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Clinton and Sanders Just Came Out Hard on the Issue Republicans Refuse to Talk About

by AmparoTrn382087 Posted on October 14, 2015

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During the first Democratic debate in Las Vegas, climate change roared into focus. Republicans are largely silent on climate change. Democrats shout it loud. That’s the message from tonight’s debate in Las Vegas that was broadcast on CNN. Climate change was an awkward, 11th-hour topic in the second GOP debate last month that nobody seemed to want to talk about, in an exchange that lasted for only about four minutes. On Tuesday night, climate change roared into focus. Global warming was introduced as a big, banner election theme for the Democrats onstage. All but one spoke about it during opening remarks. “I want to address climate change, a real threat to our planet,” said former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee in the opening minutes of the debate. “We must square our shoulders to the great challenge of climate change and make this threat our opportunity,” former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley told the audience. “The future is what we make of it. We are all in this together. And the question in this election is whether you and I still have the ability to give our kids a better future.” Then, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, went even further. “Today, the scientific community is virtually unanimous,” he said. “Climate change is real, it is caused by human activity, and we have a moral responsibility to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy and leave this planet a habitable planet for our children and our grandchildren.” Later, Sanders described climate change as the greatest national security threat. Hillary Clinton, the current Democratic front-runner, framed climate change as an economic opportunity. “I’ve traveled across our country over the last months listening and learning,” she said. “And I’ve put forward specific plans about how we’re going to create more good-paying jobs: by investing in infrastructure and clean energy, by making it possible once again to invest in science and research, and taking the opportunity posed by climate change to grow our economy.”

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Clinton and Sanders Just Came Out Hard on the Issue Republicans Refuse to Talk About

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Clinton and Sanders Just Came Out Hard on the Issue Republicans Refuse to Talk About

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Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

by AnnelieseHXW Posted on September 24, 2015

Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

By on 24 Sep 2015commentsShare

Over the past few months, upwards of 50 countries have made their views on fighting climate change exceedingly clear. In submitting pledges to the United Nations in the run-up to the Paris negotiations, cabinets and diplomats the world over have spelled out exactly what their governments are prepared to commit to the global climate dilemma. Now, a team of economists from Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, and Scotland thinks it can leverage these positions to predict the outcome of the Paris talks in the same way football analysts might use players’ stats to predict the winner of the Super Bowl. (After all, COP21 will basically be C-SPAN’s Super Bowl.)

Viewing most national interests as frighteningly cemented, these self-dubbed “predictioneers” are employing a branch of economics called game theory to call the outcomes. Game theory is the math behind rational decision-making. In practice, what the economists’ work takes is figuring out how to convert negotiating blocs’ positions into streams of usable numbers. Climate Home has the scoop:

One method anticipates the bargaining positions of all main actors and blocs, from the United States, European Union to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

How salient is the issue of loss and damage – or climate compensation – for cyclone-menaced AOSIS, for example? How flexible can it be on the issue’s inclusion in a final pact? And what clout can it exert over other countries?

Those variables, deduced by researchers’ scanning of official UN submissions as well as conversations with negotiators, award a value for each “actor”.

Running actors’ values through game theoretic models produces a series of predictions for what observers can expect from the negotiations.

Sound a little too Nate Silver to be true? It might be. Things like political momentum and the reality of fatigued, hungover diplomats are tricky, if not impossible, to capture in game theory.

But in fact, researchers on the team have predicted U.N. climate talk outcomes before — with impressive accuracy. In 2009, before the notably boondoggled Copenhagen negotiations, two of the team’s economists independently predicted the unfortunate Copenhagen outcome (which failed to guarantee any legally binding international climate action). Here’s more from Climate Home:

Frans Stokman at the University of Groningen, predicted a weak, voluntary agreement which slightly deepened pledges made for the Kyoto Protocol, and pledged a limited adaptation fund.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a self-styled “predictioneer” favouring science over punditry, too predicted the Danish summit would be a “bust”.

“Sacrificing self-interest for the greater good just doesn’t happen very often. Governments don’t throw themselves on hand grenades,” he wrote in a Foreign Policy article in October 2009.

Success in Paris won’t take governments throwing themselves on hand grenades, but it will take an immense amount of compromise — especially on behalf of developed countries. How optimistic should we be about these compromises? The economists are expected to reveal their predictions shortly before the negotiations begin in late November.

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‘Predictioneers’ forecast Paris climate talks outcome with game theory

, Climate Home.

