Climate Politics
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Seeking sustainability, finding skeptics at the American Farm Bureau meeting
Seattle, Wash. — Attending the American Farm Bureau’s annual meeting in the Emerald City on Sunday, I felt like a Red Sox fan at a Yankees game. It did nothing to calm my nerves when I heard Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman say this: A line must be drawn between our polite and respectful engagement […]
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Obama seizes the energy opportunity
During President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition, the Center for American Progress proposed a 10-point clean-energy agenda for the president and Congress that would speed the economic transformation to a clean energy economy. A review of these items today finds that all were adopted or are working their way through the process. This is a startling achievement […]
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Gates Foundation throws its lot with agribusiness
The Gates Foundation has emerged as a kind of de facto USDA for Africa: a deep-pocketed funder with a focus on agriculture, in a continent that has seen ag-research funding plunge over the past several decades. For a while, the Gates Foundation sought to avoid a reputation as a cheerleader for biotech “solutions” to Africa’s […]
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The policy and politics of Obama’s $2.3 billion in clean energy tax credits
Today the Obama administration unveiled $2.3 billion in new tax credits to clean energy manufacturing companies. There were 183 projects selected out of some 500 applications; one-third were from small businesses; around 30% are expected to be completed this year. The winners are spread across 43 states. Here’s a map from White House adviser Carol […]
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What does climate consensus look like?
What with the Arctic Oscillation oscillating like mad thus making the developed world colder than a… Well, really cold. And with meteorologists across the country proving that talking about the weather for a living seems to make you less likely to understand climate. And with the American Farm Bureau sort of proving the same thing, […]
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Common Sense Regulations For Carbon Markets
With all the concern about carbon trading, it’s worth pointing out that there are some common sense solutions to the risk of carbon market manipulation. Foremost among these solutions is restricting trading to regulated exchanges (such as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which handled agricultural futures) and banning unregulated, or lightly-regulated, “over-the-counter” trading. In a later post, […]
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Is the Obama administration about to eat the foodies’ lunch?
These are heady times for foodies — you know, the people who love farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSAs), and hate Big Ag. They’ve turned the documentary movies “Food Inc.” and “Fresh!” into big hits. And they’ve turned “Slow food” into a generic term (there actually is an organization by that name that boasts […]
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Scientists demand meeting to talk climate with head of American Farm Bureau
It’s not just mountaintop removal mining that’s making activists of scientists. Now a group of 40 climate scientists backed by the Union of Concerned Scientists has written a letter demanding a meeting with American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman to discuss his group’s continued endorsement of climate denial and refusal to acknowledge the reality of […]
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The Climate Post: Warming apparently takes extra time off for holidays
First things first: Our story left off at the COP-15 negotiations, minutes after world leaders released their three-page Copenhagen Accord [pdf], a broad statement of political intent to address the issues that — according to the (old) U.N. schedule — should have been addressed by now. This result begs the question: Did 2009 end with […]
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Coal: Looking Back at 2009 & Ahead at 2010
2009 was one hell of a year! For the first time in more than six years, no new coal-fired power plants broke ground. It is hard to believe, but we are close to closing the book on one of the most dangerous chapters of the Bush-Cheney era – the ill-conceived 2001 Bush-Cheney Energy Plan that […]
