Youths file federal climate change lawsuit

Federal Courthouse Eugene, Oregon

A group of 21 youths — several of them from Eugene — today filed a lawsuit against the federal government, claiming that it is violating their constitutional rights by promoting the development and use of fossil fuels.

The plaintiffs are seeking a court order requiring President Obama to immediately implement a national plan to decrease atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to a safe level.

The suit was filed with support of two Eugene groups, Our Children’s Trust and Wild Earth Advocates. A case summary issued by Our Children’s Trust states that the lawsuit “will put indisputable science about climate change squarely in front of the federal judiciary.”

Read more at The Register Guard

Bernie Sanders wants to break our dependence on fossil fuel

"One of my top priorities as US president will be to work with India, other countries, in breaking our dependence on fossil fuel," Bernie Sanders said. 

"I think the evidence is also out there that not only is climate change already causing devastating problems to this planet in terms of drought and flooding and extreme weather disturbances, if we do not transform our energy system, the situation will only become much worse, and obviously, it will impact human health," Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate said. 

"So one of my top priorities as president of the United States will be to have this country lead the world, work with China or India or Russia, other countries, in breaking our dependence on fossil fuel and moving to energy efficiency and wind, solar, geothermal and other," Sanders said during a conference call. 

Read more at:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/48444017.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst .. 

The costs of climate change.

Plant Scherer, a coal-burning generator in Juliette, Ga., is ranked as the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the nation. (AP)

Writing in Sunday’s AJC, Dan Chapman and Greg Bluestein take a look at the climate-induced changes already underway along the Georgia coast and at the continuing sense of denial by the state’s political leadership:

“Brian Robinson, a spokesman for Gov. Nathan Deal, wouldn’t answer questions about the governor’s views on climate change. U.S. Sen. David Perdue, a Republican who lives on Sea Island, a barrier island threatened by rising seas, said “the scientific community is not in total agreement about whether mankind has been a contributing factor.”

As they report, a tidal gauge off Fort Pulaski near Tybee Island documents a sea-level rise of 11 inches over the past 80 years, with the pace accelerating since the 1990s. Should that trend continue, as scientists warn it will without effective action, most of the state’s barrier islands will disappear in the next century, as will much of the sea marsh that makes our coastal region so beautiful and so ecologically diverse and productive.

It’s true that, as Perdue puts it, “the scientific community is not in total agreement” about mankind’s role in those changes. However, “total agreement” strikes me as a peculiar standard for taking action. In most other policy areas, the overwhelming consensus of the acknowledged experts, augmented by the fact that since the 1980s that expert opinion has been validated by visible changes in the field, would be enough to push policymakers to take action, particularly when the potential consequences of doing nothing are so profound.

That’s certainly been the approach taken by the Obama administration. Under its new climate-change plan released earlier this month, Georgia will be required to take action by reducing carbon emissions from power plants by 25 percent over the next 15 years.

Read more at Jay Bookman's Blog

Climate Change Nightmares Are Already Here

Walruses, like these in Alaska, are being forced ashore in record numbers. Corey Accardo/NOAA/AP

Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state's Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire for the first time in living memory. London reached 98 degrees Fahrenheit during the hottest July day ever recorded in the U.K.; The Guardian briefly had to pause its live blog of the heat wave because its computer servers overheated. In California, suffering from its worst drought in a millennium, a 50-acre brush fire swelled seventyfold in a matter of hours, jumping across the I-15 freeway during rush-hour traffic. Then, a few days later, the region was pounded by intense, virtually unheard-of summer rains. Puerto Rico is under its strictest water rationing in history as a monster El Niño forms in the tropical Pacific Ocean, shifting weather patterns worldwide.
On July 20th, James Hansen, the former NASA climatologist who brought climate change to the public's attention in the summer of 1988, issued a bombshell: He and a team of climate scientists had identified a newly important feedback mechanism off the coast of Antarctica that suggests mean sea levels could rise 10 times faster than previously predicted.

The authors included this chilling warning: If emissions aren't cut, "We conclude that multi-meter sea-level rise would become practically unavoidable. Social disruption and economic consequences of such large sea-level rise could be devastating. It is not difficult to imagine that conflicts arising from forced migrations and economic collapse might make the planet ungovernable, threatening the fabric of civilization."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-point-of-no-return-climate-change-nightmares-are-already-here-20150805#ixzz3i392EwoY