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[E3 wise]

Recently I have been compiling research for work I am doing and I came across an editorial from the Los Angeles Times Opinion section dated December 9^th 2011.  Upon rereading it again I thought it would be a good posting for Alt Energy Shift.  To many of us in the environmental community it seems to preach to the choir, however with this said I think it is important to keep stressing the scientific realties of climate change to Americans and demonstrates the stark need for change.  Here is the editorial.
Shared by E3Wise

Ignoring a global warning
Those in the U.S. who deny climate change have nothing on Nero.

Nero probably didn't really fiddle while Rome burned; for one thing, fiddles as we know them today didn't exist yet, and for another, historians at the time dismissed the story as a rumor. Moreover, it's hard to believe that even a tyrant as petty and murderous as Nero would be foolish enough to watch the burning of his city-state and do nothing about it. But we Americans are.

Climate change is no longer a theoretical concept to be debated at symposiums by science nerds. It is happening right here, right now. Thirteen of the warmest years on record worldwide have happened in the past 15 years. In the U.S., 12 weather-related disasters this year have caused in excess of $1 billion in damage each, a record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Although many expected the global economic downturn to slow the output of greenhouse gases, emissions actually have been accelerating at an alarming rate, growing 5.9% in 2010 — the biggest jump since 2003. The American response? Fiddling around.

The 17th annual United Nations climate conference, which aims at coming up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol or a new international agreement, wraps up Friday in Durban, South Africa. You can be forgiven for not knowing about this, because U.S. media have largely ignored it. And not just the media. In 2009, when Democrats controlled the House and there was still some hope of passing a climate bill, more than 20 members of Congress attended the conference in Copenhagen. This year, not a single one showed up.

The U.S. position at the talks can be described as, well, nuanced. Chief climate negotiator Todd Stern says that he favors a legally binding treaty to replace Kyoto (which the U.S. Senate never ratified), but only if it holds developing nations such as China and India to the same mandatory standards as industrialized countries such as the U.S. Yet he acknowledges that those nations will never go along with such a deal, so countries should just make voluntary pledges to cut emissions and hold themselves accountable. In other words: "I will now perform Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major. Does anybody else smell smoke?"

  The voluntary approach isn't getting us far. At last year's climate conference in Cancun, the world agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial norm. Yet that goal can't be met under the current global pledges of voluntary reductions, leading to predictions of up to 4 degrees of warming by the end of the century. That would mean catastrophic sea-level rise, drought, famine and weather-related carnage. Fortunately, we'll all be dead by then. But our progeny will not thank us.

From E3 Wise
   So now I want to know what ideas you have to bring about broad consensus in the United States.  Some have advocated a carbon tax which failed to win congressional approval in 2011.  Others call for a fuel tax to lower demand and fund clean energy, what do you think and what solutions you believe will make a difference here in America.

Winston Churchill once said that you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing; after they have exhausted every other option.

Can we really waste time exhausting those options?
E3Wise

[Shortpoet-GTD]

It's not just the administrations of many countries, it's the public living in them as well.
As much as I appreciate OWS, and the attention they're trying to bring; it's mostly about banks
and money.
Sure, there are a few folks holding up signs about climate change, but they're far and few between.

Germany gets it, so does Norway, Sweden-a few others. But most, are just hand sitting.

Countries like China, imo are running after the all mighty dollar. That's their focus.
And countries like Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan are operating in war mode, trying to destroy the rest of us.
Climate is not on their minds at all.

If Gore had been put in office because he received the votes, and wasn't kicked to the curb by the
"supreme" court that put ole' bushwacker in, we'd be light years ahead of the game.

How many eco protection laws did chaney/bush administration reverse while they were in office? Hundreds.

Obama is doing the best he can with this do nothing congress, but it's us too.
We should be aware enough and angry enough to be yelling in the streets. Is that happening?
Not at all.
We're into beiber and kardashian and old housewives of Beverly Hills.