Weekly Mulch: Why Building a Bike-Safe City is Key to a Clean Energy Future

“There’s a dead dolphin on this beach,” Mother Jones‘ Mac McClelland, wrote yesterday in Louisiana. It’s one snapshot of the harm visited on the Gulf Coast by the BP oil spill. Back in Washington, the Senate climate bill, which would put the country on a path to cleaner energy consumption, is on its last legs.

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

Environmental advocates from around the world gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia, this week and resolved that, a year from now, they would hold a world’s people referendum on climate change to marshal support for the rights of the planet.

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

On Monday, climate activists, nonprofit leaders, and governmental officials will gather in Cochabamba, Bolivia, to look for new ideas to address climate change. The conference, organized by leading social organizations like 350.0rg, “will advocate the right to “live well,” as opposed to the economic principle of uninterrupted growth,” as Inter Press Service explains. In the absence of real leadership from the world’s governments, the conferees at Cochabamba are looking for solutions “committed to the rights of people and environment.”

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

Americans don’t know what to think about climate change anymore. A few years ago, the public more or less trusted the science that said human activity was raising global temperatures, but now that Congress and the Obama administration have hemmed and hawed about climate issues, we’re not longer so sure.

By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger

In his first State of the Union address, President Barack Obama touched on climate issues only briefly. He called on the Senate to pass a climate bill, but did not give Congress a deadline or promise to veto weak legislation. Nor did he mention the Copenhagen climate conference, where international negotiators struggled to produce an agreement on limiting global carbon emissions.

Dr Seuss at Copenhagen

old song that still seems to describe our current situation

A legally enforceable domestic bill and a legally enforceable international treaty have, at times, resembled a chicken and egg. The United States needed to pass a strong climate bill before Copenhagen; then it needed to structure the framework of a treaty in Copenhagen; now it needs to pass a climate bill, negotiate a treaty at the next Conference of the Parties in Mexico City, and get 67 votes in the Senate on a treaty or 60 votes in the Senate plus a simple majority in the House.