The Climate Minute - A Happy Thanksgiving to You!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Massachusetts Climate Action Network! This week, Ted discusses a recent paper published in the journal Climatic Change, entitled “Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010”, by Richard Heede.  The paper is summarized in the British paper The Guardian (which has become something of a beacon of light given the sad happenings at the New York Times!) As a final topper, the podcast “On the Green Front” has our friend D.R. Tucker interviewing the author himself. There is a lot to unpack in the article, but it provides an interesting complementary view of how we got to over 400ppm of CO2 in the air. The story down in Falmouth reminds us of Machiavelli’s quote (although he said it in in Italian) “It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones. ” It seems that a few people in Falmouth want to preserve the “old institutions.” A judge agreed that the turbines might be a nuisance and issued a preliminary injunction against night time operation. Over at The Green Miles they point out a few aspects of the medical claims that will make you grind your teeth in frustration! In Warsaw, the COP ended with a mild agreement to help get countries to make announcements of their intended level of carbon pollution reduction levels well in advance of the next 2015 COP in Paris. You can read the summary here  or revel in the US’ relative good standing compared some others, like Canada and Austrailia. If you like cars, you will love a recent report on the advent of hydrogen powered fuel cell cars. What’s a fuel cell? Go here. 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- specifically to pay for the full cost of carbon pollution at the time we create it, because we accept responsibility for building a durable future and because we believe it is our patriotic duty as citizens to speak out, we must insist that the US put a price on carbon.