Climate Politics
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House Dems to corner Republicans into admitting they love Big Oil
House Republicans are planning on voting this afternoon to rev up offshore oil drilling again, and Democrats are taking the opportunity to prove that Republican's hatred of national deficits cannot outweigh their love for oil companies. Right now, oil companies get billions of dollars in tax breaks under a domestic manufacturing provision in the tax […]
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Republican energy coalition has the most ironic name ever
House Republicans are forming a coalition to talk about energy priorities. They're calling it the Guild to Load Our Business Associates with Lucre While Also Realizing Many International Net Gains, or GLOBALWARMING. Ha ha, just kidding! They're calling it the House Energy Action Team, or HEAT. WHAT? THAT IS NOT EVEN BETTER. Given that the […]
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GOP rep couldn’t have voted for oil subsidies, because they don’t exist, la la la
Bush killed Osama, the president was born in Kenya, and there's no such thing as oil subsidies. Not buying it? You just need practice. If you can believe six impossible things before breakfast every day, before you know it you'll be as adept as Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, who last week told a constituent that […]
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Canada elects first Green Party MP; everything else sucks
Well, yesterday's elections ended with Stephen "Kyoto is a socialist plot" Harper and his Conservative cronies controlling a majority government, with Jack "Trustache" Layton and the New Democratic Party nipping at their heels. Canadian Twitter this morning sounds like U.S. Twitter would have sounded in 2004 if we'd had Twitter then. Oh, Canada, we're sorry […]
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Tim Pawlenty doesn’t understand how gas prices work
Presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty doesn't like high gas prices. Unfortunately, he apparently has no idea where they come from. Well, Tim, when a congressional GOP loves an oil industry very much … Pawlenty complained that Obama is "proposing is a tax increase on energy at a time when the gas is $4 a gallon," adding that […]
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Why EIA funding cuts may disrupt energy efficiency investments
This post was written by R. Neal Elliott, associate director for research at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and a contributing author at the ACEEE blog. Last Thursday, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced cuts in Energy Data and Analysis Programs resulting from the fiscal year 2011 budget deal. While the 14 percent […]
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The U.S. budget slashes information-gathering on energy
In times of rising gas prices and uncertainty about the nation's overall energy future, it would seem that obtaining information on energy would be a top priority for our government. But not so. The Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy, is facing a 14 percent cut in the 2011 spending […]
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Canada’s elections are today. Here’s why you’re rooting against Stephen Harper
Guys! Turns out other countries have news today too. It's election day in Canada, and the conservative government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper is an epic source of maple-flavored environmental f*ckery. Canada's elections involve a lot of words that even U.S. political junkies may never have heard before (“prorogation” is a totally new one on […]
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What’s the matter with elasticities? (Answer: maybe nothing)
Price-elasticities — dimensionless parameters that express the extent to which a price increase triggers a usage decrease — are central to policies that aim to reduce a harmful activity by internalizing its damage into its price. The efficacy of carbon fees, congestion tolls, cigarette taxes, and the like turns on the proposition that the toll […]
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Awesome video shows us what the messaging on climate and clean energy must become
Holy hickory-smoked pole beans, did you just see that? That's what happens when the messaging on climate shifts from scare tactics — which studies show only work on about 10 percent of the population — to a totally honest, positive but not Pollyanna-ish attempt to get people excited about real change. Carbon Nation is the […]
