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Republican Joe Barton to BP: ‘I apologize’ for the White House ‘shakedown’

Cross-posted from Think Progress. During a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee this morning, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) “apologize[d]” to BP CEO Tony Hayward, accusing the White House of an illegal “shakedown” of the foreign oil giant to secure a $20 billion escrow fund for Gulf Coast damages. Barton repeated the Republican attack […]

Demand No More Coal, No More Oil This Independence Day

No surprise here, on the heels of President Obama’s Tuesday night speech, the coal industry front group — American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — released a statement saying they agree with his call for a clean energy future: “The president also renewed his call for bolder action to create a clean energy future. We […]

Are butterflies the silent harbingers of global warming?

Camille Parmesan studies the effects of global warming by chasing butterflies. Sounds fanciful, but it is anything but. Her careful field observations of butterfly populations have produced compelling evidence of how climate change has already affected our living planet. In several landmark studies, she has helped pave the way for a body of eye-opening research […]

Taking Stock of BP

As happens with stock charts, this one is likely to be out of date even before I get this post published.  But here’s Google Finance’s chart comparing the stock price of British Petroleum (in red), an energy-stock index fund (in blue) and an S&P 500 index fund (in yellow). Since the oil spill in the […]

EPA Analysis: Rainforests Key to Climate Legislation Affordability, Integrity

This post was co-authored by Andrew Stevenson of Resources for the Future and Climate Advisers. The EPA analysis of the American Power Act shines a light on a key fact about climate policy: strong rainforest protections, especially in the short run, are essential to keeping costs low and emissions goals strong. The analysis finds that […]

Getting into a jam in Nebraska

(Steph Larsen photos) “You live in the middle of nowhere!” This was the exclamation, repeated at regular intervals, we heard when an old high-school friend of mine came to visit. For folks from the city — even Nebraskans — visiting our house can feel like entering another world. There’s no traffic to speak of, and […]

An Electrifying Vision: 20 Million Plug-in Hybrids in 5 Years (Video)

With the backdrop of devastated communities and ecosystems in the Gulf, President Obama took the opportunity to challenge the nation to move our clean energy transition forward–but what would that look like? Marc Spitzer of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) makes his case for a transformation of our vehicle fleet to plug-ins. He is […]

Will Any Republicans Join Democrats in Holding BP Accountable?

Steve Benen and Greg Sargent have been making an important point lately that hasn’t yet received the attention it deserves: to the extent that Republicans intend to oppose efforts to hold BP accountable this summer and fall, they are extremely vulnerable politically. Here’s Benen first, commenting on Republican confusion over just what lengths they should […]

Some international findings from EPA analysis of the American Power Act

The Obama administration has just released the U.S. EPA analysis of the American Power Act and it shows that U.S. action coupled with reasonable actions by other countries will put us on a path to preventing the worst impacts of global warming.

Local power: tapping distributed energy in 21st-century cities

Hammarby Sjostad “eco-cycle”Source: HammarbySjostad.de Residents of Hammarby Sjöstad, a district on the south side of Stockholm, Sweden, don’t let their waste go to waste. Every building in the district boasts an array of pneumatic tubes, like larger versions of the ones that whooshed checks from cars to bank tellers back in the day. One tube […]