The Nation: "Surviving the Climate Crisis,"

The Nation has devoted its current issue to "surviving the climate crisis," and it's chock full o' good stuff.

First up is Jim Hansen, the World's Least Censored Censored Scientist, who recommends the following five steps:

"First, there should be a moratorium on building any more coal-fired power plants until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2."
A gradually increasing price on CO2 emissions.
Energy-efficiency standards.
A National Academy of Sciences panel to study ice-sheet stability and nonlinear ice-sheet collapse.
Reform of government communication practices.
Next up is Christian Parenti, who gets a lot of things forcefully and eloquently right in this piece, but muddies the water with a title and a lead conceit that doesn't particularly fit the rest of the article. Small-scale hydro, solar thermal, and vehicle-to-grid all get mentioned, but because there will still be large-scale wind farms, support for decentralized generation is a bit of quaint nostalgia? That seems strained.


Then there's Doug Henwood, noting that global political and economic elites have gotten on board re: climate change, but still favor solutions (e.g., cap and trade) that are not equal to the task. Naturally, Henwood, like everyone not a politician or a potential taxee, prefers a carbon tax.

Then Mark Hertsgaard (again) offers a piece on adaptation, noting that rich countries caused the problem and thus far are doing virtually nothing to help the developing world adapt to the nasty results.

Then the delightfully named Elizabeth Economy notes that China's development threatens to tip the climate over into chaos, Matthew Gilbert notes that climate change is going to screw the Gwich'in tribe, A. C. Thompson & Duane Moles raise all the usual doubts about carbon offsets, Lawrence Weschler surveys artistic responses to climate change, and George Monbiot says (again) that flying's not gonna fly in a warming world.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/4/24/152016/822

The Nation "surviving the climate crisis,"

http://www.thenation.com/issue/20070507