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Naomi Klein: Why Rich Countries Should Pay Reparations To Poor Countries For The Climate Crisis
Posted by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! on November 30, 2009 at 1:40 PM.

AMY GOODMAN: We turn to the best-selling author of The Shock Doctrine. Yes, independent journalist Naomi Klein joining us from Toronto, Canada to talk about the latest shocks to the economy and with the climate summit in Copenhagen just two weeks away, the coming together of a global movement for climate justice. She is just out with the 10th anniversary edition of her first book, the international bestseller No Logo. And her latest articles include "Climate Rage," for Rolling Stone Magazine, and "Copenhagen, Seattle Grows Up," for The Nation. Naomi Klein, Welcome to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with the issue of climate change and as you put it, climate rage. Tell us what is happening.

NAOMI KLEIN: That piece in Rolling Stone is looking at a growing demand for the repayment of climate debt. This is really a relatively new framing for the climate crisis and is becoming predominantly from the developing world, led by the government of Bolivia and other Latin American governments, and it has been joined by the coalition of least developed countries which are primarily in Africa. And essentially what they're saying is that the climate crisis as we know was created in the industrialized world. There is a direct correlation between industrialization (what we call development) and carbon emissions. In fact, 75 percent of the historical carbon emissions have been produced by only 20 percent of the world's population. Then we have this cruel geographical irony, which is that the effects of climate change our felt overwhelmingly in the developing world, and the parts of the world that are least responsible for creating the crisis. According to the World Bank, 75-80 of the effects of climate change are being felt in the developing world. So, you have this inverse relationship between cause and effect.

It is in this context that we see a growing movement from the developing countries that really are on the front lines of climate change, saying that the rich world that created the climate crisis owes them a debt, owes them a tangible reparations for the creation of this crisis. And those reparations should be paid in three forms. First through deep emissions cuts in the developed world, in the rich world. At least 40 percent below 1990 levels- this is a figure we have heard a lot. In addition to this, they are saying the rich world, the G-8 countries, the industrialized countries, should pay for the costs, the huge costs, that poor countries face in adapting to climate change. In addition to that, they’re also saying that they would like to leapfrog over the dirty energies, the fossil fuels that are fueling the climate crisis. But they point out that this is expensive and more expensive to shift to cleaner green technology than it is to develop with cheap, dirty fuels, which is the way we did in the rich world. So, they are saying we will change, but we don’t think we should have to pay this additional cost because of our problem that is not of our creation. Essentially the climate debt arguments is the “polluter pays” argument, which is a familiar argument to people in the United States, its a basic principle of jurisprudence. Another way of putting this is “you broke it, you bought it”.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk specifically about the countries that are raising these concerns and saying we shouldn’t have to pay. For example in Africa.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, the African Union, the coalition of African states, have been very clear that their primary demand out of Copenhagen are these deep emissions cuts and serious funding for adaptation to climate change. In eastern Africa right now, you have massive, you have serious droughts affecting millions of people. That is just one example of the kind of costs that are being incurred because of climate change already. So, we’re not talking about projecting into the future, some hypothetical future, we are talking about right now.

The main push, as I said, is actually coming from Bolivia. And Bolivia has an extraordinary climate negotiator, who I quote in the Rolling Stone piece, named Angelica Navarro, who I first met in Geneva. She was actually Bolivia’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization. She’s very clear, very tough, multilingual. It takes a lot of strength to stand up to the sort of pressure that a small country like Bolivia faces, whether at the World Trade Organization or now in the climate negotiations. And Angelica Navarro is really up to the task and she has been giving these really inspiring speeches, at summits in the lead up to Copenhagen. And has really been an galvanizing force for other developing countries.

But also, you know she is taking a demand that is coming from groups like the third World Network, Focus on the Global South, Jubilee South, coalitions of NGOs and climate justice groups, that have been making these demands on the outside of summits. But, what is interesting now is that these demands have entered inside the summit, they are at the negotiating table. And of course there is extraordinary resistance from the United States, and the European Union, Canada, Australia, to the idea that they shouldn’t just be giving money to the developing world to adapt to climate change, to deal with climate change, out of the goodness of our hearts, out of a sense of charity, but actually out of a legal obligation. This is a frightening concept as you can imagine.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein –

NAOMI KLEIN: The case for this is very strong, just to add.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon rejected widespread predictions that the summit in Copenhagen would be a failure.

