Climate Climate & Energy

Q&A with Van Jones about the Climate Security Act and green jobs

Van Jones. What does the green jobs and justice community think about the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act? To get one perspective, Grist caught up with Van Jones, the founder of Green For All, a group that promotes green-jobs policies and environmental justice. Jones, a civil-rights lawyer and the founder and former executive director of the […]

America’s 21st century can’t-do spirit

“It’s frankly not doable for us.” — chief U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson, on the G8’s proposal to reduce industrial countries’ emissions 25-40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020

Cause and effect

Here’s a sentence from a new story in the WSJ: The second-poorest state in the nation based on household income, West Virginia counts on coal to support its economy. May I suggest a rewrite? West Virginia counts on coal to support its economy; as a consequence, it is the second-poorest state in the nation based […]

Opening ANWR cuts gas prices $0.02 in 2025

In the climate and energy debate, conservatives continue to argue that the only solution to high gasoline prices is drill, drill, drill, especially in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This argument is false, false, false.

The Administration's own Energy Information Administration found differently in a 2004 Congressionally-requested "Analysis of Oil and Gas Production in ANWR" (see "Note to Bush, media: Opening ANWR cuts gas prices one cent in 2025"). I pointed out then that the 2004 analysis was based on low oil prices, and that higher oil prices would raise the savings.

A May 2008 re-analysis [PDF] by EIA, "Analysis of Crude Oil Production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," in fact found this:

A Post columnist’s defenders can’t salvage his poor cap-and-trade logic

Tyler Cowen weighs in on the cap-and-trade debate. He focuses on my criticism of Samuelson’s seeming failure to understand the relationship between cap-and-trade and a carbon tax: But Samuelson is correct here and Avent is misleading. When there is uncertainty about the location of the social optimum, and uncertainty about elasticities, a carbon tax and […]

U.S. emphasis on Canada’s tar sands a bad idea, says report

As the United States expands its oil-refining capabilities, more than two-thirds of planned capacity will be devoted to processing crude oil from Canada’s tar sands, says a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project and Environmental Defense Canada. Tar-sands capacity is predicted to see a total increase of 1.9 million barrels per day, says the […]

South Dakota vote is step toward first new U.S. oil refinery in decades

Plans have moved forward for the first new U.S. oil refinery in more than 30 years, as voters in South Dakota’s Union County approved a rezoning that would allow the project to be built. Energy company Hyperion Resources says the planned $10 billion facility would be a “green refinery” and would produce ultra-low-sulfur gasoline and […]

What should I ask the efficiency guru about nuclear power?

Amory Lovins. Photo: © Judy Hill Amory Lovins is on the warpath against nuclear power, battling the industry PR push that says nuclear is a viable climate solution. He’s got a new report, co-authored with Imran Sheikh, called “The Nuclear Illusion” [PDF]. Spinning off from that report are a Newsweek article called “Missing the Market […]

An ad campaign on climate needs spokespeople who believe what they’re saying

Idly watching TV the other day, my attention was caught by the arresting image of Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting on a sofa. The artfully shot, 15-second spot is one of the first blitz of television ads from We Can Solve It, Al Gore's $300 million project to build up a public base of support for climate action.

The two resemble each other, looking as sleek and plump as sea otters after a good feed. Sharpton and Robertson fence good naturedly, following the strange-bedfellows format of the ad series. Robertson puns, "So get involved; it's the 'right' thing to do," and Sharpton ripostes with the Reagan line, "Now there you go again!"

The thing is well done and I enjoyed it, but I was also aggravated by the choice of spokespersons -- and the more I thought about it, troubled by the deeper meaning of the ad.

Standing up to Samuelson

This post is by Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

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In Monday's Washington Post, and a parallel piece in Newsweek, Robert Samuelson gets it wildly wrong on cap-and-trade, parroting a litany of falsehoods and misrepresentations concerning the most probable federal policy for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Like most detractors of action on global warming, Samuelson continues to push the unsubstantiated notion that reducing emissions will tank the economy, and thus is not worth the effort. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the last three decades of science, misunderstands basic economic theory, and overlooks the enormous opportunity presented by the clean energy economy.

Inaction is by far the most expensive policy option, as many recent studies make clear.