Climate Politics

Seeing red: Where do the GOP candidates stand on urban issues?

For decades, the Republican strategy on cities has been to ignore them and hope they go away. This year appears to be no different, but the guys currently taking pot shots at each other in the presidential primary never cease to surprise.

Energy efficiency: Still awesome, still ignored

Despite having drifted back out of the public eye, energy efficiency remains a readily available way to stimulate the economy and create jobs while reducing energy demand and climate pollution.

Obama sings his support for Green causes

We guessed from his first campaign ad that President Obama was going to be vocal about clean energy this election, but we didn’t realize he was going to go full-on Green:

Newt Gingrich thinks riding the subway is for fancy people

Not that this is the most ridiculous Gingrich news in the last few days or anything, but it’s pretty amusing: Evidently “metro-riding” is the Gingrich equivalent of “arugula-eating.” “Those who, you know, live in high-rise apartment buildings writing for fancy newspapers in the middle of town after they ride the metro, who don’t understand that […]

A farm bill in 2012? Don’t hold your breath

Ironically, after the rush to push the Farm Bill through the congressional supercommittee this fall, some farm state politicians are admitting that a bill before November's election is looking unlikely.

President Obama and the forgotten urban agenda

Obama came to the White House promising new energy and resources for American cities. Has he lived up to that promise? And anyway, who’s paying attention?

What environmental policy could we expect from President Colbert?

Stephen Colbert has officially thrown his hat in the ring for definitely possibly considering a run for president. He's already out-polling Jon Huntsman! So what kind of environmental policy platform could we expect from a President Colbert?

Congressional staffers will stop betting on wildfire destruction

We here at Grist mock a lot of people. But we don't always manage to mock some sense into them. Which is why we're pretty psyched about the response to Sarah Laskow's feature story revealing that congressional staffers were making deadly wildfires into a fun office pool: 

McKie Campbell, the [Senate Energy and Natural Resources] committee’s Republican staff director, said the contest has been stopped.

“It will never happen again,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “It was in no way indicative of disrespect for any of the folks who put their lives on the line to battle the fires.”

Let’s make fun of Rick Santorum talking about climate change

Is it getting boring to make fun of Rick Santorum? I don't really care, because frankly the dude is both a menace and an ignoramus and that is comedy gold even if he didn't look like the love child of Ryan Reynolds and a turtle. (Yes, I recycled that joke, but it's TRUE.) It's all very well to talk about frothy mixtures and whatnot, but opportunities to mock Santorum go well beyond his Google problem. Although seriously, does anyone else feel sort of dirty when they type his name, like they should be writing "Sant*rum" or something?

Anyway, Treehugger found a doozy of a quote from Sir Mixture-a-lot about global warming. Let's mock it! (Note to Rick and adherents: We are not in the "then they laugh at you" stage of Gandhi's, or whoever's, hierarchy. We are just laughing at you.)

Koch fiends: AFP’s favorite members of Congress

Americans for Prosperity gave five senators and 39 representatives perfect scores for their votes to uphold the Koch agenda in Congress.