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Bipartisan plan aims to revamp U.S. fisheries law

Congress is plotting its first revamp of fisheries law in nearly a decade — and it’s about time. Every boat counts. Photo: iStockphoto. Scores of fish stocks are dwindling in U.S. waters (as they are around the world), and only one of the eight federal fishing zones in the United States is widely considered to […]

Great minds, etc.

Yesterday I wrote about America's shame in Montreal. Today, the New York Times, which clearly knows a good idea when it sees one, is running an editorial called "America's Shame in Montreal."

A spoof and a serious energy plan

First: Engineer-Poet is right -- somebody has way too much time on their hands.

Second: via Oil Drum, check out the collective efforts by Kossacks to develop "A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security." They're on their fourth draft, and it's really shaping up into an impressive piece of work. I would quibble with a few details, and with the excessive focus on command-and-control regulation, but my one broad criticism is that they've ended up with a kind of melting pot of every single progressive energy idea on the planet.

As an exercise in visualization and planning, it's great, but if this is going to be picked up as an actual proposal, it's in dire need of some editing. Some tough choices need to be made. There's no way, in today's political climate -- or any I can foresee -- that this country is going to be able to process 20 major pieces of legislation all at once. Especially since for each one there's going to be a major lobbying push against it by entrenched powers.

But regardless: Very nice work, and a rather inspiring example of grassroots collaboration. I'll be following the progress.

Great Expectations

Big Great Lakes cleanup plan gets an OK, but no federal funds U.S. EPA administrator Stephen Johnson and a bipartisan coalition of Midwestern lawmakers and officials approved a 15-year strategy to restore the Great Lakes on Monday. But the Bush administration says it won’t fund the plan, which may cost up to $20 billion. The […]

Off Season

Climate change is messing with the seasons in a Rocky Mountain forest Since 1968, researchers have gathered air samples from near the summit of Colorado’s Niwot Ridge in the Rocky Mountains, and tracked carbon dioxide levels in the conifer forest below. They’ve amassed the world’s third-longest record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and that record provides […]

Haul Out the Folly

White House makes last-ditch effort to open Arctic Refuge to drilling The Bush administration is mounting a last-ditch effort to persuade Congress to approve drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before lawmakers break for the holidays. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao are out furiously shopping talking points: It would supply […]

Milbank on the refuge

Bush administration officials sense that their best chance in years to get drills into the Arctic Refuge is slipping away, so they're putting on a PR offensive.

This isn't particularly newsworthy. Still, it's nice to see Dana Milbank, the Washington Post's excellent political reporter, writing a column with just the right degree of mocking skepticism, calling Interior Secretary Gale Norton "the administration's Ahab" on the subject and busting Labor Secretary Elaine Chao for passing on talking points straight from a rightwing think tank (drilling will create a million jobs -- by all accounts, she said it with a straight face).

Anyway, it's a bracing exception to the normal stenography of mainstream Washington reporting. Give it a read.

Is the world ready to waltz with nuclear again?

Most of us know what torture it is to be a wallflower, so it’s hard not to feel at least a slight frisson of sympathy for the nuclear industry. Once considered “most likely to succeed,” this promising power source found itself stumbling in the 1970s. It was bad enough after Three Mile Island in 1979 […]

Stevens rumor

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is not Jon Stewart's favorite person. Last week on The Daily Show's he did a memorable segment called "Who the F**k is Ted Stevens?" (Video here.)

Why is that? Well, consider the following.

He and his fellow drilling monomaniacs in Congress have inflated the (already-inflated [PDF]) projected revenue from Arctic Refuge drilling to $5 billion, though the Congressional Budget Office has not yet changed its official scoring.

Last week Stevens was openly discussing scaring up support for refuge drilling among Gulf-state Democrats by tying it to hurricane relief. Holding devastated families hostage. Classy.

But the latest rumor -- and right now it's only a rumor, mentioned in CongressDaily -- takes the cake. Apparently Stevens is considering holding up the Defense Appropriations Bill until he gets refuge drilling in the budget reconciliation bill, which is in conference committee. Holding the military's budget hostage. Quite a mensch!

Anyway, if anyone can verify (or disconfirm) this rumor, let me know.

Cali’s ‘million solar roofs’ back from dead tomorrow

As this San Francisco Chronicle op-ed notes, the California Public Utilities Commission is expected to revive some portions of California's SB1 (the "million solar roofs" legislation) tomorrow.

(Grist readers will recall that SB1 died earlier this year, a casualty of squabbling between organized labor and state Republicans.)

Though there are some parts of SB1 the CPUC cannot replicate with regulation, the steps they're taking are considerable. This is from an email correspondence with David Hochschild of the Vote Solar Initiative:

Tomorrow, we expect the California Public Utilities Commission to issue their proposed decision implement a 10 year, $3 billion solar program. This will be the largest solar energy incentive program in nation and the 2nd largest in the world after Germany. It will be followed by a 30 day public comment period and then it is expected to be approved by the Commissioners in January.

More heartening still is the fact that the CPUC seems to be responding to a genuine groundswell of public support:

The public pressure to implement this program has been nothing less than inspiring. Over the last two months, 43,000 people wrote to the Public Utilities Commissioners to ask them to pass the Million Solar Roofs program (we worked with Moveon and about 10 other groups to do this). This is more public comment than the PUC has gotten on any issue they have ever considered, including the energy crisis. It shows public support for solar and renewables has reached a new threshold.

If this goes through, and doesn't get screwed up by the legislature again, it could establish what solar technology has long desperately needed: A long-term, predictable incentive.