Climate Politics
All Stories
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Fannie and Freddie attack clean-energy plan
Few new ideas brighten the faces of clean-energy advocates as much as Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, the Berkeley-born financing tool that’s spreading quickly throughout the country. The three-year-old model has put rooftop solar panels, high-efficiency furnaces, and other home improvements within reach of thousands of American homeowners, and there’s hope it could reach […]
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G20 leaders to meet and discuss global warming … but only a little bit
G20 leaders meet at the 2009 London summit.Photo: Downing Street via Flickr On June 26-27, leaders from the 20 largest economies will meet in Toronto, Canada, as a part of the Group of 20 summit. These countries represent 85 percent of the world’s global warming pollution and 83 percent of the world’s economic output. So […]
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Judge who ruled against offshore drilling moratorium invests in oil industry
The federal judge who overturned Barack Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium appears to own stock in numerous companies involved in the offshore oil industry — including Transocean, which leased the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to BP prior to its April 20 explosion in the Gulf of Mexico — according to 2008 financial disclosure reports. So Yahoo […]
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California’s climate law in peril, Governator pissed
California’s pioneering climate law, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, is officially under threat in this November’s election. The ballot initiative known as the California Jobs Initiative, which “would halt enforcement of the Global Warming Solutions Act until the state’s unemployment rate falls to 5.5 percent or less,” on Tuesday received the necessary qualifications […]
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Presidents keep failing to get us off oil, but Americans aren’t helping
Who’s to blame for America’s 40-some years of stagnation on energy policy — cowardly politicians or a lazy public? Time‘s Bryan Walsh finds some fault with both in a new post. The case against politicians: Energy is one of those bipartisan issues that any politician can dust off — usually whenever gasoline prices have gotten […]
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Public support for offshore drilling continues to plummet, despite GOP scare tactics
On the 64th day of the nation’s worst environmental disaster, Americans’ opposition to offshore oil drilling continues to grow. Center for American Progress’s Daniel J. Weiss has the details: A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll of adults taken on June 16, the day after President Obama’s Oval Office energy address, found an 18 percent swing towards […]
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Big Oil plays jobs card as it fights offshore-drilling moratorium
First we saw interview after interview with out-of-work fishermen and shrimpers. Now we’re hearing from oil-rig workers. Jobs are the trump card of political debate in America these days and, not surprisingly, that card is now being deftly played by critics of the Obama administration’s six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. […]
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How To Talk About Energy Policy
Matthew Yglesias makes a strong case that the “energy independence” frame has backfired when it comes to moving the public on climate-friendly energy policy. I agree. (Jon Stewart illustrates better than anyone how poorly this line has fared—as far back as the Nixon years!) And Yglesias isn’t alone. My colleagues in the climate policy communications […]
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Obama and Senate finally dive in on climate and energy bill
Tick … tick … tick … The Senate now has about 30 working days before its August recess to decide how serious to get about dealing with greenhouse-gas emissions. By the end of this week, particularly after a confab Wednesday between President Barack Obama and top senators [Editor’s note: This meeting was indefinitely delayed], we […]
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Is a ‘utility-only’ cap-and-trade bill worth passing?
Energy deliberations in the Senate are in the home stretch. There’s a crucial White House meeting on Wednesday between Obama and key senators where some final decisions are likely to be made. There are, believe it or not, a few liberal senators fighting to keep carbon limits in the bill, but the bulk of “centrist” […]
