Earth Day At The Mall Is Over--But It's 4/20 So Get Stoned

++The mall event was sort of lackluster and the musical acts weren't my style but keep on trucking as R. Crumb used to say.

++Online blogs appear to picking up on the millenials concerns about climate change. Talking Points Memo has a series on Alternatives and Washington Monthly has weekend blogger D.R. Tucker who writes passionately on this issue. This past weekend he demolished the Daily Beast article on the Death of California. I worry that climate change will become ghettoized so that it can't break out into an issue for which policies can be enacted.

++D. R. Tucker did us a courtesy of posting the video of the WGBH interview with Harvard graduate Bill McKibben, the founder of my favorite NGO, 350.org. In this interview he explains why he and hundreds others have gathered at Harvard for a debate on the university divesting from fossil fuels. Last year he was present as the Rockfeller Family divested from fossil fuels.

++Bill explains that Nelson Mandela came to the United States and flew to California to thank the California University system for divesting from apartheid South Africa saying that while the South Africans freed themselves the divestment movement was a primary external motivator. Nice analogy but given the great stranglehold over the planet by the oil companies will it be meaningful to divest.

++Bill is probably too commonsensical for some in his admission that climate change won't stop. But his argument gains force when he raises the question whether we really want to experience a planet 2 degrees C hotter.

++The technical experts working on the papers and positions for the UN meeting in Paris are encouraged about the national commitments they've gotten so far. Is it enough? I have no idea but it is more than we got when the US abandoned the Kyoto Treaty. 

++The burden to me is on the GOP candidates who play games with the issue. Marco Rubio is a prime example when he throws in the "cap and trade" red herring or saying there is not unanimity of the science. Only 2 papers dissented from the scientific consensus. Or how about Ted Cruz saying that Galileo defied the consensus. And we know what happened to him.

++The advocates on climate change have yet to find the formulations needed to move a political system. I wish them luck and sooner rather than later.