The Climate Minute - We’re not in Kansas anymore edition

Another week, another example of extreme weather pointing us toward what will be the new normal in a climate-damaged world.  This week Ted and Rob are joined by DR Tucker, the prolific blogger, commentator, and cynical optimist as we try to make some sense out of the week's events. Now, the links Dr. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute was a guest on PRN's "On The Greenfront" with Betsy Rosenberg and DR, talking about the recent monster storms and their potential to force our government to finally aggressively address climate change.  Dr. Sachs had the same message in an op-ed in the Washington Post. Mindy Lubber, the President of CERES which works with businesses to help the address their climate footprint, thinks that the investor sector will play a large role in getting companies to focus on climate change.  Her slightly different op-eds in  The Guardian and Forbes this week highlight efforts by large investor groups calling on large companies to explain how they are positioning themselves to address the new realities of carbon regulation and the coming post-carbon world. The recent tornadoes in the midwest provided an opportunity to discuss the seemingly increasing incidence of extreme weather events (and reach a whole new audience, as fantasy football players everywhere had to wait through a tornado-caused delay in the Bears-Ravens game), and also gave birth to another Richard Muller and Michael Mann dust-up. Muller, you may remember, is the former climate skeptic who famously "converted" into a climate change believer in 2012.  The most interesting part of that journey is Muller had previously been heavily supported by the Koch brothers...  Anyway, Muller has an op-ed in the New York Times calling "time out" on the speculation that climate change has anything to do with tornado activity -- well, if anything, it might actually decrease the severity and number of storms. Muller quoted climate scientist Michael Mann in his New York Times piece, which Mann felt took his statements out of context, leading to a rebuttal from Mann in the Huffington Post.  What's the take away?  Well, at the end of the day, both Mann and Muller acknowledge anthropomorphic climate change is happening.  There are certainly instances where a changing climate may have a beneficial side effect - increased rainfall in previously arid areas, perhaps, or opening new lands to agriculture -- but certainly on balance the negative impacts (and the uncertainty over the unknown yet to be realized consequences) surely lead to a recognition that climate change needs to be minimized to ensure a safe future for humankind.  I think a more useful approach by both Mann and Muller would be to acknowledge the overall problem, and take a more humble tact with respect to particular impacts; isn't "this may be happening" enough to raise alarm? In other news, the Warsaw Conference of the Parties talks are winding down with few concrete results.  Yesterday a number of NGOs  (non-governmental organizations) walked out of the talks to protest lack of action.  Here's Rob's thoughts (which most likely aren't shared by DR or Ted, but hey, I'm writing this section):  Bravo.  You walked out.  What did you accomplish in doing so?  You said your time shouldn't be wasted in non-productive talks -- what did you use the time to do?  Did you all go out an weatherize some homes, or build a wind turbine, or plant trees instead?  No, you held a press conference.  You complained about lack of action and took off.  Unfortunately, whether you like it or not, the only place where an international agreement on climate can be reached is within these talks.  Either you're at the table, or you're not.  And if you're not at the table (and outside the house, throwing bricks at the house...), you're not likely to have a real impact.  End of Rob's soapbox. The irony here is that the United States may finally be being seen as having made some movement on our own climate change policies, which would make the US more of an active and respected player at these negotiations. The "You Had Me At Pigovian" talk at Babson College we've been talking about for the last couple of months happened earlier this week, and the entire one hour and 45 minutes has been uploaded to YouTube.  Here's the video, or you can see it here. http://youtu.be/cXtg9UA7u18 Hat tip to John Carlton Foss, who took the video. Finally, Sheldon Whitehouse, the climate advocate US Senator from Rhode Island, has been making speeches on the Senator floor about climate change for the last year, and made his 50th speech this week.  Congratulations to Senator Whitehouse, and keep up the good work!  We'll tune in again next week for number 51. Well, that's it for now.  Remember, for more climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar. You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always, it’s been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you. You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here. Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email. You can even follow us on twitter @MassClimate , so there are lots of ways for you to listen and participate in the dialog. When you are on the website, please contribute to MCAN. Your generous donations help us continue to bring climate news and views to you through our podcast and blogs, but also help support the Annual MCAN conference (this year on March 2nd, at Northeastern University), and our local climate action. So we will close the way we always close, by saying that because we recognize the necessity of personal accountability for our actions, because we accept responsibility for building a durable future and because we believe it is a patriotic duty as citizens, we insist that the US put a price on carbon. Good bye and see you next week…