From The Hill:

The League of Conservation Voters has launched a petition drive pressing the moderator of the first presidential debate, Jim Lehrer of PBS, to ask about the topic. The first debate is Oct. 3.

“We urge you to ask President Obama and Gov. Romney how they will confront the greatest challenge of our generation — climate change,” states the online petition, launched Wednesday.

… 

The League of Conservation Voters is seeking 50,000 signatures.

Check out the rest of the article here. You can sign the petition here.

Related:

• ‘Our summer of climate truth’ (Project Syndicate) 
• ‘Voters wish politicians would fix the climate. Really.’ (Grist)
• ‘Conspiracy of silence: The irresponsible politics of climate change’ (Bulletin of Atomic Scientists)

(Map source: State of the Climate - National Overview, July 2012, NOAA)

Infographic: ‘Earth’s oceans and ecosystems still absorbing about half the greenhouse gases emitted by people’

Details over at NOAA.

Related:

• ‘The Carbon Bathtub’ (National Geographic)

“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”

~ Carl Sagan

Related:

• ‘STUDY: TV Media Ignore Climate Change In Coverage Of Record July Heat’ (Media Matters)
• ‘July 2012 Marked Hottest Month On Record for Contiguous U.S.; Drought Expands to Cover Nearly 63 Percent of the Lower 48’ (Science Daily)

It’s gettin’ hot in here: ‘Rate of arctic summer sea ice loss is 50% higher than predicted’

From The Guardian:

Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth’s polar caps.

…

This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.

…

The consequences of losing the Arctic’s ice coverage, even for only part of the year, could be profound. Without the cap’s white brilliance to reflect sunlight back into space, the region will heat up even more than at present. As a result, ocean temperatures will rise and methane deposits on the ocean floor could melt, evaporate and bubble into the atmosphere. Scientists have recently reported evidence that methane plumes are now appearing in many areas. Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the atmosphere are only likely to accelerate global warming. And with the disappearance of sea ice around the shores of Greenland, its glaciers could melt faster and raise sea levels even more rapidly than at present.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Infographic source: The Guardian)

From The Vancouver Sun:

The city’s urban fruit orchard is poised to expand steadily over the next eight years with new plantings planned for city parks.

The city has created new orchards in three city parks in just the past couple of years — Falaise, Gaston and Slocan — with the Renfrew-Collingwood Food Security Institute and a handful of neighbourhood partners. Its goal is to create at least seven more orchards by 2020 as part of the Greenest City Action Plan.

…

Although the city doesn’t have a complete inventory of fruit and nut trees in parks, the figure is believed to be around 425. The city’s inventory lists more than 600 fruit and nut trees on boulevards.

The biggest opportunity to expand the number of fruit and nut trees in the Vancouver is the city’s street tree planting program, which council has instructed to plant 150,000 trees to complement the 139,000 trees already lining Vancouver streets. But the city is hesitant to plant any more fruit and nut trees on the boulevards because trees that are not carefully maintained can create a tripping hazard on sidewalks and rotting fruit attracts vermin and wasps, according to Alan Duncan, environmental planner for the park board.

Planting fruit trees on the city’s boulevards would make sense for the city from a policy point of view as it satisfies the twin goals of increasing the number of street trees in the city and increasing food assets under Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, said Anthony Nicalo of FoodTree, a web- and mobile app-based local food sourcing system.

FoodTree has created an online map of the more than 600 fruit and nut trees already planted on streets and boulevards across Vancouver, which allows people to search for their favourite fruits in season and where they can be picked for free.

Nicalo said planting trees is just a first step toward creating a “food asset,” an accessible and sustainable food source for Vancouverites. Fruit trees need care, fruit needs to be picked and either eaten or processed.

“People need to adopt and care for fruit-bearing street trees,” he said.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo source: Renfrew-Collingwood Food Security Institute)

Clean Energy Transition: ‘Switch’ (Documentary Trailer)

From Switch via Vimeo:

What will it really take, to go from the energy that built our world, to the energy that will shape our future?

