Climate Politics

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  • Soda lobby gets its game on

    HuffingtonPost has a piece up detailing the food lobby’s full court press over a federal soda/sweetener tax: During the first 9 months of 2009, the industry groups stepped up their lobbying in Congress. They have spent more than $24 million on the issue of a national excise tax on sweetened beverages and on other legislative […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • Consumer Reports finds BPA traces in common canned foods

    Bisphenol A, commonly abbreviated as BPA, is vile stuff–not the kind of thing a smart species knowingly introduces into its ecosystem. And if a species were to willfully foul its nest with BPA, it would at least be wise to keep it out of direct contact with food. That’s because BPA is an established endocrine […]

    Tom Philpott Politics

  • Blowing up our clean energy future

    Last week, blasting began on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia. This is a part of the country where dynamite routinely goes off—turning the region’s historic mountain ranges into dust for the tiny coal seams that lie beneath their surface. But Coal River Mountain is special, or, rather, you can decide whether it becomes special. […]

    Nell Greenberg Politics

  • Climate psychology in cartoons: clues for solving the messaging mystery

    Illustration courtesy Ian Webster/CREDFor the climate-change message to finally sink in, for the 64 percent of Americans who don’t believe in the problem (according to a recent Pew poll) to start changing their minds, the place to begin might be the local high-school gym. Have a respected teacher—maybe from the science department—lead a public presentation. […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Politics

  • What does recent Senate drama on the climate bill mean? Peak Boxer

    There’ve been some weird goings-on in Congress around the Kerry-Boxer clean energy bill over the past few days. So let’s take a step back and try to get a handle on how the story is unfolding. In the House, the development of the Waxman-Markey bill was a relatively orderly process. Waxman took control of the […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Congressional watchdog issues update on coal ash regulation efforts

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still does not know the exact number of coal ash dumps at the nation’s power plants, but it’s moving ahead with plans to regulate them. Those are among the findings of a report [PDF] released last week by the Government Accountability Office on the status of EPA’s efforts to improve […]

    Sue Sturgis Politics

  • Why developing countries cannot afford failure in Copenhagen

    The African delegation insisted today in Barcelona that its decision to walk out on negotiations Tuesday was necessary in order to jolt the intransigent European Union and other developed nations to move forward with serious discussions, rather than obstruct progress by bringing only lofty rhetoric and no numbers to the negotiating table. The plan seems […]

    Brendan DeMelle Politics

  • Gaming cap-and-trade: Should we worry?

    Worries about “gaming” or market manipulation sometimes crop up as an objection to cap-and-trade, often with reference to recent shenanigans in the financial markets. Some fear that a cap-and-trade system could be manipulated to artificially raise — or lower — permit prices to generate profits for a few at the expense of consumers. While distrust […]

    Eric de Place Politics

  • Tracking where senators stand on climate legislation

    dummy page pointing to special series: https://grist.org/article/series/2009-tracking-where-senators-stand-on-climate-legislation

    Grist staff Politics

  • Lindsey Graham rebukes fellow Republicans: ‘The green economy is coming’

    Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. While other Senate Republicans led by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) boycott action on the climate crisis, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has chosen a leadership role. In a press conference today with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the author of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, and Sen. Joe Lieberman […]

    Brad Johnson Politics