1) It is historic. John Kerry was right to use the phrase in his New York Times oped announcing the deal: for the first time a developing nation has agreed to eventually limit its emissions, which has become a necessity for advancing international climate negotiations.

2) It isn't...

This Sunday, an estimated 100,000 people will flood the streets of midtown Manhattan for the largest climate demonstration in world history. They will come from all over the globe, with interests, talents, and biographies that mirror the incredible diversity of our world. What's even more groundbreaking is how many groups...

Sunday will see the biggest march against climate change in the planet's history. But as we parade through the streets of New York, it will look -- and sound -- different than the big mass gatherings of the past century, from the march on Washington to the huge...

Stepping Forth for a Planet in Peril

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

On Sunday, September 21st, a huge crowd will march through the middle of Manhattan. It will almost certainly be the largest rally about climate change in human history, and one of the largest political protests...

Word came recently that both the Philadelphia Quakers and the Unitarian General Assembly have decided to divest from fossil fuels. It followed by few weeks the news that the Roman Catholic University of Dayton and Union Theological Seminary, the home of many a great thinker, had done likewise.

In...

Will Obama Block the Keystone Pipeline or Just Keep Bending?

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

As the battle over the Keystone XL pipeline has worn on -- and it’s now well over two years old -- it’s illuminated the Obama presidency like no other issue. It offers...

What to Make of Change on an Overheating Planet

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

The history we grow up with shapes our sense of reality -- it’s hard to shake. If you were young during the fight against Nazism, war seems a different, more virtuous animal than if...

You need to see this: Former Obama administration green jobs advisor Van Jones just came out swinging against Keystone XL.

It's one of the strongest statements yet about what is at stake in this fight -- for the president, and for all of us. Here's the video:

Van doesn't just raise the stakes, he debunks the outright myths that are leading our nation down a road to disaster. But who he is matters just as much as what he says.

Van is the first prominent former Obama official to take such a strong stand. A man who helped set environmental policy in the Obama White House is now making it clear that approving Keystone XL would be a horrific mistake. We should pay attention.

Please watch, and help me spread far and...

Ever since the Keystone fight began, the smart money has insisted the pipeline will be approved. But so far: no pipe.

And the opposition got a serious boost this week, when Republicans in the House of Representatives forced a vote on a symbolic measure approving KXL. It passed, of...

And If So, Is That Terrible News?

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

A few weeks ago, Time magazine called the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast the “Selma...

BLOOMBERG VIEW:

If you go to the website of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Eastern District of Missouri, you can read more than 1,000 letters from retired coal miners and their widows.

Their words are like the lyrics to an endless Johnny Cash ballad, and...

I don't claim to know exactly what's going on with #IdleNoMore, the surging movement of indigenous activists that started late last year in Canada and is now spreading across the continent -- much of the action, from hunger strikes to road and rail blockades, is in scattered and remote places,...

Why Climate Change Won’t Wait for the President

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

Change usually happens very slowly, even once all the serious people have decided there’s a problem. That’s because, in a country as big as the United States, public opinion moves in slow currents.  Since...

Superstorm Sandy has made it clear that no matter how hard some politicians try to ignore climate change, climate change will not ignore them -- or any of us. More carbon means higher seas, the kind that inundate subways. The U.S can also thank carbon emissions for contributing to the...

Watching from a distance is hard. I'm on the move setting up our big roadshow assault on the fossil fuel industry, but the real action is in Texas, where a growing number of blockaders are trying to shut down work on the southern section of the Keystone Pipeline...

You may wonder why so many progressive leaders -- from Van Jones to Al Gore -- are lining up to endorse Joe Romm's new book.

In part, of course, it's because we admire what he's done at Climate Progress. He's not just turned it into by...

It's turning into a hot climate summer in two ways, only one of which you can measure with a thermometer.

Amidst the deepening drought, the summer's fourth heat wave, and the continued western fires, there's something else breaking out: a siege of citizen uprisings at key points...

Pity the poor senator or representative trying to stay alive in the political jungle. At every turn there's a danger: a constituent who actually wants something done. Or worse, a campaign donor who might be offended by that something.

And so over time, our representatives have developed protective drab coloration...

Climate-Change Deniers Are On the Ropes -- But So Is the Planet

Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com

It’s been a tough few weeks for the forces of climate-change denial.

First came the giant billboard with Unabomber Ted Kacynzki’s face plastered across it: “I Still Believe...

Two pieces of crucial evidence emerged in the tar sands fight yesterday. One, happily, got all kinds of notice -- Jim Hansen's op-ed in the New York Times was the "most emailed" item of the day, which is appropriate since he explained new calculations showing that those Canadian...