BAN KI-MOON: Reading the latest news reports, however, you might think Copenhagen is destined to be a disappointment. That is wrong. To the contrary, we can, and I believe we can and we will reach a deal in Copenhagen that sets the stage for a binding treaty as soon as possible.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response to what Ban Ki-Moon is saying?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, the problem is the definition of success in Copenhagen has been lowered and lowered. A few months ago the definition of success in Copenhagen was countries agreeing to lower emissions, to levels that climate scientists were demanding. And the science is very clear that we really do need cuts of 40 percent below 1990 levels. The other definition of success was rich countries coming to the table with levels of funding for the developing world that once again meet the actual need. And we know what those types of figures are. The World Bank for instance has estimated the cost faced by developing countries to simply adapt to a changing climate dealing with droughts, dealing with increased flooding, is $100 billion a year. The cost of leapfrogging over those dirty energies, as I was saying earlier, that’s $500 billion-$600 billion a year. That’s a figure from independent UN researchers. But now what we hearing from the UN is there hope for Copenhagen is that they can get developed countries, rich countries, to agree to $10 billion a year.

So Amy, they will turn around and say that is a success, but it is simply not a success. So, the definition of success is just been pushed lower and lower. And this is really a troubling issue, and it an issue that a lot of environmentalists, climate justice activists are going to have to confront. Because, with an issue like climate change, urgency matters, maintaining a sense of urgency in the face of this crisis really matters. So, there is a danger, a very real danger of creating an illusion of doing something about the problem in Copenhagen. You know, having Obama go make another terrific speech which he is very good at, claiming it is a breakthrough that the U.S. is talking about emission cuts of between, now they are saying 14-20 below 2005 levels, which is just absurd, it has nothing to do with the science. And then this $10 billion a year figure, which once again there such a huge gap between that figure, and the lowest possible figure that we’re hearing from the World Bank which is $100 billion.

So, we have to be very careful about what is called success, because if you turn around and say “It is a success to have U.S. commit to 14 percent cut from 2005 levels,” and a throwing a couple billion dollars a year out of the goodness of their hearts while still recognizing historical responsibility, then you lose some of this crucial urgency, in confronting this crisis. So, I think is very important for the climate justice movement not to allow politicians to pass off the failure as success.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, the issue of President Obama going. He's going to be in the region, he's going to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. He also just recently was in Copenhagen. He was there to push for Chicago to get the Olympics. But, he has not said he is going, although 65 world leaders have. The top three carbon polluters, the U.S., China and India, have not said they will attend the meeting. Your response?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, you know John Kerry is publicly calling on Obama to go and I think now that that is happened, my assumption is Obama will go. I do not think Kerry would be saying this if it was not already pretty much decided that he will go. And I think this whole process of lowering the definition of success, so essentially failure can be passed off as success, is really, much of it is about creating conditions for Obama to go and claim that failure is success. So, frankly, I think he will go, but I do not think we should allow that to be a definition of success.

AMY GOODMAN: Now of course we will be there, “Democracy Now!” will be there in force, en masse, to cover what is happening for the two weeks. We will be covering what is happening at the summit and we will be covering what is happening in the streets. Naomi, it is the 10th anniversary of the Battle of Seattle, the protests in Seattle, Washington. I’m going to be there in a few days and there’s a lot of conversation about what that has meant. But, before we go to break and talk about this 10 years later, talks specifically about what is planned for Copenhagen in the streets.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, the latest column I wrote for The Nation is about this line that you can draw from Seattle to Copenhagen. I call the column “Seattle Grows Up,” because I think we're also seeing an evolution of a movement that can to world attention on the streets of Seattle. I think there has been a profound deepening of the coalition between groups that are primarily focused on poverty, on development, on debt, and environmental groups that have traditionally been focused on environmental issues. We saw that in Seattle, the beginnings of that coalition, with the famous "Teamsters and Turtles" coalition. Now we are seeing something much deeper.

