Can The US Constitution Stop Government Officials From Lying To The Public?

When regular people lie, sometimes their lies are detected, sometimes they’re not. Legally speaking, sometimes they’re protected by the First Amendment – and sometimes not, like when they commit fraud or perjury.

As a researcher on the history of childhood, I’ve been disturbed to see Thunberg described and depicted as a prophet. To me, it risks distorting her message.

The Auditor General of Ontario’s recent report found the province’s current climate change plan is not based on “sound evidence” and will fall well short of Ontario’s 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The UK will go to the polls on December 12 for the third time in four years. Climate change didn’t make waves in previous elections, but this one may be different.

When the Brazilian city of São Paulo abruptly went dark at midday on Aug. 19, there was talk of the Apocalypse – not all of it in jest.

"These Twitter ads aren't just any political issue ads—they epitomize the art," according to a Harvard researcher who studies the oil giant.

By defining environmental citizenship as responsible consumption, sustainability advocates downplay the need for mass action to catalyze structural change.

The character of Greta Thunberg is part of a polarised global confrontation regarding climate change. Despite what her critics may say, her speeches have contributed to social mobilisation and awareness of the climate crisis and the future of the planet.

The recent appearance in the province of Ontario of Premier Doug Ford’s anti-carbon pricing gas pump stickers reinforced the central role environmental issues may play in this federal election campaign.

At the seventh World Mayor’s Summit in Copenhagen, leaders of 94 cities embraced a global Green New Deal, in an attempt to make the 2020s the defining decade in the fight against climate change.

Women’s leadership won’t be a panacea for the overwhelming whiteness of climate leadership, but it’s a starting place.

In this age of rapidly melting glaciers, terrifying megafires and ever more puissant hurricanes, of acidifying and rising oceans, it is hard to believe that any further prod to climate action is needed.

She sits small on the large stage, her face contorted trying to contain emotion as she labours to push her words out; on the brink of crying. She tells those listening:

We humans have a natural tendency to focus on negative stories. We tend to assume things are worse than they really are, and going downhill fast.

Included here is the complete coverage and some highlights of the Climate Forum 2020 as presented by MSNBC.

“It can’t just be young people. It needs to be all of us.” Business as usual is what’s doing us in.

When war breaks out among the political class, as it has over Brexit, journalists are bound to get excited. It works the other way, too: excitement among journos puts the wind up the politicos.

As the effects of climate change become more widespread and alarming, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called on nations to step up their plans for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Multinational ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s will close its Australian stores for this month’s global climate strike and pay staff to attend the protest, amid a growing realisation in the business community that planetary heating poses an existential threat.

"There's a tremendous amount of power that drives through those streets and parks next to those sidewalks and walks into those buildings. We want them to think about what they're doing with that power."

I have travelled from Plymouth to the UN headquarters in New York many times, often to discuss how to protect the oceans from climate change. 

The 2018 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body that assesses climate change science, says the world needs to limit global temperature increases to below 1.5C this century.

In my day job, I am a scientist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland studying things such as how agriculture contributes to climate change and what we can do about it.

Contrary to opinion polls predicting a groundswell of support for Labor’s relatively progressive agenda on climate and economics, the election results revealed that Australians are more divided on climate change than we thought.

What do you do if you have a question? You probably Google it.

Politicians and pundits from all quarters often lament democracy’s polarized condition.

Despite calls for a fifth convention two decades ago, military conflict continues to destroy megafauna, push species to extinction, and poison water resources.

Imagine this: A young professional couple at a party mentions they’re thinking of buying a home in a popular waterfront neighbourhood that scientists have found is vulnerable to coastal flooding.

We all need to work together to nurture a habitable planet for future generations and to play our part in building a greener and cleaner future for all.

“The fires were never a threat to us. It was the state that was the threat.” The environment does not create disasters — people do.

The European Union has survived its latest contest between pro-EU and anti-EU forces. Helped by high turnout, pro-EU centrist and leftist parties together won more than two-thirds of seats in the European Parliament elections held in 28 countries from May 23 to 26.

Days after the British parliament declared a “climate emergency”, The Guardian announced that it would start using “stronger” language to discuss the environment.

A green wave has flooded Europe in the 2019 European elections. The big winners of the night were the German Greens, who took 20.5%. of the national vote, almost doubling their 10.7% share from 2014.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez remarks on the Green New Deal at an event hosted by the Sunrise Movement.

Environmentalism can feel like a drag. People trying to reduce their environmental impact often feel stressed and inadequate, and those who aren’t can feel judged and resentful.

The inside story of Extinction Rebellion, the direct action group that paralysed central London to protest against what it see as the government's inaction on climate change. After a week of protests,

Jason Kenney has led the United Conservative Party to victory in Alberta. There were manyobjectionablecomponents to the UCP campaign. One of the most ominous was Kenney’s promise to fight for the continued subsidization of Alberta’s dying fossil fuel industry.

Students around the world are walking out of school once more, as part of ongoing strikes to protest governments’ inaction on climate change.

