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The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’
President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Singh of India walk along the Cross Hall of the White House towards the East Room for the arrival ceremony.Photo and caption: The White HouseAt least that’s what the White House is calling it. (Okay, okay: Technically, the White House calls it the “Green Partnership to Address Energy Security, […]
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Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success
President Obama announced today that he will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, raising the stakes for himself and all participating nations. The initial goal for Copenhagen was to forge a binding treaty. But that ambitious goal has been scaled back. With American climate protection legislation bogged down in the Senate after […]
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For McCain, it’s really all about the fake snow
I’m prepared to fight for this fake snow, damn it. Media hype aside, John McCain was always a self-important blowhard. But didn’t he used to care a little bit about substantial issues–and even once sponsor climate legislation in defiance of an oil-satuarated White House? As Grist’s Jon Hiskes recently pointed out, McCain has completely […]
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What to make of the new climate poll
There’s a new Washington Post-ABC News poll out on climate change; Juliet Eilperin’s got a good piece up about it (despite the terrible headline, for which she is not responsible). Having watched this story bounce around today, I’m frustrated yet again by how these polls are discussed. Here’s how I would write the lede to […]
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Learning how to count to 350
Cross-posted from TomDispatch. Next month, at the climate change summit in Copenhagen, the wealthy nations that produce most of the excess carbon in our atmosphere will almost certainly fail to embrace measures adequate to ward off the devastation of our planet by heat and chaotic weather. Their leaders will probably promise us teaspoons with which […]
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Will Africa’s farmland become a ‘resource curse’?
Palm-oil trees in the making, Ivory Coast.In his Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis teases out the mechanisms of famine in British-ruled 19th century India. When a drought would wipe out a grain harvest in one region of India, the price of grain would spike. People all over the subcontinent would suddenly find themselves priced out […]
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Obama administration officials grateful for early spring
“The good news is spring is coming earlier and earlier [thanks] to climate change.” — An anonymous White House official, on the prospect of the Senate debating a climate and clean energy bill in the spring of 2010.
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More NYC farmers markets accept food stamps and sales soar
The NYT’s Cityroom blog offers some hopeful news on getting more healthy food into low-income neighborhoods: Food stamp purchases at the city’s Greenmarkets have more than doubled in the last year, due in large part to publicity campaigns and the addition of more farmers’ markets to the program. Food stamp sales from July to November, […]
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Kids just say no — to fossil fuels
“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary…” OK, students of American History, think you know the rest of this historic American sentence? If you guessed, “… for one people to rid themselves of an energy system that may threaten their lives and liberties, it is only decent that they should declare the […]
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Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets
As I said in my last post, taking energy efficiency in buildings seriously means expanding our policy horizons beyond the blunt tool of raising energy prices. We have to think in creative ways about how to remove market and behavioral failures that inhibit cost-effective responses to today’s energy prices. How can we make efficiency markets […]