It is this idea of climate debt that is bringing together groups, like I was saying, Jubilee South, like Action Aid, groups that have been mostly focused on anti-poverty and development and are now are seeing climate change as the single greatest barrier to human development around the world, but also seen the call for climate reparation as an opportunity for, to quote Angelica Navarro, Bolivia's ambassador to the climate negotiations, who I was talking about earlier, when she talks about the need for the developing world- developed world to pay our climate debt, she says if this happened and we would have a Marshall Plan for planet earth, which is a very exciting prospect because it means you have the opportunity to tackle simultaneously two of humanities most intransigent challenges, most intransigent problems, climate debt on the one hand, and inequality on the other. So, the bringing together of these two forces. That is what's going to be really, really exciting in Copenhagen. And a lot of the people, a lot of networks that grew out of Seattle are going to be activated in Copenhagen and have only grown stronger in recent years.

AMY GOODMAN: When we will come back, we’ll talk about ten years after the Battle of Seattle protest overall, its also the 10th anniversary of the release of your book, No Logo, I want to talk about "world branding."

...

... But Naomi, before we talk more specifically about Seattle, what about the specific actions planned for the streets of Copenhagen at the Climate Summit?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, you know, it's going to be a maze, Copenhagen. It's the largest environmental gathering in history, larger, even, than the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. So there's going to be a lot happening all around the city.

But, here is where I think it's really different from Seattle: in Seattle, the World Trade Organization was really the enemy for the activists in the street, and the goal was to shut down the meeting, both from the outside and inside. And you had this interesting coalition of activists in the street with that message, that "No WTO" message. And then you had coalitions of developing countries inside, emboldened by these protests in the street, emboldened to stand up to the pressure from the European Union and the United States. And ultimately it was that sort of "pincer" that collapsed the meeting.

In Copenhagen, it's a different dynamic, because the fact is that the people in the streets overwhelmingly support the mission of the meeting in Copenhagen. And, so, they're not saying "no" to the idea of a climate summit. In fact, they're saying "yes," and they're revealing, highlighting that, in fact, it is the world leaders, particularly world leaders from the heavy-emitting countries, like the United States and Canada, who are the naysayers, who are the ones who are saying, "No, we don't actually want to tackle the climate crisis, we don't want to make the emissions cuts that are needed, that are required by science."

So, in a sense, it’s an inversion where it’s the activists who are saying, "Yes, we believe in this mission." And it's the politicians, really, who we need to reveal as being the ones who are actually saying, 'no,' even as they claim to be saying 'yes,' and even as they claim -- even as they sell failure as 'success.'"

So, it’s really tricky for activists in terms of figuring out how you interact with a summit like this. So, there's one day, for instance, the 18th -- December 18th, where activists are going to be kind of storming the conference center, nonviolently, but using civil disobedience. But their goal, they say, is not to shut down the meeting, but to open up the meeting and to have a forum inside the meeting to talk about real climate solutions, like leaving fossil fuels in the ground—dirty fossil fuels, particularly things like the Alberta tar sands -- talking about solutions like climate debt that we’ve been discussing, and exposing the fallacies of the claims that the market can solve the climate crisis.

Because, of course, that's what we’re going to be hearing a lot of in Copenhagen, market-based solutions: cap and trade, emission trading, carbon sinks, basically creating a huge market in pollution. And you have many of the same players that crashed the global economy, like Goldman Sachs, salivating over the idea of being able to have a speculative bubble over carbon.

So, that's the dynamic. It's not saying "no," not saying "shut down," but saying, "Open up. Let's talk about real solutions." And another example of this is that, actually, there will be an attempt to shut something down in Copenhagen, but that is focused on shutting down the port for a day -- Copenhagen's port -- to highlight the corporate side of this equation, the shipping industry and how emissions-heavy it is. And, so, not to shut down a meeting that actually the activists believe in, but to go after industry itself. So, there's going to be a lot of actions like that. A lot of thought and debate is going into how to craft actions that are really consistent with the goals of this movement.

AMY GOODMAN: And the delegates, the people who are involved in the climate talks, as opposed to the activists in the street -- something interesting that happened ten years ago with the Battle of Seattle that also turned things were those inside who were saying, "You are not listening to us." I mean, developing countries, for example, countries in Africa. What about those countries here, their role at the climate summit in Copenhagen?

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, you know, it remains to be seen. As I said, some of the most interesting solutions are being put on the table by Latin American governments, like Bolivia, also Ecuador.

