Latest Articles

Obama announces Solis for Labor and LaHood for Transportation

Barack Obama announced four new members of his team in a press conference Friday afternoon, including Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) for secretary of transportation and Rep. Hilda Solis for secretary of labor. Solis, Obama said, would be a leader in creating green-collar jobs. “We’re also going to have to train our workers to be prepared […]

Where will the money for public investment come from?

As I said the other day, I’m going to be asking a few questions about cap-and-dividend. Today’s question is about public investment. As people around here have heard a million times by now, climate policy is a three-legged stool: carbon pricing, public investment, and regulation/regulatory reform. All of these will be necessary given the size […]

Study finds that tolls and parking charges are key to ease traffic

Earlier this year, the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit think tank, put out a report on how to get traffic moving faster. They considered lots of the standard solutions — improving signal timing, clearing accidents quickly, encouraging telecommuting, and so forth — and found that many of them could, in fact, provide some temporary congestion relief. […]

A look at EPA administrators since the agency’s founding

As government titles go, “administrator” doesn’t have the same ring as “secretary,” “czar,” or “ambassador.” But it’s an accurate moniker for the top job at the Environmental Protection Agency, where the president’s appointee is charged with running an agency of 17,000 employees organized around 10 regional offices, with an overall annual budget of more than […]

Two trillion tons of land ice lost since 2003, rate of Greenland summer ice-loss triples 2007 record

The AP reports on new data to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union: More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. More than […]

Semiletov tells AGU that, if released, 1 percent of ESAS methane could cause runaway warming

At a press conference Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, a Russian scientist who has spent the last 15 years tracking the release of methane from Siberia was asked if a huge surge he and his team detected this summer constituted “a global emergency.” Igor Semiletov did not say no, and did […]

Bush pledges $17.4 billion for auto bailout, with no efficiency requirements

President Bush today approved $13.4 billion in emergency loans for General Motors and Chrysler, and will make another $4 billion in loans available in February. The loans are intended to keep the automakers alive until March 31, at which point the Obama administration will get to decide how to proceed. In a press conference this […]

The incoming energy secretary sees corn as a ‘transitional’ fuel crop

In his interview yesterday morning on NPR on prospective USDA chief Tom Vilsack, Michael Pollan touches on the former Iowa governor’s virulent support for ethanol (which fits well with the etha-mania of the former Illinois senator who nominated him). Pollan expresses hope that that Vilsack will steer U.S. policy away from corn-based ethanol, which most […]

EPA says ignore CO2 when issuing permits for coal plants

Coal-fired power plants’ greenhouse-gas emissions shouldn’t be taken into consideration when determining whether to approve their construction, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson ruled this week. The ruling could clear the way for at least a handful of new coal plants to be approved in the final days of the Bush administration. “The current concerns over global […]

Rule change would allow more mountain biking in national parks

A proposed rule change at the U.S. Interior Department would make it easier for individual national parks to open existing trails to mountain biking, a move opposed by some conservationists and hikers who argue mountain biking can speed erosion and disturb the national-park experience for other visitors. For their part, mountain-biking advocates say that greater […]