Climate Politics

Who Are You, and What Have You Done With Our House?

House shows its green side with votes on Interior Department bill The House of Representatives was on an eco-roll yesterday as it fixed up an Interior Department spending bill to send to the Senate. Over the objections of top Republicans, lawmakers approved 252-165 a measure that would put oil and gas companies on the hook […]

Better Late Than Clever

Democrats unveil plan to cut dependence on oil imports Yesterday, Senate Democrats presented a proposal to cut U.S. dependence on oil imports 40 percent by 2020. The Clean EDGE Act contains nary a mention of increased fuel-economy standards, gas taxes, or other such excessively bold proposals; instead, it proclaims that ethanol will save us all. […]

Chase to the Cut

House passes bill to speed up salvage logging A bill that would speed up salvage logging in national forests after fires and other natural disasters has passed in the House. Currently, a careful review of wildlife and forest health is required before timber can be salvaged and sold after catastrophes; proponents of the heftily named […]

Honorably Discharged

Supreme Court sides with enviros on licenses for hydroelectric dams Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the first environmental case considered under new Chief Justice John Roberts … and sided with enviros (supported, this time, by the Bush administration). At issue was a Maine case hinging on wording in the Clean Water […]

Michael Hayden Is Taking Notes

Chinese environmentalist faces trial on questionable charges Chinese environmental activist Tan Kai went on trial yesterday, facing charges widely considered dubious. Inspired by protests in the province of Zhejiang, where residents say chemical plants are destroying crops and causing birth defects, Tan and five others informally launched a group called Green Watch last summer. In […]

Big Ethanol …

... wins again.

House Majority Leader John Boehner's attempt to lower the ethanol tariff (and thus allow ethanol-hungry oil refineries to purchase ethanol from overseas) has gone down in flames:

Point, shoot, go to jail

Say you live in a neighborhood where there is a power or waste-treatment plant nearby. You notice some toxic nastiness spewing out, so you decide to document said spewage by recording it with photos or video. If lawmakers in New Jersey get their way, you've just committed a crime that could put you in jail for 18 months:

The state Senate Law and Public Safety Committee is expected to discuss a bill today which would make it a crime -- punishable by up to 18 months in jail -- to photograph, videotape or otherwise record for an extended period of time a power generation, waste treatment, public sewage, water treatment, public water, nuclear or flammable liquid storage facility, as well as any airport in the state.

At the very least, it will allow law enforcement officials across the state to detain the individual or confiscate any recorded materials to further their investigation, according to state Sen. Fred Madden, D-4 of Turnersville, who is the bill's sponsor.

Opponents of the bill said it "makes no sense" and is "awful."

Indeed.

(Via BB)

A Hard Sell

Bush admin land sell-off plan may be DOA The future looks dim for the Bush administration’s unpopular proposal to sell off 300,000 acres of public land to fund rural schools. A House subcommittee has excluded the proposal from a spending bill; it will be considered by other committees, but has no enthusiastic backers in Congress. […]

Push to raise fuel-economy standards gaining new support

Cringe as we might over record-high gasoline prices, they could be the best thing to happen to automobile fuel economy since the Arab oil embargo. Nowhere to go but up. The soaring cost of oil in recent weeks has sent Washington lawmakers into an election-year frenzy. Some of their proposals — like one from Senate […]

Wake Up and Smell the Carbon

Al Gore launches new climate campaign Launched with profits from Al Gore’s new movie and book, a new group called Alliance for Climate Protection plans to spend big bucks on advertising and grassroots organizing in an attempt to impart the dangers of climate chaos to the American public. Focusing particularly on conservatives and labor groups […]