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Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

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We Fact-Checked What the Republicans Said About Climate Change During the Debate

by TwilaMayon Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Climate change made a last-minute appearance in Wednesday night’s GOP debate on CNN. Nearly 150 minutes into the show, and only for about four minutes, a few candidates weighed in on President Barack Obama’s plan to tackle global warming.

What made the short exchange most notable was the fact that none of the candidates on stage spent time refuting the fundamental science behind climate change: that the world is warming, and that humans are responsible. This alone was a sign of a recent shift in conservative politics that some pollsters have identified: More than 70 percent of Republicans believe humans are contributing to global warming, according to one recent study. Many conservatives no longer reject climate science itself. Rather, they reject the solutions, which they view as economically onerous. So, predictably, the GOP candidates largely portrayed Obama’s landmark Clean Power Plan as job-killing overregulation.

“We’re not going to destroy our economy the way the left-wing government we’re under wants to do,” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said. “Every proposal they put forward are proposals that will make it harder to do business in America, that will make it harder to create jobs in America.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie agreed. “We shouldn’t be destroying our economy in order to chase some wild, left-wing idea that somehow, us, by ourselves, are going to fix the climate,” he said, while touting his state’s solar investments.

Let’s fact-check a few of the statements from the debate.

Marco Rubio: “America is not a planet. And we are not even the largest carbon producer anymore: China is. And they’re drilling a hole and digging anywhere in the world that they can get a hold of.”

It’s true that America is not a planet. So we’re off to a good start. There is a sprawling (round) and diverse world beyond America’s shores that features other countries and other leaders and other cultures. These 197 countries include, but are not limited to, Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria…Anyway, the list goes on. The point Rubio is making, though, is that America can’t act alone to solve climate change.

That’s true. That’s why the UN climate process exists—to try to get countries to make a deal to reduce carbon pollution around the world. Rubio is right: China is the largest carbon producer in the world, by far, and is therefore crucial to how the world deals with runaway global warming. China’s reluctance at the Copenhagen negotiations in 2009 to forge a deal was reportedly central to the summit failing. China, as we’ve reported before, is voraciously consuming energy, and Rubio is correct that the country is “drilling a hole and digging anywhere.”

But that doesn’t mean China isn’t moving hard and fast on climate action. Indeed, China is acting, for the first time, in concert with the United States. Last November, China set a year at which it expects its emissions to “peak,” or finally begin to taper downward: around 2030. Credible analysts say that could happen sooner, holding out a tantalizing possibility: The world could stay within the internationally agreed-upon limit of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming above pre-industrial levels. China is also pouring money into renewable energy, especially solar. And in September 2014, China announced it was moving forward with plans for a massive, nationwide cap-and-trade program intended to help combat climate change. The program will launch in 2016, but there are already a series of pilot carbon markets across the country.

So, Sen. Rubio: China is acting, and the United States is helping it act. Just this week, a delegation of Chinese climate negotiators met their American counterparts in Los Angeles to announce a widespread crackdown on carbon emissions in Chinese cities—matched by commitments from US cities.

Rubio: “The decisions that the left want us to make…will make America a more expensive place to create jobs.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker: “This is an issue where, we’re talking about my state, it’s thousands of manufacturing jobs.”

Christie: “We shouldn’t be destroying our economy in order to chase some wild, left-wing idea that somehow, us, by ourselves, are going to fix the climate.”

Rubio, Walker, and Christie are referring to a classic argument here, that increased regulation will make electricity bills more expensive, depress the economy, and kill jobs. The truth is a little more complicated—and this is where it gets a little wonky. The entire electricity industry is changing, with or without Obama’s new climate rules. As my colleague Tim McDonnell reported in February, inefficient coal plants that could face closure under Obama’s EPA-led Clean Power Plan “are already being threatened by competition from cheap natural gas and existing EPA rules targeting mercury pollution”:

A recent survey of the nation’s electric utility companies found that 77 percent already plan to reduce their dependence on coal in the coming years, while a similar proportion plan to increase their dependence on natural gas and renewables. In other words, the new EPA rules don’t signal an about-face from existing trends.

