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Obama energy adviser Jason Grumet talks climate, coal, and transportation policy

As executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan group of 20 energy experts created in 2002, Jason Grumet has come in for some flack from environmentalists. NCEP’s influential 2004 energy report called for several measures anathema to greens, including a "safety valve" that would set an upper limit on the price […]

Clinton vows to take down OPEC

Now Clinton’s going to dissolve OPEC: “We’re going to go right at OPEC,” she said. “They can no longer be a cartel, a monopoly that get together once every couple of months in some conference room in some plush place in the world, they decide how much oil they’re going to produce and what price […]

Glenn Hurowitz’s analysis of Democratic election strategy

Hurowitz has written a book that analyzes how the Democrats managed to lose control of Congress for 12 whole years and let Bush get into and hold his office for the last eight. He sums up the problem in a single word: Courage. What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? Courage can be hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For example, here is an old YouTube video where some guy off camera tells Cheney to GFY.

Sometimes there is a fine line between courage and stupidity. This guy, who may now be sitting in Guantanamo for all I know, sure had balls. Base jumpers and NASCAR drivers are on the wrong side of that line, because courage only counts when an individual takes a personal risk for others. We instinctively admire courageous leaders. If they are also smart leaders, they can impart a serious competitive advantage.

Hurowitz's book Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party is about 270 pages long but has only six chapters. Four of those chapters juxtapose four politicians: the late Paul Wellstone, Bill Clinton (gutless wonder), Tom Daschle (circumstantial coward), and Nancy Pelosi.

Is there no end to it?

First McCain panders to middle-class drivers, now he’s pandering to Ron Steenblick!

Clinton sings the faux-populist, anti-intellectual Manichean blues

I must say I’m surprised and gratified at the amount of coverage the gas-tax holiday is getting. It appears to be blowing up in Clinton’s face, which is exactly what would happen in a Good and Just world. Earlier this week, asked about the fact that not a single policy expert or economist thinks the […]

Eco-friendly outdoor-clothing company goes under

Last year, Eric Brody of outdoor-apparel company Nau excitedly chatted with Grist readers about his new enterprise and its ambitious sustainability plans. This week, the company announced that it’s closing its doors: “Just as we could not have predicted the sudden groundswell of environmental consciousness that blossomed at the time we launched our business, we […]

Myanmar cyclone is a portent of disasters to come

At least 10,000 people lost their lives when a tropical cyclone struck the nation of Myanmar, in Southeast Asia. Perhaps the jury is still out on the extent to which storm intensity can be related to climate change. What is clear is that sea-level rise will make future storms, more intense or no, much more […]

Monday bummer blogging

Damn, one of the more promising ideas, biochar, seems to be a little less promising than hoped:

... a new study ... suggests that these supposed benefits of biochar may be somewhat overstated.

... They found that when charcoal was mixed into humus ... charcoal caused greatly increased losses of native soil organic matter, and soil carbon ... Much of this lost soil carbon would be released as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Therefore, while it is true that charcoal represents a long term sink of carbon because of its persistence, this effect is at least partially offset by the capacity of charcoal to greatly promote the loss of that carbon already present in the soil.

Oh, and you know that thing Al Gore talked about, where birds would emerge from their eggs only to find that their usual food had already peaked and declined because the changing climate had disconnected formerly co-evolved species? Well, caribou go next:

Monday links

As promised, here’s yet another bunch of links for your leisurely perusal: Fortune writer Adam Lashinsky has a great round-up from the Brainstorm Green conference. My only beef is with this, about Lomborg: Even if you believe that global warming is an abject crisis, I simply reject the argument that it’s a bad idea to […]

The longer we wait to move away from gasoline, the more high gas prices will hurt

Like Americans, Europeans are generally not fond of rising fuel costs. Unlike Americans, they’re much better at handling them. It isn’t difficult to understand why; they simply planned ahead. Geoffrey Styles writes: A big part of our problem is that most Americans are still driving cars that were purchased when gasoline was under $1.50/gal., to […]