Monthly Archives: April 2008

Vote on Climate Change Bill Scheduled for June

By / Bio / Published: April 23, 2008

Elizabeth ThompsonThis post is by Elizabeth Thompson, Legislative Director at Environmental Defense Fund.

Operation Climate Vote

This post is part of a series on the work of the Environmental Defense Action Fund to enact an effective climate law. You can help by writing to Congress.

A bill has to pass both the House and the Senate to become law (see our previous post on how a bill moves through Congress). A climate change bill hasn’t yet been introduced in the House, but the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act already has passed out of committee in the Senate.

Whether the bill is brought to the Senate floor for discussion and vote is up to majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev), and Reid has taken this step. The bill will be considered by the full Senate in the first week of June.

Will it pass? It’s possible, but we need your support!

Read More »

Posted in News / Read 3 Responses

Check Out the Hidden Gold!

By / Bio / Published: April 22, 2008

Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Climate 411 has great content. But you may have noticed that – until today – it’s been hard to find things in our archive. Our topic categories evolved organically as we posted, and what we ended up with wasn’t very useful.

No more! Check out our new, improved, and actually useful "Posts by Topic" list. Click on EPA and Tailpipe Emissions or Climate Change Legislation to learn what’s going on in those quarters. Our Science category is now broken into subtopics like Arctic and Antarctic, Basic Science, and Plants and Animals. Plus you’ll find posts on Health, Green Living, and much more.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

Posted in News / Comments are closed

Global Warming Test: The Real Answers

By / Bio / Published: April 18, 2008

Lisa MooreThis post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense Fund.

There’s an email making the rounds lately – an invitation to take a Global Warming Test. It starts off reasonably enough (yes, global warming is real), but then quickly devolves into ridiculousness – ridiculousness presented in a way that looks misleadingly "scientific".

For those interested in truth, here are the real answers to the Global Warming Test.

Read More »

Posted in News / Read 9 Responses

How to Win the War on Global Warming

By / Bio / Published: April 17, 2008

Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Time magazine’s cover story in their latest issue is "How to Win the War on Global Warming". It starts this way:

Americans don’t like to lose wars – which makes sense, since we have so little practice with it. Of course, a lot depends on how you define just what a war is. There are shooting wars—the kind that test our mettle and our patriotism and our resourcefulness and our courage—and those are the kind at which we excel. But other struggles test those qualities too. What else was the Great Depression or the space race or the construction of the railroads or the eradication of polio but a massive, often frightening challenge that we decided as a culture we ought to rise up and face? If we indulge in a bit of chest-thumping and flag-waving when the job is done, well, we earned it.

We are now faced with a similarly momentous challenge: global warming. The steady deterioration of the very climate of our very planet is becoming a war of the first order, and by any measure, the U.S. is losing. Indeed, if we’re fighting at all—and by most accounts, we’re not—we’re fighting on the wrong side.

Take a look and tell us what you think!

Posted in What Others are Saying / Read 6 Responses

On the Plus Side, Bush Recognized the Need for Federal Action on Climate Change

By / Bio / Published: April 16, 2008

Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Today’s speech by President Bush acknowledged that federal action is needed to address climate change – a new and welcome shift. But the details of his plan fall far short of what’s needed to halt global warming.

Moreover, Environmental Defense Fund strongly disagrees with elements of the President’s legislative principles, his assertion that the U.S. lacks the technology to make deep near-term cuts in emissions, and his claim that effective climate action would cause economic harm.

Read More »

Posted in Climate Change Legislation / Read 2 Responses

Cost of Inaction on U.S. Transportation

By / Bio / Published: April 15, 2008

Sheryl CanterThis post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

A new fact sheet on costs to U.S. transportation and infrastructure surveys the many ways that global warming will cause disruption and damage if we don’t act to stop it.

Published by the Democratic Policy Committee, the fact sheet gives examples of known costs in different areas to give a sense of what the total might be – and it’s big. Here are just a few examples from the transportation sector:

Read More »

Posted in Economics / Read 6 Responses