And if we wait, they only get more expensive. Three to five times more expensive according to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco who a year ago called this decision “a disaster in the making,” “an expression of dysfunction in our system,” and “insanity.”

In congressional Republicans’ mindless crusade against all government spending, they have forgotten that there are some things the government actually does well and the private sector cannot provide. A few years ago, one GOP congressman famously asked then NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, “why are we building meteorological satellites when we have The Weather Channel?” Where do you suppose he thought the Weather Channel gets its data? That’s right, kids! NOAA’s meteorological satellites!

The GOP’s push for budget austerity is as blunt, broad, and mindless as a hurricane bulling its way forward without regard for the health, value, or well-being of anything in its path. If the party continues down this path of insanity, it may well also end up being just as destructive.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress

by Bob Berwyn, via Summit County Citizens Voice

Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe this year joins a list of dubious anti-environmental characters in receiving the Rubber Dodo award,  given annually to those who have done the most to drive endangered species extinct.

The award is given each year by the Center for Biological Diversity. Previous winners include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (2011), former BP CEO Tony Hayward (2010), massive land speculator Michael Winer (2009), Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (2008) and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne (2007).

When it comes to denying the climate crisis — the single-greatest threat now facing life on Earth — James Inhofe has few peers. The Oklahoma Republican is the ringleader of anti-science climate-deniers in Congress and a driving force behind the tragic lack of U.S. action to tackle this complex problem.

“As climate change ravages the world, Senator Inhofe insists that we deny the reality unfolding in front of us and choose instead to blunder headlong into chaos,” said Kierán Suckling, the Center’s executive director. “Senator Inhofe gets the 2012 Rubber Dodo Award for being at the vanguard of the retrograde climate-denier movement.”

This year is on track to become the warmest on record; some 40,000 temperature records have been broken in the United States in 2012 alone, while Arctic sea ice melted to a record low. According to conservation activists, this summer’s record droughts, crop failures, massive wildfires, floods are unmistakable signals that manmade global warming is tightening its grip, threatening people and wildlife around the globe.

“Senator Inhofe’s pet theory that climate change is an elaborate hoax would be hilarious, if only he weren’t an elected representative of the American people,” Suckling said. “If he were, say, a performance artist, it’d be really funny. But sadly he has the power to affect U.S. climate policy. The United States has a chance — and a duty — to take significant steps to slow the climate crisis, and a brief window of time before it’s too late for us to do so. Deniers like Inhofe, in positions of leadership, are dooming future generations of people to a far more difficult world.”

More than 15,000 people cast their votes in this year’s Rubber Dodo contest. Other official nominees were Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who put a rider on a must-pass bill that stripped Endangered Species Act protection from wolves, and Shell Oil, a company bound and determined to pursue dangerous oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

Background on the Dodo
In 1598, Dutch sailors landing on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius discovered a flightless, three-foot-tall, extraordinarily friendly bird. Its original scientific name was Didus ineptus. (Contemporary scientists use the less defamatory Raphus cucullatus.) To the rest of the world, it’s the dodo — the most famous extinct species on Earth. It evolved over millions of years with no natural predators and eventually lost the ability to fly, becoming a land-based consumer of fruits, nuts and berries. Having never known predators, it showed no fear of humans or the menagerie of animals accompanying them to Mauritius.

Its trusting nature led to its rapid extinction. By 1681 the dodo was extinct, having been hunted and outcompeted by humans, dogs, cats, rats, macaques and pigs. Humans logged its forest cover while pigs uprooted and ate much of the understory vegetation.

The origin of the name dodo is unclear. It likely came from the Dutch word dodoor, meaning “sluggard,” the Portuguese word doudo, meaning “fool” or “crazy,” or the Dutch word dodaars meaning “plump-arse” (that nation’s name for the little grebe).

The dodo’s reputation as a foolish, ungainly bird derives in part from its friendly naiveté and the very plump captives that were taken on tour across Europe. The animal’s reputation was cemented with the 1865 publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Based on skeleton reconstructions and the discovery of early drawings, scientists now believe that the dodo was a much sleeker animal than commonly portrayed. The rotund European exhibitions were accidentally produced by overfeeding captive birds.

Bob Berwyn is Editor of the Summit County Citizens Voice. This piece was originally published at the Summit Voice and was reprinted with permission.

by Daphne Wysham

Sandy is like a horror film we can’t stop watching: And this “Frankenstorm,” coming right on Halloween, is giving us the best of the worst of storms.

We are glued to the set, knowing exactly what comes next: The weathercasters wade into thigh-deep water; they stand at the ocean’s edge, buffeted by high winds; they shout into the microphone…. It is as if the whole thing is choreographed, like some archetypal play being enacted before our eyes for the one-thousandth time.

We have come to expect the endless parade of men (and they are largely men): mayors, governors, presidents, military leaders, all looking manly, in control, surrounded by more men, looking on, somberly, from behind. What they say is less important (we already know the advice, but, like children, must be told again and again: “Things are bad;” “Don’t take any risks;” “Stay off the roads”) than how they say it, and what the optics are: Does he look presidential? Is he a man in charge? How calm does he sound in the face of catastrophe? We need that “father figure,” it seems, when times are tough. And our media and our politicians willingly oblige.