On March 14 2019, at least 50 rallies were planned across Australia and expected to draw thousands of students walking out of school to protest climate change inaction.

In the past year, we have heard from several right-of-centre members of the media-political elite in Australia - some of whom dined together at Kirribilli House on the weekend - that climate change is exaggerated for the purposes of introducing a “socialist” carbon tax.

Climate scientists insist in a recent report that fundamental changes in how energy is consumed and supplied are urgently required to avoid serious damage to life and property from rising temperatures, rising sea levels and greater frequency of extreme weather events

The Doomsday Clock, a measure by scientists of the risk to global survival, now says the danger is the greatest since 1953.

It seems that extreme weather is becoming more extreme and increasingly common. We can't pick up one of the few remaining papers, visit a news website, turn on the radio, without hearing of another hurricane, tornado, mudslide, nor'easter, or common everyday snow storm called Billy Bob, Wilma May, or a cyclopoop.

Newspaper articles, TV appearances and radio slots are increasingly important ways for academics to communicate their research to wider audiences.

The 2018 elections promise to be the “Year of the Woman,” with more women planning to step into local, state and federal elections than ever before.

While Americans support action on climate change, many don’t see the issue as an immediate threat and so the issue does not elicit the powerful responses necessary for Americans to mobilize, argues sociologist Doug McAdam.

President Donald Trump on June 1 took the dramatic step of removing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement – the product of many years of diligent and difficult negotiation among 175 nations around the world. Recent polls reveal that six in 10 Americans oppose Trump’s move.

In the early 15th century the Ming Dynasty in China undertook a series of expensive oceangoing expeditions called the Treasure Voyages.

Even before the Paris Agreement was signed in December 2015, market forces and policy measures were starting to tilt the world toward a lower-carbon future. U.S. carbon dioxide emissions peaked in 2007, and Chinese emissions may have peaked in 2014.

The conventional wisdom that the United States should remain under the Paris Agreement is wrong. A US withdrawal would be the best outcome for international climate action.

Until recently, weather talk was an easy filler for any awkward silence. But tragically for polite conversationalists everywhere, the weather is no longer mundane.

Towns and villages along the east coast of England were put on red alert on Friday 13 January.

A new detailed, easily navigable opinion map clarifies what people in each county, city, and even congressional district in the United States believe about climate change.

New York Attorney General's office discovers secondary email while investigating company's climate science cover-up

President-elect Trump has called global warming “bullshit” and a “Chinese hoax.” He has promised to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate treaty and to “bring back coal,” the world’s dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuel.

"Scientists are right to preserve data and archive websites before those who want to dismantle federal climate change research programs storm the castle"

The wonders of NASA — Mars rovers, astronaut Instagram feeds, audacious missions probing distant galactic mysteries — have long enthralled the American public.

The man who called global warming a fabrication invented by the Chinese to make US manufacturing less competitive is now president-elect of the US.

It should be a momentous occasion for the environment. In early October 2016, 55 countries with 55% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions ratified the Paris climate change agreement.

Over breakfast at our riad in old town Marrakech, conversation was dominated by Donald Trump’s election victory and what kind of world we had woken up to.

When Secretary Hillary Clinton sought to mobilize millennial voters, she held a rally with Al Gore in Florida and focused heavily on climate change.

President…Donald…Trump. For those on both sides of the aisle who vowed “Never Trump!,” that’s going to take some getting used to.

Not only is climate change bad for the planet, but rising temperatures could mean politicians face a greater risk of being voted out of office.

Exxon Mobil announced on Oct. 28 that it may have to take the largest asset write-down in its history. The company said that 4.6 billion barrels of oil and gas assets – 20 percent of its current inventory of future prospects – may be too expensive to tap.

Movie buffs will recognize this title as the most memorable line from “A Few Good Men” (1992), spoken by the character Colonel Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson (“You can’t handle the truth!” is #29 in the American Film Institute’s list of 100 top movie quotes).

As scientists become more gloomy about keeping global warming below the allegedly “safe” limit of 2℃, the issue is disappearing from the US presidential debates.

Many mini-dramas develop during major disasters like Hurricane Matthew, which has left a trail of devastation in the Caribbean and the southeastern United States.

Leading scientists say most people remain unaware of the truth that climate change is a stark reality now and will continue to get worse without drastic action.

Forest fires in the Amazon region are reaching record levels as Brazil’s government fails to tackle the deforestation that fuels the country’s high rate of emissions.

The Paris climate agreement set a “safe” global warming limit of below 2℃, aiming below 1.5℃ by 2100. The world has already warmed about a degree since the Industrial Revolution, and on our current emissions trajectory we will likely breach these limits within decades.

The recently elected One Nation senator from Queensland, Malcolm Roberts, fervently rejects the established scientific fact that human greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change, invoking a fairly familiar trope of paranoid theories to propound this belief.

Given that 2016 is expected to be the hottest year on record, with several months that not only surpassed old heat records but did so by increasingly large margins, it stands to reason climate change should be an issue we as a nation are rushing to address.

