Climate Politics
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Reports of climate bill death are greatly exaggerated
Despite speculation from a few Beltway pundits, recent events suggest that there is momentum for the passage of a comprehensive clean energy and global warming legislation in 2010. Sen. Lindsay Graham’s (R-S.C.) commitment to work with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to craft legislation is a significant political breakthrough. Sen. Graham voted […]
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Q&A: what will happen with climate legislation in 2010?
By Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian’s U.S. environment correspondent What is the state of play for climate change legislation in America? Barack Obama put his reputation on the line at Copenhagen by saying America would act on climate change. Now it’s up to Congress. The House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey bill last June which would […]
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The Trouble with Tribbles
Grist columns have recently seen a new spate of climate obstructionism. Here’s DaveWR responding to a recent post … “I am old enough to firmly believe in climate change. I was born when the planet was just ending several warming decades which had followed several cooling decades, which were imbedded in the general warming which […]
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TRIPping out: A first step in making the US-India climate dialogue real
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away — well, no, actually two months ago in Washington, D.C., President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Singh inked something called the U.S.-India Climate Dialogue. It was a pretty transparent attempt to salvage something from the fact that India would never agree to binding emissions cuts (and probably […]
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Solar energy’s dirty little secret
Solar energy has long been one of the great hopes for fighting climate change and liberating the world from fossil fuels. And it’s easy to see why solar has captured the collective imagination: All those photovoltaic panels look so shiny, futuristic, clean, and green. Producing solar PV modules involves a witch’s brew of toxic chemicals. […]
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What might Sen. Byron Dorgan’s retirement mean for climate legislation?
Sen. Byron Dorgan, a 18-year veteran Democrat, dropped a late-day bombshell, announcing he will retire when his term ends this year. Dorgan’s announcement represents an opportunity for Republicans: North Dakota is a Republican-leaning state, where President Obama got just 45 percent of the vote last year. What’s bad news for the Dems in the longer term […]
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Richard “Dick” Pombo running for Congress again in California
Pombo and an old pal.Enviros were thrilled when Richard Pombo, a Republican who represented California’s 11th congressional district for seven terms, was ousted from his seat by a renewable-energy geek in 2006. Pombo had been deemed Public Enemy No. 1 by the environmental community, which invested big bucks in the effort to beat him. Amanda […]
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Pollan on ‘The Daily Show’
[vodpod id=Video.16083146&w=425&h=350&fv=] As health care, finance, and climate bills lurch through Congress, buffeted and compromised by the very industries they seek to rein in, the question of whether our political system is actually capable of real reform arises. Could it be that corporate lobbies are so powerful that current dysfunctions are entrenched? Are we doomed […]
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Milk may be cheap but dairy workers shouldn’t be
Barry Estabrook has a piece up on the Atlantic reminding us that agriculture practiced on any scale anywhere in this country relies heavily on migrant — usually undocumented — laborers to perform the hardest, riskiest jobs. And sometimes they die. [A]t about 4:00 in the afternoon of December 22, José Obeth Santiz Cruz, a 20-year-old […]
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James Hansen vs. cap-and-trade
NASA climate scientist James Hansen has a new book out about climate policy, with excerpts in this month’s issue of The Nation. And in my view, he’s got a pretty good policy idea: tax carbon, and use the revenue to give out rebates in equal, per capita shares to every U.S. citizen. It’s a twofer […]
