Articles by Tom Athanasiou
Tom Athanasiou is a long-time left green, a former software engineer, a technology critic and, most recently, a climate justice activist. He is the author of Divided Planet: The Ecology of Rich and Poor and the co-author of Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming. In 2000, with Paul Baer, he founded EcoEquity, an activist think tank focused on the development and promotion of fair and potentially viable approaches to emergency climate stabilization. This work has taken shape as the Greenhouse Development Rights Framework. Tom is now the director of EcoEquity.
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Winning the battle in Bali, and then winning the war
Since COP13 / MOP3 -- hereafter "Bali" -- has begun, I thought I'd send a brief note on expectations and strategy. Brief because there's too much to say, so I shouldn't try. Besides, I'll try to post again in a few days.
Here's the thing: Bali is freighted with terrific expectations, which are entirely appropriate given the state of the science. We now "know," insofar as we can know these things, that we've got to do everything to hold total temperature increase from global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and that to have a good chance of doing so global emissions are going to peak by 2015.
In other words, we now know this is an emergency situation. So why would we demand anything except emergency action? No reason at all. Which is why EcoEquity signed the "Call for Climate Talks to Accelerate Global Economic and Energy Transitions: What Bali Must Achieve" (PDF), now being circulated by the Institute for Policy Studies and the International Forum on Globalization.
The Call urges negotiators to pursue three paths:
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What’s the ecological footprint of the gambling industry?
I won't explain how it came to pass that -- only two days after a trip to NYC to present Greenhouse Development Rights at a meeting of the UN's Committee for Development Policy -- I went to Las Vegas.
I will say that that my wife, an Aussie, wanted to see the place, that we have a 11-year-old boy, and that the Hilton contains an installation honoring the United Federation of Planets. (The flag of which has a notable similarity to the one displayed in the UN's own, rather more dilapidated, halls.)
Some quick thoughts:
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Australian newspaper identifies consumerism as warming culprit
I was just in Australia, spending some love miles (my wife is an Aussie) but also giving some talks, and while there I was interviewed by a journalist named Wendy Frew from the Sydney Morning Herald. She did a nice piece (August 9) on Greenhouse Development Rights called "Rich will have to help poor to save climate," which is perhaps notable for containing the dulcet phrase "coal is the enemy of mankind."
But that's not what I'm writing about.
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Scientists weigh in
Sorry to post this on the heels of "Doom and gloom blowback," but this Daily Kos summary of a new study by Hansen et al is too well done to pass over. And do note that Hansen is trying to accentuate the positive.
The original paper, by the way, is called "Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS modelE study" (PDF). And it's not locked down.