"Getting the social cost of carbon right is most pressing, given its importance to policy," says Charles Kolstad. "It's also an area where rapid research progress should be possible."

Ocean acidification is causing fundamental and dangerous changes in the chemistry of the world’s oceans yet only one in five Britons has even heard of ocean acidification, let alone believes it a cause for concern.

For two weeks this May, organizers across 12 countries will participate in Break Free 2016, an open-source invitation to encourage “more action to keep fossil fuels in the ground and an acceleration in the just transition to 100 percent renewable energy.”

One of the biggest threats to a thriving world today is that the world’s poorest people face disproportionate risk from climate change. The World Bank’s Turn Down the Heat report notes that climate change threatens to erode progress made on reducing poverty.

The title of this piece should instead be: how to weather the next few years of stupid politics over climate change while watching the oceans rise, acidify, and lose oxygen, and while watching extreme drought, forest fires, and weather slap us upside the head.

Representatives of Australian coastal communities have gathered this week to discuss the major challenges they face. Delegates at the conference in Rockingham, Western Australia, represent 40 councils around Australia, some falling within the 24 federal electorates held by a margin of 5% or less.

Despite the Republican US presidential candidate’s claim that climate change is a hoax, a new survey has found that more than half of his supporters believe global warming is happening.

By putting a temporary halt to Obama’s cornerstone climate policy, the Supreme Court puts the next president in the driver’s seat. Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to halt, at least temporarily, implementation of one of the central components of the federal effort to constrain U.S. climate emissions, the Clean Power Plan.

Volcanic eruptions that triggered climatic extremes could have heralded deadly plague and famine in Europe and undermined the Roman empire.

An environmental activist friend of mine recently shook her head and marveled at the extraordinary accomplishments of the last several months. “Still lots of work to be done,” she said. “But wow! This has been an epic period for environmentalists!”

In the lead-up to the Paris climate change summit, US President Barack Obama recently said “We only get one planet. There’s no Plan B”. Of course he’s right – there’s no other planet we can retreat to. Obama’s statement emphasized the urgent need for international agreement in Paris to minimize human-caused climate change and its impacts.

Analysts say the world’s 20 leading economies give nearly four times as much in subsidies to fossil fuel production as total global subsidies to renewable energy.

North of the 49th parallel, Canadian voters turfed the decade-old government of Stephen Harper. With close ties to the Albertan oil industry, Prime Minister Harper was an established friend of fossil fuel. As leader of the former Canadian Alliance Party, Harper in 2002 had gone as far as to describe the Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations.”

More than three out of four Americans—or 76 percent—now believe that climate change is occurring. The number is up from 68 percent just one year ago, but partisan politics are still a huge factor in how people respond.

It’s a big few weeks at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA issued a regulation clarifying its authority to regulate bodies of water throughout the country. This week it issued an “endangerment finding,” a precursor to a regulation governing carbon emission from aircraft.

Converting the world’s entire energy infrastructure to run on clean, renewable energy could effectively fight ongoing climate change, eliminate air pollution deaths, create jobs, and stabilize energy prices.

This summer, Pope Francis plans to release an encyclical letter in which he will address environmental issues, and very likely climate change.

To detoxify the debate over climate change, we need to understand the social forces at work. To reach some form of social consensus on this issue, we must recognize that the public debate over climate change in the United States today is not about carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas models; it is about opposing cultural values and worldviews through which that science is viewed.

The climate debate seems to be as polarised as ever. While joint political pledges offer some hope that climate change no longer has to be a partisan issue, a look at the comments below most articles on global warming says otherwise.

If we want to use scientific thinking to solve problems, we need people to appreciate evidence and heed expert advice. But the Australian suspicion of authority extends to experts, and this public cynicism can be manipulated to shift the tone and direction of debates. We have seen this happen in arguments about climate change.

There are many complex reasons why people decide not to accept the science of climate change. Climate scientists, myself included, have strived to understand this reluctance. We wonder why so many people are unable to accept a seemingly straight-forward pollution problem. And we struggle to see why climate change debates have inspired such vitriol.

The climate science might be gloomy but at least governments seem to be doing something about it. But this is only half the story. Side by side with policy initiatives designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions have come new policies that have the opposite effect: increased emissions.

I’ve heard it many a time, and you probably have too. It’s supposedly the trump card to any argument on addressing climate change globally: “Yeah, but what’s the point? Isn’t China building a new coal plant every week?”

Naomi Klein’s third attack on capitalism, This Changes Everything, has put the urgency of climate change front and centre.

Each of the 125 leaders attending the New York climate summit this week has been given four minutes to speak to the world. They (or their aides) may well have dipped into the climate literature to add scientific ballast to their speeches.

A report published ahead of the 2014 UN Climate Summit illustrates that poor and prosperous nations, tiny islands and great cities, can achieve all their energy needs from renewables.

On August 28, 1963, 200,000 people swarmed into the nation’s capital for one of the most iconic moments in the civil rights movement: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. More often remembered today simply as the March on Washington, it was seen by many as a turning point for the civil rights movement, which helped spur passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act.