Once the water recedes, the excuses must recede as well. After the devastation and death wrought by Hurricane Florence, American print, broadcast and cable media outlets have a journalistic obligation to expand its coverage of the existential crisis of human-caused climate change. No longer can we tolerate having extensive coverage of extreme weather without that […]
Michael Mann
Posted inPolitical Animal
Future Fire and Fury: Trump’s Climate Instability
Fifteen years ago today, Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman introduced the Climate Stewardship Act, which would have implemented a federal cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon pollution. McCain and Lieberman were horrified by President George W. Bush’s refusal to take action on the climate crisis due to the influence of the fossil-fuel industry; that industry, […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
The Joan Walsh Fiasco Proves It: MSNBC Must Seriously Now Be Crazy
Serves ‘em right. The MSNBC executives who made the logic-free decision to get rid of progressive contributor Joan Walsh right before Christmas deserve the embarrassment they presumably feel after CNN immediately offered Walsh a position. Those now residing in the house Ted Turner built recognized that Walsh’s vision had value—something MSNBC officials apparently lost sight […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Hurricane Havoc and the Climate Conversation
Will they say this was the moment when America finally grew up on climate? After the multi-billion-dollar impact of Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria, it’s safe to say that if the ideological barriers preventing Americans from working together to solve the climate crisis have not been knocked down yet, those barriers will never fall. It’s […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Hurricane Harvey: The Climate 9/11
We will never forget. August 25, 2017–the day Hurricane Harvey hit Texas–will be remembered as a day of infamy and injustice. The horror America experienced that day–and in the days afterward–will be remembered for generations to come. The anger Americans justifiably feel towards those who ignored the advanced warnings of this crisis will never subside. […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Green Lantern: Gore’s Return to the Spotlight Has Implications for 2018 and Beyond
Accepting the Vice Presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention 25 years ago today, then-Tennessee Senator Al Gore declared: I’ve spent much of my career working to protect the environment, not only because it is vital to the future of my State of Tennessee, our country and our earth, but because I believe there is […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
If Trump Wins
It could happen. It could happen. In his 2009 book The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution 1980-1989, right-wing author Steven Hayward describes the aftermath of President Carter’s defeat on November 4, 1980: By Thursday the magnitude of the election was starting to course through the news cycle. “The election was a shocker,” Washington Post […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Burning Down the House
It’s sadly ironic that as worldwide temperatures continue to rise, mainstream-media coverage of the most pressing issue of our time–human-caused climate change–continues to fall. Fortunately, documentary filmmakers and writers have stepped up to do the job that so much of the Fourth Estate won’t on climate. Speaking of writers combating carbon pollution, 2014 produced the […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
A Taxing Effort
Will Congress actually pass carbon-pricing legislation by December 31, 2017? This ambitious goal is not as far-fetched as it may seem—especially if Donald Trump damages the Republican Party so severely that the GOP actually loses both houses of Congress (also not a far-fetched prospect). Having said that, the final version of a carbon-pricing bill may […]
