Attention to the Unseen

Dan Zak reports: The man in the pulpit had the posture of a preacher who had not tired of tribulation. “Half of all the living species on this planet will disappear on our watch when we’re assigned responsibility,” the man said, voice starting to thunder. “How do we take on board the meaning of that?” The church was hot. The choir members fanned themselves with their programs, which read “A Moral Call to Action on the Climate Crisis.” The man…

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ClimateWire reports: A climate science advisory panel disbanded by the Trump administration released a report today outlining the steps communities can take to prepare for climate change. In 2017, the Trump administration dissolved the federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment. Its purpose was to translate climate science in the National Climate Assessment into usable guidance for local governments and private companies. The panel was reconstituted by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) and includes members from academia,…

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Michael Mann and Bob Ward write: Americans should not be fooled by the Stalinist tactics being used by the White House to try to discredit the findings of mainstream climate science. The Trump administration has already purged information about climate change from government websites, gagged federal experts and attempted to end funding for climate change programmes. Now a group of hardcore climate change deniers and contrarians linked to the administration is organising a petition in support of a new panel…

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Chris Cillizza writes: On the day that the Senate rejected — by a vote of 0-57 — the broad strokes of the so-called “Green New Deal,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D), one of the leading voices for the legislation, went off on those who mock the effort as nothing more than an elitist fantasy. It began when Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy (R) introduced an amendment in a meeting of the Financial Services Committee that would force a homelessness bill…

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Sean McElwee writes: Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, brought the Green New Deal to a vote in the Senate on Tuesday. He defeated consideration of the plan 57-0, winning over three Democratic senators and one independent who caucuses with the Democrats. The rest of the Democratic caucus voted “present,” in an attempt to confound Mr. McConnell’s strategy, which was to tie down the Democratic Party to an ambitious proposal from its progressive wing. In his mind, this would clearly…

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Kate Aronoff writes: For Republicans, the climate crisis is a joke. On Tuesday in the Senate, Mike Lee, a Republican senator for Utah, spent several minutes on the floor showing pictures of Luke Skywalker on Hoth, giant seahorses and Ronald Reagan shooting off a machine gun whilst mounted atop a dinosaur. This was his bid to “treat the Green New Deal”, which came up for a vote in that body on Tuesday, “with the seriousness it deserves”. For a growing…

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Inside Climate News reports: Before U.S. lawmakers have even come up with the details of the Green New Deal, they’re facing a vote on it Tuesday in the Senate. It’s a procedural vote—a preemptive roll call engineered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in an attempt to embarrass the Democrats and tamp down talk of climate policy. Democrats, in turn, will try to use the occasion to highlight the GOP’s inaction on climate change. That sets the stage…

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National Observer reports: In the three years since world leaders signed the Paris Agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s five largest oil and gas companies have spent more than $1 billion on misleading branding and lobbying related to climate change, according to a new report. While the oil majors — ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP and Total — have publicly supported carbon pricing and other efforts to mitigate climate change, they have also lobbied against effective policy,…

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Landry Ninteretse writes: As Africa climate week unfurls in Ghana, the countries of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe count the costs of Cyclone Idai, which ripped through villages and towns, taking hundreds of lives and leaving a trail of destruction. For a continent already racked by the effects of the climate crisis, Idai is another chilling reminder of the destructive power of the kind of storms that will become more common as the world warms up. The cyclone made landfall on…

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