Climate Politics
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On gaming the political spectrum
He’s been called a lot of things, but …If Bill Gates visited a homeless shelter with nine people, the Washington Post would predictably report on a gathering of tycoons with an average net worth of $123 million. Why do I say that? Read this from today’s WaPo: Tony Kreindler, spokesman for the advocacy group Environmental […]
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Boxer-Kerry climate bill: what to watch for
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) plan to introduce their climate bill tomorrow. Here are a few brief notes on what to watch for. Just as a reminder, for the non-wonks, here’s how the process works: 1) House passes bill, 2) Senate passes bill, 3) House and Senate bills reconciled via conference committee, […]
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Saving the planet is hard
Paul Krugman concludes in “It’s easy being green” (NY Times Opinion, 9/24/2009) that “the claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax.” Indeed, but the notion that the Waxman-Markey legislation is about “saving the planet” (Krugman’s words) is equally inscrutable. Even Joe […]
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Bikers and activists ride for the climate from New York to D.C.
On Saturday, more than one hundred climate and cycling activists began a 300-mile cycling journey from New York City to Washington, D.C. Enduring endless chafing, near collisions, and constant pedaling, they are riding for climate change awareness and strong legislation. Most importantly, they will represent the vanguard of the climate movement’s fall of activism and […]
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Memo to Congress: Don’t dawdle on climate bill
Even though the Senate hasn’t even begun debating a specific climate bill, naysayers at home and abroad are already declaring as dead on arrival the effort to pass climate and energy legislation in the United States this year. And who can blame them? Like health-care reform — and bad teenage slasher movies — the whole […]
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James Hansen on Obama, climate legislation, and the scourge of coal
Cross-posted from Earth Island Institute. A recent article in the New York Times pointedly asked whether NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen still matters. The subtext to the story was, has Hansen been too vocal and too unconventional in his criticism of Washington’s response to climate change to be taken seriously? Hansen, dubbed by some […]
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Feed-in rates: a hard sell
I really feel for the renewable energy activists in the U.S. who are trying to get the most successful policy in the world, feed-in tariffs (FITs), implemented. The problem in the U.S. is, ironically, that so many U.S. renewables advocates actually oppose the idea (because it wasn’t theirs), and even now that everyone seems to […]
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Big Ag on climate change: “What, me worry?”
Once again, topics covered at length in the pixels of Grist are slowly percolating out into the wider media world. Newsweek over the weekend posted an article by Jeneen Interlandi about the grave effects of climate change on agriculture, summed up as the triple threat of “droughts, bugs and big storms.” And once again, we […]
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Washington Post doubles down on fact-free climate denial
Is there any media outlet that enables global warming denial more effectively than the Washington Post? After today’s op-ed from one of the top deniers in the world, the latest in a long line of denial op-eds, you have to wonder. While Fox “News,” Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street Journal, and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review all deliver […]
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G20 cans fossil-fuel subsidies, but fails to make other climate-conserving moves
Let man tear asunder.On Friday afternoon, President Barack Obama formally announced that the world’s 20 major developed and developing nations had agreed to gradually eliminate fossil-fuel subsidies. It was the only climate-specific policy directive to come out of the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Pittsburgh, and it fell far short in the view of […]
