Latest Articles

Martin Feldstein uses Washington Post op-ed page for cap-and-trade scare-mongering

Martin Feldstein is a conservative economist — a long-time advocate of supply-side, trickle-down economic policy and a leading advocate for Social Security privatization — so it’s no great surprise that he has taken to the pages of the Washington Post to characterize the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill as “All Cost, No Benefit.” Feldstein has […]

Europe poised to meet Kyoto target: European Trading System a success?

Europe made a major commitment under the Kyoto protocol that U.S. conservatives have been telling us for years they would never achieve. It now seems clear Europeans will meet their commitment under the terms of the protocol. It will become increasingly difficult for those who don’t want a U.S. cap-and-trade system to point to the […]

Would you like some GMOs in your coffee?

One cube or two? Jill Richardson made a good catch on the GMO crop front the other day. She dug up an article from a Boulder, CO newspaper that detailed the debate over local sugarbeet farmers’ request to plant GM seeds within the city limits. The farmers claim that without GM sugar beets, they’ll be […]

First impressions from Bonn: climate change hurts the poor

At the opening of the international climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, today, representatives from governments around the world shared their opinions on a newly released draft of a global climate treaty that will be debated and (perhaps) finalized when they meet again in Copenhagen in December. Children herd goats in drought-ridden Ethiopia, on land […]

U.S. responsible for 29 percent of CO2 emissions over past 150 years, triple China’s share

Since the mid-1800s, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, accounted for 29% of the global total. Those 328,000 million metric tons of cumulative emissions are the most of any country and more than three times the amount emitted by China over the same period (93,000 MtCO2), according to data from the World […]

Top U.S. climate negotiator to speak on China and the global climate challenge

Is any question more central to averting climate catastophe than “the challenges and the opportunities of working with China in the context of our broader climate and clean-energy policy”? On Wednesday, 10:30 to 11:30 EST, the Center for American Progress will be hearing from Todd Stern, U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change on that very […]

Nature: Hurricanes ARE getting fiercer — and it’s going to get much worse

Hurricane season officially begins tomorrow.  So I’m updating one more 2008 post on the science.  Last September, Nature published a major analysis that supports my 2-parter (Why global warming means killer storms worse than Katrina and Gustav, Part 1 and Part 2).  As Nature explained: … scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so […]

Boost innovation investments to make Waxman-Markey bill a game-changer

Advocates of regulatory environmentalism dominated the spin wars last month when the monumental American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) — aka the carbon cap-and-trade bill assembled by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Climate politics “realists” lauded “historic action” (in […]

Van Jones on Clean Energy Jobs from “humble hard-working energy efficiency”

The Center for American Progress Action fund had a recent event on clean energy jobs keynoted by Van Jones, who is not the President’s “green-jobs czar,” but “the green-jobs handyman.” Besides being the administration’s point person on clean energy jobs, he is the best speaker on the subject — because he studies rhetoric and persuasive […]

Offsets are still counterfeit carbon credits

The arguments in favor of counterfeit carbon credits still fail no matter how often they are repeated   Common talking points(TP)  and replies(R) TP) Cap-and-trade will be too expensive if we don’t do offsets. And then we need a higher cap! R) Counterfeit carbon credits are just a back door way to raise the cap. It […]