The point is that making lots of energy from coal plants just isn’t as economically feasible as it once was—so it’s hard to blame any one lost coal industry job on the EPA’s plan alone. And about electricity bills themselves, McDonnell writes about one case study suggesting electric bills could actually go down:

Meanwhile, back in Virginia, an analysis by the Southern Environmental Law Center found that although electricity rates are projected to rise 2 percent by 2030, improvements in energy efficiency thanks to the new EPA rules would actually lead to an 8 percent drop in consumers’ electric bills.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, savings like that could add up to $37.4 billion for all US homes and businesses by 2020.

But it’s probably taken you longer to read this than the exchange took to play out on stage at the Reagan Library in California. And once they were done misinforming viewers about the climate, they moved on to vaccines.

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We Fact-Checked What the Republicans Said About Climate Change During the Debate

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A surprising link between superintelligent robots, global warming, and mass extinction? Nope, not really

by AlphonsoChauncy Posted on September 9, 2015

A surprising link between superintelligent robots, global warming, and mass extinction? Nope, not really

By on 9 Sep 2015commentsShare

Hold on to your tinfoil hats, folks: Robots are taking over the world after climate change forces global mass extinction. Or, rather, with enough conjecture, coincidence, and frivolous shoehorning, you too could wring that argument out of a new paper by researchers at the IT University of Copenhagen and the University of Texas–Austin. If that’s what you wanted to do with your afternoon.

But you don’t need to — that’s what The Washington Post is for:

We’ve already heard of all the nasty consequences that could occur if the pace of global climate change doesn’t abate by the year 2050 — we could see wars over water, massive food scarcity, and the extinction of once populous species. Now add to the mix a potentially new wrinkle on the abrupt and irreversible changes – superintelligent robots would be just about ready to take over from humanity in the event of any mass extinction event impacting the planet.

In fact, according to a mind-blowing research paper published in mid-August by computer science researchers Joel Lehman and Risto Miikkulainen, robots would quickly evolve in the event of any mass extinction (defined as the loss of at least 75 percent of the species on the planet), something that’s already happened five times before in the past.

In a survival of the fittest contest in which humans and robots start at zero (which is what we’re really talking about with a mass extinction event), robots would win every time. That’s because humans evolve linearly, while superintelligent robots would evolve exponentially. Simple math.

Woahhh, boy. Easy. Have a sugar cube.

Climate change is bad, bad, bad news bears. But it’s probably not going to wipe out all the people. Don’t get me wrong: Rising sea levels, security threat multipliers, Peabody is the devil, keep it in the ground, carbon fee and dividend, etc., etc. But implying mass human extinction due to a warming climate is counter-productive in a country in which half the political populace suggests the threat is overblown.

Side note: Even if we did “start at zero,” presumably that would imply actually starting at zero. As in, no humans and no robots. In which case you can exponentiate zero until the robocows come home, and you’ll still be left with an arithmetic donut. Mother Earth wins every time — the deserts, the oceans, the bacteria — not the ‘bots. End side note.

There’s a lot going on in Lehman and Miikkulainen’s paper, but none of it is about climate change. (Dominic Basulto, the author of the WaPo piece, acknowledges as much.) The study itself is a relatively straightforward piece of computer science: Dump some biologically inspired learning algorithms into a population of simulated robots, tack on an evolution-mimicking step, kill off a bunch of digital bots (that’s the mass extinction), and see what happens. The researchers demonstrate that after unplugging a good chunk of the robots, “evolvability” accelerates; that is, the extent to which and the rate at which the digibots are able to fill abandoned niches increase. It’s an interesting result, and one that warrants discussion in the context of biological evolution.

But back to climate change, mass extinction, and the coming robopocalypse. Let’s assume “start at zero” means “start at roughly equal numbers of robots and humans, who are at roughly equal levels of intelligence, and who are more or less randomly geographically distributed, and then inexplicably normalize this undoubtedly high-dimensional description of the scenario to ‘zero’.” (Forget the difficulties of meaningfully quantifying intelligence and consciousness.) There are a handful of robots and a handful of humans. It’s basically Burning Man out there. Then, the argument goes, the robots really take off:

Think about it — robots don’t need water and they don’t need food — all they need is a power source and a way to constantly refine the algorithms they use to make sense of the world around them. If they figure out how to stay powered up after severe and irreversible climate change impacts – perhaps by powering up with solar power as they did in the Hollywood film “Transcendence” — robots could quickly prove to be “fitter” than humans in responding to any mass extinction event.

