In a stunning opinion piece (pdf) NASA’s chief climate scientist James Hansen, acting a private citizen, asks China to take the lead on combating climate change. The US government is too fractured and too beholden to the fossil fuel interests to take action. “Big money” is also behind the lack of action in many other industrialized countries including Canada and Norway while they expand production of tar sands he writes.
He says China is the world’s best hope to end the rule of the world by fossil fuel interests.
Like most governments the Obama administration says climate change is a crisis, claims to have a plan and does little to nothing. Hansen calls this “green washing”. (FYI this is a wide spread practice that most people are unaware of.)
In this picture Hansen, one the world’s most acclaimed climate scientists, is being handcuffed and arrested in front of the White House during a protest to urge the US government to end the coal industry practice of blowing off the tops of mountains to mine coal. Such practices are extremely damaging to the environment and local communities he says.
Moreover to prevent catastrophic climate change coal must stay in the ground Hansen said.
There is plenty of scientific evidence to back up that last statement. See my previous articles below — Stephen
Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist 