Policy

Climate movement across movements

Patrick Bond, teleSUR, March 27, 2015

Will a “climate movement across the movements” produce Seattle-style shutdowns or a Paris cul de sac?

TUNIS — Looming ahead in eight months’ time is another Conference of Polluters, or COP (technically, the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). The last twenty did zilch to save us from climate catastrophe. Judging by early rough drafts of the Paris COP21 agreement recently leaked, another UN fiasco is inevitable.

US oil pipeline industry quietly building network that 'dwarfs Keystone'

Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams, March 16, 2015

Despite public opposition that has so far blocked the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, the fossil fuels industry has successfully—and quietly—expanded the nation's domestic oil network by installing thousands of miles of pipeline across the country, according to new reporting by the Associated Press.

Building people power before the Paris climate summit

Jeremy Brecher, Waging Nonviolence, March 12, 2015

Since international climate negotiations began a quarter of a century ago, annual greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 60 percent. As we approach yet another climate summit this November in Paris, the question for the climate protection movement is not just, can some kind of agreement be reached, but how can we reverse the continuing climate catastrophe over the next quarter-century?

Gender equality and earth's future

Mary Robinson, Christiana Figueres, Amina J. Mohammed, Project Syndicate, March 9, 2015

NEW YORK – Twenty years ago, the adoption by 189 governments of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action marked a turning point in the history of women's rights. This progressive blueprint remains a powerful source of inspiration in the effort to realize equal opportunities for women and girls.

The Paris climate talks and the failure of states

Gabriel Levy, The Bullet, March 4, 2015

The officials in charge of the United Nations climate talks say that no deal will be done in Paris in December (COP21) to avoid dangerous global warming.

Heard about the FBI tracking of Keystone XL activists? It's worse than you thought.

Adam Federman, Earth Island Journal, March 1, 2015

The energy industry is now firmly hitched to the national security state.

Polluting politics: Koch Industries and others spend millions to gut Clean Water Act protections

Anastasia Pantsios, EcoWatch, February 28, 2015

Americans like the Clean Water Act (CWA), which was passed in 1972 to clean up the country’s waterways polluted by decades of industrialization and weak regulation, because they like having access to safe drinking water as well as clean water for activities like swimming, boating and fishing. It seems like a no-brainer.

Company whose train had exploded had spent millions on lobbying, campaign contributions

Andy Szal, Chem.Info, February 22, 2015

The railroad company whose train triggered a massive explosion Monday in West Virginia had spent millions lobbying against rail oversight legislation in Congress, according to a report.

Numbers from the Washington, D.C. research group Center for Responsive Politics indicated Florida-based CSX Corp. had spent more than $56 million lobbying members of Congress since 1998, with its largest lobbying expenditures coinciding with debate over legislation to fund the Surface Transportation Board in 2009.

Syriza can show "another energy is possible"

Sean Sweeney, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, February 19, 2015

During its first days in office, Syriza has taken actions that suggest it is willing to confront the EU’s neoliberal approach to energy and to embark on a new course. New Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has also stated his government will restore collective bargaining agreements and stop 300,000 planned layoffs.

Will the trans-Pacific trade pact deepen our climate change nightmare?

Alison Rose Levy, Alter Net, February 14, 2015

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke recently at the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington DC, she said that if she had to pick one case to undo, her choice would be the 2010 Citizens United ruling. Two years after that decision, one poll found that 62% of Americans also opposed it. Among progressives, there is even broader consensus that it represented a sea change for democracy.

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