Climate Politics
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Obama was against offshore drilling before he was for it
While blogger Adam Bink is correct to point out that then-candidate Obama pivoted on offshore drilling in the final months of the presidential campaign, he misses a few important points.
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Obama’s mountaintop-removal crackdown could mean more than offshore drilling
Offshore drilling, auto-efficiency standards, water-heater regs, green jobs for strippers … there’s a ton going on this week. But today’s big news is a lot brighter than yesterday’s offshore drilling hubbub: the Obama administration announced sweeping new regulations for mountaintop removal, the coal-mining method that tends to (a) remove mountaintops, (b) fill mountain valleys with […]
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The Climate Post: Read this. Read now. Pay nothing.
First things first: The Obama administration today finalized greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and light trucks first proposed last May. The practical upshot of the rules is a roughly 40 percent rise in fuel economy, to 35.5 miles per gallon, by 2016. The government said the measures would save owners about $3,000 in fuel […]
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Appalachians hail EPA’s great victory for Clean Water Act and justice
Earlier this morning, I wrote a piece for April Fool’s Day, Obama Ends 150-Year War of Strip-Mining in 24 States: Mountaintop Removal Loses Its Groove. Well, turns out the second part wasn’t an April Fool’s joke after all. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson invoked the rule of science and law today — and for the first […]
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Me, in the NYT, on Obama’s drilling plan
Yesterday, Obama announced a new offshore drilling plan that would open up parts of the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern seaboard for leasing and exploration. The New York Times’ Room for Debate blog brought a few folks together to discuss what it means. My contribution is reposted below. See also comments from: Peter Maass, […]
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How offshore drilling will affect the Alaskan wilderness
First let me set the scene. Alaska’s Arctic Ocean is vast, even as oceans go. During the summer months, Arctic waters lap up against pebble-lined shores for miles along endless miles. In the winter, that water stops lapping because it turns into ice that is so beautiful and important to the Inupiat Eskimo people, who […]
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Conservativeclimate.org lauds Reagan as climate hero
Courtesy Reagan Library via Wikimedia Commons“While liberals will never admit it, Ronald Reagan was one of our nation’s greatest climate champions,” argues the new site Conservativeclimate.org, a joint project of ConservAmerica and Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP). It’s clear that no freedom-hating liberal graphic designers were involved in the creation of the site. David Jenkins, […]
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Obama's Oil Plan: Something For Nothing? Or Nothing For Something?
Forgive me if my Outrage-O-Meter registers low today despite the President’s coastal drilling announcement. Candidate Obama announced his willingness to compromise on coastal drilling quite dramatically during the campaign. And the Senate climate bill talks have been premised on expanded coastal drilling ever since last year’s New York Times op-ed from Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) […]
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A Representative Senate?
When I consider the hurdles to reforming state or federal constitutions, I’m reminded of the tale about the lost traveler who called out for directions to a farmer in a field. “If I were going there,” the farmer eventually hollered back, “I wouldn’t start from here.” Richard Rosenfeld, in Harper’s writes of how deeply embedded […]
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Energy Independence Through Greater Addiction
According to President Obama, the only path to energy independence is greater addiction! Or something: Reversing a ban on oil drilling off most U.S. shores, President Barack Obama on Wednesday announced an expansive new policy that could put oil and natural gas platforms in waters along the southern Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico […]
