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A look at Mike Huckabee’s environmental platform and record

Update: Mike Huckabee dropped out of the presidential race on Mar. 4, 2008. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who served as governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007, touts energy independence as one of his top priorities. He dodges the issue of whether humans are responsible for global warming, saying we don’t know for sure, […]

Hansen’s response to a claim that he accepted money from George Soros

I don't know how NASA's James Hansen keeps up his pace of writing -- or how he puts up with the steady stream of disinformation launched against him. I am not trying to create a cult of personality around him, but I do feel under some obligation to give his writing as much attention as possible -- as I think he has done more than any other scientist to raise awareness on climate change, and deserves our thanks, not slander.

"The latest swift-boating," Hansen explains in a new post (PDF), "is the whacko claim that I received $720,000.00 from George Soros." Here is a smear from Investors Business Daily, of all places -- I have no idea why investors would be interested in such drivel -- which migrated over to the conservative websight NewsBusters in an article titled, "Is Global Warming Alarmist James Hansen a Shill for George Soros?"

Hansen explains, "Here is the real deal, with the order of things, as well as I can remember without wasting even more time digging into papers and records":

The City of Love unveils an emissions reduction plan

Speaking of the scheming of the French, Paris has pledged to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions 30 percent by 2020. Gosh, who isn’t introducing such plans these days? Oh. Right.

Pumpkin production is down for second year in a row

Halloween may still be four weeks away, but this story‘s already got me spooked: Scorching weather and lack of rain this summer wiped out some pumpkin crops from western New York to Illinois, leaving fields dotted with undersized fruit. Other fields got too much rain and their crops rotted. It’s the second year in a […]

An interview with Mike Huckabee about his presidential platform on energy and the environment

This is part of a series of interviews with presidential candidates produced jointly by Grist and Outside. Update: Mike Huckabee dropped out of the presidential race on Mar. 4, 2008. Mike Huckabee. Photo: healthierus.gov Should you heart Huckabee? The jovial former Arkansas governor famously shed 100 pounds in two years and became an outspoken health […]

John Dingell’s carbon-tax bill is designed to be unpopular

The carbon plan of Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) is considerably lamer -- and more transparently a poison pill -- than early reports suggested. So I strongly disagree with Chris Dodd, Friends of the Earth, and Gristmill's Charles Komanoff, who all applaud the bill. Here's why.

First, as Dingell himself has said, he wanted to design a bill with maximum pain to prove to everyone how unpalatable greenhouse gas mitigation is (see below). Why else include a pointless $0.50 gasoline tax on top of the carbon tax? Dingell actually has a double agenda here -- to torpedo climate legislation and a toughening of CAFE at once. Taxes are unpopular enough -- but two of them? Come on! We've seen gasoline prices jump two dollars a gallon in recent years, with little impact on usage. What would another 50 cents do, except piss people off? It would never make the final bill, and Dingell knows it.

Second, Dingell "phases out the mortgage interest on primary mortgages on houses over 3,000 square feet." But why? Here is the lame answer:

Quebec introduces carbon tax

Determined not to let British Columbia hog the green spotlight, the province of Quebec has introduced Canada’s first carbon tax. The tax, to be levied on gasoline, diesel, heating oil, and coal, is expected to raise $200 million a year to fund the province’s emissions-reduction plans. Apparently Quebec never got the memo that taxes are […]

New book details successes; join a chat with Paul Hawken

At work today I received a review copy of Building the Green Economy: Success Stories From the Grassroots, which just hit the presses and looks interesting. It's a diverse roundup of grassroots efforts aimed at stewardship and urban renewal toward a cleaner economy and greener, more just communities. Green economy superstar Van Jones is interviewed, of course, but I didn't notice a nod to Paul Hawken right off the bat, whose pioneering books on the topic of greening the economy laid the groundwork for the idea, and whose new book, Blessed Unrest, details the incredible, ever-widening scope of the global grassroots movement for a better future (excerpt here).

I'm planning to ask him how he envisions the role of commerce in this new civil society era during a conference call I'm hosting this Friday the 5th, for the Orion Grassroots Network. If you'd like to join this conversation on the global grassroots and pitch Hawken a question of your own, the dial-in info is here.

Corps may buy out coastal Miss. towns, encourage residents to move inland

The Army Corps of Engineers is seeking support from three coastal Mississippi counties for a proposal to buy out 17,000 homes and encourage residents to move inland. The Corps generally reserves buyouts for areas prone to river flooding; the new proposal is an indication that the U.S. may be seriously considering the risk of sea-level […]

Why we shouldn’t forget the Farm Bill

Once again, a prime example of our misguided farm policies hits like a ton of factory-farm manure sludge -- or in this case, a massive sack of federally insured, genetically modified corn.

Last Wednesday, Monsanto announced that the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) approved a pilot program that will give farmers a 20 percent discount on insurance premiums if they plant a majority of their corn acres with seeds featuring Monsanto's trademarked YieldGard Plus with Roundup Ready Corn 2 or YieldGard VT Triple stack technology. This is the first time the FCIC Board has approved a crop insurance discount for specific crop traits, but not likely the last.

For the moment, let's set aside the potentially sordid nature of this public/private arrangement. What is particularly ironic and imbalanced is that organic producers pay an extra 5 percent surcharge when they sign up for crop insurance because of the perceived additional risks associated with organic production.

That's right. Organic producers are actually penalized for using production practices that have been shown to lessen risks.

Simply put, this is bad policy that should be reformed when the Senate takes up the farm bill this month.