They also might just sit around and rust in the sun. What’s motivating them to survive? Part of the problem here is that we also don’t really know what “evolvability” is. A 2008 review in Nature Reviews Genetics by Massimo Pigliucci states that, traditionally, “the term has been used to refer to different, if partly overlapping, phenomena.” It’s also unclear whether or not an organism can actually evolve evolvability.

Setting those difficulties aside, in assessing the Robo-Climate Wars scenario, we’re still left poking at the unparalleled uncertainty that hovers around the Singularity — the term used to describe the moment at which runaway artificial intelligence surpasses that of mankind. Some researchers argue the moment could come within the next ten years. Others say it won’t be less than a hundred (if ever). Basulto’s argument in The Washington Post rests on the temporal convergence of a climate-change-induced mass extinction and the dawn of superintelligence. Which seems a tad unlikely. And even if you buy, say, 2050 as an extinction date and as the hockey stick uptick for the Singularity, we’re still left with the assumption that human evolution and robot evolution will somehow be qualitatively and quantitatively different from one another. Which should give us pause.

While Basulto writes that “humans evolve linearly,” that idea is not at all settled in the evolutionary biology community. (Nor is “linear evolution” particularly well-defined in the first place. Linear? By what metric?) Some futurists argue — and it’s mostly futurists having these conversations — that as soon as we’ve developed robots capable of superintelligence (which ostensibly implies nonlinear evolution) we’ll have cracked the code of our own brains. In which case the same argument that applies to the robots in Lehman and Miikkulainen’s paper will apply to us, too, and we should spend more time worrying about climate change and less time worrying about the rise of our robot overlords.

Besides, by 2045, we’re supposed to be able to upload our brains to achieve immortality. As long as we’re cherry-picking futurist tidbits, we might as well cling to that one.

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Extinction Events Can Accelerate Evolution

, PLOS One.

The strange link between global climate change and the rise of the robots

, The Washington Post.

How mass extinctions can accelerate robot evolution

, Kurzweil AI.

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A surprising link between superintelligent robots, global warming, and mass extinction? Nope, not really

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Obama’s Big Climate Plan Is Now Final—and It’s Even Stronger Than Expected

by Myrna Posted on August 3, 2015

But there’s still much more to do. Drop of Light/Shutterstock t’s finally here, the biggest climate action of Obama’s presidency: On Monday morning, the EPA will issue a final Clean Power Plan rule that will, for the first time, govern carbon emissions from power plants. And it’s stronger in several ways than the draft plan that was released in June 2014. The White House began bragging about its accomplishment on Sunday. First it released a feel-good video. Then there was a press call with EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. On Monday, President Obama himself will speak about the plan. Even before any of that, the accolades from environmental and public health groups started rolling in. Carol Browner, former EPA administrator and now chair of the League of Conservation Voters, was typical in calling it “a visionary policy that sets our nation on the path to cleaner, renewable energy for the future.” Here’s why: The Clean Power Plan, assuming it survives legal challenges, is set to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It’s the biggest component of Obama’s Climate Action Plan, and the centerpiece of any realistic program to meet our emission-reduction pledges from the 2009 Copenhagen Accord and the intended targets we have outlined ahead of the Paris climate talks that will take place later this year. Read the rest at Grist. Visit site:  Obama’s Big Climate Plan Is Now Final—and It’s Even Stronger Than Expected ; ; ;

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Obama’s Big Climate Plan Is Now Final—and It’s Even Stronger Than Expected

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When the Gun Lobby Tries to Justify Firearms Everywhere, It Turns to This Guy

by Norris41S7784335 Posted on July 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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When you watch the news after the latest big shooting, there’s a good chance you’ll come across John Lott. The 57-year-old economist has made more than 100 media appearances over the past two years, from friendly conversations on Fox News to heated debates on MSNBC and CNN. After nine churchgoers were gunned down in Charleston, South Carolina, he went on Sean Hannity’s show and criticized President Obama for spreading “clearly false” information about gun violence. Following the recent mass shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee, his op-ed asking “Why should we make it easy for killers to attack our military?” was among the most popular articles on the Fox News site. After an interview with Lott in the wake of the movie theater shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, conservative radio host Laura Ingraham gushed, “He knows more about guns and the Second Amendment than pretty much anyone I know.”

