If recent polls are any indication, Americans will have difficulty enjoying a carefree summer, facing, as they are, the reality of rising fuel prices. Despite overwhelming calls for action transcending partisan lines, there was no definitive congressional action taken prior to the July 4 break to initiate plans for America's energy independence. House Minority Leader John Boehner and his Republican colleagues said that GOP lawmakers "made it clear that Congress should not leave town without voting on meaningful solutions to increase American energy production. But Democrats did." Democrats can balk, but they cannot deny the facts – even when those facts are provided by an organization not always in sync with Republican policies.
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Hopes have dimmed for stronger action on climate change – a central goal of this week's G8 summit in Japan – with countries such as the United States and Canada resisting calls for the group to set hard midterm targets for reducing emissions.
Next week, the leaders of the G8 countries will be meeting in Hokkaido, Japan, for their annual summit. Once again it will at least provide the world with the opportunity to reflect on whether this is the kind of institution the world needs for the 21st century. Like many of the institutions of the 20th century shaped by distinct but now bygone circumstances, the G8 has started to look like a rather arbitrary gathering.
The Group of Eight major industrialized countries meeting next week in Japan cannot by themselves set effective long-term world goals on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, the White House said on Tuesday.
Although most experts agree that financial speculation was not responsible for the surge in the global prices of food and energy, many people remain puzzled about the source of these remarkable price rises. Economics offers a simple supply-and-demand explanation and reason for optimism about the future of commodity prices. In the case of oil, economics also suggests how policy changes today that affect the future could quickly lower the current price of oil.
Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.
The bitter arguments in the Senate this month over the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill, which would have required major emitters to pay for the right to discharge greenhouse gases, proved that climate change caused by humans has come to the fore of U.S. policy debates. This fact may comfort those who believe that future generations will judge us on the zeal with which we face the challenge. It may even assuage the fears of those who believe that warming will end life as we know it. But political rhetoric is unlikely to put us on a path toward solving the problem of climate change in the best possible way.
The world's emissions of the main planet-warming gas carbon dioxide will rise over 50 percent to more than 42 billion tonnes per year from 2005 to 2030 as China leads a rise in burning coal, the U.S. government forecast on Wednesday.
I seem to remember from statistics class that anything less than 95 percent probability is junk science. This is an editorial from the most recent issue of GEO, a Norwegian magazine about earth sciences.
In honor of the 33rd International Geological Congress being held in Oslo this summer, GEO's 04/08 issue is published in English, so the editorial is legible for people other than the maybe 5 million that speak Norwegian.
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