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Ask Umbra on buying a convertible

Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Long story short, my parents have been thinking about buying me a car since soon I will be going to University and that way, I won’t constantly be using their cars. My mom suggested a Volkswagen Beetle Convertible, which I love the look of. However, it doesn’t […]

Hansen versus Romm

The following comment, submitted climateprogress.org in response to Romm’s July 9 story about Hansen, was censored: July 9, 2009 at 11:25 pm For all of Waxman-Markey’s faults, I think it gets two things right: (1) allowance set-asides to fund tropical forest conservation, and (2) a meaningful price floor. These measures move U.S. policy closer to […]

Even More About Me

[9/08/2010] I am a California resident and climate policy activist with a particular interest in legislative policy related to climate change. Recent writings: “Going Beyond CAFE Standards: Feebate Financing Incentives for Fuel Economy” (September 3, 2010)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1624672 “A Decarbonization Strategy for the Electricity Sector: New-Source Subsidies” (January 13, 2010)http://ssrn.com/abstract=1427106 Circumventing the Weight-Versus-Footprint Tradeoffs in Vehicle Fuel […]

If you want a revolution, start with a clean energy one

It was about five years ago. I was talking with a radical friend about my then-recent personal decision to prioritize work on the climate crisis. I had done so after the European heat wave in the summer of 2003 that led to 30,000 or more deaths. This catastrophe jolted me into serious study about the […]

Why the climate bill is in trouble (and how to help)

If it weren’t for mixed messages, the US Senate wouldn’t be sending any messages at all. Thursday, WaPo ran a  story about how the Senate, once hot to trot on passing a climate change bill, had decided to rein it in. Climate legislation got its first hearing before Senator Barbara Boxer’s Environment committee on Tuesday. […]

Revised and updated: Things I love — and hate — about Waxman-Markey

Editor’s note: A revised and updated federal version of Sightline Cap and Trade 101 is now available. Download Cap and Trade 101: A Federal Climate Policy Primer here. The original version of this post originally appeared June 11, 2009. It was based on the version of the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act (H.R. […]

Governments need to lead the breakthrough on technology

The Obama administration once again convened a Major Economies Forum in Italy this week after the G-8 meeting, which included the world’s 17 major carbon emitters, to press forward on a global deal on climate change and the transformation to a clean-energy economy. One of the most important announcements to come out of this meeting […]

Friday music blogging: Manchester Orchestra

Manchester Orchestra is an indie rock quintet out of Atlanta, driven by the singing and songwriting of Andy Hull, one of those precocious talents who wrote his first album when he was in high school, the bastard. Their latest album, Mean Everything to Nothing, was produced by Joe Chicarelli, well-known for his work with My […]

Deliberate misinformation: Making saving money sound bad

The enemies of energy efficiency have unveiled their new tactic to keep you from saving money and energy: they’re just going to tell you ridiculous lies and hope you believe them. It seems that because they have had a hard time weakening the money saving efficiency provisions in the American Clean Energy and Security Act […]

Washington state may soon be home to world’s largest PV solar project

About four miles from the town of Cle Elum, Wash., there is a large, flat piece of land surrounded by a ring of 50-foot-tall Ponderosa Pines. The area has been repeatedly logged over the last few decades and is now relatively treeless. But it may soon be home to an entirely different sort of renewable […]