Friday Quote: “Public opinion on climate change just tipped”

One of the hallmarks of tipping points is that you don’t know when you’re in one. There’s growing agreement that peak oil, for example, happened between 2004 and 2008. Still, you’re never sure about such inflection points until well after the fact.

This week, though, sure feels like the tipping point on public opinion on climate, and so I’m going to stick a fork in it right here, folks. Climate opinion just tipped. Why do I say that? In the last week:

-Australia, with huge coal reserves — but rapidly passing the Arctic as ground zero for climate impacts with epic fires, droughts, floods, hurricanes, and dust storms — passed a carbon credit law , with a tax coming up next.

-Canada rolled out regulations that will likely phase out coal by mid-century.

-Michael Mann’s “hockey stick” research was once and for all vindicated .

-Prominent Republicans like Jon Hunstman and Chris Christie agree that climate science is real, and there’s even pressure within the GOP to not become the anti-science party. In fact, when Rick Perry denied climate science, he wasn’t just censured by some Republicans, he was instantly and vigorously debunked by the Washington Post .

-The press is finally doing its job by calling deniers like Rick Perry out on their climate claims.

-Last and most important, prominent intellectuals, scholars, and youth (the people who always make up revolutions and are regularly jailed in less freedom-friendly countries) were arrested and imprisoned for peaceful protest in our nation’s capital, and kept overnight on the eve of the national dedication of a memorial to Martin Luther King, Jr .

This is from Auden Schendler and the author of Getting Green Done . Read the rest of his column at Grist HERE .