the inhofe file

I have decided that I'm going to spend as much time and energy as I can to try to get Sen. James Inhofe removed as chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

People say that a main reason for preventing the building of the Keystone XL pipeline is that building it will indicate that we're simply not really serious about doing anything about global warming, that we're just going to go after every last drop of oil, no matter where it is or how dirty it is.

I feel the same way about Senator Inhofe.  If we allow him to continue to chair this committee, which deals most directly with climate change, it will indicate that we simply are not serious in trying to bring about political change to deal with this issue.  I don't have financial resources to put into this, but I don't think that's important.  What I do have is time, so in the weeks and months ahead I'll be investing as much of it as I can into getting Sen. Inhofe out of that position.  He's simply got to go.

weo, wto

We need a World Environmental Organization analogous to the World Trade Organization.

world parliament?

A world parliament?  I doubt it, but here's the rationale:

http://www.cadmusjournal.org/article/issue-4/social-evolution-global-governance-and-world-parliament#13

dawn satellite

I think it would be cool to have a satellite moving in orbit directly above the ring of illumination separating day from night, so you could actually see dawn as it moves across the surface of the Earth.  Then you could have video cams at various locations to show the sun coming up there.  These would include major cities, but also important landscapes (dawn over the Urals, the Indian Ocean, the Rift Valley, etc.)

planetary consciousness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_consciousness

short term and long term

The short-term goal is to get a serious carbon tax enacted.

The long-term goal is that the human population of this planet has to be cut.  If we want a world in which everybody can achieve a Western-style level of affluence, we can't get it with 7 billion of us on the planet.  I've read somewhere that to achieve that, we'd need four or five planet Earths to provide the necessary resources.

india goes to mars

Launched on Nov. 5, 2013, India's MOM (Mars Orbiter Mission) goes into orbit around Mars.

http://www.space.com/27242-india-mars-mission-arrival.html

maven

After ten months in space, NASA's MAVEN Mars orbiter goes into orbit around Mars.

http://www.space.com/23617-nasa-maven-mars-mission.html

ddpp

The Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) issued its final report in preparation for this week's climate summit at the UN:

http://unsdsn.org/what-we-do/deep-decarbonization-pathways/

Here is the Executive Summary:

http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DDPP_2014_report_executive_summary_digit.pdf

carbon tax center

Here's a link to the blog of the Carbon Tax Center, a New York-based group advocating-- you guessed it-- a carbon tax:

www.carbontax.org/blog/

Many of these posts are quite technical, but there are links, in particular, to comparisons of a carbon tax to cap-and-trade schemes.