Category Archives: Climate Change Politics

More on "Professionalism" in the Climate Change debate

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Blair

I am back from a brief blogging hiatus as I took some time off-line to have a holiday with my family. During my holiday I was mostly out of electronic contact except for a brief period last week, when I … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 9 Comments

On Seattle’s Kayaktivists: Are they really hypocrites?

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Blair

My Twitter feed has been filled these last few days with pictures of the “Kayaktivists” protesting Shell’s Arctic Endeavour drilling platform at the Port of Seattle. I am of two minds on this topic. First and foremost, I do not … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 6 Comments

On being a modern PELE: a Pragmatic Environmentalist, Lukewarmer, Ecomodernist

Posted on May 9, 2015 by Blair

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go to my 30th high school reunion. The reason my reunion is being mentioned in my blog is that part of a 30th reunion is the inevitable question: “so what are you doing … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 9 Comments

On a Broader Definition of a “Lukewarmer”

Posted on May 6, 2015 by Blair

I have been offline for a bit of a holiday and as such am catching up on some very interesting posts that appeared in my absence. One of the most interesting was from Dr. Tasmin Edwards titled: The lukewarmers don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Lukewarmers | 8 Comments

Why the modern environmental movement must abandon its traditional left-right rubric

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Blair

On the event of Earth Day I spent some time thinking about the state of the environmental movement in Canada. As my regular readers know, I have written a lot of posts about the environmental movement including observations from a … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 7 Comments

On "An Ecomodernist Manifesto", Mannsplaining and irony blindness in climate science

Posted on April 19, 2015 by Blair

A very interesting document, An Ecomodernist Manifesto, came out this week. For those of you not familiar with the Manifesto, it represents an attempt by a number of pragmatic environmental scientists, economists and policy experts (http://www.ecomodernism.org/) to put the planet’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change, Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 13 Comments

So Whatever Happened to the Environmental Moderates and Pragmatists?

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Blair

As I noted in my throwback post, the Ensia article about how Environmental activism needs “good cops” and “bad cops” really brought back a lot of memories. But one thing it also caused me to do is to look back … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics, Environmentalism and Ecomodernism | 3 Comments

On “soft climate denial”, regionally-appropriate renewables and marginalizing potential allies in the climate change debate

Posted on March 26, 2015 by Blair

While reading my Twitter feed I was recently introduced to a brand new label in the climate change discussion: “soft climate denial/denier”. The label, based on my admittedly limited research, appears to have been introduced to our lexicon by a … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 11 Comments

Is the IPCC the IOC of Science?

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Blair

I was having a discussion online, on Twitter, about the field of Climate Science. The basis of the discussion was a simple question: what does it take to be considered a “climate scientist”? and the corollary: who is qualified to … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 9 Comments

Carbon Offsets: a Basilica to Bad Policy

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Blair

Last week’s ridiculous display of private jets in Davos, Switzerland brought back to mind a topic I have meant to discuss in detail: carbon offsets.  For those of you in the back row, a carbon offset is simply a credit … Continue reading →

Posted in Climate Change Politics | 8 Comments