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Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz on the new corporate push for climate action
Timberland CEO Jeff SwartzPhoto: TimberlandCould corporate America finally be stirring from its climate change slumber? Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz believes the answer is a qualified yes. If recent events are any indication, we’re inclined to agree with him. In the last few weeks companies from Apple and Nike to Pacific Gas and Electric have been […]
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The economics of 350
There is good news on the climate policy front. The Europeans have ratcheted down their emission targets; the Chinese are getting serious about solar power and energy efficiency; and Washington, after opening a multi-billion dollar stimulus spicket for clean energy, is lumbering towards a carbon cap. This is progress-inadequate, but still important progress — towards […]
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Can the USDA really keep our food safe?
Having read and listened to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s attempts at ground beef-related damage control in the wake of the recent food safety revelations, I’m left to wonder if the USDA simply needs to get out of the food safety business entirely. Vilsack himself — in a Minnesota NPR radio interview where he defended the […]
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Carbon poker
I had a dream about watching one of those high stakes poker games that you see on TV these days. There were bit players who you knew, from the few colored chips in front of them, would soon fold — but the two “whales” at the table were Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. They each […]
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Jumpin’ Jack Verdi, it’s a gas, gas, gas
Cross-posted from TomDispatch. Oil and natural gas prices may be relatively low right now, but don’t be fooled. The new great game of the twenty-first century is always over energy and it’s taking place on an immense chessboard called Eurasia. Its squares are defined by the networks of pipelines being laid across the oil heartlands […]
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India’s 1.1 billion move to feed-in tariffs
Cross-posted from Wind-Works. The world’s largest single political jurisdiction to date, India, has made a strategic move to use a comprehensive system of feed-in tariffs to develop its renewable energy potential. China had previously announced feed-in tariffs for wind energy only. The country is expected to reveal feed-in tariffs for solar energy later this year. […]
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Economics of climate legislation deserve honest accounting
The debate over the Kerry-Boxer bill has picked up where Waxman-Markey left off: the economics of climate legislation. Perhaps empowered by the “death panel” misinformation campaign, climate bill obstructionists are reviving rumors of economic disaster in the hopes of panicking the public and eviscerating or blocking final legislation. Just as no one was every going […]
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New Cantwell climate bill is simpler and more equitable
Cross-posted from AlterNet. On Sept. 22, in a speech to 100 world leaders gathered at the United Nations to discuss climate change, President Barack Obama declared the U.S. “determined to act.” But at the same time, word began to circulate on Capitol Hill that the Senate might be equally determined not to vote on the […]
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Warning: This product may cause sickness, paralysis, and death
It’s hard to draw any other conclusion from Michael Moss’s New York Times blockbuster investigative piece on E. coli in industrial beef, which is centered on the plight of Stephanie Smith, a young dance instructor left comatose, near death and now paralyzed from eating a single Cargill hamburger. Of course, a “single hamburger” can include […]
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What do we mean when we talk about the cost of climate legislation?
As the Senate takes up climate change legislation, there’s going to be a great deal of talk about its costs, its benefits, and how they stack up against each other. These are vexed conversations, plagued with technical complexity and hidden political agendas. We’ll get to to some of those complexities and agendas in a future […]
