Articles by David Roberts

Eric Pooley offers nine questions on climate legislation that the press ought to ask Obama

Eric Pooley continues his quest to single-handedly raise the intelligence of mainstream media climate coverage by a factor of ten: Thursday on the Nieman Watchdog site, he lays out "nine climate questions for President Obama" on the upcoming climate bill. I won't attempt to summarize them here. Suffice to say, a) he hits the most important issues, and b) the chances of anyone in the U.S. political press corps asking Obama questions this informed and nuanced are somewhere between slim and nil.

I was going to conclude this post by cleverly pointing out an important question Pooley missed, but I can't think of one. Go read.

The game plan: partnership with China

Conventional wisdom seems to be that Obama needs to secure a domestic climate bill and then take that bill to international climate talks in Copenhagen this December as a demonstration of good faith. I very, very much doubt there will be a climate bill signed into law by Dec. But there’s something else that the […]

Blue dogs, old tricks

Let me highly recommend Chris Hayes' piece on Blue Dog Democrats. This is the coalition of House Democrats who have decided that "fiscal responsibility" is the highest virtue, where fiscal responsibility means preventing the government from spending more on anything but the military. (Military spending is fine -- there was zero Blue Dog opposition to the war or to the perpetually increasing military budget.) In particular, it's worth highlighting this key sentence:

"Where Blue Dogs have perhaps been most effective is in helping Republicans pass legislation and blocking or diluting progressive legislation."

Yes. You will hear lots more from and about the Blue Dogs when energy and climate legislation are debated later this year. The Blue Dogs will push to weaken the legislation and reduce the amount of investment in the green economy, not for any particularly coherent philosophical or substantive reason, but just because it gets them lots of corporate donations and media attention. As Ezra says:

The Blue Dogs smartly hew to a form of elite centrism that assures them almost uniquely glowing press coverage. ...

Put another way: It doesn't matter if you're a centrist or a liberal. It only matters whether you're perceived as a centrist or a liberal. And Blue Dogs have chosen to be ostentatiously and inconsistently heterodox on the issue that's most visible to the perception-makers.

Preserving the status quo by preventing investment in alternatives is "centrist," even when the status quo is leading the country to ruin. It's all atmospherics, but the consequences for the atmosphere will be very real.

NYT breaks story on CO2 regulations … after two years of Grist coverage

Back in mid-January, Kate covered Lisa Jackson's confirmation hearing, in which Jackson promised to move ahead on the CO2 endangerment finding:

On climate change, Jackson said she would have the EPA declare whether greenhouse gases pose a danger to humankind and need to be regulated -- an action mandated by the Supreme Court, but put off by the Bush administration. "When that finding happens, when EPA makes a decision on endangerment, let me put it that way, it will indeed trigger the beginnings of regulation of CO2 for this country," she said.

Then, this past Tuesday, Kate covered the fact that Jackson announced the beginning of the endangerment finding process.

Back in December, I posted some thoughts on regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act.

At the beginning of February, the folks from the Constitutional Accountability Center wrote two excellent posts (here and here) on the politics and mechanics of regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act.

Our own Sean Casten has published at least two interesting posts (here and here) on the technical and legal challenges of regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act.

And on Tuesday, I posted an extensive analysis of the politics and mechanics of regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act.

Meanwhile, today, The New York Times finally got around to covering the story.

And lo! The blogs are suddenly abuzz with the news! Friends are emailing me the article! "Did you know about this?!" Our own commenters are saying "This will be the top story here on Grist tomorrow."

Yeeeeaaaaaaaargh!