Climate Politics
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Kyoto: Congress’ disgrace, not ‘Al Gore’s mistake’
A specter hangs over the U.S. negotiators at the Copenhagen climate summit: the Kyoto Syndrome. Conventional wisdom holds that the Clinton Administration, and Al Gore in particular, blew it by agreeing to the Kyoto Accords without building the foundation for the Senate to ratify it, which it never did. (See, e.g., “How to Prevent Climate […]
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Susan Collins (R-Maine) [UPDATED]
Susan Collins Though Sen. Susan Collins seems supportive of climate legislation, she remains a toss-up in the debate over the Kerry-Boxer bill. In this letter sent to a constituent in early December, she calls for “meaningful action” to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, while saying that solutions must be “reasonable”: Dear [Constituent], Thank you for contacting me […]
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The EPA to the rescue?
On Monday, the first day of Copenhagen, the EPA announced that it has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, which is a none-too-thinly-veiled warning to Congress that if it doesn’t act the EPA may.
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Political smarts key to success for Australia’s green tech industry
As I boarded my flight back to California in Brisbane, Australia, last Wednesday, I received an email alert that the Australian Senate had just defeated the Labor government’s climate change legislation. Only days earlier victory seemed all but assured, allowing Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to go to Copenhagen with an iron-clad, albeit weak, agreement in […]
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$200 a day – why Sierra Leone will get screwed at Copenhagen
Behind the smart suits, tinted windows, and Swiss fountain pens of COP15 there are delegates from poorer countries who struggle to attend the conference and struggle to have a voice amongst the well-polished rhetoric of the E.U. and American delegations. One such country is Sierra Leone.
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Climate advocates should build ties with the public-health community
They can be climate activists too.“Green jobs now” has become the rallying cry for environmental activists over the last few years as they have worked to build political support for climate action by tying it to economic growth — a powerful message in a world rocked by the worst recession in decades. Politicians have responded […]
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The ‘leaked draft’ non-story and Copenhagen journo-hype
The latest story out of Copenhagen has to do with a leaked draft agreement put together by Denmark, the U.S., and the U.K. According to the Guardian‘s breathless coverage, the leak has climate talks in “disarray,” with developing countries at war with rich countries and the whole edifice getting ready to collapse. Disarray I tell […]
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Shared fate under the ‘fault lines’
We hear plenty about the divisions that make reaching a global climate agreement in Copenhagen daunting. “Negotiators at Climate Talks Face Deep Set of Fault Lines,” as the New York Times put it on Sunday. Indeed, the opening salvos from the negotiators confirm that they have a long way to go in less than 2 […]
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Money’s coming to cool the planet: What’s the winning spending plan?
With their natural resources pilfered, have Native American gambling casinos been payback, a further pillage (described as Tonto’s revenge during the Abramoff scandal) or perhaps both? It’s a relevant debate for today’s global warming talks. During these next weeks of climate change deliberations in Copenhagen, environmental service payment programs will be hammered out. What’s the […]
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FDA moves to reform nutrition labels
Still smarting over the industry’s shenanigans over the “Smart Choices” label, the FDA has decided to pick up the pace of change. Marion Nestle dug up a set of proposed new front-of-package nutrition labels that the FDA is studying, one of which may ultimately get the agency’s final approval. Here they are: My faves are […]
