China's Response to Climate Report

According to the Scotsman, China's chief environmental scientist says that China lacks the technology to lower greenhouse gas emissions and wants larger, more developed nations to take the lead.

China is the #1 producer and consumer of coal, and is expected to pass the US as the #1 source of greenhouse gases in the next 10 years.

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Canadian Jewish Community Revives Environmental Stewardship

A recent symposium for members of the Jewish community held in Halifax featured keynote speaker Richard Zurawski, a meteorologist and scientist; Stephen King, Halifax’s head of resource management; Daisy Kidston, education programmer with Clean Nova Scotia; and Cantor Ari Isenberg of Halifax’s Shaar Shalom Synagogue to speak on global warming issues, according to an article in the Canadian Jewish News.

Isenberg stressed that Jews must revert back to the respect for the environment noted in several parts of the Torah and practised during the harvest festivals of Sukkot, Shavuot and Pesach.
He said the celebration of Tu b’Shvat, the new year of the trees and agriculture, reminds Jews of the spiritual lesson of the tree – that it’s not merely a plant that produces fruit and shade, but a symbol of life and an upright person.
“Tu b’Shvat reminds us of our responsibility [to the environment], but we have drifted and become abusive to it,” he said.

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Tourism and Climate Change

According to the Travel Daily News,

The Tourism Sector should be brought to the table in the global response to Climate Change, said UNWTO Secretary-General Francesco Frangialli, addressing the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) Governing Council in Nairobi, Kenya. Mr. Frangialli announced a work programme which will culminate in two major conferences in 2007 – a preparatory sectoral summit in Davos, Switzerland, in September, supported by the Swiss Federal Government, and a Global Ministerial meeting in London, co-organized with the UK Government and World Travel Market, in November.These meetings will intensify the follow up from the UNWTO Summit on Climate Change and Tourism, held in 2003 in Tunisia, which resulted in the Djerba Declaration and plan of action.

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Yale Divinity Event Feb. 7, 2007, 4 PM

Scholars from the Yale Divinity School, Yale School of Forestry and the YaleInterdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, join together to discuss:

"Religious and Ethical Responses to Environmental Issues"

WEDNESDAY, February 7, 4:00 PM

Yale Divinity School Common Room

Light Refreshments to follow

As the issue of global climate change has drastically altered political, social and personal agendas around the world, creative ways of addressing this, and related environmental issues, have emerged. The four panelists - Professor Stephen Kellert (FES), Professor Willis Jenkins (YDS), Professor Mary Evelyn Tucker and Professor John Grim (Bioethicist in Residence at Yale),with moderator Professor Margaret Farley (YDS) - will discuss the ways in which religion, spirituality, and ethics have and will contribute to the environmentalmovement and the fostering of human-nature relationships.Come join us for an exciting and historic opportunity to explore therelationship between religion, ethics, and environmentalism, with five of Yale's most prominent voices on the topic.

We look forward to welcoming you,

Yale Earth Care Committee, YDS

People of Faith Take Environmental Lead

In Minnesota, as in other states, people of faith are taking the lead in grappling with environmental issues, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

"Global warming is harming God's creation and God's people," said Kendra Brodin of the Plymouth Center for Progressive Christian Faith at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. "It's wreaking havoc on the land and on human beings who are losing homes, jobs, safety, even their lives in storms, floods, droughts and heat waves."

This week, Archbishop Harry Flynn of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and Bishop Craig Johnson of the Minneapolis synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America joined polar explorer Will Steger and Minnesota scientists at the Capitol, where they called for action against pollution that can cause global warming.

But can religious people really make a difference on this most complex of issues?

Just watch us, movement leaders say.

N.B. The Director of IREJN is a Minnesota native and the Saint Paul is the home of this blogger's favorite coffee place and Vietnamese restaurant.

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It's Not Easy Preaching Green

That's why the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Ministries offers these helpful tips and sample sermons. If you're thinking of tackling climate change in a sermon, (or another environmental issue), this is a good place to start.

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Cash for Climate Deniers?

Have you got academic credentials? Looking to make some serious change? Then you may already be a winner. The American Enterprise Institute has offered $10,000 to academics willing to contribute to a book on climate change policy, according to the San Jose Mecury News.

Greenpeace spokeswoman Jane Kochersperger, who noted that AEI has received funding from Exxon Mobil in recent years, said Sunday that the think tank ``has clearly hit a new low . . . when it's throwing out cash awards under the rubric of `reason' to create confusion on the status of climate science. Americans are still suffering the impacts of Hurricane Katrina, and it's clearly time for policy-makers on both sides of the aisle to take substantive action on global warming and ignore Exxon Mobil's disinformation campaign via climate skeptics.''

But AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green, one of two researchers who has sought to commission the critiques, said in an interview that his group is examining the policy debate on global warming, not the science.
``It's completely policy-oriented,'' said Green, adding that one-third of the academics AEI solicited for the project are interested in participating. ``Somebody wants to distort this.''


