John McCain and Sarah Palin had a cap and trade plank in their platform. (~47 min)
Recommended Books:
- Isabel Wilkerson
- Family Properties: history of redlining
- Kenneth Jackson: crabgrass fronteir
- Arnold Hersh, Making the Second Ghetto: the housing riots
- Tony Judt: Postwar Europe
- Timothy Snyder: Blood Lines
- Ira Katz Nelson: History of New Deal
- Robert Samuelson: Great American City
Climate: Will We Lose the Endgame?
It turns out that the geology of the region is bowl-shaped: beneath the glaciers the ground slopes downward, meaning that water can and is flooding underneath them. It is eating away at them from below and freeing them from the points where they were pinned to the ground. This water is warmer, because our oceans are steadily warming. This slow-motion collapse, which will occur over many decades, is “unstoppable” at this point, scientists say; it has “passed the point of no return.”
.. Indeed, by the time President Obama leaves office we will have passed Saudi Arabia and Russia as the largest oil and gas producer on the planet. We’re using less coal in our own power plants, but exporting more. Our actions have resulted in huge profits for oil and gas companies but have not been consonant with the emerging physics.
.. There, in the one country that has taken climate change seriously and done the work to change its energy infrastructure, a new record for renewable energy was set. On that afternoon Germany generated 74 percent of its electric needs from renewable sources.
Indigenous Alaskans Losing Homes and Fishing to Global Warming
A dog team prepares to begin the Iditarod. Warming temperatures have drastically changed the terrain for the annual race.
According to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, an estimated 86 percent of indigenous villages in Alaska will need to move within the next 50 years, at a cost of $200 to $500 million per village.
How Much Are the World’s Ecosystems Worth?
$142.7 trillion annually, according to one new estimate
Back in 1997, ecologist Robert Constanza and a team of researchers set out to quantify a seemingly unquantifiable abundance: the value, in dollars, of the world’s ecosystems.
.. In other words, deforestation and other damage we’ve inflicted on the natural world has wiped out $23 trillion a year in ecosystem services. To put that loss into perspective, consider that the gross domestic product of the United States is $16.2 trillion.