But what we just saw in Barcelona, which was, you know, the last major negotiating push before the meeting in Copenhagen, is that the coalition of African states walked out of the summit en masse. So, basically a form of civil disobedience within the summit, in protest of the very low commitments for emission cuts coming from the developed world, which was interesting that the African bloc walked out, not because there wasn’t enough money for them, not because there wasn’t enough aid for them to deal climate change, but because they don’t simply want aid, they want us in the rich world to change our way of life because they are facing the effects of that. They’re on the front lines of climate change.

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Tony Kushner: Right-Wing Opposition to Recognizing Climate Change Comes "Entirely From Greed"
Posted by Staff, TheNation.com on November 30, 2009 at 1:25 PM.

In 1991, Angels in America was one of the first major American dramas to take on the impact of human lives on the environment, as the character Hannah Pitt fretted about the hole in the ozone layer. Eighteen years later, the U.S. is on the verge of major negotiations over another, still more intractable instance of environmental degradation caused by humans, in Copenhagen this December. The Nation asked playwright and Editorial Board member Tony Kushner to reflect on the environmental legacy of Angels in America, and to discuss the artistic challenges of coping with an issue like climate change.

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Angels in America took on the impact of humans on the environment. Now we face a more intractable instance of environmental decay.&topic=politics">

Inhofe Trashes Military Generals Who Advocate For Clean Energy Legislation
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on November 30, 2009 at 7:34 AM.

In testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, retired Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn articulated a national security argument for passing clean energy legislation. “Continued over reliance on fossil fuels, or small, incremental steps, simply will not create the kind of future security and prosperity that the American people and our great Nation deserve,” McGinn warned.

In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking member of the Senate environment committee, argued that McGinn and other generals who are advocating for clean energy reform (like Wesley Clark, Stephen Cheney, Brent Scowcroft, etc) are simply doing so because they crave “the limelight”:

NYT: Senator Boxer is chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, on which you are the ranking Republican. She and her fellow Democrats have lately suggested that global warming could be a threat to national security by destabilizing developing countries.

INHOFE: That’s the most ludicrous thing. They looked around and they found, I think, five generals to testify before the committee. Well, that’s 5 generals out of 4,000 retired generals that say that. There are a lot of generals who don’t like to be out of the limelight. They’d like to get back in.

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Copenhagen: Getting Past the Urgency Trap
Posted by Sara Robinson, Orcinus on November 28, 2009 at 4:11 PM.

The article below appeared earlier this week at Grist.

Copenhagen’s still three weeks away, but climate activists are already voicing their enormous disappointment about everything that’s not going to get done there. The heat is rising, and we’re all feeling the overwhelming urgency to get a strong global agreement that will get the laggards off their butts and launch the structural reformations most of us know we need to fix the problem. A lot of us, it seems, loaded all our highest hopes onto this one conference, wanting desperately to believe that this would finally be the moment the long-awaited Grand Transformation would occur.

But the hard truth of the matter is this: change of this magnitude never happens with a single conference, a single treaty, or even a single disaster. The structural changes required to get us off carbon and onto a truly sustainable footing challenge the economic assumptions that humans have lived by for 2500 years. Change that wide and deep will be the work of an entire century, maybe two. (If we’re smart and lucky, our grandchildren may live to see it mostly done.) All of us are well aware of the precarious time crunch we’re under here; but humans change only as fast as they change, and forcing the issue isn’t likely to help. And it may even hurt us in the long run.

We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and we’re not going to get out of it in one dazzling planetary stroke of universal enlightenment, either.

The good news: big, deep changes like this one tend to proceed in a fairly predictable order. If we understand the whole arc of that process, we can have a little more patience with where we are, and think a little more strategically about what comes next.

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Wingnuts Cite Lunatic Message Board Commenters as Authorities on Climate Science
Posted by Thers, Whiskey Fire on November 27, 2009 at 10:30 AM.

NewsBusters has always been a stupid fucking website, if rather pedestrian in its wingnuttery. But this breaks new ground:

An hilariously bizarre situation is happening in the wake of the growing Climategate scandal.  Many of the mainstream media stories about global warming are simply pretending it doesn't exist. Perhaps they feel that by ignoring Climategate entirely that it will just go away. Unfortunately for them, the readers of these global warming stories keep bringing up the inconvenient truth of Climategate by mentioning the scandal in the comments section over and over and over again.

