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Bush admin proposes rules for domestic oil-shale development

The Bush administration today will propose rules for tapping the U.S.’s vast oil-shale deposits, estimated to hold up to 800 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Oil shale development is enormously expensive and spectacularly polluting, but the U.S. Department of the Interior is expected to frame the debate in terms of high fuel prices and domestic […]

Grist talks to Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mark Begich

Anchorage’s Democratic mayor, Mark Begich, is challenging Republican incumbent Ted Stevens for his Senate seat this November. Begich, 46, is in his fifth year as mayor, and is the city’s first mayor actually born in Anchorage. In a state that’s already feeling the effects of a warming planet, Begich lists climate change as a top […]

A failure of leadership in the wind

This recently appeared in Wendy Williams' blog. She is coauthor of the book Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound, now out in paperback -- a fascinating and horrifying read.

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I've been giving lots of talks about Cape Wind around the country, and I can tell you -- the American people are getting really angry. Both Democrats and Republicans are equally disgusted by what they read in our book about Cape Wind.

At this point, they're angry about a lot more than Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney getting together behind the scenes or over dinner to plot about how to kill Cape Wind.

WaPo’s misguided call to scale back the Conservation Reserve Program

Back in April, it already seemed obvious: Spooked by skyrocketing prices for corn, soy, and wheat, policymakers would push to put as much land as possible in the Midwest under the plow, environmental consequences be damned. One of the first policy levers, I figured, would involve gutting the Conservation Reserve Program. The CRP is a […]

Has the candidate’s stance shifted?

Obama loves coal! No, he’s a flip-flopper who’s ready to embrace policies that would hurt America’s coal industry and its many employees across the country. So which one is it? USA Today is the latest major media outlet to explore the Democratic presidential candidate and his views on coal, with a piece last Friday looking […]

Forget a carbon cap; try guilt instead!

This is quite possibly the most idiotic argument I've ever heard against cap-and-trade. Why is it bad?

By turning carbon emissions into commodities that can be bought and sold, cap-and-trade policies could remove the stigma from producing such emissions ... the purchase of the right to emit greenhouse gases would likely reduce any stigma associated with doing so. Emission levels, consequently, could rise.

Oh, lordy, that's a good one. But that's from an op-ed in yesterday's Christian Science Monitor written by Justin Danhof from The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative D.C. think-tank.

Could he be right? Could it be that the only thing standing between us and a climate crisis is stigma? We need more guilt!

Snippets from the news

• Destroyed wetlands could unleash “carbon bomb.” • Appeals court rules in favor of whales. • Plans for Europe’s largest wind farm approved. • People irked about leaf-blower bans. • Mideast faces choice between crops and water.

In the EPA’s Midwestern division, a pro-industry stalwart replaces a dioxin stickler

Back in May, Mary Gade found herself unceremoniously ousted from her post as Midwest regional administrator of the EPA. According to an excellent Chicago Tribune article by Michael Hawthorne, Gade had been locked in a battle with Dow over the chemical giant’s massive, long-standing dioxin mess in low-income areas of Michigan. Hawthorne reports that Gade […]

Major League Baseball going, going, green!

Eco-friendliness has been seeping into pro baseball for a while, and now it’s pretty much official: America’s pastime has gone green. Major League Baseball partnered with NRDC at the start of the season to encourage teams to, um, win at sustainability. Head to a ball game near you, and chances are you’ll toss your plastic […]

Time to stop using the phrase ‘renewable energy’

This is the first in an occasional series on reframing the energy and climate debate. I welcome all ideas on how we can improve our language in what is now the central front in the war to protect the health and well-being of American families and all future generations.

The phrase "renewable energy" is often used by the media and conservatives to give lip service to clean energy sources -- by lumping them all together in order to trivialize them or diminish their individual potential. For instance, the "bunch of bland old guys" had just one bullet for renewables (and one for efficiency), thereby making them equivalent to expanded domestic oil and gas production, expanded nuclear production, and "clean coal."

Progressives, I think, should stop using the phrase "renewable energy" entirely. It is lazy and fits into the conservative frame of renewable energy sources as individually insignificant. We should go out of our way to specify them, since several of them have come of age.