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McCain suggests renegotiating Colorado River compact to benefit Ariz., Nev., and Calif.

What epic gaffe could unite Colorado’s Democratic Senator Ken Salazar — “over my dead body” — and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer — “Over my cold, dead, political carcass“? That would be Arizona Senator John McCain telling The Pueblo Chieftan on Thursady that he wants to renegotiate the famous 1922 Colorado River compact to […]

Bill Clinton gets into the weeds of energy policy

Photo: Brent Danley On Monday, Bill Clinton gave the opening remarks at the National Clean Energy Summit, speaking for almost an hour and taking questions for another 30 minutes. The energy issue is hot politics these days, but those hoping to witness some of the ’90s-vintage Clinton political jujitsu left disappointed. Instead they were treated […]

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says he’d invest in clean energy

The Wall Street Journal asked House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) how he would spend $10 billion of the country’s monetary resources. He says it should be spent on clean energy: A dramatic investment in clean energy would be the most effective check on aggressive petroregimes from Moscow to Tehran. It would be the best […]

A roundup of energy and climate news from the U.K.

Like pretty much every other English person I know, I’m currently on holiday in France. The Vendee region makes for a pleasant alternative to Britain at this time of year, and just down the road is La Rochelle, which was part of England until, oh, about 500 years ago. The two nations are deep in […]

Speaker’s radio address aimed at blunting GOP message on energy

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took up the “drill more, drill now” refrain Saturday in the Democrats’ weekly radio address, offering up a list of policy proposals intended to show that Democrats do indeed care about high gas and energy prices. Here’s the YouTube version (text can be found here): Pelosi bashes the Bush administration […]

Reid pulls together Dem bigwigs (and T. Boone) to hash over energy policy

I’m here at UNLV for the National Clean Energy Summit being thrown by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Center for American Progress. I guess they’re playing off Las Vegas’s international reputation for bringing water and air conditioning to the desert clean energy. Bill Clinton is speaking in a few minutes. And hey, is […]

Mississippi Senate race goes negative as Dems attack incumbent over Big Oil

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is targeting Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) for supporting Big Oil. A new ad highlights the fact that he voted to give oil companies tax breaks and voted against legislation to curb speculation in the oil market. “While oil companies make record profits, Roger Wicker votes to give them $28 billion […]

One in three schools too close to highways for clean air, study says

One third of American public schools are in an “air pollution danger zone,” researchers at the University of Cincinnati found in a new study to be published in the Journal of Environmental Planning and Management. They defined danger zones as areas within a quarter-mile of heavily trafficked highways. Diesel particles and other pollutants from highways […]

The good, the bad, and the ugly of the ‘Gang of 10’ drilling deal, part 2

Major legislative compromises are unsatisfying by design. They invariably have good, bad, and ugly parts. I have previously argued that the Democrats would be smart to compromise on offshore drilling. The rest of this series will examine whether the so-called Gang-of-10 deal is in fact a smart compromise. That question can be rephrased as, does […]

Climate whiplash

In a recent article in The New York Times, Andy Revkin talks about the whiplash effect: When science is testing new ideas, the result is often a two-papers-forward-one-paper-back intellectual tussle among competing research teams. When the work touches on issues that worry the public, affect the economy or polarize politics, the news media and advocates […]