Climate Politics

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  • Sen. Mark Udall: “I think it’s crucial to price carbon”

    Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.)Mark Udall — son of legendary enviro-friendly Arizona Rep. Morris “Mo” Udall — had been a member of Colorado’s House delegation for 10 years when he won the race to replace retiring senator Wayne Allard. Just 17 days into his first term, Colorado’s other senator, Ken Salazar, left to head up Obama’s […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Energy Secretary Steven Chu posts his nuclear rationale on Facebook

    Originally posted at Inventing Green. Following the Department of Energy’s announcement of a loan guarantee for a new nuclear plant, the Nobel Prize-winning head of the agency, Steven Chu, laid out his rationale for nuclear in clear and plain language. It’s a pretty conventional argument: 1) “no single technology will provide all of the answers,” […]

    Alexis Madrigal Politics

  • Getting China wrong

    It’s been a long time since Copenhagen. A few weeks after it ended, chatting to a friend about some stupid comments I’d overhead during that long last night, he said that “everyone gets a pass for anything they said during the first week.”  The first week after Copenhagen is what he meant — a time […]

    Tom Athanasiou Politics

  • Halliburton secret spurs investigation into gas-drilling practices

    Louis Meeks’ well water contains methane gas, hydrocarbons, lead and copper, according to the EPA’s test results. When he drilled a new water well, it also showed contaminants. The drilling company Encana is supplying Meeks with drinking water.Abrahm Lustgarten / ProPublicaThere’s a scandal brewing about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a revolutionary process for extracting natural […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Politics

  • Policy fixes to unleash clean energy, part 6

    Having outlined ideal utility policy in part 5, we move now to ideal environmental policy. As a reminder, this is not the policy that could be accomplished tomorrow given political realities, but rather the long-term goal we ought to shoot for. If the only thing that mattered was good environmental policy guided by responsible principles, […]

    Sean Casten Politics

  • Arizona introduces bill to redefine renewable standard to include nukes

    In Arizona, a new bill has been introduced that would kill renewable energy progress in the state. HB 2701 would establish a legislative version of the Arizona Corporation Commission’s regulatorily-implemented Renewable Energy Standard of 15% by 2020, but with some tragic differences. For one, the bill would redefine renewables to include large hydro and nuclear. […]

    Adam Browning Politics

  • To reduce nitrogen pollution, we need new farm policies

    California dairy farmer Joey Rocha. Photo: Stephanie OgburnTurlock, Calif. — Joey Rocha tends 2,800 cows at his Central Valley dairy. That may sound like a large herd, but in California, Rocha is a mid-sized dairy producer. Taken together, California’s dairy cows produce more than 100,000 tons of manure every day. Rocha and his fellow dairy […]

    Stephanie Ogburn Politics

  • Gates Foundation ignores reality, hypes latest GMO ‘vaporware’ instead

    Another day, another misguided announcement from the Bill Gates Foundation. This time, it’s hyping a new GMO press release project from DuPont’s biotechnology arm, Pioneer Hi-Bred (via the Des Moines Register): Pioneer Hi-Bred is joining with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help scientists in Africa develop genetically engineered corn varieties that would allow […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • Carbon capture and storage: A piece of the puzzle

    In his recent blog, David Sassoon calls President Obama’s creation of a task force for a Carbon Capture and Storage Strategy a big victory for the coal industry. Let me offer a few thoughts on why I believe this task force actually is a step forward for all of us who want to put an […]

    Dave Hawkins Politics

  • Corporate farming to trump saving salmon?

    What’s Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) up to? Under pressure from Stewart Resnick, billionaire corporate farmer & major campaign donor, Feinstein is attempting to put a legislative limit on how much water from the California Bay-Delta system goes to rescuing the region’s endangered fisheries. It would quite literally erase biological science & replace it with political […]

    Miles Grant Politics