Times Higher Education - Profits of doom

Climate change is serious business - in more ways than one. Martin Cohen describes how capitalist 'bootleggers' have co-opted the environmental 'Baptists' to fulfil their raison d'etre - making money. Thanks to the 'greenwash', the solutions could be worse than the problems

UPDATE 1-ANALYSIS-Action on global climate may drift for years | Energy & Oil | Reuters

"I suspect that we're in for a fairly long period of slowdown, you're talking about a two to three years' timeframe before you restore the political momentum," said Tom Burke of Imperial College London.

The global renewable energy market is tipped to have a record year in 2010, thanks to existing support and subsidies, but a climate deal would boost investment above the current level of about $200 billion annually.  [Why isn't that enough?]
...
A "State of the Climate report" published on Wednesday found that evidence from a wide range of sources including land, ocean and air temperatures as well as ice cover pointed to a warming world, culminating to make the last decade the hottest on record.

The report did not focus on the cause of warming but, when asked, contributors said humans were to blame.

"The consistent picture from numerous studies looking at that particular question is that you can only explain all these changes at the global and regional scales by invoking human causes," author and editor Peter Thorne told Reuters.

Bipartisan blame for Senate botching energy bill - opinion - Modbee.com

With Democrats controlling both chambers and a president promising to heal a planet in peril, locking down the support of majority-party senators should have been the easy part. But some Democrats wavered until the end, raising questions about possible defections.

Worse, Reid couldn't bring himself to put passing this legislation at the top of his to-do list. During the Democrats' 19 months at the helm, other issues routinely catapulted ahead the climate bill.

Report: oil company carbon liabilities are huge risk for investors - 29 Jul 2010 - BusinessGreen.com

Oil companies such as BP and Shell could be facing billions of pounds in future carbon liabilities as the cost of carbon rises, says the report, but lack of carbon reporting means many investors are unaware of these liabilities and the risk they pose.

Carbon [dioxide scam] liabilities, currently undisclosed, could become the sub-prime toxic assets of the future, says the report.