Beijing has been swamped for days in a beige-gray miasma of smog, bringing coughs and rasping, hospitals crowded from respiratory ailments, a midday sky so dim that it could pass for evening, and head-shaking disgust from residents who had hoped the city was over the worst of its chronic pollution.
But “Brother Nut,” a performance artist, has something solid to show from the acrid soup in the air: a brick of condensed pollution.
For 100 days, Brother Nut dragged a roaring, industrial-strength vacuum cleaner around the Chinese capital’s landmarks, sucking up dust from the atmosphere. Now he has mixed the accumulated gray gunk with red clay to create a small but potent symbol of the city’s air problems.
Meanwhile, the air in some corners of Washington DC seems to be thick as a brick as well.
Republicans are taking aim at a new “Green Climate Fund,” as they look to weaken President Obama’s hand in global climate talks later this month.
The pot of money, a $3 billion climate change pledge the president’s administration made last year, is something officials hope to bring to the negotiating table at United Nations summit in Paris.
But Republicans — hostile to the climate talks and bent on doing whatever they can to derail a deal in Paris next month — say they’re going to deny Obama the first tranche of money he hopes to inject into the fund.
“We pledge that Congress will not allow U.S. taxpayer dollars to go to the Green Climate Fund until the forthcoming international climate agreement is submitted to the Senate for its constitutional advice and consent,” 37 Republican senators wrote in a letter to Obama on Thursday.
The fund, a pool of public and private money, is meant to help poorer nations prepare for climate change.
A Senate appropriations bill cleared the way for the first portion of American funding earlier this year, but Republicans committed this week to blocking it in a final budget deal.
“When it comes to the financing: I know a lot of people over there, the 192 countries, assume that Americans are going to line up and joyfully pay $3 billion into this fund,” said Sen. James Inhofe, the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. “But that’s not going to happen.”
Republicans have looked to throw up obstacles in Obama’s path toward a climate accord, but they do not have a clear way to block it. Unless a deal is deemed to be a treaty requiring Senate ratification, it won’t come before lawmakers for a vote.
But the climate fund, something developing nations have long wanted as part of the climate talks, might give Republicans some leverage — or at least allow them to send a signal to the world about their opposition to a final climate deal.
BTW, “Thick as a Brick” is a British phrase meaning “Really Stupid” (still a big fan of Jethro Tull/Ian Anderson)