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  • Pelosi won’t commit to deadline for passing climate bill

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has set a soft deadline of June 19 for committee leaders to finish their review of the climate and energy bill that passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee last month. But she hasn’t set a deadline for passing the bill out the full chamber. Speaking to reporters on Thursday, […]

  • Inhofe’s plan: Stall climate action until the next president

    The Heartland Institute, an outpost for climate change skeptics, is holding its Third International Conference on Climate Change here in Washington, D.C., this week (just three months after its second one). Yesterday the meeting played host to the Senate’s top climate-change denier, Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe. Inhofe, best known for calling global warming “the greatest […]

  • West Virginia celebrates the blessings of a coal-based economy

    West Virginia gets more of its electricity from coal than any other state. To celebrate that fact, yesterday WV Gov. Joe Manchin (D) declared coal the official state rock. Yes, really. Coal is now the state rock of West Virginia. But why should Manchin stop there? Having a coal-based economy has given his state so […]

  • Obama calls for cooperation on clean energy and green jobs in Mideast

    Photo: White House No one expected President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo today to focus on climate change, and it didn’t. Obama didn’t use the words “climate” or “environment,” but rather talked about the usual Middle East challenges — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the distrust of American […]

  • Video highlights from the GOP’s anti-climate-bill crusade

    For the past month, House Republicans have been taking their anti-climate-bill efforts on the road, trying to stir up public resistance to the Waxman-Markey climate and energy legislation. The show kicked off in D.C. and moved on to Indiana, Pennsylvania, and California. Now the House Republican Conference has produced a “greatest hits” reel on their […]

  • Nancy Sutley: Obama to stake political prestige on climate bill

    Barack Obama is prepared to stake his own political prestige on getting climate change legislation through Congress, and would be willing to intervene directly to ensure passage of America’s first law to reduce the carbon emissions that cause global warming. Nancy Sutley, who is pivotal in setting Obama’s green agenda as the chairwoman of the […]

  • A common person’s guide to the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009

    On May 21, following months of work, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a 946-page piece of climate legislation. There have been mixed reactions from environmental and climate groups, but most groups are in agreement that it needs to be strengthened going forward. For some […]

  • Former Republican Sen. George ‘Macaca’ Allen shills for dirty energy

    Hey, remember George Allen, the former Republican senator from Virginia best known for using the racist slur “macaca” on camera during his failed bid for reelection in 2006? Apparently, he’s making his comeback as the Republican anti-climate bill poster boy, flacking on behalf of the coal and oil lobbies. Allen reemerged this week as the […]

  • Everything you always wanted to know about the Waxman-Markey energy/climate bill — in bullet points

    You keep hearing about the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill — aka the American Clean Energy and Security Act, ACES, H.R. 2454 — but what’s actually in it? We combed through the 946-page beast so you don’t have to. Here are the highlights of the bill, which is sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and […]

  • Me, on the (web) radio

    Last week I made an appearance on Green Patriot Radio, and the episode is now online, with the somewhat amusing slug, “Mariel Hemingway and the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill.” You can listen to the episode … on a buggy player with no controls … at this horrendously ugly website (WTF?). But it’s worth it!