Progressive Opinion

salon.com — While Hurricane Sandy batters increasing stretches of the East Coast, she has also thrown up somewhat of a false dichotomy question: “Climate change or freak storm?” Climate scientists remain split on the debate of whether extreme weather can indicate a shifting global climate, as Tom Chivers of UK newspaper the Telegraph noted, “The answer is no, or yes, or better yet ‘you’re asking the wrong question’.” While millions of Americans batten down the hatches and millions more stay glued from afar to Sandy’s ruinous spectacle, no resolution will be found to the climate change/freak storm question. But it is nonetheless the question on millions of minds today, as it is every time an extreme weather event strikes. So why is neither presidential candidate this year exploring the issue with us?

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prospect.org — Here is what it’s possible to say for certain: Climate change is happening. It’s likely that we’ll get better at dealing with erratic and extreme weather. There’s a high probability that, over the next decades, we’ll worry more often about crops dying and about monster storms. And just as it’s almost normal now for each passing year to be one of the hottest ten on record, soon it may seem routine to hear that the hurricane that’s currently headed towards your city is the largest ever measured. The two men running for president did not mention this issue when they met in three debates, and neither has shown much interest in addressing it in the next four years. But if the summers stay hot and the hurricanes abnormally large, enough people might start believing that climate change is problem that they’ll have to.

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grist.org — It is ironic, way beyond ironic really, that the Nation’s Capital – and the entire Northeast – is staring down the barrel of an incredibly powerful storm about which a National Weather Service meteorologist has said, ”I’ve never seen anything like this and I’m at a loss for expletives to describe what this storm could do.” Perhaps this weather scare that may well be much more than just a scare is God’s revenge for the refusal of the U.S. government to take action on the climate crisis.

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grist.org — The climate silence is complete: Climate change got not a single mention in any of the three presidential debates nor in the vice presidential debate this year. That hasn’t happened for 24 years. In the final debate on Monday night, focused on foreign policy, moderator Bob Schieffer didn’t ask anything about energy or climate, but he posed a couple of open-ended questions that would have given easy entrée to either candidate had they any inclination to bring up the topic: “What is America’s role in the world?” and “What do you believe is the greatest future threat to the national security of this country?” In a debate about global challenges and global threats, Romney and Obama both chose to say nothing at all about the climate crisis, the most global of all challenges and threats.

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earthisland.org — In January 2012, I, like many other people, thought the Keystone XL pipeline controversy was over. We had won a hard-fought victory in suspending the proposed tar sands pipeline from crossing the border from Canada into the USA. But shortly after reveling in the victory, I read the words of President Barack Obama said during a March speech in Cushing, OK. “And today, I’m directing my administration to cut through the red tape, break through the bureaucratic hurdles, and make this project a priority, to go ahead and get it done,” the president said. To my horror and disappointment, that is exactly what he did. Today TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, has already started construction on the southern leg of the pipeline. Some residents in Texas and other allies who have come from all over the country are trying to stop this from happening. I am honored and humbled to be able to share part of their story.

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washingtonpost.com — Not a word has been said in the presidential debates about what may be the most urgent and consequential issue in the world: climate change. President Obama understands and accepts the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is trapping heat in the atmosphere, with potentially catastrophic long-term effects. Mitt Romney’s view, as on many issues, is pure quicksilver — impossible to pin down — but when he was governor of Massachusetts, climate-change activists considered him enlightened and effective. Yet neither has mentioned the subject in the debates. Instead, they have argued over who is more eager to extract ever-larger quantities of oil, natural gas and coal from beneath our purple mountains’ majesties and fruited plains.

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washingtonpost.com — We know, we know. No one in Washington wants to talk about climate change. Neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney mentioned the subject in the second presidential debate on Tuesday. And there’s a widespread belief that a cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions won’t resurface in Congress anytime soon. Still, that hasn’t stopped our friends on the other side of the Atlantic from tackling the issue. And there’s a new report from the analysts at the Environmental Defense Fund, looking at the track record of Europe’s cap-and-trade system over the past seven years. Some of the lessons here are worth a closer look.

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guardian.co.uk — On 4 October 2012, in rural east Texas, a 78-year-old great-grandmother, Eleanor Fairchild, was arrested for trespassing on her own property … and I was arrested standing beside her, as we held our ground in the path of earth-moving excavators constructing TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline. Seems there's showdown in Texas – but, in fact, it's a battle being waged all over the United States. It's being fought by ordinary citizens of all colors, economic strata and political persuasions – against the world's wealthiest multinational corporations, misinformation and deeply embedded fears. While I'm not a fan of war terminology, in these struggles, war analogies seem to highlight both the crisis at hand and perhaps the solution we seek.

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motherjones.com — Jacob Susman is frustrated again. Sitting in the bright green conference room of his company's trendy industrial office, overshadowed by the Brooklyn Bridge, he's a clean-cut poster child for the "green economy": Since 2007, Susman's OwnEnergy, which installs wind turbines, has grown to be one of the nation's most prominent wind installers. But he's plagued by a recurring nightmare: "Every few years the industry has to drop everything for six or nine months and focus exclusively on having the credit passed." He's talking about the Production Tax Credit, the federal subsidy that gives a 2.2-cent per kilowatt hour break to wind energy producers. Those pennies add up to about $1 billion per year, no chump change for the burgeoning industry. The subsidy, a touchstone issue in the presidential campaign, is set to expire at the end of this year, and uncertainty about whether Congress will extend it has led to layoffs and much anxiety in the industry.

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grist.org — The Big Energy industries (oil, coal and gas) along with their political allies like Mitt Romney are waging war against sustainable energy and efforts to transform our energy system and reverse global warming. In many instances, they are aided and abetted by the very powerful nuclear power industry. One of their main lines of attack (used repeatedly by Romney in his first debate with President Obama) is that the federal government is picking energy “winners and losers.” Romney says he will not invest in “chasing fads and picking winners and losers” among energy technologies and will instead allow the free market to determine energy development. Romney is right about one thing: The government does pick winners and losers in the energy sector. What Romney has not told the American people, however, is that the big winners of federal support are the already immensely profitable fossil fuel and nuclear industries, not sustainable energy.

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