Tag Archives: Political Polarization
Will the health dangers of climate change get people to care? The science says: maybe
April 7, 2016 —Climate change is a major public health threat, already making existing problems like asthma, exposure to extreme heat, food poisoning, and infectious disease more severe, and posing new risks from climate change-related disasters, including death or injury. Those were the alarming conclusions of a new scientific assessment report released by the Obama administration Continue Reading »
Shifting the conversation about climate change: Strategies to build public demand for action
March 1, 2016 —Late last year at the United Nations climate change summit in Paris, world leaders reached a historic accord committing their countries to lowering greenhouse gas emissions over the next two decades and beyond. The combined commitments by countries fall short of what many scientists say is needed to avoid the worst impacts of Continue Reading »
Pope Francis climate advocate: Reframing the debate
January 15, 2015 —Warning of “unprecedented destruction of the ecosystem,” Pope Francis in an encyclical to be released this week (and already leaked) calls for aggressive action to combat climate change and other environmental problems. In the special papal letter addressed to the world community, Pope Francis is expected to emphasize the deep moral imperative for Continue Reading »
Republican Charlie Baker’s win in liberal Massachusetts offers path forward on climate change
November 4, 2014 —On an urgent mission to shift the political debate over climate change, environmental groups spent an unprecedented $85 million in the 2014 U.S. midterm elections, focusing their efforts on a handful of contested Senate seats. Following the failure in 2010 to pass a national climate bill, environmentalists believed that they were trumped by Continue Reading »
Fox News seeds climate doubts, but liberal media also distort
October 30, 2014 —Recent Pew Research Center studies offer valuable insight on the ideological makeup of those Americans most likely to voice their opinion in politics generally and the climate debate specifically, including the news sources they rely on to articulate their arguments. What’s clear from the Pew findings and related research is that the highly Continue Reading »
Can people power drive action on climate change?
Oct. 21, 2014— Humans have so much influence over the global environment today that we have crossed a major threshold in Earth’s long history, entering a new stage in geological time which some scientists call the Anthropocene – the “Age of Us”. Experts, journalists, and advocates have warned us about the threats of climate change, Continue Reading »