Taggreenhouse gases

The long hot summer…in Alaska

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Once every few weeks or so, it’s a good idea to remind yourself that man-made global warming isn’t just some abstract idea supported by nearly 100 percent of the world’s climate scientists (even if the idea is, of course, supported by nearly 100 percent of the world’s climate scientists.) The reality is that all over the world, in many different ways, climate change is...

How the merchants of death — tobacco and oil — worked together

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Not that long ago, I mentioned in a blog post that the New York Times had found strands of evidence — common law firms, similar lobbying and political strategies and the like — suggesting that two of our most notorious industries may have worked more closely together than anyone could have imagined. At first blush, the idea that lobbyists and key executives for these two so-called...

Trump’s veep pick Pence would be a disaster for the environment

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When it comes to the environment, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is something of a wild card. Before entering politics, Trump’s views on critical issues such as climate change — to the extent they were known — tended to be within the range of conventional opinion. But as the Manhattan billionaire got deeper into his bid for the GOP nomination, he...

The Brexit vote was also bad news for the environment

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Most Americans weren’t really paying close attention in recent weeks during the run-up to Great Britain’s referendum vote on leaving the European Union — the so-called “Brexit.” Maybe that was because all of the polling experts (yes, the same folks who told us in 2015 that Donald Trump would never win the Republican presidential nomination) insisted that British...

‘We’ve never seen anything like this before’

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Every day, a new reminder of the urgency of the world’s climate crisis — and, by logical extension, the 2016 elections here in the United States — shows up in my inbox or somewhere on the web. The streak of record monthly average world temperatures shows absolutely no sign of letting up. The hurricanes are coming earlier and growing stronger; the floods in places like Texas are...

A President Trump would undo years of environmental progress

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It took a long time, but President Obama finally has many — not all, but many — aspects of U.S. environmental and energy policy moving in the right direction. Even with a U.S. Congress that is led by deniers of climate change, the Obama administration has been able to promulgate new rules to restrict greenhouse-gas pollution from U.S. coal-fired power plants, and recently signed onto...

New Orleans is sinking just as the waters are rising

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When it comes to climate, the latest news for my lifelong hometown of New Orleans is not very good at all. As many people know — and as Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed made quite clear in 2005 — much of the Crescent City sits below sea level, which is why the city’s levees and its other defense mechanisms such as flood pumping stations are so critical. When...

The day climate change came to haunt tar sands country

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The scenes that have been coming from Alberta, Canada, over the past week are truly tragic, and horrifying. Massive wildfires, whipped by high winds, have turned the area around Fort McMurray — heavily populated with energy workers in recent years — into a hellscape of towering flames and smoke. Some 245,000 acres of land have been burned, and firefighters aren’t anywhere close...

Thanks to climate change, the world’s oceans can’t breathe

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Two of my passions in life, when it comes to recreation, are sailing and deep-sea diving. So, as you could imagine, the health of the world’s oceans is very important to me. Unfortunately, the medical report on the planet’s oceans has not been too good lately. Too much garbage has been dumped in our waters for too long — and the stunning result of that has been a massive slick...

Can our legal system stop global warming, for the sake of the children?

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As an environmental attorney, I’ve seen time and time again how the American legal system can bring justice to people — blue-collar workers, private property owners — who had no other real venue for airing their grievances. We’ve seen time and time again that large, profit-minded corporations can’t be trusted to do the right thing, and that too many of our so-called...

Stuart H. Smith is an attorney based in New Orleans fighting major oil companies and other polluters.
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