Attention to the Unseen

The New York Times reports: President Trump has rolled back environmental regulations, pulled the United States out of the Paris climate accord, brushed aside dire predictions about the effects of climate change, and turned the term “global warming” into a punch line rather than a prognosis. Now, after two years spent unraveling the policies of his predecessors, Mr. Trump and his political appointees are launching a new assault. In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback…

Read More Read More

Joe Romm reports: A new survey finds Republicans under 40 support a carbon tax 7-to-1. And a remarkable 85% of Republican millennials are concerned that “the current Republican position on climate change is hurting the party with younger voters.” But what makes this result so striking is that the survey was conducted by Frank Luntz, a top GOP strategist and pollster. Luntz wrote an infamous memo in 2002 detailing the exact words conservatives should use if they want to sound…

Read More Read More

Reuters reports: The rise of the Greens, the “Greta effect” of a young Swedish climate activist and the entry of French President Emmanuel Macron’s party into the European Parliament are likely to result in a more defensive and climate-oriented EU trade policy. Sunday’s European election saw the traditional conservative and socialist parties that have long run the European Union lose dozens of seats each. Between them, they can no longer form a majority, making them more reliant to pass European…

Read More Read More

Michael Bäcklund writes: The Israeli school strike branch had a very successful strike on Tuesday, which was three times bigger than the last one in March. It was the first sitting day of the new parliament. We had over 500 students marching and shouting slogans in front of the prestigious Knesset in Jerusalem. We had Arab Palestinians and Jewish Israelis participating together. We have multiplied our following on social media and we have started to plan social media campaign with…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: Green parties have swept to their strongest ever showing in European elections, boosting their tally of MEPs to a projected 71 compared with 52 last time. The result gives them every chance of becoming kingmakers in a newly fragmented parliament. “Thank you so much for your trust in us Greens,” a delighted Ska Keller, one of the European Greens’ two lead candidates for the post of European commission president, told a press conference in Brussels. “This is…

Read More Read More

Greta Thunberg and 46 youth activists write: Tomorrow, schoolchildren and students will be out on the streets again, in huge numbers, in 150 countries, at over 4,000 events, demanding that governments immediately provide a safe pathway to stay within 1.5C of global heating. We spent weeks and months preparing for this day. We spent uncountable hours organising and mobilising when we could have just hung out with our friends or studied for school. We don’t feel like we have a…

Read More Read More

Peter Fiekowsky writes: In early February, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced the Green New Deal (GND), a sweeping resolution that addresses the dual challenges of income inequality and climate change, and the first government policy document aimed at curbing climate change as one of its goals. This is significant. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released in October 2018 stated that there will have to be some removal of carbon dioxide…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: The polls said this would be Australia’s climate change election, when voters confronted harsh reality and elected leaders who would tackle the problem. And in some districts, it was true: Tony Abbott, the former prime minister who stymied climate policy for years, lost to an independent who campaigned on the issue. A few other new candidates prioritizing climate change also won. But over all, Australians shrugged off the warming seas killing the Great Barrier Reef…

Read More Read More

John Vidal writes: Last week a small campaign group in the staunchly conservative town of Shrewsbury called a public meeting about climate change. The organisers were delighted when 150 people turned up. Even they were surprised, though, when people unanimously said they were prepared to give up flying, change their boilers and cars, eat less meat and even overthrow capitalism to get a grip on climate change. But this was just a straw in the political wind whipping through middle…

Read More Read More