Climate Politics
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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 […]
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Post-truth politics
During this strange lull in the (endless) development of the federal climate bill, I’ve been mulling over a few political notions. First: voters don’t generally know much about politics or policy. They have things they do know a lot about (American Idol, baseball teams, accounting software, scrapbooking), but for most voters, politics and policy aren’t […]
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Is Obama’s offshore drilling plan winning any GOP votes?
The consensus, among People on the Internet anyway, is that Obama’s far-reaching offshore drilling expansion is a bid to win Republican support for clean-energy legislation. More offshore drilling is a major Republican energy priority, after all. So how are GOP leaders responding? House leaders John Boehner and Mike Pence attack the plan as a job-killing […]
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The Hill: GOP senators say they can work with Dems despite healthcare battle
Republican senators say they can work with Democrats, despite dire predictions that the healthcare fight would make cooperation impossible. Okay, this story from The Hill isn’t a big shock. But once again, John McCain proved how out of touch he is: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned that using reconciliation to block a GOP filibuster and pass […]
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Obama will open large sections of Southeast and Alaskan coasts to offshore drilling
Updated President Obama will open large swaths of the Atlantic, Gulf, and Alaskan coasts to offshore oil and natural gas drilling in a stunning concession to fossil-fuel companies, the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, and others are reporting. On Wednesday morning Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced an end to […]
