Climate Politics
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Economics cage match: Stavins’ minimalism vs. Houser’s full-court press
Whenever I criticize economists I get yelled at by economists because I’m no economist and what do I know. So I’m trying a different approach: I’m going to compare and contrast two economic perspectives on climate/energy policy. See if you can guess which one I prefer! Textbook economics Representing what he calls the “textbook economics […]
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Job losses push need for energy bill
America’s urgent need for new job creation may be the driver that pushes the Senate to pass a jobs and energy bill this year. After the loss of 8.4 million jobs in the current Great Recession, Congress is searching desperately for any means to create new jobs. Unemployment vs. deficit “conundrum” As former Treasury Secretary […]
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CBS Evening News report on antibiotics in livestock, part 1
Update: Catch the preview and part 2 here. Here is part 1 of the Katie Couric’s CBS Evening News report on antibiotic use in livestock. She pulled no punches. This first segment focused on poultry processing facilities in Batesville, Ark. and drug-resistant MRSA. As in the preview, Couric explicitly discussed the possibility of transmitting disease […]
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10 races to watch in 2010
California House race, 19th Congressional District Richard Pombo is back! He antagonized environmentalists as chair of the House Resources Committee (he even removed the word “Natural” from the committee’s name) until 2006, when he got beat by a renewable-energy booster. For his comeback attempt, he’s carpetbagging from the 11th Congressional District, site of his […]
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Progress from the Copenhagen Accord: A good start to global progress on climate safety
This past December, 192 countries gathered for the 15th meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark. Ambitions for the Copenhagen meeting were high. UNFCCC members had agreed at their 13th meeting in Bali, Indonesia in 2007 that December 2009 would be the deadline to determine a course of action […]
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Did Michelle Obama get the president to create a national Food Policy Council?
Michelle Obama kicked off her campaign against childhood obesity today. Among the provisions are a revamping of the school lunch program, a small boost in funding for farmers markets, a major initiative to “end” food deserts by 2017, a focus on maintaining children’s exercise levels, a set of broad public-private partnerships, along with reforms to […]
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Policy fixes to unleash clean energy
Suppose you became King tomorrow and your first order of business was to modernize the U.S. energy system — make it cleaner, cheaper, more reliable and more sustainable. What would you do? Now suppose you’re the King’s subjects, and he has just announced his plan per the above. What will you learn? Clearly, you’ll learn […]
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A response to teabaggers
This morning, my piece on the Audi “green police” ad made its way onto the Drudge Report. Grist got crushed with traffic, and as always when my work drifts into the rightosphere, I got some choice emails. Most emailers objected to my use of the terms “teabag” and “teabaggers.” Appaaarently, there’s some sort of deviant […]
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Any hope for meaningful U.S. climate policy? A somewhat positive view
The current conventional wisdom – broadly echoed by the news media and the blogosphere – is that comprehensive, economy-wide CO2 cap-and-trade legislation is dead in the current U.S. Congress, and perhaps for the next several years. Watch out for conventional wisdoms! They inevitably appear to be the collective judgment of numerous well-informed observers and sources, […]
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Four stories that should have changed the media narrative … but didn’t
One of the most frustrating things about covering national energy politics is that conventional wisdom in D.C. never seems to change. The incestuous circle of journalists, pundits, lobbyists, and lawmakers known as The Village has its own set of narratives about climate/energy policy. Those narratives are a) completely at odds with the rest of the […]
