Climate Politics

Biden’s Middle Class Task Forces asks some tough questions about green jobs

At the first meeting of the Middle Class Task Force on Friday, Vice President Joe Biden celebrated the progress on a new, green economy kicked off by the stimulus package, and called for continued efforts to create more jobs that “keep up with 21st century needs and lower energy costs.” But his cabinet members also […]

Takin' it to the streets … of NPR

I was on NPR's "News & Notes" program last week, talking about Obama's green stimulus. Listen if you dare.

U.S. denounces Iceland whaling move

WASHINGTON — The United States on Friday denounced Iceland’s decision to go ahead with a sharply higher whaling quota, voicing concern there were not whales to sustain the hunt. Iceland’s new left-wing government said last week it will maintain an earlier decision for a quota of 150 fin and 150 minke whales this year — […]

Michelle Obama loves her veggies, cue George Will rant about value of fast food

Climate kudos this week go to the more than 10,000 yoots descending on Washington, D.C., today for Power Shift, the largest national youth conference on climate change to date. These young advocates for climate action will spend the weekend strategizing on how to bring about a green energy future, then they’ll pound the halls of […]

For the first time in decades, a healthy school-lunch debate opens

First it was the 2008 (nee 2007) Farm Bill. Then it was Obama’s choices for the top USDA posts. Now it’s the National School Lunch Program. Food issues once lived at the margins of U.S. political discourse, where agribusiness and food-industry interests could control them. Now they’re inching toward the center. A new era has […]

How to build resilient communities in a chaotic world

This is a guest essay by Chip Ward, a former grassroots organizer/activist who has led several successful campaigns to hold polluters accountable. He described his political adventures in Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West and Hope's Horizon: Three Visions for Healing the American Land. This post was originally published at TomDispatch, and it is republished here with Tom's kind permission.

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Now that we've decided to "green" the economy, why not green homeland security, too? I'm not talking about interrogators questioning suspects under the glow of compact fluorescent light bulbs, or cops wearing recycled Kevlar recharging their Tasers via solar panels. What I mean is: Shouldn't we finally start rethinking the very notion of homeland security on a sinking planet?

Now that Dennis Blair, the new Director of National Intelligence, claims that global insecurity is more of a danger to us than terrorism, isn't it time to release the idea of "security" from its top-down, business-as-usual, terrorism-oriented shackles? Isn't it, in fact, time for the Obama administration to begin building security we can believe in; that is, a bottom-up movement that will start us down the road to the kind of resilient American communities that could effectively recover from the disasters -- manmade or natural (if there's still a difference) -- that will surely characterize this emerging age of financial and climate chaos? In the long run, if we don't start pursuing security that actually focuses on the foremost challenges of our moment, that emphasizes recovery rather than what passes for "defense," that builds communities rather than just more SWAT teams, we're in trouble.

Today, "homeland security" and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), that unwieldy amalgam of 13 agencies created by the Bush administration in 2002, continue to express the potent, all-encompassing fears and assumptions of our last president's Global War on Terror. Foreign enemies may indeed be plotting to attack us, but, believe it or not (and increasing numbers of people, watching their homes, money, and jobs melt away are coming to believe it), that's probably neither the worst, nor the most dangerous thing in store for us.

Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force hosts summit on green jobs

Joe Biden will host the first meeting of his Middle Class Task Force on Friday at the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on the potential for green jobs to create a pathway to economic stability. The panelists gathered in Philadelphia — including greens, labor leaders, and the president’s top advisors — will explore several main questions: […]

Van Hollen to introduce cap-and-dividend bill

Fans of carbon-pricing schemes that would return the vast majority of tax or carbon auction revenue to consumers think there’s increasing political momentum for their proposals in Congress these days. Proponents of cap-and-dividend — a carbon-pricing plan that would auction off pollution credits to industries and send roughly 90 percent of the resulting revenue to […]

Send us your responses to our questionnaire on climate action

It is a strange but not uncommon experience for youth to hear veterans of the 1960s disparage protest. Youthful protest, it is implied, can never hope to achieve the cultural and political breakthroughs of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam era; it's nothing more than nostalgic play-acting by those too young to know what the '60s were all about and too naive to understand a changed and nuanced world, where simplistic slogans and confrontational tactics are at best a waste of time and probably do more harm than good.

This is hogwash.

What power environmentalists do have was wrested from a complacent society by determined, principled confrontation, and this is spent rather than increased by polite advocacy. It is also worth noting that the peak of environmental protest was the surge of Greenpeace USA led actions in the early 1980s.

The strength of public commitment to environmental action and climate crisis intervention (as opposed to the breadth of public opinion, a fickle product of ADD mass-media news cycles) is directly proportional to our conviction and moral clarity -- for which protest, or the lack thereof, serves as a convenient civic barometer. Without thinking about it, most Americans gauge how bad things are by whether there are people in the streets (or Zodiacs).

What percentage of auction revenue is rebated?

In my original post about Obama's budget, I looked at the issue of how much of the auction revenue ought to be rebated directly to taxpayers and how much should be devoted to investments in green infrastructure, etc.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that with 55 percent of auction revenue, those in the bottom 60 percent of incomes in the U.S. could have their increased energy costs entirely offset. That's pretty much all of lower-income and middle-class taxpayers.

So what is Obama proposing to do with the revenue?

The short answer is: $15 billion a year goes to green investments and the rest goes to "Making Work Pay," i.e., offsetting payroll taxes. (See p. 3 of the Summary Tables [PDF].) That stays true over the next ten years, which means that the percentage of revenue rebated rises steadily.

So, in the first year, out of $78.7b in revenue, $63.7b is rebated -- roughly 81 percent. In 2019, out of $83b in projected revenue, $68b is rebated -- about 82%. But it's important to note that the $15b in investments is held steady, regardless of total revenue. If revenue rises faster and farther than these projections -- and these are extremely conservative projections -- then the percentage rebated could get up to 85, 90, 95 percent.

That is, in my humble opinion, bad policy. But there it is.