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When Fund Managers Attack

According to a column by Brett Arends, Jeremy Grantham, perhaps best know as the investment manager of US Vice President Richard Cheney, asks "What were we thinking?' in a four-page attack on U.S. energy policy mailed last week to all his clients, including the vice president.

Titled "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data," Grantham asserts, "Successive U.S. administrations have taken little interest in either oil substitution or climate change," he writes, "and the current one has even seemed to have a vested interest in the idea that the science of climate change is uncertain."

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Climate Change Skeptics Unite

No, that is not a call to arms, but a statement about the reaction by (some) climate change skeptics to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report that calls the evidence of Global Warming "unequivocal."

Once again, here is a collection of articles from the blog Gristmill dealing with the various arguments of climate change skeptics.

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46 Nations Call for World Climate Organization

Forty-five nations have joined France in calling for the formation of an international body to to slow climate change, possibly with powers to punish violators of international agreements. Notably absent from these calls are the United States (biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions) and China and India, two developing nations on a course to become big polluters like the US.
Read more at the News Review Online.
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Climate Change: What are People Saying

CNN has posted emails by readers responding to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. It is a great placeto check out the state of the "marketplace of ideas" on the subject.
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Climate Change Moral Issue

David Lamarre-Vincent, executive director of the New Hampshire Council of Churches, called climate change a moral issue in an editorial in the Concord Monitor.

He says, "the problem for most moderate Christians is not intellectual denial about the evidence of climate. It is moral sloth, the lack of moral stewardship. With each new day the evidence is even clearer, and the Bible's pro-environment message remains unchanged."

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Religious Response to Climate Report

The Lakeland, Florida Ledger has an editorial by Tom Palmer relating his thoughts after attending the Florida Center for Science and Religion's series of lectures titled "Stewardship and the Environment."

During the talks the speakers displayed photos of Earth from space, making it clear that it is the only place able to sustain life for billions of miles around.

I was reminded of the gospel song with the refrain, "Oh, sinner man, where ya gonna run to?"

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World Responds to Climate Report

While the Bush Administration endorsed the UN Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change report released February 2, they rejected demands for mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, the administration said President Bush would rely on his plans to develop more renewable fuel and require more efficient vehicles, according to the Mecury News.

Meanwhile, according the Australian publication The Age, Prime Minister John Howard has used the report to push his nuclear plan.

And in France, President Chirac called for "a revolution," according to the Canadian publication The Gazette.
“Faced with this emergency, the time for half measures is finished,” Chirac said at the opening session of an international conference on the environment.
“It is time for a revolution,” the French president added. “A new industrial revolution, that of sustainable development, lies before us.”
Chirac proposed that this revolution would be led by transforming the existing United Nations Environment Program into a new United Nations Environment Organization, with a political mandate to propose common efforts to deal with climate change.
“We must build global governance for the environment,” Chirac said. “Multilateralism is the key to sustainable development.”
Sir Nicolas Stern, a British expert on climate change applauded Chirac's proposal, saying, “a global problem requires a global response.”

According to the Jackson Hole Star Tribune from an AP report,

Officials in Indonesia and the Maldives, two archipelagos threatened by rising sea levels, said they feared for the future of their lands. Others said the threat was not simply to the environment, but to international peace, prosperity and development.South Africa's Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said failure to act would be "indefensible."

India, which along with China is developing rapidly with a quickly-expanding population, faces the challenge of how to develop economically without ruining its environment. A senior ecology official noted that the climate change panel is "a network of scientists" that cannot set policy."This is a group of climate experts attempting to reach a scientific consensus. It doesn't commit governments to any course of action," said the official, Pradipto Ghosh, of India's Ministry of Environment and Forests.

But beyond the responses of world leaders, perhaps the most eloquent response to this report in the AP article came from a mother in Spain.

"I am worried for him more than anything," said Maite Leon, gesturing toward her 6-month-old. "By myself I cannot do anything, but if we each do our little bit, maybe we can change things. We have to do it all together."

On the NPR radio program Talk of the Nation, several segments dealt with energy alternatives.
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No Stopping Global Warming

The explosive UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is finally out and it is making headlines all over the world.
The Eiffel Tower is shown just before the 20,000 bulbs went out Thursday Feb. 1, 2007 at 7.55 p.m for five-minutes. The City of Light went dim when thousands of Parisians joined in a five-minutes "lights-out" campaign aimed at showing citizens concern over climate change. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) (AP) -- The Eiffel Tower's 20,000 sparkling bulbs went dark for five minutes Thursday night and the lights went out at the Colosseum in Rome and the Greek parliament in Athens in a demonstration of concern about climate change across the European continent.

Read the LA Times story on the report. (As a sidebar to the story, the LA Times has a graphic illustration about curbing greenhouse gases for registered users. Registration is free.)
Here are the main findings, as published by the AP:

THE CAUSE: Global warming is "very likely'' caused by man, the strongest conclusion to date.

