Latest Articles

Healthcare/energy parallels

Commenting on an article by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, Jonathan Cohn says this: Reform, he notes, could eventually create a more rational health care system in which we don’t throw away so much money on administration, inefficient care, or unnecessary treatments. And less waste in health care means more money for other, more productive purposes. […]

Alliance for Climate Protection CEO Cathy Zoi talks clean energy

Alliance for Climate Protection CEO Cathy Zoi was part of the massive energy panel that Third Way hosted on Tuesday, one of several folks representing the environmental community. After the event, Grist caught up with Zoi to talk more about the organization’s new Repower America campaign, which aims to shift the U.S. to 100 percent […]

Christine Todd Whitman talks about greening the GOP and running the EPA

If Christine Todd Whitman had waited four years to publish her political memoir, she might have had this winter’s timeliest bestseller. The former Environmental Protection Agency administrator and New Jersey governor wrote It’s My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America to urge moderate Republicans, environmentalists included, […]

More misleading salvos in the great carbon tax debate

Professional lost-cause Ralph Nader has found another arena in which to unhelpfully intrude: carbon policy. On the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, no less, he argues for a carbon tax. I personally have no dog in the carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade fight. It seems pretty clear that either policy can effectively put a price on […]

In Washington D.C., car drive you

“Did you drive or did you have a driver? Did you drive a little and ride a little? And secondly, I guess, are you going to drive back?” — Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), during Thursday’s Senate Banking Committee questioning of auto industry executives, suggesting that the decision to leave private jets in Detroit and drive […]

Clean coal salesman Joe Lucas shucks and jives for NPR

This NPR story on clean coal is astounding. Pardon the long post, but I had to transcribe several parts of it so you wouldn’t think I’m making it up. The story begins with Al Gore making (and repeating several times) a single point: clean coal — insofar as that means coal power generation that has […]

Emergency stimulus requires an emergency board

Cross-posted from the NDN blog. —– Clean infrastructure stimulus is coming and it is coming fast, perhaps as soon as Jan. 20, given the new accelerated timetable of President-elect Obama and the Congressional leadership. For us at NDN, this is an exciting moment, as we have been advocating on behalf of a large green stimulus […]

Prez-elect urged to name progressive farm-policy chief

Rather than name a USDA chief, Obama keeps floating trial balloons. The names range from the deplorable, like Big Ag lobbyist Charles Stenholm, to the relatively innocuous, like Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Sebelius is a former chair of the Governors Ethanol Council. Predictable, given that she leads a big farm state; inevitable, almost. But still. […]

U.S. Justice Dept says DoD can’t refuse to clean up toxic sites

In an unexpected move this week, the U.S. Justice Department sided with the EPA in its long-running dispute with the Defense Department over clean up of three ultra-contaminated Superfund sites in Florida, Maryland, and New Jersey. In a Dec. 1 letter to the DoD, the Justice Department argued that the agency has no legal grounds […]

The governator pledges to pump iron and save the environment until he dies

“Everything I do is forever. I got into bodybuilding at an early age and I will be working out until I drop dead, and hopefully they will put dumbbells in my casket. I will continue promoting fitness forever and I will be an environmental leader forever.” — California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), in an interview […]