TheGreenFront presents: This Day in Climate History (hat tip to Michael E. Mann) July 18, 1980: No Nukes, a documentary about the September 1979 concert and rally organized by Musicians United for Safe Energy in New York to raise awareness about the risks of nuclear power, is released in the United States. youtu.be/kPIs7GoHIS0 youtu.be/r0dj1CPfwL8 nytimes/movie/review?res=9D05E1DE1538F93BA25754C0A966948260 July 18, 1996: The Washington Post reports: The Clinton administration announced yesterday that it is seeking the adoption of a binding agreement requiring the worlds industrial nations to reduce the levels of industrial emissions that are contributing to global warming. Undersecretary of State Timothy E. Wirth, appearing at an international conference on climate change in Geneva, outlined a proposal that would establish goals for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases -- pollutants from smokestacks and tailpipes that scientists have identified as a major contributor to global warming -- and would require industrial nations to meet those goals. The details of the plan should be worked out by the end of next year, Wirth said. The proposal represents a departure from current administration policy, which relies on factories and utilities to introduce voluntary measures to cut overall emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. If you look at where weve gotten so far, were going to miss those targets, Wirth said in a telephone interview from Geneva. It seems to us that a voluntary approach doesnt do it. Of the leading signatories of the 1992 Climate Change Treaty, which established the target emissions-reduction levels, only Great Britain and Germany are expected to meet the goals by 2000. The United States, the worlds largest consumer of fossil fuels, is expected to reach only 7 to 10 percent above the 1990 target at the end of the century, Wirth said. The U.S. proposal is designed as an endorsement of a major report released late last year by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The U.N.-appointed body of scientists concluded that there is significant evidence Earths temperatures are rising and that greenhouse emissions caused by human activity are a key contributor to the increase. In recent weeks, a coalition of U.S industries and oil producing nations has sought to raise questions about the IPCC report, saying it was based on faulty or incomplete science. The coalition has used the ongoing climate change conference in Geneva, a gathering of the 150 nations that signed the agreement, to advance its campaign against the IPCC. In his speech yesterday, Wirth defended the IPCC conclusions. We are not swayed by and strongly object to the recent allegations about the IPCC conclusions, Wirth told the gathering. The science calls on us to take urgent action; the IPCC report is the best science we have, and we should use it. https://secure.pqarchiver/washingtonpost/doc/307909287.html?FMT=FT&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jul+18%2C+1996&author=Lee%2C+Gary&desc=U.S.+Urges+Binding+Accord+on+Global+Warming July 18, 2002: USA Today reports: Democratic attorneys general from 11 states accused the Bush administration Wednesday of ignoring global warming and favoring energy policies that will boost greenhouse gas emissions. White House spokesman Scott McClellan responded by saying the president was working on a bipartisan, commonsense approach to address climate change. In their letter to Bush, the attorneys general denounced the administrations climate change policy, arguing that states have been left to address a global problem with a patchwork of inconsistent regulations. They said Bush has failed to create a national plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles and power plants. usatoday30.usatoday/news/science/climate/2002-07-18-states-climate.htm July 18, 2005: The Washington Post reports: House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.) has demanded that another senior Republican, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Joe Barton (Tex.), call off his investigation of three scientists who have charted Earths rapid warming in recent decades. The unusual public tiff between two powerful GOP lawmakers highlights the sharp divide that drives the nations climate change debate. Barton, along with President Bush and many other House Republicans, opposes mandatory curbs on greenhouse gas emissions and questions the science underlying such efforts. Boehlert, who backs limits on carbon dioxide pollution, said he fears such attacks could chill future scientific inquiry. In a sharply worded letter sent last week, Boehlert called Bartons probe into the findings of Michael E. Mann, Raymond S. Bradley and Malcolm K. Hughes a misguided and illegitimate investigation. Mann will direct the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University as of next month, Bradley is a geosciences professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Hughes is a professor at the University of Arizonas Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. washingtonpost/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/17/AR2005071701056.html July 18, 2007: The Washington Post reports on a leaked list of the groups that met with the Cheney energy task force in 2001: The list of participants names and when they met with administration officials provides a clearer picture of the task forces priorities and bolsters previous reports that the review leaned heavily on oil and gas companies and on trade groups -- many of them big contributors to the Bush campaign and the Republican Party. But while it clears up much of the lingering uncertainty about who was granted access to present energy policy views to Cheneys staff, it does not entirely explain why the Bush administration fought so hard to keep it and other as-yet-unreleased internal memos secret. washingtonpost/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/17/AR2007071701987.html July 18, 2008: In one of his weirdest pieces, syndicated columnist Michael Gerson suggests that a lack of political consensus on climate action is due to the environmental movements scorn of Republicans, as opposed to the GOPs scorn of environmentalism. washingtonpost/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/17/AR2008071701841.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 July 18, 2013: • Gina McCarthy is confirmed as President Obamas second EPA administrator. m.washingtonpost/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/07/18/senate-confirms-gina-mccarthy-as-next-epa-administrator-in-59-to-40-vote/ • Progressive radio host Sam Seder interviews Rolling Stone writer Jeff Goddell about his piece in the July 4, 2013 edition of the magazine regarding the failure of Floridas political leadership to confront climate change. youtube/watch?v=L7Foq2kldzs rollingstone/politics/news/why-the-city-of-miami-is-doomed-to-drown-20130620?print=true July 18, 2014: The New York Times reports: While other states and critics of the Obama administration have howled about complying with its proposed rule slashing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, Minnesota has been reining in its utilities’ carbon pollution for decades — not painlessly, but without breaking much of a sweat, either. Today, Minnesota gets more of its power from wind than all but four other states, and the amount of coal burned at power plants has dropped by more than a third from its 2003 peak. And while electricity consumption per person has been slowly falling nationwide for the last five years, Minnesota’s decline is steeper than the average. nytimes/2014/07/18/us/politics/without-much-straining-minnesota-reins-in-its-utilities-carbon-emissions.html
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 09:03:53 +0000
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