Climate Politics
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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, […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)
Mark Pryor Sen. Mark Pryor is a moderate who has voiced concerns in the past about passing climate policy, but has been relatively quiet this year. He is regularly listed among the Democrats most likely to oppose a climate bill. Pryor has expressed interest in increasing his state’s contribution in the biofuels sector, however, which […]
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Offsets and Big Ag: Does the climate bill give away too much to the farm sector?
Special Series: What’s the deal with offsets?Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / GristThe compliance market for offsets proposed under the House’s American Clean Energy and Security Act would not just mean more opportunity for companies already in the business of selling carbon offsets. It would also result in a major realignment in the types of […]
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Surprise, surprise: NWF-sponsored poll finds support for climate bill
Hey, we couldn’t find a photo that screamed “polling,” so how about this period shot of Seattle City Light workers?Seattle Municipal Archives via FlickrThere’s some good news about public support for climate legislation in a new Zogby poll commissioned by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). Seventy-one percent of likely voters say they like the American […]
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NYT: Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security
The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say. Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the […]
