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Thursday, March 8, 2012

James Hansen at TED: Why I must speak out about climate change


Recorded for TED on Feb. 29 2012 at Long Beach, Cal and posted in March, this video provides a succint account of Dr James Hansen's career as a climate scientist and why he campaigns for action on climate change. He has in recent years engaged in civil disobedience being arrested on a number of occasions campaigning specifically against the highly destructive and polluting practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virgina. He has been arrested at protests in West Virginia and outside the Whitehouse.

The video includes a brief statement on his Fee and Dividend proposal for taxing the carbon emissions of oil, gas and coal at the mine or port of entry and distributing all this money back to citizens in a monthly dividend to allow them to make the energy choices to drive change in the economy. You would think this would make 'free market' sense to Republicans and Libertarians, but many people in the Republican party and the Libertarian Party are too caught up and captive to fossil fuel interests. Many of these people even deny the scientific facts on global warming and climate change as enunciated in peer reviewed journals and every academy of science in the world, including the US National Academy of Sciences.


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