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Diverting war spending to green investments is both politically possible and neccesary

Is it possible to divert war spending into green investment? (David is skeptical.) The current military budget for fiscal year 2008 is around 650 billion dollars, not including supplemental requests, which so far have been made every year since the Iraq war started. That $700 billion-plus total compares to the around $400 billion of military spending in 2001. Given the current unpopularity of the Iraq war, would it really be politically impossible to gain public support for reducing our military budget back to pre-Operation Clusterf*ck levels? (I'd like to see much deeper cuts, but let's look a mere $300 billion reduction for the moment.)

Tory swelling

The Tories are kicking Labour’s ass in the U.K. elections. More about the Tories’ surprising degree of green here.

A History Channel production on climate is worthwhile

A coworker lent me an amazing piece of work called A Global Warning? It does an excellent job illustrating the chaotic nature of terrestrial climate and explaining the theories behind some of the most dramatic climate transitions. It's not a perfect movie, but if you won't read With Speed and Violence, it's probably the best thing there is. It gets into both ocean clathrates (methane hydrate crystals) and the melting permafrost (more methane).

Best of all, not a single denialist or confusionist in the whole thing. It simply says "most scientists," cites the IPCC (the only appearance by Gore is him picking up the Nobel), and makes a strong case that while climate may undergo some rapid changes without us, we have our collective finger on the trigger on the climate howitzer. No James Hansen, but lots of Lonnie Thompson (Ohio State), whom people will recall from The Weather Makers and other good books on the climate crisis.

Bush admin ousts top EPA official over Dow Chemical pollution case

The Bush administration forced out the U.S. EPA’s top Midwest regulator on Thursday, after months of contention over a pollution case involving Dow Chemical, the Chicago Tribune reports. Mary Gade, who was appointed by President Bush in 2006, had been tussling with Dow over plans to get the company to clean up extensive dioxin pollution […]

Candidates, Congress split on ‘gas tax holiday’

The “gas tax holiday” has officially emerged as the latest bickerfest big issue in the presidential race. Hillary Clinton and John McCain say drivers need a break this summer, while Obama is aggressively pushing back against the idea. In a new ad, Obama emphasizes that cutting the tax this summer would save most consumers a […]

Highlights from the American Lung Association’s annual ‘State of the Air’ report

It's become an annual spring ritual, but the American Lung Association's "State of the Air" report -- essentially a report card on the country's air -- contains some valuable lessons.

First is that we have seen progress in dealing with widespread air pollutants such as ozone, or smog, and fine particle soot. States with the most aggressive cleanup approaches, such as California, have seen the most improvement.

But second, and equally important, we still have a major public health problem from air pollution. This is important since virtually all public attention regarding smokestacks and tailpipes concerns global warming. The ALA found that about two in five Americans live in areas afflicted by dirty air. (That number will increase under the new EPA ozone standard.)

Emission prices don’t reduce consumption sufficiently

Recently, I pointed out that emission prices do in fact get passed along to consumers. However, it's important to add that making low carbon alternatives cheaper won't by itself ensure that they are adopted.

My online book Cooling It! No Hair Shirt Solutions to Global Warming documents numerous profitable-but-overlooked energy-saving alternatives. Numerous other people have pointed out the same thing. The Rocky Mountain Institute produces megabytes of examples. Economists refer to the fact that profitable opportunities to save energy tend to be overlooked as "low demand elasticity." You can find out more about why this tends to occur in an annotated bibliography I put together, currently posted as a Word doc at the Carbon Tax center website.

Just to correct some ambiguities, this is not to say that an emissions price won't accomplish anything or is not needed - simply that it is not sufficient. That if we want the problem solved without absurdly high carbon prices, we need to use other policy tools, and not limit ourselves to putting a price on emission.

Obama on gas prices

If you can overlook the silly “price gouging” bit, this strikes me as an enormously effective push-back against Clinton’s attacks:

Top EPA official forced out by political appointees

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.

I've previously described Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson as "the environment's Alberto Gonzales." After years of scandal as White House Counsel and Attorney General, Gonzales finally resigned after it was revealed that numerous U.S. attorneys were fired without cause under his watch.

Now it seems the EPA is following the Department of Justice's efforts to rid itself of staffers who are not "loyal Bushies."

The Chicago Tribune reports:

The Bush administration forced its top environmental regulator in the Midwest to quit Thursday after months of internal bickering about dioxin contamination downstream from Dow Chemical's world headquarters in Michigan.

In an interview with the Tribune, Mary Gade said two top political appointees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington stripped her of her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.

Snippets from the news

• Another day, another EPA scandal: top Midwest regulator forced out. • All but five of 500 ducks meet their end in a Canadian oil-sands pond. • Does artificial turf pose a health threat? • Economists bash gas-tax holiday idea. • Arctic sea ice likely to set another record low. • Shell pulls out of […]