Climate Politics
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McDermott’s cap and trade alternative may have unintended consequences
Washington’s Congressman Jim McDermott just released a new climate plan, but I can’t quite wrap my head around it. It gets some things right, but it may cause some relatively serious problems too. Here’s how he described it in a recent blog post: In brief, here’s how it would work: Producers of products and resources […]
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A teaching moment at the G20 summit
Logs being transported out of the Amazon rainforest. Shazari via Flickr It was a mistake, I know, to try to cross the street last Thursday evening. There I was, not far from the Tower of London, hoping to get across the main road east to the city’s former docklands. But every time I tried to […]
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Washington state renewable plan avoids watering down
Washington state’s Initiative 937, the renewable energy bill voters approved in 2006, looks to be safe from meddling state legislators. From Josh Feit at Publicola: The state Senate bill I’ve been following all session—the one that supporters like Sen. Chris Marr (D-6, Spokane) says will “amend” I-937 (the voter-approved renewable energy initiative) and Greens say […]
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Energy portions of Waxman/Markey compensate (in part) for carbon weaknesses
There are some gloomy reactions to the Waxman/Markey bill around the interwebs — see, for instance, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and Brad Plumer. I’m not going to claim the bill is perfect, but I think the pessimism is excessive. It comes down to this: these guys are focusing too much on the carbon […]
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Bachmann again calls for revolution against climate action
Two weeks ago, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) called for an “armed and dangerous” revolution against measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and move away from fossil fuels. Now she’s toning down her rhetoric a bit, clarifying during an interview with NewsMax that she wants citizens “to be armed with knowledge, so they can be dangerous to […]
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Green nudges: An interview with Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein
From deceptive advertising to misguided public policy to sheer boneheadedness, Americans have no shortage of forces pushing them to make unwise choices. How else to explain Ding-Dongs? Or ruining a perfectly good planet? Legal scholar and avowed environmentalist Cass Sunstein, however, holds out hope that we, both individually and collectively, are not condemned to irrationality. […]
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Markey/Waxman = Roadmap for Coal
As an upstart state rep from Malden, Mass, Ed Markey had the temerity to support rules reform, which got him kicked him out of his office by Speaker Tom McGee. Markey set up desk, chair and phone in the statehouse hallway and burnished an image of integrity which vaulted him to the top of a […]
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Republican enviros challenge Boehner’s misinformation
Republicans for Environmental Protection is calling on House GOP leaders to stop spreading misinformation about the climate and energy legislation Democrats released last week. In a pointed press release issued last week, the group challenged allegations made by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) that a plan to reduce climate-warming emissions amounts to a “light […]
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Climate policy question #1 is simple: “Are we in?”
It’s all about the cap Photo: ne* via Flickr Climate and energy policy touches everything. So it’s no surprise that as Congress finally sets to work on a national climate policy, it confronts a blizzard of complexities. But at the end of the day, Congress will face some stark questions. Will they step up to […]
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Providing the tools to get a strong international climate agreement
People always ask me: how do we get a strong international commitment to solve global warming pollution? What “tools” do U.S. negotiators (and others) have to secure an equitable commitment from all major emitters to reduce global warming pollution? How do we support the most vulnerable developing countries in adapting to the impacts of global […]
