“The tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially produced animal agriculture because of environmental impact. It’s just not possible.”

— Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), in an interview with VegNews.

“Prominent Democrats have rushed to embrace the Green New Deal — and Republicans couldn’t be happier about it,” Politico reports.

“As liberal groups pressure presidential candidates and lawmakers to back the ambitious climate proposal, Republicans hope their opponents may drift so far to the left that they will be more vulnerable in 2020. Since the election of President Donald Trump — who dismisses the link between carbon emissions and rising temperatures — Republicans have mostly steered clear of climate change, but in the Green New Deal they see a chance to pivot the argument back towards economics as growing majorities accept the underlying science.”

“President Trump announced that he will nominate David Bernhardt, a veteran lobbyist who has helped orchestrate the administration’s push to expand oil and gas drilling as the Interior Department’s number-two official, to serve as the next secretary,” the Washington Post reports.

“If confirmed, Bernhardt, a 49-year old Colorado native known for his unrelenting work habits, would be well positioned to roll back even more of the Obama-era conservation policies he has worked to unravel since joining Interior a year and-a-half ago. He has helmed the department as acting secretary since Jan. 2, when Ryan Zinke resigned amid multiple ethics probes.”

A new study says that climate change “will impose the greatest economic losses on Republican-leaning areas of the country that are almost uniformly resisting new efforts to combat it,” CNN reports.

“In the study, researchers at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program found that states, counties and congressional districts that voted Republican in 2016 and 2018 will suffer greater economic and environmental damages from a changing climate over the coming decades than places that voted Democratic in the past two elections. As a share of income, rural areas that now break predominantly for the GOP will likewise suffer greater losses than the metropolitan centers that have become the backbone of the Democratic coalition.”

“Civil penalties for polluters under the Trump administration plummeted during the past fiscal year to the lowest average level since 1994, according to a new analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data,” the Washington Post reports.

“In the two decades before President Trump took office, EPA civil fines averaged more than $500 million a year, when adjusted for inflation. Last year’s $72 million in fines was 85% below that amount.”

“America’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years,” the New York Times reports.

“Strikingly, the sharp uptick in emissions occurred even as a near-record number of coal plants around the United States retired last year, illustrating how difficult it could be for the country to make further progress on climate change in the years to come, particularly as the Trump administration pushes to roll back federal regulations that limit greenhouse gas emissions.”

NBC News/ Wall Street Journal poll: “Overall, 66% of Americans now say they’ve seen enough evidence to justify action, up from 51% two decades ago. That figure incorporates 85% of Democrats, 79% of independents, 71% of women, 61% of men and strong majorities of all racial groups. At least 55% agree on the need for action in all regions of the country, and at all age, education and income levels.”

“Resistance comes only from the one-third of Americans who identify themselves as Republicans. A 56% majority of the GOP says either that concern about climate change is unwarranted or that more research is necessary before taking action.”

“Diplomats from nearly 200 countries reached a deal on Saturday to keep the Paris climate agreement alive by adopting a detailed set of rules to implement the pact,” the New York Times reports.

“The United States agreed to the deal despite President Trump’s vow to abandon the Paris Agreement. Diplomats and climate change activists said they hoped that fact would make it easier for the administration to change its mind and stay in the Paris Agreement, or for a future president to embrace the accord once again. The United States cannot formally withdraw from the agreement until late 2020.”

“The United States joined a controversial proposal by Saudi Arabia and Russia this weekend to weaken a reference to a key report on the severity of global warming, sharpening battle lines at the global climate summit in Poland aimed at gaining consensus over how to combat rising temperatures,” the Washington Post reports.

“The U.S. position lines up with the views of the Trump administration, which is plowing ahead with a raft of aggressive policies on coal power and oil exploration that are likely to worsen the effects of climate change — steamrolling over dire environmental warnings issued by the administration’s own team of experts in a major report just two weeks ago.”

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds 58% of American voters agree with the scientific consensus — and disagree with President Trump — that climate change is being caused by human activity.

“David Attenborough, the naturalist and broadcaster, sounded a dire warning in a speech Monday to the U.N. climate conference in Poland,” NPR reports.

Said Attennborough: “Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: Climate change. If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

Washington Post: “As President Trump’s rejection of climate science isolates the United States on the world stage, illustrated by the small U.S. delegation dispatched to this week’s United Nations climate summit in Poland, he has also presided over a transformation in the Republican Party — placing climate change skepticism squarely in the GOP’s ideological mainstream.”

“Where the last Republican president, George W. Bush, acknowledged that the Earth was warming and that ‘an increase in greenhouse gases caused by humans is contributing to the problem,’ the prevailing GOP view expressed on the campaign trail this year and espoused by many members of Congress is built on the false premise that climate science is an open question.”

“The small number of voices supporting the science have been largely drowned out.”

President Trump “dismissed a landmark report compiled by 13 federal agencies detailing how damage from global warming is intensifying throughout the country, saying he is not among the ‘believers’ who see climate change as a pressing problem,” the Washington Post reports.

“The comments marked the president’s most extensive yet on why he disagrees with his own government’s analysis, which found that climate change poses a severe threat to the health of Americans, as well as to the country’s infrastructure, economy and natural resources. The findings — unequivocal, urgent and alarming — are at odds with the Trump administration’s rollback of environmental regulations and absence of any climate action policy.”

Said Trump: “One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers.”

President Trump told reporters that he has seen the latest climate report released on Black Friday by his administration, Axios reports, but said, “I don’t believe it.”