Climate Politics
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Sotomayor endorsement is an embarrassment
If there was ever a time when the U.S. Supreme Court requires a passionate, articulate and unabashed voice for the environment — another William O. Douglas — that time is now. Should Waxman-Markey die in the Senate and the EPA be forced to regulate carbon emissions, the matter will likely land before the Justices and […]
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The enemy of my enemy is my friend, ACES edition
A curious thing happened at Tuesday’s morning meeting of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee when the panel’s infamous climate-change skeptic, James Inhofe (R-Okla.), cited NASA climatologist Jim Hansen in his screed against the House climate bill. Yes, this is the same James Inhofe who once called climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated […]
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‘Citizen’s Guide’ primes readers for climate activism
The following post was written by Lois Parshley and Ben Wessel, students at Middlebury College. Download a PDF copy of the guide.According to The Center for Public Integrity, more than 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence federal climate policy in 2008. That means every morning, 2,340 briefcase-holding and business […]
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Quitter-in-chief Sarah Palin attacks climate action and clean energy in falsehood-filled piece
Memo to Washington Post and editorial page editor Fred Hiatt: We get it already. You don’t like clean energy. You don’t mind publishing unfact-checked articles again and again. And if somebody wants to publish an op-ed attacking climate legislation focused exclusively on the cost of action while never actually discussing climate change or the cost […]
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Palin eschews facts and economics in blasting cap-and-trade bill
The cap-and-trade climate and energy bill passed by the House last month is not a perfect piece of legislation. Critics on the right and left have leveled tough criticisms at it, questioning whether it will do much to accomplish its stated goal of cutting carbon emissions or if it will overburden average consumers with high […]
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Will Senate leadership crack the whip on the climate bill?
In the weeks since the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, it’s become clear that the bill was approved only because of some serious arm-twisting by Democratic leaders. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) personally badgered wavering Democrats, even going so far as to pull one representative out of rehab so he could […]
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Lunatic fringe watch: wing nuts unleashed on ACES climate bill
If you feel the ground shaking under your feet that is because the United States is about to be swallowed up into the bowels of Hell as the U.S. Senate takes up climate legislation. Or so Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin would have you believe. These and other right-wing “pundits” lost their tenuous grasp […]
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Enviros back Sotomayor for Supreme Court
Sonia SotomayorGreen groups are throwing their weight behind Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, even though she doesn’t have much of a record on environmental decisions and hasn’t always ruled in favor of enviros. More than 60 environmental and Native American groups — including the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, Greenpeace USA, the League […]
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Hansen versus Romm
The following comment, submitted climateprogress.org in response to Romm’s July 9 story about Hansen, was censored: July 9, 2009 at 11:25 pm For all of Waxman-Markey’s faults, I think it gets two things right: (1) allowance set-asides to fund tropical forest conservation, and (2) a meaningful price floor. These measures move U.S. policy closer to […]
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Why the climate bill is in trouble (and how to help)
If it weren’t for mixed messages, the US Senate wouldn’t be sending any messages at all. Thursday, WaPo ran a story about how the Senate, once hot to trot on passing a climate change bill, had decided to rein it in. Climate legislation got its first hearing before Senator Barbara Boxer’s Environment committee on Tuesday. […]