Climate Politics
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We need birth control, not geoengineering
I’ve written about my choice not to have children. What’s all too easy to forget is that many women still don’t have any reasonable choice about their fertility. An estimated 200 million women around the world don’t have access to family-planning tools. If they did, 52 million unwanted pregnancies could be averted every year, according […]
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Abandoning Congress is not a winning strategy for climate activists
Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. Senators drafting comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation are negotiating with polluters, and talking about combining a cap on carbon with public incentives for nuclear plants, “clean coal,” and offshore drilling. Should supporters of strong, progressive action to solve the climate crisis give up on Congress and work within the […]
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Time for Obama to embrace another GOP energy plan
By Jesse Jenkins and Yael Borofsky With President Obama’s announcement Wednesday that the administration would support expanded offshore oil and gas extraction, it’s now apparent that price pressures on oil make political pressures on politicians impossible to ignore and that some expansion of offshore drilling is inevitable. But despite Green backlash against the Obama administration’s […]
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China’s global shopping spree: Is the world’s future resource map tilting East?
Cross-posted from TomDispatch. Think of it as a tale of two countries. When it comes to procuring the resources that make industrial societies run, China is now the shopaholic of planet Earth, while the United States is staying at home. Hard-hit by the global recession, the United States has experienced a marked decline in the […]
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Can we get some attention for our issues now?
Fareed Zakaria — prominent foreign policy writer, Newsweek International editor, Washington Post columnist — uses President Obama’s campaign words to suggest it’s time for the president to devote his attention to energy policy: During the 2008 campaign — before the global economic crisis — Barack Obama said the top three things he wanted to accomplish […]
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Me, on Grit.tv, talking about Obama’s drilling plan
Yesterday I went on Grit.tv with Laura Flanders to discuss Obama’s new drilling plan. Watching it now, I think the main lesson is that I desperately need more sleep, or at least a professional make-up artist to hide the bags under my eyes. Here it is: One quick follow-up note: I think my focus on […]
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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 […]
