Governors, Mayors, Business, Insurance, Farm, Military, Youth, Faith, and Other Voices: Enhance The Economy, Improve Public Health, Protect National Security, Safeguard Our Children, Act Justly, and Honor Our Moral Duties By Putting Solutions Into Action

“A unique bi-partisan coalition is urging President Obama to follow up his State of the Union commitment to address the climate crises by directly engaging America in climate solutions: www.climatesummit2013.org.

Specifically, the group wants the President to host a kick-off solutions-focused national climate summit linked directly with concurrent action-planning meetings hosted by state and local governments, business, civic, and faith organizations nationwide. The events would be designed to mobilize Americans to implement proven, beneficial solutions to prepare for and build resilience to the impacts of climate change, and reduce climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions. 

“To achieve the bold climate goals the President described in his State of the Union address, he must reach out directly to and engage Americans where they live, work, play, and pray,” said Bob Doppelt, director of The Resources Innovation Group and a leader of the Climate Summit 2013 Coalition.

The national leaders endorsing Climate Summit 2013 include Governors, Mayors,  business, farm, insurance, youth, faith, civil rights, climate justice, former military, and other leaders, as well as top climate scientists. A growing list of Catholic leaders that support the proposal can be found here.

“Climate disruption is not just an environmental issue. It is a profound economic, health, social justice, and national security problem with deep moral implications,” concluded Doppelt.  “Our proposal is consistent with calls by six scientific societies for a high-level climate summit. It will serve as a springboard to expand existing resilience building and emission reduction programs, launch new ones, and spur tremendous innovation that reaps great near and long term benefits nationwide.””

More at http://www.climatesummit2013.org/

These diseases are caused by viruses, bacteria and parasites, and affect more than one billion people, mainly in the tropics, where the most vulnerable developing world populations are concentrated.

But the map of tropical diseases like malaria, Chagas’ disease, sleeping sickness, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis and dengue fever, is starting to change.

Tropical diseases transmitted by vectors like mosquitoes, flies, ticks or snails are directly affected by conditions in the ecosystems they inhabit, such as changes in humidity, water levels, temperature or rainfall, experts explain.

“Global warming is ‘tropicalising’ subtropical regions; rising temperatures could bring an explosion of parasite and insect vectors that are expanding into North America, the Southern Cone of South America, Australia and New Zealand,” Costa Nery said.

One sign of this, said the president of the SBMT, is the spread of leishmaniasis in Europe by travelling persons and dogs. He explained that the disease, which is endemic in southern Europe, could continue to spread northward if temperatures keep rising.

At the same time, climate variation in the tropics and its effects on the frequency of flooding and drought “could also modify the dynamic of the transmission of diseases,” with the emergence of vectors that alter the population’s immunity and resistance.

Via IPS covering the 18th International Congress on Tropical Medicine and Malaria, held Sept. 23-27 in Rio de Janeiro.

bringtheruckuss:

The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday.

Scientific estimates differ but the world’s temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably.  As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests.

 ”This is the critical decade. If we don’t get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines,” said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University’s climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London.  Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world’s biggest polluters, such as the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 - to enter into force in 2020.

 ”We are on the cusp of some big changes,” said Steffen. “We can … cap temperature rise at two degrees, or cross the threshold beyond which the system shifts to a much hotter state.”

More from the Planet Under Pressure conference, which focuses on human’s impact on the plant. Note that sessions are live streamed GMT.

Kind of a weird article from DeSmogBlog accusing PR agencies of illegally using psychological military techniques against land owners in order to, I don’t know, sell their land or something. The author gives evidence by 1) pointing to a PR guy blabbering at a PR conference and 2) pointing to a gas fracking FAQ flier left in a woman’s driveway.

Making the connection from tactless PR to scary-illegal seems more than a stretch, it’s wishful thinking.

“At the “Media & Stakeholder Relations: Hydraulic Fracturing Initiative 2011” conference last week in Houston, Matt Pitzarella, Director of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs at Range Resources, revealed in his presentation that Range has hired Army and Marine veterans with combat experience in psychological warfare to influence communities in which Range drills for gas.  

As CNBC reported, Range spokesman Matt Pitzarella boasted to the audience:

“[“…looking to other industries, in this case, the Army and the Marines. We have several former PSYOPs folks that work for us at Range because they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments. Really all they do is spend most of their time helping folks develop local ordinances and things like that. But very much having that understanding of PSYOPs in the Army and in the Middle East has applied very helpfully here for us in Pennsylvania.”
[**Listen: MP3**]

At that same conference, Matt Carmichael, External Affairs Manager at Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, suggested three things to attendees during his presentation:

“If you are a PR representative in this industry in this room today, I recommend you do three things. These are three things that I’ve read recently that are pretty interesting.

