{"id":1943,"date":"2014-11-23T07:59:15","date_gmt":"2014-11-23T12:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1943"},"modified":"2014-11-23T07:59:15","modified_gmt":"2014-11-23T12:59:15","slug":"tomgram-michael-klare-the-new-congress-and-planetary-disaster-tomdispatch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=1943","title":{"rendered":"Tomgram: Michael Klare, The New Congress and Planetary Disaster | TomDispatch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175924\/tomgram:_michael_klare,_the_new_congress_and_planetary_disaster\/\">Tomgram: Michael Klare, The New Congress and Planetary Disaster | TomDispatch<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', helvetica, arial; font-weight: normal; color: #333333; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20px; font-size: 16px; margin: 11px 0px 15px 0px;\">Looking for a little hope on climate change? \u00a0Believe it or not, it\u2019s here and it\u2019s real. And I&#8217;m not referring to the fact that, at least temporarily, oil prices have\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/money\/business\/2014\/11\/13\/crude-keystone-project\/18994601\/\" target=\"_blank\">gone<\/a>\u00a0through the floor, making environmentally destructive \u201ctough oil\u201d projects like western\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/christopherhelman\/2014\/11\/05\/as-oil-plunges-further-why-it-might-be-game-over-for-the-fracking-boom\/\" target=\"_blank\">oil-shale fracking<\/a>\u00a0and Canadian<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pri.org\/stories\/2014-10-21\/big-companies-are-pulling-plug-their-projects-albertas-tar-sands\" target=\"_blank\">tar sands<\/a>\u00a0extraction look ever less profitable.\u00a0 Nor do I mean the climate change\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/worlds-largest-polluters-strike-deal-to-curb-global-warming\/\" target=\"_blank\">deal<\/a>\u00a0that was just reached at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit and is being\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/time.com\/3577820\/apec-climate-change-barack-obama-xi-jinping-greenhouse-gas\/\" target=\"_blank\">called<\/a>\u00a0&#8220;historic.&#8221; It&#8217;s true that President Obama made a positive move at that summit,\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2014\/nov\/14\/barack-obama-to-pledge-at-least-25bn-to-help-poor-countries-fight-climate-change\" target=\"_blank\">another symbolic gesture<\/a>\u00a0in its wake, and is promising\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2014\/11\/climate-rules-obama-112792.html?hp=t2_r\" target=\"_blank\">more<\/a>\u00a0of the same in the future.\u00a0 These steps to check the worst future depredations of climate change have been\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/11\/14\/opinion\/paul-krugman-china-coal-climate.html\" target=\"_blank\">hailed<\/a>\u00a0as perhaps more transformational than they are.\u00a0 Nonetheless, in the face of a new Republican Congress in which\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/gop-congressional-leaders-denounce-us-china-deal-on-climate-change\/2014\/11\/12\/ff2b84e0-6a8d-11e4-a31c-77759fc1eacc_story.html?hpid=z1\" target=\"_blank\">anti-climate-change hawks<\/a>\u00a0may\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/climate\/2014\/11\/12\/3591317\/republicans-freak-out-china-us-climate-deal\/\" target=\"_blank\">outnumber<\/a>\u00a0war hawks (no small feat), this is\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/thischangeseverything.org\/some-very-initial-thoughts-on-the-us-china-deal\/\" target=\"_blank\">well worth noting<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', helvetica, arial; font-weight: normal; color: #333333; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20px; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 15px 0px;\">I&#8217;m talking, of course, about the potentially carbon-reducing long-term deal between the planet\u2019s\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/worlds-largest-polluters-strike-deal-to-curb-global-warming\/\" target=\"_blank\">two major greenhouse gas polluters<\/a>, between, that is, Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.\u00a0 Both of them have been running \u201c<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/blog\/2014\/05\/29\/new-report-all-above-energy-strategy-path-sustainable-economic-growth\" target=\"_blank\">all of the above<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tomdispatch.com\/post\/175889\/michael_klare_oil_rush_in_america\" target=\"_blank\">drill-baby-drill<\/a>\u00a0&#8212; or in China\u2019s case dig-baby-dig and import-baby-import &#8212; energy programs to devastating effect. China, for instance, is slated to bring online\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.climatecentral.org\/blogs\/chinas-growing-coal-use-is-worlds-growing-problem-16999\" target=\"_blank\">the equivalent<\/a>\u00a0of a new coal-powered plant every 10 days for the next decade, even as it\u2019s taken a\u00a0<a style=\"color: #993300; text-decoration: none;\" href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/climate\/2014\/11\/12\/3591433\/china-renewable-energy-commitment\/\" target=\"_blank\">leading position<\/a>\u00a0in developing solar power technology.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-family: 'Times New Roman', helvetica, arial; font-weight: normal; color: #333333; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; padding-top: 0px; line-height: 20px; font-size: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 15px 0px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tomgram: Michael Klare, The New Congress and Planetary Disaster | TomDispatch. Looking for a little hope on climate change? \u00a0Believe it or not, it\u2019s here and it\u2019s real. And I&#8217;m not referring to the fact that, at least temporarily, oil prices have\u00a0gone\u00a0through the floor, making environmentally destructive \u201ctough oil\u201d projects like western\u00a0oil-shale fracking\u00a0and Canadiantar sands\u00a0extraction [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[113,130,141,1272,834],"class_list":["post-1943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-china","tag-climate-change","tag-congress","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1944,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/1944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}