Progressive Opinion

Excuse me, folks, but the weather is trying to tell us something. Listen carefully, and you can almost hear a parched, raspy voice whispering: “What part of ‘hottest month ever’ do you people not understand?” According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, July was indeed the hottest month in the contiguous United States since record-keeping began more than a century ago. That distinction was previously held by July 1936, which came at the height of the Dust Bowl calamity that devastated the American heartland. James E. Hansen, who heads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, summed it up in a piece he wrote for The Washington Post last week: “The future is now. And it is hot.” more »

policyshop.net — At the beginning of July, we noted that even though just a few days had passed in the month, thousands of heat records had been matched or surpassed. Now, it turns out that the month of July was the hottest month on record—not the hottest July on record, the hottest month ever. July continues the record warming of the first seven months of this year and we are experiencing the warmest 12 month period since NOAA started keeping records in 1895. So, can we final agree that the climate crisis needs immediate attention? Accompanying the extreme heat is widespread drought. Drought conditions still cover over 60 percent of the contiguous United States with regions prime agricultural land hit the hardest. So, how many more months of record-breaking heat do we need before policymakers stop listening to money, wake up to the very real impacts of climate change and start investing in a real plan to combat climate change?

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guardian.co.uk — As the U.S. faces record drought and an Old Testament-level pestilential heatwave in the midwest, American environmental denialism may be starting to change. The question is: is it too late? America has led the world in climate change denial, a phenomenon noted with amazement by Europeans, not to mention thinking people around the world. Year after year, the U.S. has failed to sign global treaties or curb emissions, even as our status as a source of a third of the world's carbon emissions goes unchanged. It is fairly well-known what has been behind that climate change denial in America: vast sums pumped into an ignorance industry by the oil and gas lobbies. But could our denial be cracking, this summer, as, in the heartland – that most iconic of American landscapes – broiling temperatures injure humans and cook fish in the water?

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Back in 2008, not long before the world’s financial system seized up, global food prices hit record highs. For many poorer nations around the world, it was a full-blown crisis. Riots broke out in dozens of countries from Cameroon to Egypt to Bangladesh. In Haiti, more than five people were killed and the government was toppled as the price of rice, beans, and fruit rose more than 50 percent. Could we see a repeat of that chaos this year? Could we see a repeat of that chaos this year? The newest report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggests that food prices still aren’t anywhere near 2008 levels yet, even after the massive U.S. drought has hurt corn and grain production. But there’s also reason for concern—in July, the FAO food index jumped the most in a single month since 2009. more »

thinkprogress.org — Business at large has only recently awakened to climate change—really just within the last 10 years. It started slowly, following the 1997 adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, and then it picked up speed after the development of industry-accepted greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring and reporting standards such as 2001’s GHG Protocol and 2003’s Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). During the first decade of the new century, companies began to measure, reduce, and report emissions from operations. They pioneered carbon finance, showing that carbon markets play a vital role in resolving climate change. They came to grips, for the first time, with the financial value at stake from climate change. They came to define leadership as a focus on policy engagement. During this time, discussing adaptation (seen as admitting defeat) was considered taboo. Times have changed.

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tomdispatch.com — The Great Drought of 2012 has yet to come to an end, but we already know that its consequences will be severe. With more than one-half of America’s counties designated as drought disaster areas, the 2012 harvest of corn, soybeans, and other food staples is guaranteed to fall far short of predictions. This, in turn, will boost food prices domestically and abroad, causing increased misery for farmers and low-income Americans and far greater hardship for poor people in countries that rely on imported U.S. grains. This, however, is just the beginning of the likely consequences: if history is any guide, rising food prices of this sort will also lead to widespread social unrest and violent conflict.

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dailykos.com — Typically, the people who oppose climate change are thought to do so because of short-term financial considerations: There are obviously those in the fossil fuel industry and other businesses who profit directly from the very activities that are warming the climate. But as powerful as these industries are at dictating policy in the United States and throughout the world, both logic and emotion seem dictate that they would eventually be overwhelmed by a unification of opposing forces, even on the right wing, who value the preservation of society over shorter-term profit. Unfortunately, that assumes that the right wing is interested in preserving society as we know it, and this assumption could be gravely mistaken.

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thinkprogress.org — Call it Jurassic Park or Dinosaur Train: Mitt Romney’s team of energy and economic advisers, like his energy plan, is dominated by fossil fuels. Romney’s energy team relies on the expertise of lobbyists, coal and oil industry insiders, several of whom crafted the polluter agenda of the George W. Bush administration, a trend Politico described as, “Bush-era energy policy wonks … finding a new home with Mitt Romney.” Romney has made expanding oil and gas drilling and coal exploration central to his campaign, and he’s elevated the Keystone XL pipeline to his top day one priority if elected. The pipeline illustrates where Romney’s priorities lie: while it would boost oil companies’ profits, consumers will only deal with the environmental effects and even higher gas prices.

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inthesetimes.com — With states looking to raise taxes on oil and gas production and better regulate the most controversial drilling practices, we can expect industry to soon trot out its tried and true argument against such moves. As they did here in Colorado a few years back when our governor proposed a hike in severance levies, oil and gas companies will promise to leave any place where taxes or regulation increase. Such blackmail deftly plays to our reflexive fears of job outsourcing—and those fears are understandable. But, as a new study highlights, when it comes to natural resource extraction, there’s a little secret the oil and gas industry doesn’t want voters to know: namely, that the “we will leave if you tax or regulate us!” threats are hollow when it comes to fossil fuels thanks to their captive status.

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guardian.co.uk — Americans have since the second world war built an entire way of life around the automobile. It turns out, however, that our faith was an unsteady one and, in the face of high gas prices and young people's increasing preference for urban living, we are heading back to subways, trains, buses and trolleys in droves. In the first quarter of this year, we took an additional 125.7m trips on mass transit compared with the same time period last year – an increase of 5%. Yet, Republican-led austerity is pushing public transit, like most everything public, into severe fiscal and physical crisis. All at the very moment when we want and need it the most. Nationwide, 80% of mass transit systems either did move to boost fares and cut services or considered doing so in 2010, according to the most recent report from the American Public Transportation Association.

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