Climate Politics
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The real reason the climate bill is going to suck
The clean energy bill slogging through the U.S. Congress is far weaker than what’s needed. There’s every chance it will a) get weaker still and b) fail to pass in the end. These facts are widely acknowledged among progressives. What’s less agreed upon is who or what is to blame. You see a lot of […]
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Graham and Kerry are in talks with White House “to discuss a possible compromise.”
The big climate bill story of the last few weeks is the breakthrough Senate climate partnership between Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.). The result — E&E News’s latest analysis shows, “At least 67 senators are in play” on climate bill. This isn’t to say Senate passage will be easy, but I think it […]
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Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 4
We’ve seen how GOP conservatives want to cleanse their party of moderates — see “Honey, I shrunk the GOP, Part 1: Conservatives vow to purge all members who support clean energy or science-based policy.” Even Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), an American Conservative Union “Senate Standout,” among the 20 most conservative U.S. Senators in 2008, is being […]
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Negotiators take aim at U.S. on day one of Barcelona climate talks
The final round of negotiations prior to the Copenhagen Climate Summit kicked off Monday in Barcelona, Spain. Delegates from around the world will meet for the next five days in an attempt to find common ground on multiple areas of disagreement before convening in Denmark this December to try to forge a legally binding international […]
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The must-read solutions book by Al Gore
The long-awaited sequel to An Inconvenient Truth comes out Tuesday, Nov. 3. If you want a preview, Al Gore and the book are featured in an excellent Newsweek cover story, The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man. In September, Nature Reports Climate Change asked me (and several others) to suggest three books to read ahead of the […]
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Michael Specter’s new book ‘Denialism’ misses its targets
“The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of […]
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American stimulus funds benefiting foreign wind energy firms
The Investigative Reporting Workshop released a report on Thursday detailing how one of the first big chunks of money for clean energy under the stimulus package is actually being spent. Our findings (I was the lead reporter on the story) can be found here. Most interestingly, we found that the program, which is designed to […]
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Republicans threaten to boycott Kerry-Boxer markup over substanceless procedural complaint
Darren covered this over at ClimateWire, but I’m not sure a straight news story can really capture the toxicity and absurdity of what the Inhofe is planning to do on the climate bill next week. Some background: when the Waxman-Markey chairman’s mark was released, the EPA undertook an exhaustive five-week analysis of its economic impacts. […]
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Memo to Baucus: Your state’s trees are being ravaged
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said Tuesday he has “serious reservations” about climate legislation unveiled by his Democratic colleagues, signaling trouble for a proposal that is stronger in certain respects than a bill passed by the House. In an effort to inject drama and conflict into a hearing that lack both, the Washington Street Journal and […]
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N.Y. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand answers Grist’s questions on the Kerry-Boxer bill
Kirsten Gillibrand was in the midst of her second term in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving New York’s 20th District, when Gov. David Paterson selected her to replace Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate. (Clinton, you’ll recall, was chosen by Obama to serve as secretary of state.) Gillibrand will serve in the Senate at […]
