Climate Climate & Energy
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Health care reform is tougher than climate action
I realize that in the blogging world you get no credit for claiming things after-the-fact. But what has been obvious to some of us for a while is now I think becoming painfully obvious to the White House and Congressional Democrats: A serious climate bill is politically easier than a serious health care bill. The […]
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Waxman, Peterson announce agreement on cap-and-trade bill paving way for final vote this week
From a scientific perspective, the deal Waxman made with the aggies is not optimal. From the perspective of consequences in the real world, however, I just don’t see how this deal changes any of the major outcomes of the bill much, if at all. UPDATE: I’ve added comments on the deal from Dr. Michael MacCracken, […]
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NASA’s James Hansen arrested in protest on mountaintop removal
Two years ago, the nation’s top climate scientist wrote, “It seems to me that, as yet, it is difficult to use actions of our government as grounds for civil disobedience, however egregiously stupid those actions are” (see Hansen on “civil disobedience”). But like all of us, his positions have evolved over time. Author Jeff Biggers […]
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Obama on ACES: “I believe that this legislation is extraordinarily important for our country.”
This week, the House of Representatives is moving ahead on historic legislation that will transform the way we produce and use energy in America. This legislation will spark a clean energy transformation that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and confront the carbon pollution that threatens our planet. So said President Obama in the […]
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Shame on the New York Times for running ExxonMobil’s greenwashing ad once again
If I may paraphrase Sir Thomas More in the masterful A Man for All Seasons: It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the world. But for ExxonMobil? The NYT apparently thinks that the way to preserve its declining fortunes is by selling (what’s left of) its soul to ExxonMobil. As you can […]
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House Dems release 1,201-page climate bill with floor debate scheduled for Friday
In the whipsawing environment that is the House of Representatives, the vote for Waxman-Markey is back on for this week, scheduled for Friday. My sources put the odds of an actual vote at 70-30. The updated American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) is here (a big PDF). E&E News (subs. req’d) reports: House Democratic leaders […]
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Deniers like Pielke keep shouting down any talk of a climate change – extreme weather link
Would the New York Times have Bernard Madoff as a business columnist? Only if they hated business. So why does the NYT let John Tierney write a “science” column? The “founding principles” of his NYT blog are the clearest anti-scientific statement you will ever find by anybody claiming to be covering science (see “here“). And, […]
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The two most important questions that both critics and supporters of Waxman-Markey must answer
First, is the Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill compatible with – indeed integral to – a national and international effort to keep global warming as close as possible to 2°C? Second, what would be the outcome if the bill failed? This is the basis of the 500-word post at Yale e360, in which they […]
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Nobelist Krugman takes on the “fantasists” of the “burn-baby-burn crowd”
Nobel prize-winning NYT columnist Paul Krugman has been doing some terrific writing on the economics of climate action (see Climate action “now might actually help the economy recover from its current slump” by giving “businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities” and “Krugman strongly endorses Waxman-Markey“). Now he writes on Friday’s important […]
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The top 10 ways the House GOP are like my two-year-old daughter
The idea for this Father’s Day post came when I was putting my daughter to bed a few weeks ago, and she started to repeat, “Want tiny dog” – one of her favorite stuffed animals. The room was dark, and so I asked, “Is tiny dog in the crib?” to which she replied, “Not yet” […]