This is inverse nutpicking, or the inane tactic of citing lunatic shitheads in comments sections in order to destroy cedibility. NewsBusters is now pioneering the inane tactic of citing lunatic shitheads in comments sections in order to claim credibility.

There should be a clever name for this innovation, I guess, but really they're just being shitheads.

Copenhagen Is On; Obama to Lead U.S. Delegation
Posted by Jeff McMahon, True/Slant on November 26, 2009 at 4:00 AM.

First the climate bill was dead, then the climate bill was not dead yet, then Copenhagen was dead, then Copenhagen was not dead yet, and now it’s all back on the table, right where President Obama said it would be: a legally binding climate treaty calling for an ambitious reduction in carbon dioxide–83 percent by 2050.

Patience, people, patience.

Obama’s call for such a treaty today closely follows three other significant events:

• His announcement that he’ll attend the Copenhagen Climate Conference on Dec. 9 to call for the treaty in person. I’ve always said that his decision to attend would depend on the likelihood of a treaty being signed, and the likelihood of a treaty being signed would be worked out behind the scenes in meetings between diplomats from the U.S. and other major players. But not only is Obama attending, according to the White House:

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson are all scheduled to attend, along with Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, and Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner.

• Obama’s announcement follows key meetings between Obama and the leaders of China and India, the two developing nations whose participation in the treaty is most essential to its success.

• The treaty Obama has called for matches the climate bill that already passed the House and the one likely to pass the Senate: not the bill that passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, but the one likely to be worked out in a compromise with that bill’s sole no vote, Sen. Max Baucus. Both the House bill and the likely Baucus compromise call for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020.

For the first time, the U.S. delegation will have a U.S. Center at the conference, providing a unique and interactive forum to share our story with the world. In addition to working with other countries to advance American interests, U.S. delegates will keynote a series of events highlighting actions by the Obama Administration to provide domestic and global leadership in the transition to a clean energy economy. Topics will range from energy efficiency investments and global commitments to renewables policy and clean energy jobs.

China on Reducing Its Carbon Footprint: Why Should We Have to?
Posted by Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation on November 24, 2009 at 3:29 PM.

BEIJING -- Ambassador Yu Qingtai is China's point man on global warming. As special representative to the climate change talks for China's ministry of foreign affairs, Yu is a forceful advocate for China's view that while his country will do its part, the primary responsibility for fixing the problem rests squarely on the shoulders of the United States and other industrialized countries. And he bristles when reminded that many US experts put on the onus on China's rapidly growing economy and industrial might.

"There were those who came to China years ago and described us as a kingdom of bicycles," he says, when I mention some of that criticism. We're sitting in a conference room at the foreign ministry, where Yu has come to be questioned by a small group of journalists invited to Beijing by the Chinese People's Institute for Foreign Affairs. As China modernizes, he says, every Chinese citizen has the right to all of the modern industrial and transportation options enjoyed by, say, Americans – including the right to own a car. "We should not be expected to stay forever as a kingdom of bicycles!" he says.

He has a point.

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Buying Sarah Palin's Book Will Help Save Wolves?
Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet on November 18, 2009 at 6:16 PM.

Sarah Palin's new book may serve a purpose beyond keeping the AP busy and relaunching the hilariously petty sniping between Palin and former McCain campaign aides: it can, counterintuitively, help Alaska's wolves. San Francisco's Green Apple books has announced that %100 of the proceeds from sales of Going Rogue will go to the Alaska Wildlife Federation.  From the bookstore's blog: 

With all due to respect to the Republicans who were as overjoyed as I was (for different reasons, of course) by Sarah Palin's nomination to the McCain ticket last year, Green Apple is donating 100% of the profits from sales of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue: An American Life to the Alaska Wildlife Alliance.

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Sorry Monsanto, You're Wrong: More GE Crops Mean More Pesticides
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 17, 2009 at 3:25 PM.

More genetically engineered crops means less pesticides are needed, right? That's what the big agricultural biotech companies, like Monsanto, promised. But, a report proves they're wrong. Really wrong.

