Climate Politics
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Are environmentalists responsible for climate failure?
Environmentalists and their allies have expressed “disappointment” at the failure of the Senate to cap carbon pollution this year. A few bold voices have even suggested, gingerly, that President Obama might bear just a teensy bit of responsibility for this failure by not aggressively lobbying the Senate to take action or launching a consistent public campaign for action. Meanwhile, the White House isn’t shying from putting the blame squarely on environmentalists.
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What are the prospects for comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation in the coming years?
The chances for either an economy-wide shrinking cap on greenhouse gas emissions or a major push on clean energy investment over the next several years are not large. The best one could plausibly hope for in the next Congress, assuming only modest Republican gains, is some sort of weak cap on utility emissions, though that would still require Obama to do what he refused to do under more favorable political circumstances -- push hard for a bill.
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Is a renewable electricity standard really back from the dead?
Climate and energy legislation in the Senate has shriveled to a husk, but if a renewable electricity standard is added, all might not be lost.
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How Reid's parliamentary maneuvering could doom reforms to the oil industry
The Sen. majority leader may block amendments to an oil reform bill, endangering a bipartisan priority in order to prevent efforts to sideline the EPA
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As energy use goes, so goes the economy
Economic activity tends to track energy use. In particular, demand for electricity is a reliable predictor of economic growth. Recent trends in electricity demand portend bad news for the economy (and the Democrats).
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Why did the climate bill fail?
With the climate bill officially dead, there's already a trickle of "who's to blame and what they should have done differently" pieces. Most of these pieces will focus in the wrong places. Were I doing an autopsy on the death of the bill, here are the causal factors I'd single out.
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The blame Obama game
Obama has received much of the blame, despite Congress being a separate branch of government. But so it goes in the age of outsized prez expectations.
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Can the renewable electricity standard be saved?
Last week, Harry Reid announced a pared-down energy bill, and it didn't include a key policy: the renewable electricity standard that would require utilities to get some of their power from clean energy. Now a coalition of groups is pressing him to put it back in.
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The climate bill is dead. Long live the climate bill!
Months after the Waxman-Markey/Kerry-Lieberman bill died, Harry Reid and environmentalists have finally admitted it is dead, and may even be ready to remove its rotting corpse from the living room and give it a decent burial.
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The way forward after the Senate's climate failure
Here’s President Obama in April 2009: Now, the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline. As of yesterday, it looks like we’re gonna go with decline. Prosperity was over-rated anyhow. That’s what seems to be the message, anyway, from DC, where […]