SWITCH explores the world’s leading energy sites, from coal to solar, oil to biofuels, and gets straight answers from the international leaders driving energy today, to discover the path to our energy transition.

Embraced by fossil and renewable energy companies, environmental groups, academics and the general public alike, SWITCH is the first truly balanced energy film.

It’s part of the Switch Energy Project, a film, web and education effort designed to lead a balanced national energy conversation.

Details here.

(Source: Union of Concerned Scientists)

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here | ‘Greenland Goes Green: Ice Sheet Melted in Four Days’ (Video)

From PBS News Hour via YouTube:

On July 8, NASA satellite imagery showed about 40 percent of Greenland’s top ice layer intact. By July 12, only four days later, 97 percent of the ice had melted. Margaret Warner asks NASA’s Thomas Wagner for scientific explanation of the massive thaw.

You can read the interview transcript here.

Related:

• ‘Iceberg twice the size of Manhattan breaks off Greenland glacier’ (CBC News)
• ‘New study says the Greenland ice sheet is becoming more sensitive to atmospheric warming’ (The Carbon Brief)

(Greenland map source: NASA) 

From BCSEA:

Join us for a BCSEA Webinar, starting at noon Pacific time (3:00 PM EDT) with Mathis Wackernagel, co-founder of the ecological footprint concept, and co-winner with Professor Bill Rees of the prestigious 2012 Blue Planet Prize. 

…

Mathis Wackernagel, Ph. D. is co-creator of the Ecological Footprint and President of Global Footprint Network, an international sustainability think-tank which focuses on bringing about a sustainable human economy in which all can live well within the means of one planet.

Mathis has worked on sustainability on six continents and lectured at more than a hundred universities. He previously served as the director of the Sustainability Program at Redefining Progress in Oakland, California, and ran the Centro de Estudios para la Sustentabilidad at Anáhuac University in Xalapa, Mexico.

He has authored or contributed to over 50 peer-reviewed papers, numerous reports and various books on sustainability that focus on embracing limits and developing metrics for sustainability.

More here.

Related:

• ‘2012 Blue Planet Prize Winners Offer Hope for Greener World’ (National Geographic

(Infographic source: Global Footprint Network)

From Bill Moyers:

The country’s best opportunity to mitigate climate change came three years ago, soon after President Barack Obama took office, with a friendly Democratic Senate and House of Representatives. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (otherwise known as Waxman-Markey, after its sponsors) passed the House – barely.

It later failed in the Senate, punted along until it was eventually abandoned in July 2010. Since then, our elected officials have largely ignored the heat-trapping gases causing enormous disruptions across the planet.

The 2009 bill saw lobbying efforts unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Environmental groups pushing for the legislation, including the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, spent a record $24.6 million lobbying in 2009, employing nearly 500 lobbyists in their hefty effort.

But even that kind of cash was grossly outmatched by the oil and gas industry, which also had a record spending year in lobbying: $175 million and 807 lobbyists. No wonder the bill didn’t stand a chance.

No piece of legislation since Waxman-Markey has been anywhere near as comprehensive in lowering carbon emissions. And smaller efforts have been decimated by the oil and gas industry’s influence on Capitol Hill. Take a recent vote to end $24 billion in tax breaks for big oil companies. 43 Senate Republicans and four Democrats filibustered to block the bill. All told, the 51 senators in favor of ending subsidies had received a paltry $5.9 million in career contributions from oil and gas. The 47 who protected the subsidies got $23.5 million.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘Unburnable Carbon – Are the world’s financial markets carrying a carbon bubble?’ (Carbon Tracker)
• ‘The great carbon bubble: Why the fossil fuel industry fights so hard’ (Energy Bulletin)

(Image sources: Will Blog for Food; Carbon Tracker Initiative)