THE OUTLOOK: Now that the world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level "would continue for centuries'' no matter how much humans control their pollution.

TEMPERATURE CHANGE: The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report.
However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

SEA LEVELS: The report projected rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.

HURRICANES: An increase in hurricane and tropical cyclone strength since 1970 "more likely than not'' can be attributed to man-made global warming. The scientists said global warming's connection varies with storms in different parts of the world, but that the storms that strike the Americas are global warming-influenced.

According to an article in the New York Times, (registration required)
''It is critical that we look at this report ... as a moment where the focus of attention will shift from whether climate change is linked to human activity, whether the science is sufficient, to what on earth are we going to do about it,'' said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the U.N. Environment Program.
''The public should not sit back and say 'There's nothing we can do','' Steiner said. ''Anyone who would continue to risk inaction on the basis of the evidence presented here will one day in the history books be considered irresponsible.''

Read related stories in the New York Times Environment section. (registration required.)

Meanwhile, Al Gore has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise awareness about global warming, according to the Chicago Tribune.
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Chirac to Bush: Sign Kyoto or Else!

French President Chirac has reportedly warned US President Bush that the US must sign on to the Kyoto Protocol and the successor agreement (Kyoto expires in 2012), or face paying carbon taxes, according to the International Herald Tribune.

Chirac repeated his call for the creation of a global environment organization that would centralize about 500 international agreements on the environment and 18 international bodies and departments whose remit is environmental.

"The system is not efficient; it's a fragmented system," Chirac said. "We must have a UNOE — a UN organization for the environment — which would in some sense be the environmental conscience of the world and which would be capable of coordinated action."

He said such an organization would have the power to impose sanctions on member states and could be modeled on the World Health Organization.

Chirac spoke as scientists from around the world gathered in Paris to discuss an authoritative international report on climate change, portions of which will be released on Friday.

Critics of Chirac say that despite his environmental rhetoric, his record as president is far from green. Chirac angered environmentalists when he conducted nuclear tests in a Pacific atoll within months of coming into office in 1995. He has been a loyal ally of French farmers and their highly polluting sector, blocking several proposed Europewide reforms. Most recently, Brussels rejected a French national plan for allocating carbon-emission credits to businesses for being too generous.

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It's Hip to Be Green

Conspicuous consumption is so, like, 2006. Celebrities and scientists are teaming up in an effort to make green the new black. At Global Cool, you can join their efforts to fight global warming in exchange for a chance to see exclusive videos from indie rockers like the Scissor Sisters. They are also helping to promote green dating sites like green singles.

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White House: (Mis)leaders on Climate Change

According to an article in today's Chicago Tribune, US Congressional Representative Henry Waxman (D, Calif.) accused the Bush Administration of trying to "mislead the public by injecting doubt into the science of global warming."
In an article in today's New York Times, scientists testifying at a US Congressional hearing claimed that the results of their research about climate had been distorted or watered down.

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Lights Out Around the World

The Alliance for the Planet is calling on all citizens to create 5 minutes of electrical rest forthe planet on February 1, the day the new UN report on Climate Change is due to be released, in order to show leaders that global warming is a significant issue.

People all over the world are asked to turn off their lights and electrical appliances on the first of February 2007, between 1.55 pm and 2.00 pm in New York, 18.55 for London, and 19.55 for Paris, Bruxelles, and Italy. 1.55pm in Ottawa, 10.55am on the Pacific Coast of North America.

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Bush Administration on Climate: Dim the Sun

With his tongue planted firmly in his cheek, the author of the blog Balkinization comments on a report that the idea of interfering with sunlight should be included in the summary for policymakers in the upcoming report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (No, I am not making this up: Read the Sydney Morning Herald Article "US urges scientists to block out sun" to hear the Bush Administration's take on this.)

Read the full commentary here.

Friends Bob and Brian have also reminded me that the Bush Administration didn't originate this idea: It appeared on The Simpsons episode "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" as revealed in this excerpt of the episode transcript:

Smithers: Well, Sir, you've certainly vanquished all your enemies: the Elementary School, the local tavern, the old age home...you must be very proud.
Burns: [stuffing money into his wallet] No, not while my greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy. I call this enemy...the sun. [throws a switch; a control panel appears at his desk] [another button slides the floor off a model of Springfield] Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing...block it out! [another button raises a shield over the model town]
Smithers: Good God!--
Burns: Imagine it, Smithers: electrical lights and heaters running all day long!
Smithers: But Sir! Every plant and tree will die, owls will deafen us with incessant hooting...the town's sundial will be useless. I don't want any part of this project, it's unconscionably fiendish.
Burns: I will not suffer your insubordination. There has been a shocking decline in the quality and quantity of your toadying, Waylon. And you will fall into line, now!
Smithers: [pained] No...no, Monty, I won't. Not until you step back from the brink of insanity.
Burns: I'll do no such thing. You're fired!
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