12 feet.  Water that deep comfortably inundates the front office's front door and floats the boss's desk.  And that is the predicted maximum storm surge for coastal Louisiana and Mississippi as Hurricane Isaac bears down.   So there are likely to be a few problems in that part of the country by the time the sun goes down this afternoon.  What can be done?  At this late hour, very little unfortunately, other than heading for the hills; here the adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” says it all. Other than sand bags and plywood sheetin...

When the Republican National Committee made the decision to call off Day 1 of the Republican Convention as Hurricane Isaac threatened the Gulf littoral, some thought it was an appropriate comeuppance for Republican obstruction of climate change legislation. We won't pass such judgments.  Our focus here is all about addressing climate change; we leave it to others to assess the blame. What we have noticed, however, is a rising swell of concern in the electorate about climate change, which might start to cause  the Republicans some concern.  To be sure, this is only anecdotal, an...

After a string of defeats at the regulatory agencies and state and federal courts, Our Children's Trust finally notched two victories last month in its quest to use the public trust doctrine to implement carbon dioxide emission regulations.  Our Children's Trust, an environmental organization based in Oregon,  began its campaign in May 2011 when it oversaw the filing of nearly two score regulatory petitions and a dozen lawsuits seeking to force individual states to take action to restrict carbon dioxide emissions.   OCT's trademark feature is to include as plaintiffs "youth...