Articles by Ana Unruh Cohen

Ana Unruh Cohen

As conservative spinmeister Frank Luntz has written in his infamous memo, "Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly."

With all the climate action in the Senate last week, it seems that the skeptics are getting restless. Time for Plan B.

Last week, noted skeptic Patrick J. Michaels laid out the game plan:

The Bush administration realizes that simply knowing that human activities are impacting the climate is not grounds for "urgent action" to do something about it.

So even if they can't argue about human influence anymore, they'll now argue about the appropriate time to take action.

It's time for advocates of taking action sooner-rather-than-later to update their talking points. You can be sure the other side already has.

New nuclear support in the McCain-Lieberman amendment may have cost it support.

Four votes.

Sens. Boxer, Dayton, Feingold, and Harkin, all supporters of the Climate Stewardship Act in the last Congress, voted against the legislation this afternoon when Sens. McCain and Lieberman offered it as an amendment to the energy bill. The amendment included new subsidies for the construction of nuclear power plants -- which Sen. Boxer, at least, has publicly opposed.

The amendment was defeated 38-60, a decline in support from the better-than-expected 43 votes it garnered in 2003.

Greening the U.S. tax code gets sadly little attention from green groups.

This morning the Brookings Institution hosted a forum on "Tax Reform and the Environment." Along with the usual suspects singing the economic and environmental praises of ending subsidies and tax breaks that harm the environment as well as levying some that would help was one William Frenzel -- former Member of Congress and current member of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform.

Mr. Frenzel noted that out of the hundreds of submissions from the public to the panel a grand total of three could be generously described as support for "greening" our taxes as part of a reform package. It's been nearly 20 years since the last tax reform happened, and I know that in the current DC climate it's hard to imagine a green shift in taxes, but come on people. Don't we need to at least try?

As far as I know, no environmental group has set up a generic e-mail for their members to send to the panel. This surprises me. But you can take matters into your own hands by submitting your own suggestions.

According to Frenzel:

A study says the world’s wind alone could meet its energy needs; the Senate disagrees.

A new study by some smart scientists at Stanford University suggests that global wind resources are good enough to produce 72 terawatts of electricity with current turbine technology. That's about 40 times the amount of electricity the world used in the year 2000!

In other hot air news, Sen. Domenici (R-NM), chairman of the Senate Energy committee, described Sen. Wyden's (D-OR) proposal of funding parity for coal and renewables as a "joke" during the energy bill markup today.

Question to Stanford scientists: How much electricity could the collective sighs of sustainable energy supporters produce?