Climate Politics
All Stories
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Obama’s new mileage rules will be first real step to curb planet-warming emissions
President Obama is expected to unveil new fuel-economy standards for automobiles on Tuesday — the first major step by his administration to limit planet-warming greenhouse gases. The new standards will reportedly raise fleet-wide standards for cars to 42 miles per gallon by 2016, up from 27.5 mpg now. For light trucks, the required fleet average […]
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Clean-energy future: On your markup …
At 1:00 p.m. EDT today the House Energy and Commerce Committee will begin its deliberations on the American Clean Energy and Security Act, H.R. 2454, sponsored by Committee Chair Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Energy and the Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-MA). The committee plans to debate and vote on amendments this week with a […]
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Climate honcho Rajendra Pachauri tells Grist he’s optimistic about action
Rajendra PachauriNASHVILLE, Tenn. — It’s not every week you get to chat with not one but two Nobel Prize winners. After talking to Al Gore at the summit where he rallied volunteers for his Climate Project, I caught up with Rajendra Pachauri, who also spoke at the gathering. An engineer and economist who has chaired […]
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Peterson: Leave ethanol alone, or I’ll nuke Waxman-Markey
What GHG footprint? Peterson, right, with tractor rep. House Ag committee chair Collin Peterson (D.-Minn.) has already made it clear that he’s furious that the EPA has proposed a framework for assessing the greenhouse gas footprint of ethanol. Now he’s vowing to use his clout to crush the historic Waxman-Markey climate change bill, unless Congress […]
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Pennsylvania rejected TVA coal ash that’s going to poor communities in Alabama and Georgia
Some of the more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash that spilled from an impoundment at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston power plant in eastern Tennessee last December is making its way to landfills in poor and black communities in Alabama and Georgia, as we reported last week at Facing South. It turns […]
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A summary of the climate bill
Let me start by warning/notifying readers that this week will see a lot of posts about Waxman-Markey. The name of this blog is Climate Progress — and I so rarely get to blog on actual climate progress! This is, after all, the first bill to require reductions in global warming pollution ever considered by a […]
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Greenpeace’s indefensible attack on the House clean energy bill
I can certainly understand why people are unhappy with the weakening of Waxman-Markey. Heck, I lowered the grade for it to B or B-. But I wasn’t grading on a curve. The bill remains a stunning legislative achievement that (if enacted) would require the United States to eliminate virtually all greenhouse gas emissions in four […]
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Contempt of Congress
Memo to House GOP: We get it. You don’t believe in clean, safe sources of energy that never run out or in protecting our children and grandchildren from catastrophic global warming or in competing with China, Japan, and Europe for the jobs and industries of the future or in making polluters pay (see House GOP […]
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Obama radio address
If you want to hear the best progressive messaging on energy and climate — if you want to know the best phrases and framing — look no further than the master messenger in the Oval Office. Be warned, though, President Obama uses … rhetoric (see “Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1“)! Obama devoted much […]
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Carbon geography
If you want to understand what’s been going on behind closed doors as members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee hash out a compromise on the Waxman-Markey bill, I highly recommend reading this post by enviro-blogger Devilstower at Daily Kos. Devilstower references a new (as-yet-unpublished) paper I mentioned the other day: “Carbon Geography: The […]
