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Electric vehicles crowd out hydrogen brethren at sustainable driving conference

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress. —– Iceland has long been touted as a hydrogen economy pioneer. So it is quite shocking that electric vehicles — both plug-in hybrids and pure battery electric cars — crowded out hydrogen at a recent Reykjavík conference. Iceland is blessed with abudant hydro-electric […]

Debate: spending

Last night moderator Jim Lehrer pressed the candidates about what spending priorities they would postpone or cancel in response to the financial crisis (a bit of framing I find maddening). In the heat of the debate I was irritated with Obama for not countering the frame directly. Going back and watching, though, he did seem […]

Question

Will McCain’s “spending freeze” include spending on nuclear power and clean coal?

Pickens’ natural gas plan makes no sense and will never happen

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress. —– Thomas Boone Pickens is a billionaire who made his money in oil and corporate takeovers. He began investing in natural gas in 1997, and in wind power in 2007. In 2008, he went public with the Pickens Plan via a website and […]

While McCain and Obama squabble …

… about who supports clean energy more, Calif. governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pulling together a summit of community and local leaders from Europe, Australia, India, China, and all 50 states to discuss how best to battle climate change. This is part of the great undercovered story of the climate battle: national governments are largely impotent, […]

Energy security came up frequently, but climate change only mentioned in passing

The first presidential debate between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama focused mainly on national security issues and the economic crisis/Wall Street bailout package. But energy issues came up a few times during the debate, with McCain and Obama squabbling over the details of how the country could achieve greater energy security. Grist’s David […]

Candidates spar on who has most comprehensive vision

Obama said that we “have to have an energy policy to deal with not just Russia” but with other not-so-friendly regimes. He also said the United States should increase “domestic production, and yes, offshore drilling … but we only have 3 percent of the world’s oil .. we can’t drill our way out of the […]

Debate: concessions

Okay, Obama tags McCain for voting against renewable energy 23 times, which is fine. But in the process he concedes offshore drilling, he concedes nuclear, he concedes clean coal. Why play on your opponents’ ground? Over and over again, Obama starts out by conceding and then backing away. It comes off as defensive. Argh.

Debate: fact-checking

Check out ThinkProgress for some pretty amazing real-time fact-checking of this debate. And more at washingtonpost.com, Factcheck.org and Politifact.com.

McCain and Obama trade jabs on energy bill and Big Oil

More on the 2005 energy bill, which came up earlier in the debate. McCain said it was “festooned with Christmas tree ornaments,” and claimed that Obama’s vote for it shows his support of excessive pork spending. McCain implied that his own vote against it was a vote against giveaways to Big Oil. But at the […]