“(1) Download the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual [audible gasps from the audience], because we are dealing with an insurgency”

Source: DeSmogBlog

Hi all,

As you probably know, I’m helping organize Obama’s climate change conference, to be held this weekend. If you’re in the DC area, we’re in need of a few volunteers. It’s competitive, and screening is tough. You have to be polished. If you make it in, you’ll make incredible connections. Here’s the application: GreenGov Volunteers Application.

Good luck!

mike 

Here’s a submission from one of my readers, sahrawi. Thanks for sending! Looks good!

“Mike, I got this announcement via the ICIMOD email listserv. I’m not a national from an Asian country, but it sounds like a neat opportunity for someone who is.”

Youth Forum on Climate Actions and Mountain Issues, 8-12 August 2011

 With the grand success of youth focused events in recent years (Café Climate, Youth Forum, Youth Corner, Graduate Conference, seminars and talk programmes, various capacity building workshops and publication of the special issue of the Asia Pacific Mountain Courier on ‘youth and climate change’ among others), we are pleased to announce Youth Forum 2011 on Climate Actions and Mountain Issues. 

 Objective

The overall objective of the Youth Forum is to celebrate International Year of Youth 2011/12 and International Youth Day, 12 August, through continuation of series of activities started in 2008 to build the next generation leadership in sustainable mountain development and climate change adaptation in ICIMOD Regional Member Countries (RMCs) and beyond, especially in the context of upcoming UNFCCC CoP 17 and Rio+20 meeting.

We offer a unique
 opportunity for students and speakers across the Asia Pacific region to engage
 each other in addressing the challenge of applying and adapting broader principles of sustainability, climate change and mountain development to locale-specific  solutions. The programme will feature eminent speakers and there will
 be an emphasis on the issues specific to mountain development in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region and beyond,especially in the context of ICIMOD’s work, and ongoing and planned regional and global processes on relevant topics.

The event is financially supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Who should apply?

Read More

DC’ers:

The Environmental Markets Association (EMA) has put together two days of critical sessions with high level officials and industry practitioners focused on getting back to basics.

Join EMA on May 11-13, 2011 in Washington, DC for this interactive discussion on all things environmental markets. Sessions include:

• State of the 3P Bill and US Environmental Markets
• Energy Market Issues
• EPA’s Proposed Transport Rule: The End of Trading as We Know It?
• Renewable Energy Standard v. Clean Energy Standard
• Tackling the Uncertainty of REC pricing and Forecasted Electric Load
• Congressional Outlook Roundtable: 3P Bill, Renewable Electricity Standard, Clean Air Transport Rule, CES
• Regional CO2 Markets: California Greenhouse Gas Markets Update and Potential for the Western Climate Initiative coming online and working with California
• Solar, Wind & Bio Gas: What Technology Does it Take to Support the Market? Outlook for Financing Projects with the Recovery Act
• Media View on Emissions Trading and other Environmental Issues

Confirmed speakers include:

- Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
- Scott O’Malia, Commissioner, CFTC
- David W. Conover, Bipartisan Policy Council
- Darren Samuelsohn, Reporter, Politico
- John A. Anderson, Credit Suisse
- Tom Hewson, Energy Ventures Analysis Inc.
- Thad Huetteman, Power & Energy Analytic Resources, Inc.
- Chris MacCracken, ICF International
- Roman Kramarchuk, PIRA
- Mike McKenna, MWR Strategies
- Judi Greenwald, Pew Center
- Kedin Kilgore, Barclays Capital
- Steve Fine, ICF International
- Brannen G. McElmurray, NRG Energy


For more information and to register, please visit http://www.environmentalmarkets.org/page.ww?name=15th+Annual+Spring+Meeting+Washington%2C+DC&section=Spring2011 or go to www.environmentalmarkets.org

I was going to speak at this, but couldn’t work the calendar. Big fat bummer.

Registration for non-presenting participants now open!
Deadline for registration: 1 May 2011
<http://www.nccr-climate.unibe.ch/conferences/climate_economics_law/>

The NCCR Climate, Switzerland’s centre of excellence in climate and climate impact research, invites scientists to the Climate Economics and Law Conference that will take place on 16 and 17 June 2011 in Bern, Switzerland.

Key issues covered by the conference are:
* Mitigation, adaptation and technological change
* Trade regulations and unilateral climate policies

Each topic includes two keynote plenary lectures and numerous parallel sessions.

The conference is open to all interested researchers. Contributions from a broad spectrum of climate economics and law research issues and from the two key topics, in particular, are welcome. Overall, the conference aims to foster cross-disciplinary links.

Moomaw is pretty big in the GHG arena (I’m not really into emissions reductions). I think this talk is about building a green home in New England.

“Can Renewable Energy Address Climate Change? The Perils of Policy”