Articles by Brad Johnson

Jessy Tolkan comments on industry CEO roundtable

From the Wonk Room. —– During the Democratic National Convention, the Rocky Mountain Roundtable hosted a day-long symposium on energy and climate change. One session included top officials from major […]

Va. Senator doesn’t get that the emissions are the crisis

Originally posted at the Wonk Room. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) told the Politico last week that “environmentalists will be forced to compromise next year and support the development of clean […]

McCain says he’d end his vacation from Congress to ‘drill here, drill now’

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

In eastern Pennsylvania yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repeatedly argued, "We need to drill here and we need to drill now." His invocation of the slogan of Newt Gingrich's right-wing 527 corporation, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), was coupled with the following call for Congress to "come back to town and come back to work":

Congress should come back into session, and I'm willing to come off the campaign trail.

McCain's call for action on behalf of Big Oil and right-wing billionaires hardly jibes with his record of absenteeism on major votes. In fact, McCain has been on the campaign trail and fundraising circuit a tremendous amount this session, missing far more votes than any other member of Congress. His vacation from his elected duty has included some of the most important legislation considered by Congress:

Worse heat waves, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and storms to come

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

The traditional media rarely discusses extreme weather events in the context of global warming. However, as the Wonk Room Global Boiling series has documented, scientists have been warning us for years that climate change will increase catastrophic weather events like the California wildfires, the East Coast heatwave, and the Midwest floods that have been taking lives and causing billions in damage in recent days.

Yesterday, the federal government released a report that assembles this knowledge in stark and unequivocal terms. "Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate," by the multi-agency U.S. Climate Change Science Program with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the lead, warns that changes in extreme weather are "among the most serious challenges to society" (PDF) in dealing with global warming. After reporting that heat waves, severe rainfall, and intense hurricanes have been on the rise -- all linked to man-made global warming -- the authors deliver this warning about the future: