Climate Politics
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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 […]
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Environmental regulations visible from space
We're learning a lot about space spiders and space bacteria from the nerd horde at the NASA tweetup, but somehow this one from Rachel Maddow writer Tricia McKinney is the most chilling. (She's citing astronaut Leland Melvin.) It's true:
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Nader: Obama’s guaranteed to win, so why not make him sweat?
Former Green presidential candidate — and former presumed Democratic spoiler — Ralph Nader doesn't plan to run again this time around. But that isn't keeping him from political machinations. Nader's plan for 2012: Obama's gonna win anyway, so why not put some pressure on him to move leftward? Obama's win is basically guaranteed, thanks to […]
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Why did environmentalists pursue cap-and-trade and was it a doomed strategy?
We’re starting to see pieces of counterfactual history on the climate bill in The New Republic and elsewhere based in part on a widely debunked “false narrative.” Since cap-and-trade has been so vilified by the entire right wing and even some on the left, I thought I would try to set the record straight on […]
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We’ve already slowed greenhouse-gas emissions
Given that the Republicans in power are clearly willing to go to the mat to make sure we make no further strides towards improving the environment, this is good news: Even if the government takes no further action to regulate greenhouse gases, our emissions will grow much more slowly than predicted in coming years. In […]
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Policy in an age of post-truth politics
Obama still doesn’t get it.Photo: White HouseAs Joe Romm noted the other day, Ezra Klein has an interesting column in WaPo making the case that, in terms of policy, Obama “is a moderate Republican of the early 1990s.” Putting aside the emergency measures responding to the economic crisis, Obama’s signature initiatives have been a health-care […]
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Ezra Klein: ‘Obama, based on his positions, is a moderate Republican of the early 1990s’
Klein writes, “as Democrats moved to the right to pick up Republican votes, Republicans moved to the right to oppose Democratic proposals.”Photo: The White HouseThe Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein has a terrific column that places the failed climate bill into the political context that has been missing from so much of the recent debate: If you put […]
