Climate Politics
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With Gulf-spill facts in short supply, spin takes center stage
You spin me right round …Photo: Pip WilsonFor all the fire-hose coverage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it’s a story with startlingly few known facts. We don’t know how much oil has actually spilled out. We don’t know where or when it will hit land. We don’t know exactly what’s in the chemical […]
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Has coal’s strongest defender had a change of heart?
The elders of the U.S. Senate usually aren’t good people to look to for signs of hope and change. But Robert Byrd, the 92-year-old senator from West Virginia, is making some surprising statements lately. After a career as a loyal coal-industry defender, Byrd made headlines last year by calling on the industry to “embrace the […]
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Oil spill update: Interior Dept. negligence, Obama’s BP cash, & greenwashing
The time has come to start peeling the onion on the big, oily Gulf Coast mess. The Washington Post goes at one juicy layer with a story by Juliet Eilperin revealing that the Interior Department gave BP a pass on doing a detailed environmental impact analysis last year because a massive oil spill seemed unlikely. […]
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EPA proposes two options for coal ash oversight
EPA Administrator Lisa JacksonThe Environmental Protection Agency released not one, but two proposals yesterday for regulating the coal ash waste from power plants. The stricter rule of the two would empower the federal government to oversee coal ash like other hazardous waste; the less stringent rule would treat it like ordinary trash and leave oversight […]
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Soda lobbyists say the funniest things
iStockphotoFor sheer shark-jumping, fridge-nuking outrageousness, you just can’t beat the American Beverage Association. In a must-read/listen NPR report, the ABA’s senior vice president for science policy, Maureen Storey, made the claim that soda should play a crucial role in children’s hydration needs: …Children who have been exercising may not drink enough water to get back […]
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ComEd offers Illinois $500M in exchange for guaranteed profits
The gaul of this is hard to put to words. Commonwealth Edison, one of Illinois’ regulated utilities is seeking to take advantage of the state’s budget crisis by offering the state $500 million in exchange for a guarantee of the utility’s future profits. If there’s a better case to be made that a regulated utility […]
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Pundits speak: Oil spill makes climate bill less likely
Satellite image: GeoEyeThe political fallout from the BP oil leak is proving just as difficult to measure as the ecological and economic damage. But three political bloggers who’ve been paying attention to the fight for clean-energy legislation say the odds of a bill passing the Senate are lower than ever. Bradford Plumer asks “Could The […]
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Any drilling moratorium must be accompanied by a commitment to conserve
New America Foundation’s Lisa Margonelli makes a crucial point about the Gulf disaster in an elegant New York Times op-ed: Moratoriums have a moral problem, though. All oil comes from someone’s backyard, and when we don’t reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to […]
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Against a torrent of oil, a trickle of responsibility
Of the many things lacking in the response to the BP spill, responsibility ranks pretty high on the list. From President Obama’s reluctance to reverse his decision to expand offshore drilling, to BP’s shameless attempts to play the innocent victim card, and the far right’s attempts to pin the blame on environmentalists, responsible words and […]
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Leadership lessons in the Gulf
BP’s Drilling Disaster is quickly unfolding to become one of the world’s worst ever environmental catastrophes. Credible sources already are saying that the volume of oil gushing into the Gulf exceeds the Exxon Valdez, and shockingly, there is no end in sight. As oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, as fisherman watch […]
