Climate Politics
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We’ve got no choice but nukes and carbon-capture tech, says Jeffrey Sachs
Economist Jeffrey Sachs said carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology and nuclear energy will be necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, comments made as part of a presentation at the Asia Society in New York Monday night. Jeffrey SachsFile photo courtesy the Earth Institute at Columbia University“Carbon capture better work, because they [China] are not […]
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Climate change is sexist
This is the second dispatch by Population Action International from global climate change talks in Bonn, Germany. Read the first. A Bangladeshi woman searches for drinking water after a cyclone.Photo: Abir Abdullah/OxfamOne of the under-reported issues about climate change is its dramatic affect on women. A side event I attended this afternoon, organized by the […]
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Martin Feldstein uses Washington Post op-ed page for cap-and-trade scare-mongering
Martin Feldstein is a conservative economist — a long-time advocate of supply-side, trickle-down economic policy and a leading advocate for Social Security privatization — so it’s no great surprise that he has taken to the pages of the Washington Post to characterize the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill as “All Cost, No Benefit.” Feldstein has […]
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First impressions from Bonn: climate change hurts the poor
At the opening of the international climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, today, representatives from governments around the world shared their opinions on a newly released draft of a global climate treaty that will be debated and (perhaps) finalized when they meet again in Copenhagen in December. Children herd goats in drought-ridden Ethiopia, on land […]
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Boost innovation investments to make Waxman-Markey bill a game-changer
Advocates of regulatory environmentalism dominated the spin wars last month when the monumental American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) — aka the carbon cap-and-trade bill assembled by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Climate politics “realists” lauded “historic action” (in […]
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Green sector creates 50 percent of new jobs
…in Ireland. This is great news for the people of Ireland. But we need to create those jobs in the U.S. too. In Ireland, a country of four million, 10,000 “green” jobs were created in the last three months in organic farming, energy efficient construction, electric cars, and other green industries. With US GDP falling […]
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How to deal with the climate bill
“Al Gore says support it. Paul Krugman says support it. Two Nobel Prize Winners. Who am I to question them?” That is a question received, in more than one space, when it comes to the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act. Well, with all due respect to the infallibility of a Nobel Prize […]
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Heartland Institute terrified of Grist
Can I cover Heartland Institute events as media? It depends on who’s watching when I ask the question. Back in March 2008, the Heartland Institute held its “First International Conference on Climate Change” in New York City. Heartland is one of the leading oil industry-funded deniers of global warming. According to ExxonSecrets.org, it’s received $561,500 […]
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Next steps for Waxman-Markey bill
The Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill cleared a major hurdle on May 21 when it was approved by the Energy and Commerce Committee. But the American Clean Energy Security Act of 2009 still has a long road to travel before it can be voted on by the full House. The House parliamentarian has referred the […]
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Understanding offsets
As the struggle to pass the Waxman-Markey climate-energy bill showed, there is a certain price any political system is willing to bear for climate action. In China, that price is low. In the United States, it is medium. And in Europe, it is relatively high. But in every system, there exist two primary ways to […]