We are so good at this, in America, so good at responding to the crisis. We cheer on our National Guard, our Coast Guard, our everyday heroes, and then, when the danger has passed, when the tide recedes, we congratulate ourselves and them by digging deep into our pockets and sending money to the Red Cross and the homeless shelters, saluting our men and women in uniform, as though this, and this alone, were the price of admission.

And yet…we are fooling ourselves, again and again, just as our children do every Halloween. This Frankenstorm, can we stop fooling ourselves? Our planet desperately needs us to act like adults and get beyond [just] responding to one storm after another, as though each one were a unique shock, and not related to an overall climate crisis of enormous proportions.

We need our political leaders and weather-casters to end the silence on climate change, to tell us the truth: That these storms will only grow more intense as our oceans warm and the Arctic melts. And we need to start to think long-term, to start claiming responsibility and not blame Mother Nature for our plight. Climate change is upon us, folks, and if this is what a 1 Degree Celsius rise looks like, imagine what a 2, 3, or 4 degree rise looks like.

For leadership, we may have to look beyond our borders, to the Danes or the Germans: They have taken their blinders off, looked around, taken stock of who owns most of the oil and gas in the world, carefully reviewed what Japan is suffering in the wake of Fukushima’s multiple nuclear meltdowns, and both countries have made a firm commitment to going both fossil-fuel-free and nuclear-free. These countries are committed to true energy independence–not the short-lived kind that results from trading one poisonous addiction for another. It is a long slog. Their path does not involve instant gratification nor feel-good heroics. It involves tinkering with different policies–such as Germany’s feed-in tariff and Denmark’s multi-decadal experimentation with wind. It involves committing hundreds of billions of dollars to solving a problem that will ultimately save these countries and their people hundreds of billions of dollars, while saving millions of lives around the world.

There are few heroes in these national dramas. There are plenty of ordinary people, including women, thinking of their children, their grandchildren, and of children on the other side of the planet, understanding that the energy commitments we make today affect the “Frankenstorms” our children will suffer tomorrow.

Can we grow up and out of scaring ourselves to death? Can we move into a long-term push toward the kind of energy future that will not bring real terror to millions around the world? Or will we just put on the costume of Superman and pretend we have saved [Metropolis] yet again while Frankenstorm 2.0 waits around the corner?

Daphne Wysham is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and is the founder and co-director of the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. This piece was originally published at IPS and was excerpted with permission.

by Jackie Weidman

BP, one of the Big Five oil companies, announced its 2012 third-quarter profits this morning. The company reported earnings of $5.4 billion — three percent higher than last year.  This brings the company’s 2012 profits to $9.7 billion in the first nine months of the year.

Below is a glimpse at where BP spends its billions of dollars in profits:

– BP has already spent $6.9 million lobbying Congress this year, according to the latest Federal Election Commission figures. Since 2011, BP spent almost $15 million on lobbying Congress.
– BP has $16 billion in cash reserves.
– BP has contributed close to $300,000 to federal candidate campaigns in the 2012 election cycle. Republican candidates received 60 percent of these contributions.
– Despite higher profits this quarter, BP’s oil production is 4 percent lower than this time last year (1.15 million barrels of net liquids per day vs. 1.19 million barrels per day for the 3^rd quarter of 2011)

Excess oil from the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico washed onto Louisiana shores in the wake of Hurricane Isaac this past September. Tar clumps formed from oil were found on several beaches. The U.S, Coast Guard reported that oil-soaked pelicans and other wildlife were also found on the Louisiana coast. An estimated 1 million barrels of oil remain in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the spill.

ExxonMobil and Shell are the next of the Big Five companies to release third-quarter profits on Thursday November 1, 2012.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has a $14.3 billion budget to coordinate the national response to disaster situations like Hurricane Sandy. Should the sequester take effect, the White House estimates that the agency would lose about $878 million, largely from programs that provide direct relief to disaster victims. [Washington Post]

Hurricane Sandy’s economic toll is poised to exceed $20 billion after the biggest Atlantic storm slammed into the Eastern U.S., damaging homes and offices and flooding subways in America’s most populated city. [Bloomberg]

Hurricane Sandy seems straight out of a Hollywood apocalyptic blockbuster. But a confluence of environmental and topographical characteristics helps explain its vast size, slow progress, storm surge and multiple methods of wreaking havoc on the coast and deep inland, scientists say. [Los Angeles Times]

With the last hurricane to directly hit New York City dating back to the 1800’s, residents have so far lacked the impetus to demand concrete strategies for dealing with the potential devastation to housing, the subway system and the electrical infrastructure from a major modern-day storm. [New York Times]

The head of the nation’s largest labor federation blasted GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for pandering to coal country, saying President Obama would better support miners’ rights and jobs. [The Hill]

The warning is ominous — climate change and global warming will make vector-borne diseases like dengue and malaria – already causing havoc in the country more lethal. [Economic Times]

Renewable energy capacity will overtake nuclear power in the UK by 2018, if current rates of growth continue, and will provide enough power for one in 10 British homes by 2015, according to new research. [Guardian]

Parts of two nuclear power plant were shut down late Monday and early Tuesday, while another plant – the nation’s oldest – was put on alert after waters from Superstorm Sandy rose 6 feet above sea level. [Associated Press]

The production of renewable energies in Germany is expected to grow faster than the government’s forecast and account for almost half of the country’s electricity within a decade, a top official said Monday. [Business Insider]