Climate Politics

Here’s what happens to EPA whistleblowers (hint: it isn’t pretty)

Marsha Coleman-Adebayo's new book, No Fear: The Whistleblower's Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA, tells about the ordeal she went through while working at the EPA in the 1990s. She told NPR:

For me, working at the EPA was a very harrowing experience. … I was surprised that the in environment of the EPA, instead of being rewarded for being proficient in what you do, loyalty was a much greater value. When I began questioning U.S. policy, I was considered disloyal. And at that point, at the minds of many people at the EPA, I had become their enemy.

Coleman-Adebayo says she faced racial and gender-based discrimination during her time at the office. But her real problems started when she questioned her supervisors' reaction to a problem she found out about while working with the 1996 Gore-Mbeki commission in South Africa.

Missouri puts payoff of local power in peril

The Missouri legislature's move to jeopardize the state's renewable energy standard misses the huge economic benefits of local clean energy.

How do you solve a problem like neoliberalism?

There's been an interesting online debate over neoliberalism in the past few months. I'd like to weigh in with some thoughts on an under-discussed aspect of the debate: how climate change and climate policy change the equation.

Jon Huntsman speaks out on climate change

In a tweet last week, Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman made the apparently super-controversial claim that he "trust[s] scientists on global warming." This weekend, he went a step further, telling ABC's Jake Tapper that his opponents' opposition to the idea of climate change is wrongheaded and extremist.

Politics, farmers, and change: The end of rural America

Big Ag-friendly policy has put family farms in crisis, but Obama can reverse the trend if he delivers on campaign promises.

Finally, PolitiFact calls out GOP candidate on climate

PolitiFact researched and debunked a Republican presidential candidate's claims that climate science is in dispute. Now it's the mainstream media's turn.

Rick Perry used to be Al Gore's biggest fan

Rick "climate scientists are a secular cult" Perry used to love Al Gore like he now loves prayer days. The terrifyingly anti-science Texas governor, presidential candidate, and coiffure model was the Texas campaign chairman for Al Gore's presidential run in 1988.

Perry reveals plan for total anarchy: 'a moratorium on regulations'

The Texas governor and presidential candidate says regulations kill jobs. He forgets that they also save lives, and save the U.S. from descending into complete lawlessness.

Neil deGrasse Tyson blasts Congress for not supporting science

Hayden Planetarium director and former slice of astrophysicist beefcake Neil deGrasse Tyson has some choice words for Congress about its priorities. He's talking about space exploration, which is his particular deal, but the same arguments apply to cleantech and renewable energy innovation.

Congress doesn't believe global warming is a security threat

Climate change will shift the equation of global power and craziness, and the intelligence community is trying to place for those situations. But Congress isn't interested in that. Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard gives this example:

In 2008, [Thomas] Fingar, [former chairman of the National Intelligence Council] now a fellow at Stanford University, took the lead in drafting the first national intelligence assessment on the security challenges presented by climate change. It found that global warming will further destabilize already-volatile parts of the world and should be considered in national security planning. But congressional Republicans dismissed the report as "a waste of resources."