First, the report was funded by a coalition of non-governmental organizations including the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Center for Food Safety, the Cornerstone Campaign, Californians for GE-Free Agriculture, Greenpeace International and Rural Advancement Fund International USA.

They found that GE corn, soybean, and cotton crops have increased the use of weed-killing herbicides in the U.S. by 383 million pounds from 1996 to 2008. Why? Because the idea behind many of the big GE crops is to make them resistant to herbicides, for instance Roundup Ready Soybeans won't be killed if you spray the herbicide Roundup on them. Roundup instead is suppose to kill the weeds around the plant. But, crafty little nature has outsmarted biotech again and now we've got weeds that have become resistant as well. Woops.

So, maybe the biotech industry shouldn't be making farmers pay through the nose for these seeds, eh? Here's some more info from the report about the pickle farmers are in now, thanks to GE crops:

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Under Pressure From Tea Party Activists, Charleston GOP Censures Lindsey Graham For Bipartisanship
Posted by Lee Fang, Think Progress on November 11, 2009 at 3:32 PM.

On Monday, the Charleston County Republican Party’s executive committee “took the unusual step” of officially censuring Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). The local GOP committee admonished Graham for stepping across party lines to work with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) on a bipartisan clean energy bill and other pieces of legislation. The censure stated that Graham’s “bipartisanship continues to weaken the Republican brand and tarnish the ideals of freedom.”

Part of the fury from the right against Graham is being spurred by the oil and coal industry. The oil company front group “American Energy Alliance” has blanketed South Carolina with ads smearing Graham for seeking to address climate change.

The pressure against Graham has also stemmed from his criticism of hate radio and Fox News host Glenn Beck. “Only in America can you make that much money crying,” said Graham, mocking Beck in early October. Beck has responded with a slime campaign against Graham that he typically reserves for liberals. The leader of the Charleston Republican Party, Lin Bennett, is also a member of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 organization in South Carolina. According to its website, the Charleston GOP claims to work closely with tea party groups and Beck’s 9/12 activists in selecting its favored candidates.

Will Graham be able to stand up to the angry backlash being cultivated by far right voices and entrenched corporations interests? At a Graham town hall in Greenville last month, activist Harry Kimball of “RINO HUNT” protested by constructing a display that portrayed Graham, as well as other GOP moderates, being flushed down a toilet:

KIMBALL: This is for every RINO who has failed to represent us. [...] [the toilet represents] flushing them, flushing them.

Graham’s spokesman defended his boss to reporters yesterday, claiming the senator has a “90 percent conservative voting record.” Unfortunately for Graham, that may not prevent him from being “Scozzafavaed.”

Watch it to the right.

PETA Teams Up With Glenn Beck to Bash Al Gore
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 5:39 PM.

I know it's easy to get jealous when someone's got an Oscar, a Nobel, and some pretty big job titles on their resume, but really, the Gore bashing has got to end.

The New York Times took a swipe at Al Gore and his new book this week and now Glenn Beck and PETA's Ingrid Newkirk are teaming up. In some ways it is a perfect match between two people who seem to thrive on generating controversy.

Beck chastised Gore for not giving up meat eating altogether (even though he's admitted to cutting back a lot) and told him it was time for soy milk and tofurkey. Then he invited Newkirk on the show to tag team even though Beck admitted that he doesn't agree with a thing PETA says. Although he did give PETA and the NRA a shout out for not catering to special interests (huh?), so I guess Newkirk should feel good about that.

I know that PETA's main task seems to be to get people really pissed off, but I still think it's a shame to see Newkirk sinking so low as to cozy up to Glenn Beck. The truth is though, what they're talking about is actually a tough issue. There's a lot of really good evidence that eating meat -- at least the way we mostly do it in factory farms -- is bad for the planet. If you've ever seen a factory farm (or smelled one) that would probably seem like a no-brainer.

But there's also some good evidence pointing out that growing soy -- at least the way we do it but slashing rainforests and piling on the pesticides -- is actually bad for ecosystems, water, climate and the whole shebang. And some of that soy we area eating (actually in the US 87 percent of it is genetically modified), some of it is being used for biofuel and some of it is being fed to livestock. But mostly all of it is an environmental disaster.

