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Chorus of intellectuals and activists call on Obama to think big

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman to Barack Obama: be ambitious (really ambitious)! Beltway CW bellwether Fareed Zakaria to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Former Secretary of Labor and current Obama adviser Robert Reich to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Nobel-winning climate advocate Al Gore to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to Barack Obama: be ambitious! […]

More enviro groups argue in favor of factoring greenhouse-gas emissions into EPA biofuel rules

More environmental groups are calling on the U.S. EPA to consider biofuels’ life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions as the agency draws up rules for the Renewable Fuel Standard. The groups want to make sure that any emissions resulting from land-use changes are taken into consideration. On Oct. 21, a handful of biofuel-industry representatives and academics asked EPA […]

Why polluter lobbyists are rallying to protect ‘Tailpipe Johnny’

While the Obama transition team starts assembling the pieces of his administration, one of D.C.’s most intriguing subplots is unfolding: the contest between Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) for chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees clean air, global warming, and other critical environmental legislation. Last week the […]

America’s energy crunch comes home

This is a guest essay by Michael T. Klare, a professor at Hampshire College and an author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy. It was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. —– Of all the challenges facing President Barack Obama next January, none […]

Governating Alaska: not as fun when oil revenues are down

“Now we kick in that fiscal conservativeness that needs to be engaged, and we progress this state with $57-a-barrel oil.” — Alaska governor Sarah Palin, commenting on the changed fiscal landscape she’s returned to in her home state

Tardy reflections on the election of Barack Obama

It feels a little weird that Obama won the election and I haven’t written anything about it. Everyone with a platform apparently feels obliged to say something profound, but after several aborted attempts, I find myself drained and utterly inadequate to the historical moment. I just want to take the world’s longest nap. Rather than […]

How design must change in a warming, oil-scarce world

This week I was able to attend a conference on urban planning hosted by the Penn Institute for Urban Research and the Rockefeller Foundation. Fifty years ago, the same entities had put together another urban conference, at which gathered names like Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford, intellectuals who shaped the design world’s thinking about cities […]

Al Gore offers a five-part plan for solving the climate and financial crises

Al Gore has a fantastic op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times. There’s lots of good stuff, but one thing I was particularly pleased to see is this dismissal of the rush lately toward dirty domestic fuel: Some still see this as a problem of domestic production. If we could only increase oil and coal production […]

Michael Pollan and other food authors and activists offer their elevator pitches for Obama

We asked a number of leaders in sustainable food and agriculture to imagine they found themselves in an elevator with the president-elect — giving them one minute of his undivided attention. Here are their messages to Obama about how he should approach environment, energy, climate, and food policy. (For more perspectives, check out Part 1, […]

Heartland’s climate experts: No actual expertise required

A journalist friend recently sent me this: I just got my “Journalist’s Guide to Global Warming Experts” from The Heartland Institute in the mail. They list four “experts” in Texas. It’s an awesome list. … Robert Bradley, energy expert H. Sterling Burnett, policy analyst Dr. John Dale Dunn, emergency physician Michael Economides, petroleum engineer As […]