Articles by Sean Casten

Using doubt to compete with a scientific body of fact

This will come as no surprise to Grist readers, but it's nice to see it in mainstream print. The Chicago Tribune had a nice piece in the Sunday paper articulating how those on the wrong side of science have consistently used doubt as a strategy to maintain a scientifically-uninformed policy.

In particular, note that:

Alaska state legislature proposes fund to support alternative energy including coal

Alaska has proposed a $21 billion fund (Greenwire, $ub. req'd), which uses oil surpluses to support alternative energy projects, including:

wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal, biomass and a plant that "produces ultraclean fuels from coal."

State Rep. Les Gara (D-Anchorage) responds:

Coal is not renewable energy and by any fair definition it's not really alternative energy

Sounds controversial!

Smart ideas for post Lieberman-Warner climate policy

Lieberman-Warner had many, many, many, many, many problems. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) has just done a bit of musing ($ub. req'd) on what the next effort ought to look like; he has done a rather eloquent job outlining the problems with Lieberman-Warner and suggesting what lessons we ought to take from its failure as we advance to a better model.

From Restructuring Today:

Boucher’s bill to fund CCS technology at the expense of rate-payers

A few months ago, the debate about greenhouse gas policy in Washington was in the Senate focused on Lieberman-Warner. That effort ultimately failed, as a good idea (reduce GHG emissions within a market framework) got turned into a really crummy bill. Good intentions were bedeviled by lousy execution. Conventional wisdom says that the next effort to develop a U.S. GHG plan will emerge from the House, and specifically from the House Energy committee.

This week, we got our first look at where their priorities lie, and it is not pretty. If there was any lesson taken from L-W's failure, it seems to have been that if your long-term goal is a crummy bill, you might as well just skip the whole good intentions part.