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  • Republicans plan to offer hundreds of amendments to slow climate bill

    The House Energy and Commerce Committee kicked off debate of the Waxman-Markey climate bill on Monday, beginning what will likely be a grueling week of work to get the bill through the key panel before Memorial Day. “I think members ought to be prepared to work late every single night,” Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said […]

  • Obama’s new mileage rules will be first real step to curb planet-warming emissions

    President Obama is expected to unveil new fuel-economy standards for automobiles on Tuesday — the first major step by his administration to limit planet-warming greenhouse gases. The new standards will reportedly raise fleet-wide standards for cars to 42 miles per gallon by 2016, up from 27.5 mpg now. For light trucks, the required fleet average […]

  • Obama’s ‘tougher fuel standards’

    Re “U.S. to Issue Tougher Fuel Standards for Automobiles” (NY Times, 5/18/2009) “President Obama will announce as early as Tuesday that he will combine California’s tough new auto-emissions rules with the existing corporate average fuel economy standard to create a single new national standard …” Four questions: (1) Which will it be: an emission standard […]

  • Coal Ash Dumped on the Disadvantaged

    In December, a coal slurry impoundment owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) gushed 50 times more toxic waste than the Exxon Valdez in a well publicized and inevitable disaster that unjustly ruined many homes and downstream ecosystems. So how to describe what’s happening to the sludge currently being dredged from waterways and swimming pools? […]

  • U.S. Chamber of Commerce split grows wider

    The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is famous for punishing officeholders and other political candidates who have the temerity to disagree with the Chamber’s views. But what happens when the U.S. Chamber’s own members and affiliates reject its “predictably stalwart” opposition to reasonable policies on climate change and green jobs? One “solution” is to try to […]

  • Clean-energy future: On your markup …

    At 1:00 p.m. EDT today the House Energy and Commerce Committee will begin its deliberations on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454, sponsored by Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and the Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA). The committee plans to debate and vote on amendments this week with a […]

  • Climate honcho Rajendra Pachauri tells Grist he’s optimistic about action

    Rajendra PachauriNASHVILLE, Tenn. — It’s not every week you get to chat with not one but two Nobel Prize winners. After talking to Al Gore at the summit where he rallied volunteers for his Climate Project, I caught up with Rajendra Pachauri, who also spoke at the gathering. An engineer and economist who has chaired […]

  • Peterson: Leave ethanol alone, or I’ll nuke Waxman-Markey

    What GHG footprint? Peterson, right, with tractor rep. House Ag committee chair Collin Peterson (D.-Minn.) has already made it clear that he’s furious that the EPA has proposed a framework for assessing the greenhouse gas footprint of ethanol. Now he’s vowing to use his clout to crush the historic Waxman-Markey climate change bill, unless Congress […]

  • Be part of the green solution (and the Manchester Report)

    The following post was written by The Guardian’s Dunan Clark The climate change debate often seems to focus more on the problems than on the solutions. It’s not hard to understand why: almost every week brings another scientific report predicting impacts sooner and more devastating than we were previously expecting. With so many gloomy headlines, […]

  • Pennsylvania rejected TVA coal ash that’s going to poor communities in Alabama and Georgia

    Some of the more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash that spilled from an impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee last December is making its way to landfills in poor and black communities in Alabama and Georgia, as we reported last week at Facing South. It turns […]