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Waxman talks to NYT Magazine about unseating Dingell

The New York Times Magazine on Sunday ran an interview with Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who recently unseated John Dingell (D-Mich.) as the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Interviewer Deborah Solomon asks him about the new post, and Waxman says he’s not sorry he won, but he is sorry Dingell put up […]

Gingrich summarizes the state-of-the-art delayer line

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to respond to this interview with Newt Gingrich, but to be honest, Gingrich’s sociopathic dishonesty fills me with such revulsion that I am rendered inarticulate. I guess that makes me a failure as a blogger. The one thing I’d say is: the move here is to jump […]

The economy is an ecosystem, and industrial policy will help that ecosystem

Back in the 1980s, writers such as Robert Reich were advocating what was called an “industrial policy” — that is, the government should intervene in the economy and explicitly help a particular industry or set of industries in order to make them more competitive. Yes, I know this sounds like “picking winners,” except that governments […]

What U.S. leaders could learn from a 13-year-old

Under the blunt title “Ethanol is Stupid,” a letter in the Concord Monitor makes a cogent case against corn-based ethanol: Most ethanol is made from corn. However, that corn must be supplied in enormous quantities, and corn is used in much food for humans and animals. If we use corn for fuel, more will need […]

Appeals court ruling closes Clean Air Act loophole

Green groups won an important victory for clean air last week when a federal appeals court ruled that chemical plants, refineries, and other industrial sites are still subject to pollution limits even during equipment malfunctions and when plants start up or shut down. Some refineries and other sites have used the Clean Air Act’s start-up, […]

Air in 46 U.S. metro areas exceeds allowable soot levels

Over 100 million people in the United States, nearly one-third of its population, live in metro areas that violate federal standards for daily soot pollution on at least some days, the U.S. EPA said this week. However, missing from the EPA’s list of officially sooty areas — and thus exempt from further enforcement actions to […]

EPA declares waste from oil-shale production ‘non-hazardous’

Waste products from oil-shale development are not hazardous and thus would not have to be treated as such, the U.S. EPA ruled this week, thereby lowering the costs of developing oil-shale deposits on public lands in the U.S. West.

Nancy Sutley is expected to be effective at CEQ, even in Carol Browner’s shadow

Nancy Sutley and Barack Obama. Washington wags may wonder who will be top green dog in the Obama White House — flashy “energy czarina” Carol Browner or shy, retiring Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley — but folks who know Sutley say there’s nothing to worry about. Sutley is supposed to be the president’s […]

‘Repower, refuel & rebuild America’

A new ad campaign from LCV, trying to build support for a bold green agenda from Obama:

Falling out of love with cars

Jon Rynn suggested that this comment to another thread be posted, so, by request, a repeat for the holidays! I would have posted it yesterday but we had a long power outage as a winter storm caused a transformer to blow up, putting several thousand of us without power. It was a fitting problem to […]