Climate Politics
All Stories
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Utilities are trying to pull off the scam of the decade
I’m technically on vacation, but there’s an extremely important fight going on in the background right now so I want to weigh in, even at the risk of irritating my long-suffering family. Here’s the deal: Right now, two things are happening in parallel. The first is getting all the attention, but the second is, in […]
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California attorney general sues Fannie & Freddie over PACE clean-energy programs
Jerry Brown wants to face Fannie and Freddie down.California Attorney General (and candidate for governor) Jerry Brown sued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac today for blocking Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs. There’s a good chance that Fannie and Freddie’s legal costs from defending this suit will add up to more than they ever stood […]
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Has Congress run out of time for school lunch and food safety?
The reauthorization of the Childhood Nutrition Act, which includes the National School Lunch Program, took a major step forward today. The House Education and Labor Committee “marked up” the bill, which means it considered a set of amendments with the intention of moving the bill out of committee and to the House floor for a […]
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Fear of job losses and oil-industry incompetence feed debate over drilling freeze
A stormy debate is brewing over the offshore drilling moratorium.On Monday, the Obama administration unveiled its do-over plan to temporarily stop deepwater drilling. On Tuesday, the heads of the commission created by President Obama to investigate the BP spill told reporters that maybe the moratorium should be lifted sooner rather than later. “What’s up with […]
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Against odds, Democrats will bring climate bill to Senate floor
The push for a climate bill in 2010 isn’t ending with a whimper after all. Senate Democratic leaders are going to take a bill to the floor and bet that they can find 60 votes to pass it, Darren Samuelsohn reports in Politico. And it could happen by the end of July: Senate Majority Leader […]
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Historian: It’s too soon to expect large-scale responses to the Gulf leak
Penn State historian Adam Rome studies the American environmental movement and is working on a book about the first Earth Day, which was prompted in part by an offshore drilling disaster in Santa Barbara. Yesterday, he told the Washington Post that it could take another year before we can tell if the Gulf oil leak […]
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Response to the population doomsayers and Robert Walker
Thanks for all of the responses over the past two days to my queries about proposed solutions to the population problem and the "optimum" global population. So here are some observations followed by my response to the questions Robert Walker posed in his piece claiming that population is still a major issue.
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Ads aim to humanize climate scientists, but are they doing enough to make themselves more lovable?
Do the new ads from the Union of Concerned Scientists make climate scientists more huggable? Climate scientists smeared in the “Climategate” spectacle have been cleared of wrongdoing in one investigation after another — but they’ve still got a lingering image problem. The play’s the thing: With a new ad campaign, the Union of Concerned Scientists […]
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Washington Post asks why Gulf spill isn’t leading to green progress
The Washington Post brings the serious gloom and doom today with a front-page story: “Historic oil spill fails to produce gains for U.S. environmentalists.” It’s making the rounds among green groups and climate activists. Lead environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin and David A. Fahrenthold write: This year, the worst oil spill in U.S. history — and, […]
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Feds fund new rapid buses, leave out hovertrains
We’re starting to see some tangible progress from President Obama’s Smart Growth/Livability initiative — a joint venture of the Department of Transportation, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Environmental Protection Agency — which announced $293 million in grants for urban transit yesterday. Much of the total goes to bus rapid transit systems, which […]