More from MoJo: Read Chris Mooney’s look the Lott controversy in 2003

Lott does not come off as the stereotypical pro-gun activist. His demeanor is professorial and his argument is academic: Based on his years of research and data analysis, he claims that guns reduce crime by enabling people to protect themselves and deter criminals. His message is simple: As he told CNN’s Piers Morgan in the wake of the Aurora mass shooting, “Guns make it easier for bad things to happen. But they also make it easier for people to protect themselves and prevent bad things from happening.” His book, More Guns Less Crime, which has been referred to as the bible of the gun lobby, forms the quantitative justification for the effort to ease restrictions on concealed firearms across the country.

It’s no coincidence that Lott’s profile has risen as Americans have been reckoning with the causes and impact of gun violence. But his newfound visibility is surprising considering that, a dozen years ago, his professional reputation was in tatters, his bold claims undermined by accusations of shoddy research and questionable ethics.

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When the Gun Lobby Tries to Justify Firearms Everywhere, It Turns to This Guy

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Ex-Congressman Michael Grimm Gets Eight Months in Prison for Tax Crimes

by VallieCxe2495233 Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.), the Staten Islander best known for threatening on-camera to “break” a reporter “in half—like a boy,” has been sentenced by a federal judge to eight months in prison for tax evasion.

The sentencing, by US District Judge Pamela Chen, comes seven months after Grimm pleaded guilty to his role in filing a false tax return. Grimm had been indicted in April 2014 on 20 counts related to accounting practices at Healthalicious, a Manhattan restaurant he owned before his time in Congress. The restaurant’s co-owner, Bennett Orfaly, has previously been accused of having ties to a convicted Gambino family mobster.

Despite his indictment, last year, Grimm ran for reelection to his third term in Congress—and won. It was not until December 30—seven days after entering his guilty plea—that he announced his intentions to resign his seat.

Before Grimm was the target of an investigation by the FBI, he served for two decades as one of its agents. It was during this time that Grimm reportedly pulled a gun in a Queens nightclub, and, after a bouncer ejected him, stormed the nightclub with another FBI agent and members of the NYPD. “I’m a fucking F.B.I. agent,” Grimm reportedly said. “Ain’t nobody gonna threaten me.”

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Ex-Congressman Michael Grimm Gets Eight Months in Prison for Tax Crimes

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What Do Green Activists Think About Hillary Clinton?

by BlondelGed Posted on April 20, 2015

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“I’m ready for Hillary…to say NO KXL.” Ben Adler/Grist Notwithstanding The Washington Post’s inevitable jokes about “fedoras, flannel shirts and beards” outside Hillary Clinton’s campaign office “in the midst of hipster-cool downtown Brooklyn,” there actually is no such thing as “hipster-cool downtown Brooklyn.” Downtown Brooklyn is a warren of architecturally undistinguished office buildings and sterile windswept plazas. And so it was on a charmless little patch of sidewalk near the new campaign headquarters that a group of about 20 activists with 350 Action, an affiliate of 350.org, held signs and chanted on Monday afternoon urging Clinton to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. The signs played on a slogan used by Clinton’s supporters — “I’m ready for Hillary” — by tacking an extra phrase onto the end — “to say NO KXL.” In a comment that cut to the heart of the contradiction embedded in Clinton’s record — embracing both cuts to carbon emissions and increases in fossil fuel production — Duncan Meisel, an organizer with 350, said, “If you want to stop carbon pollution, keep carbon in the ground!” Reporters in attendance strained to hear the unamplified speakers over the steady hum of idling buses across the street. What the event lacked in grandeur, though, it made up for in topical importance. Clinton herself has called climate change “the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face.” And yet climate activists have good reason to be worried about Clinton’s Keystone stance. In recent years, she has refused to take any position on the pipeline, but in 2010, when she was secretary of state, she said, “we are inclined to” approve it. Says Ben Schreiber, Friends of the Earth’s climate and energy program director, “It was inappropriate for her to make comments about the merits of the proposal when there wasn’t even an environmental impact statement.” Read the rest at Grist.

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What Do Green Activists Think About Hillary Clinton?

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What Do Green Activists Think About Hillary Clinton?