Umbra Fisk from Grist breaks down a lot of the research and writes:

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Climate Change: The Grown-Ups Are Back In Charge
Posted by Raquel Brown, The Media Consortium on November 6, 2009 at 5:00 PM.

Senate Democrats in the Environment and Public Works Committee finally squelched Republican boycotts and passed a version of the climate bill Wednesday morning. Last week, Republican senators refused to show up to committee hearings in an attempt to stall the bill. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo notes that EPW has now set “the stage for other panels to amend the legislation.”

To no one’s surprise, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., immediately complained about the legislation on Fox News. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was the lone Democrat that did not vote, which Inhofe interpreted as a sign that the bill is “dead.”

Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., was much more upbeat and argued that the Republican boycott actually marred their credibility. “The absence of the Republicans during the Environmental Protection Agency’s presentation was a clear message that their criticism of the EPA analysis was not a substantive one,” Boxer said. “We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have been able to move the bill.”

Inhofe also condemned Boxer for passing the bill through the committee unconventionally. Aaron Wiener writes for The Washington Independent that “Without a quorum that included at least two Republicans, the committee was unable to open formal debate on amendments to the bill. But passage requires just a simple majority, and Chairman Boxer and the Democratic leadership chose to forgo amendments in order to move the legislation quickly, given that the end of the GOP boycott was nowhere in sight.”  Luckily, now that the bill is moving on to other committees, Inhofe and his Republican EPW colleagues will no longer have much of a say on the bill’s final outcome.

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On the Lookout for Attempts to Indoctrinate Our Schoolchildren? Try the American Coal Industry!
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on November 6, 2009 at 2:57 PM.

Friends of Coal (FOC) is a front group created by the West Virginia Coal Association. Its mission is to “inform and educate West Virginia citizens about the coal industry” and “provide a united voice” for the industry. To make dirty coal seem appealing, FOC has sponsored or initiated license plates, football games, basketball practices, plane jumps, fishing events, and scholarships.

FOC is now selling coal to children. ThinkProgress obtained the “Let’s Learn About Coal” coloring book, which asks children to unscramble statements about the “advantages” of coal, such as “Than coal other cheaper is fuels” (”Coal is cheaper than other fuels”). Kids also learn that coal is “important” and “provides jobs for lots of people!”:

The FOC Ladies Auxiliary has been handing the coloring book out to children around West Virginia as part of a “Coal in the Classroom” campaign.

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Grist on the NYT's "Baseless Hit Job on Al Gore"
Posted by Dr. Joseph Romm, Climate Progress on November 5, 2009 at 3:30 PM.

Al Gore is in the spotlight again with his must-read solutions book — "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis." And that means the daggers are out.  But who would have imagined that one of the first pieces would be by the NYT's John Broder, who repeats the false claims by "Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming skeptics," that "Mr. Gore is poised to become the world's first ‘carbon billionaire,' profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in."  I'm going to repost a piece by Media Matters from May that looks at one of the despicable origins of this smear, "O'Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham presented clips of Al Gore's recent congressional testimony that had been edited to remove his statements that he donates the money he makes from his climate-related work to a non-profit organization."

But first I'm going to repost a response to the NYT piece by Grist's Dave Roberts:

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GOP Senators on Environment Committee Hit All-Time Low, Third-Graders Have More Maturity
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 4, 2009 at 1:59 PM.

Keeping in step with the rest of the Party of No, this week 6 of the 7 Republicans on the Senate's Environment and Public Works committee are refusing to show up in a desperate attempt to stall action on the climate and clean energy bill.

Reminder me again why these people are paid public servants?

Their apparent gripe is that they want EPA to do more extensive modeling runs on the proposed legislation. But really, what they want is to make sure we never have a viable climate bill and most certainly not before Copenhagen.

Of course, the EPA has already done modeling on all of this -- 90 percent is the same as the House bill from last Spring. The Washington Post reported that the data was analyzed closely by EPA, the Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration and many NGOs. "Indeed, EPA Associate Administrator David McIntosh said Tuesday that the differences wouldn't even show up in the agency's computer modeling, leaving little reason to conduct a completely new analysis before committee work commences," the Washington Post reported.

So, their stunt is pure bogus and their motivation is equally sad. Noreen Nielson, Director for Energy Communications at Progressive Media writes:

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