The Climate Minute - Is anyone in office paying attention?

Hi, and welcome to the Climate Minute, a weekly podcast that gives thoughtful people some perspective and insight on global warming news.  Ted and Rob are back at the pink and oragne coffeehouse again, and man, it's cold...  We're back in the polar Vortex, while Australia is suffering a historic heatwave.  Ted spoke with our Australian friend Gavin Webber about the weather, and the weather change in Australian politics.  Back in America, 18 major green groups have sent a letter to the President asking him to take charge on climate change -- and to abandon the "all of the above" poilcy which has led to increasingly higher American CO2 emissions.  In this month's New Yorker, the president doesn't seem to equate the climate crisis with the kind of national problem along the lines of a World War II, or Civil War -- and lacking that sort of understanding, how are we ever going to get anything done? Ted's firmly in the camp of "the money always wins." and if we don't break the cycle of political subjugation to wealth, we can never fully address climate. West Virginia is a cautionary tale about what can happen when corporate interests run wild and the environment is caught in the cross-hairs. On that theme, Ted wrote earlier this week about how the Trans Pacific Partnership potentially puts corpoate profits ahead of, heck, even government. Finally, the EU seems to be back-tracking from their commitment to carbon trading... 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.