Climate Politics

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  • New Obama forest plan leaves roadless rule intact

    The Obama administration will defend the Clinton roadless rule that has been ping-ponging in the courts for nearly a decade, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in Seattle on Friday. If courts can’t resolve the forest-protection conflict, the administration will create its own roadless rule, he said. Vilsack laid out a broad vision for the […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Politics

  • Solar wars

    Note to utilities: solar is popular with your customers.  Earlier in the month in Colorado, Xcel proposed a scheme to charge their customers who install a solar installation an extra fee.  After 5 days of intense public outcry, they withdrew the plan.  For now. And in New Mexico, Public Service of New Mexico  (the largest […]

    Adam Browning Politics

  • Four Democratic senators call for delay on climate legislation

    Four moderate Democratic senators — all considered swing votes on climate legislation — want a climate bill put off until next year. They say Congress should focus on passing health-care legislation. “The problem of doing both of them together is that it becomes too big of a lift,” Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) told Bloomberg. Sens. […]

    Kate Sheppard Politics

  • Solar is getting cheap

    Much of the rhetoric against energy legislation of any kind—and at any level—centers on cost.  So advocates spend a lot of time explaining why continuing with the status quo is not a low cost option: clean(er) coal is not cheap, and nukes are really expensive.  To say nothing of terraforming Mars. The other half of […]

    Adam Browning Politics

  • Lower your expectations for Copenhagen, says Foreign Affairs journal

    Michael A. Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations, writing in the September/October Foreign Affairs, finds “vanishingly small” odds that December’s international negotiations in Copenhagen will produce a comprehensive climate treaty. From the journal’s summary (emphasis mine): “Government officials and activists should fundamentally rethink their strategy and expectations” for the December climate conference in Copenhagen, […]

    Jonathan Hiskes Politics

  • North American feed-in tariff policies take off

    Gainesville’s feed-in tariff program is limited to 4 megawatts of solar PV each year. The program is already fully subscribed through 2015 — a 24-megawatt commitment.Photo courtesy U.S. NRELClean energy advocates in Europe have long considered the feed-in tariff as an antidote to the industrial world’s fossil fuel dependency. Now, the United States and Canada […]

    Ben Block Politics

  • Economist Greg Mankiw’s bottom line on climate policy: Government can’t do anything right

    Gregory MankiwThe New York Times turned over some of its valuable opinion space to Harvard economics professor Gregory Mankiw last weekend, so that he could discuss the merits of various carbon policies. His record on that score is not great, and he doesn’t have any special training or experience on the subject, but as far […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Offsets remain off-putting to many experts intent on curbing CO2 emissions

    The massive climate and energy bill now working its way through Congress would create a multi-billion-dollar market in carbon offsets, giving owners of agricultural and forest land the opportunity to profit as companies seek to offset their carbon emissions. Offset quality — ensuring that an offset represents a genuine reduction in greenhouse gases — has […]

    Erica Gies Politics

  • The defeat of Australia’s climate plan is not bad news for cap-and-trade

    It may be tempting to view the Australian Senate’s defeat Wednesday of climate change legislation as a portent of things to come as the U.S. Senate prepares to take up a cap-and-trade bill. Queensland is Australia’s coal country. Its mines power the country and feed China’s demand for energy.Courtesy Wikimedia CommonsBut the rejection of the […]

    Todd Woody Politics

  • Gore’s group targets swing senators in new climate ads

    New ads from Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection are pushing swing-vote senators to back climate and clean-energy legislation, touting the job-creation angle. The TV and radio ad campaign is targeted at moderate Democratic and Republican senators from fossil fuel–dependent, manufacturing-heavy Midwestern and Southern states: Blanche Lincoln (D) and Mark Pryor (D) of Arkansas, Evan […]

    Kate Sheppard Politics