Setting the stage for apocalypse [AUDIO] | The Climate Desk | Grist

The topic of global warming frequently grabs headlines. Now the issue is center stage at Britain's National Theater, where playwright Mike Bartlett's new play Earthquakes in London has received buzz for its apocalyptic view of a world in chaos due to global warming. The script features a scientist who suppressed his prescient understanding of the impact of carbon emissions, only to lose faith in the future of mankind.

PBS's Need to Know guest host Leslie Hart speaks with Rupert Goold, the Olivier-award-winning British director at the helm of the three-hour epic. Goold is also artistic director of the Headlong Theatre Company and an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In this podcast, Goold discusses the aim and impact of Earthquakes in London. He also calls upon scientists to more clearly communicate their warnings regarding global warming.

We can in Cancún – former UN man has a plan | Damian Carrington | Environment | guardian.co.uk

De Boer, now looking far more relaxed in his new role with accounting giant KPMG than he was in the fraught days of Copenhagen and Bali, remains adamant that Copenhagen was a success, but does acknowledge that views on that differ very widely.

Indeed they do: Low targets, goals dropped: Copenhagen ends in failure was our headline.

He also says that lots of the political momentum that was there in the runup to Copenhagen, attended by 130 or so world leaders, is still there. I think we can agree de Boer is an optimist, to say the very least.

He remains, as befits his new business-oriented job, certain that a global cap and trade scheme – a "market-based mechanism" – is the ultimate solution to cutting greenhouse gas emissions and limiting global warming.

Sans Climate Bill, What Now? - Energy & Environment Experts

When future scholars document the history of global warming, one of the watershed years will almost surely be 2010. For over a decade, the primary goal of U.S. climate policy advocates has been to establish a strong carbon pollution cap and a binding global emissions treaty. Armed with large war chests and major electoral victories, climate advocates had one of the best opportunities to achieve these goals.

This agenda has collapsed. In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate negotiations and recent developments in the Senate, it is clear that carbon caps in the U.S. and globally will not happen for the foreseeable future.

Passions and Detachment in Journalism - NYTimes.com

[Revkin, 2005] But no one can ever expect to see a headline in The New York Times reading: “Global Warming Strikes. Seas Rise. Coasts Flood. Crops Fail. People Flee.” All of those things are likely to play out if the world does not find a way to stop emitting greenhouse gases as the global population goes to 10 billion or so and rich and poor nations continue to grow their economies. But they will be dispersed in time and geography, constituting the ultimate slow drip.