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An ad campaign on climate needs spokespeople who believe what they’re saying

Idly watching TV the other day, my attention was caught by the arresting image of Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting on a sofa. The artfully shot, 15-second spot is one of the first blitz of television ads from We Can Solve It, Al Gore's $300 million project to build up a public base of support for climate action.

The two resemble each other, looking as sleek and plump as sea otters after a good feed. Sharpton and Robertson fence good naturedly, following the strange-bedfellows format of the ad series. Robertson puns, "So get involved; it's the 'right' thing to do," and Sharpton ripostes with the Reagan line, "Now there you go again!"

The thing is well done and I enjoyed it, but I was also aggravated by the choice of spokespersons -- and the more I thought about it, troubled by the deeper meaning of the ad.

Oklahoma senator makes stuff up, wastes time in climate change debate

James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the Senate’s leading climate change denier, had plenty of kooky and alarmist things to say in yesterday’s debate over climate change legislation. Think Progress has video of one of his wing-nuttiest contributions to the discussion, in which he lies about Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, and the IPCC: Yep, the same IPCC […]

As fuel prices rise, airline industry profits plummet

Buckle your seatbelts, because there’s turbulence ahead for the airline industry. As fuel prices skyrocket in flight (afternoon delight), Big Air Travel is scrambling to cope. The International Air Transport Association predicted Monday that the world’s airlines will lose a combined $6.1 billion this year if oil stays near $135 a barrel. American Airlines will […]

It’s official:

Green is not the new black.

Standing up to Samuelson

This post is by Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

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In Monday's Washington Post, and a parallel piece in Newsweek, Robert Samuelson gets it wildly wrong on cap-and-trade, parroting a litany of falsehoods and misrepresentations concerning the most probable federal policy for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Like most detractors of action on global warming, Samuelson continues to push the unsubstantiated notion that reducing emissions will tank the economy, and thus is not worth the effort. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the last three decades of science, misunderstands basic economic theory, and overlooks the enormous opportunity presented by the clean energy economy.

Inaction is by far the most expensive policy option, as many recent studies make clear.

Premier episode of a new online film series features Jones and Carl Pope

A new online film series called This Brave Nation premiered its first episode Sunday night: a conversation between Carl Pope and Van Jones. Both are natives of Frisco and both are equally adamant about environmental stewardship, but they have vastly different approaches. Here they chat about melding those tactics towards a common goal. Later this month, on June 15, Pete Seeger and Majora Carter discuss environmentalism, protest music, civil rights, and urban renewal. Should be interesting.

Dow, Boeing ordered to pay $926 million for nuke pollution

A federal judge ordered Dow Chemical and Boeing to pay a total of $926 million for nuclear pollution at the now-closed Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Denver, following a jury trial that ended in 2006. The class-action suit against the companies began 18 years ago and involves some 12,000 area homeowners seeking compensation for […]

GM acknowledges that it lost the bet on big vehicles

“At this point, we are considering all options for the Hummer brand. Everything from a complete revamp of the product lineup to partial or complete sale of the brand.” — General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, responding to the dismal numbers released by GM yesterday

The challenges of reconciling science and policy

This is a post that I'm virtually certain will be misinterpreted. But it's an important enough issue that I'm going to bet that my writing skills are sufficient to provide clarity to a rather muddy issue.

First off, though, a disclaimer: Science is good. Policy informed by science is good. Leadership informed by science is good. The alternative to all of the above is bad. Nothing I am about to say is to be taken as support for creationism, global warming denial, diminution of White House science advisers or the re-excommunication of Galileo.

However, there is a conflict that lies between the fuzziness that is innate to scientific inquiry and the precision that is required for policy -- and more broadly, leadership. We see this conflict whenever global warming deniers trot out scientists who disagree with mainstream theories and we are forced to explain to the deniers that while the nature of scientific inquiry invites debate, the presence of a debate per se does not imply anything about the preponderance of evidence. As Joe Romm has pointed out, Einstein's revisions to the laws of motion did not prove that Issac Newton was an insufferable quack. It just meant that science is innately fallible and subject to revision. Or as Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

So far, I don't think I've said anything novel or controversial. But here's the catch: The same logic that compels us to acknowledge that science is fallible and evolves must also compel us to acknowledge that policy based on science might be wrong. This is not to suggest that a 1-percent doubt ought to stand in the way of policy based on 99 percent certainty, but rather to recognize that good policy must retain sufficient flexibility to "change its mind."

Climate bills will only get better from here

Mark Thoma, whose Economist’s View is an excellent resource for all things economic, posts a roundup of writing on cap-and-trade versus a carbon tax, including a good primer on how the economics work and why the two plans are so similar. He also excerpts a rather cynical take by Pete Davis on the political reasons […]