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Climate-Skeptic US Senator Given Funds By BP Political Action Committee

by Myrna Posted on April 7, 2015

Senator Jim Inhofe, who opposes climate change regulation, has received $10,000 from PAC funded by donations from US staff at oil group. Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP One of America’s most powerful and outspoken opponents of climate change regulation received election campaign contributions that can be traced back to senior BP staff, including chief executive Bob Dudley. Jim Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma who has tirelessly campaigned against calls for a carbon tax and challenges the overwhelming consensus on climate change, received $10,000 (£6,700) from BP’s Political Action Committee (PAC). Following his re-election, Inhofe became chair of the Senate’s environment and public works committee in January, and then a month later featured in news bulletins throwing a snowball across the Senate floor. Read the rest at the Guardian. More:  Climate-Skeptic US Senator Given Funds By BP Political Action Committee ; ; ;

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Climate-Skeptic US Senator Given Funds By BP Political Action Committee

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This Major Newspaper Just Declared War on Fossil Fuels

by Myrna Posted on March 20, 2015

Inside the Guardian’s decision to embrace climate activism. Jonathan Nicholson/ZUMA After 20 years at the helm of one of the United Kingdom’s most influential newspapers, Alan Rusbridger is about to step down as editor of the Guardian. He’s not going quietly: In an op-ed a couple weeks ago, Rusbridger pledged to use his waning weeks to launch a full-out war on climate change: So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian’s best resources to describe what is happening…For the purposes of our coming coverage, we will assume that the scientific consensus about man-made climate change and its likely effects is overwhelming. We will leave the sceptics and deniers to waste their time challenging the science. The mainstream argument has moved on to the politics and economics… We will look at who is getting the subsidies and who is doing the lobbying. We will name the worst polluters and find out who still funds them. We will urge enlightened trusts, investment specialists, universities, pension funds and businesses to take their money away from the companies posing the biggest risk to us. And, because people are rightly bound to ask, we will report on how the Guardian Media Group itself is getting to grips with the issues. The Guardian, a Climate Desk partner, is no stranger to global warming reporting. It was the first daily paper in the UK to institute a dedicated section for environment coverage. The paper has extensively covered international climate negotiations, fracking on both sides of the Atlantic, and the latest climate science, while also pouring resources into lush interactive web features. But its new initiative promises to go even further. The series kicked off with a pair of excerpts from Harvard science historian Naomi Klein’s recent book on the tension between capitalism and the climate crisis. Over the next few months it will include investigative features, daily news stories, videos and podcasts, and even original artwork and poetry. The pieces will appear not just on the paper’s environment pages, but across all sections, from business and tech to lifestyle and the arts. The overarching idea is that from now until Rusbridger’s departure in June, any climate story that any reporter has had kicking around but has never had time to tackle will get priority treatment. But the centerpiece is all about the penultimate sentence in the excerpt above: “We will urge…” This week the Guardian kicked off a petition calling on the world’s two largest charitable organizations, the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to divest their financial holdings from the world’s 200 top fossil fuel companies. As of Thursday afternoon, the petition had gathered over 94,000 signatures and earned the support of the country’s energy minister. If that sounds a lot like straight-up activism, that’s because it is. Rusbridger proposed the petition a few months ago at a meeting that included a who’s-who of the paper’s top editors, designers, and website coders, said James Randerson, an assistant national news editor who handles climate reporting. “There were some voices who questioned whether a campaign was the best use of the Guardian‘s voice,” Randerson said, “because the Guardian is about reporting and uncovering things that people can use in advancing an agenda.” But Rusbridger’s argument, Randerson said, was: “We’ve tried to do that for quite a while, and we needed to do something that had a bit more cut-through. We felt that it was time to take that step.” The idea of a newspaper undertaking an openly activist campaign straight from the playbook of Greenpeace or the Sierra Club might seem strange to American audiences, who are accustomed to news outlets at least purporting to adhere to some degree of journalistic objectivity. But in the UK, newspapers taking a step across the line between news and activism is, well, less newsworthy. In 2014 the Guardian waged a similar campaign against female genital mutilation. Prior to the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, the Guardian convinced 56 newspapers from around the globe to publish a front-page editorial calling for climate action. Randerson also characterized the paper’s extensive reporting on Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency as a kind of unofficial campaign against state surveillance. And the Times of London has an ongoing campaign to promote safety for urban cyclists, inspired by an accident that nearly killed one of its reporters. Randerson said the campaign won’t dampen the editorial rigor applied to reporting, editing, and fact-checking news stories. Is it time for the Washington Post and the New York Times to launch climate petitions of their own? Randerson wouldn’t say, but he did argue that especially in the United States, “the media have not done a service to their readers in explaining what’s really at stake here.” Now we get a chance to see if a more direct approach does the trick. View the original here: This Major Newspaper Just Declared War on Fossil Fuels

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This Major Newspaper Just Declared War on Fossil Fuels

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