Climate Politics

The game plan: starting with a bang

In the last few posts, I focused on the lay of the land — the groups and institutions that will shape efforts to tackle climate/energy problems in the early years of the Obama era. Given that landscape, how will it all play out? What’s the Obama/Democrat strategy? What’s the green roadmap? Obviously, circumstances and unanticipated […]

Rep. Nick Rahall kicks off series of hearings on offshore drilling

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday kicked off a series of hearings on offshore drilling, an effort, he says, to determine the best way to proceed after the congressional moratorium on development of the outer continental shelf (OCS) was allowed to expire last October. Wednesday’s hearing came just a day after […]

Senate and House reportedly reach deal on stimulus with $70 billion in green spending

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday afternoon announced that congressional negotiators had finalized a deal on the economic stimulus package. The $789 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains an estimated $70 billion in funding for clean energy, energy efficiency, and public transportation, according to reports from the Hill. Well, maybe. There still […]

Poll: How likely is it that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century?

I'd be interested in hearing your answer to this question in the comments.

How desperate is the conservative pollster Rasmussen to glom onto the climate issue and both trivialize and confuse the debate with hyperbole, unscientific polls, and inane, vaguely worded questions? Pretty damn desperate, to judge by their headline poll last Thursday:

23% Fear Global Warming Will End World -- Soon

Nearly one-out-of-four voters (23%) say it is at least somewhat likely that global warming will destroy human civilization within the next century. Five percent (5%) say it's very likely.

Uhh, what does this polling question mean anyway:

The players: cap-and-trade agonistes

In the last few posts, I covered some of the groups and institutions that will shape climate/energy policy in the next few years. Analyst and all-around brainiac Holmes Hummel, in a presentation linked to by Adam Browning, has a nice visual representation that sheds additional light on the landscape, from a slightly different angle. It […]

Voting has ended: Grist readers have chosen top eco-hero and eco-villain of 2008

Way back before the holiday season, we posted our lists of green heroes and green villains for 2008. Because we are totally Web 3.7 participatorynewmediacroudsourcingcitizenjournalist types, we even opened it up to your votes!

So you voted. And voted, and voted. Then, on Jan. 8, we warned you: only 24 hours left to vote!

Turns out we really meant, er, 24 days. Give or take a week. So you voted some more. But now voting's really closed! For realz. And, without further ado (or delay), we're ready to declare winners.

With 730 votes ... the Grist 2008 Eco-Hero of the Year is ... [drum roll]

The Sierra Club's Bruce Nilles! [crowd roars]

Nilles is director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign, which has helped coordinate the extraordinary grassroots movement that's sprung up in the last few years to fight against new coal plants. This victory for Nilles is really a victory for that movement, which has -- with very little help from the establishment or resources from big-money funders -- pulled off an amazing string of victories that is still going on. Nice job, movement. And nice job, Bruce.

And now, turning to less pleasant matters:

With 405 votes ... the Grist 2008 Eco-Villain of the year is ...

Flaccid Apparatchik Stephen Johnson! [boos, angry shouts]

Johnson, who most everybody thought would be a harmless technocrat, turned out to be one of the worst U.S. EPA administrators in the nation's history, blatantly ignoring the advice of EPA staff and scientists in order to carry out the political hatchet jobs handed down by Dick Cheney. We will miss writing headlines about you, Mr. Johnson. But that's about all we will miss.

Onward to 2009 [already in progress]!

While Geithner's bailout flounders, it's time to explore other financial models

Things are looking a bit grim for the U.S. banking system.

On Tuesday morning, U.S. Treasury chief Tim Geithner rolled out his new plan for rescuing the banks, committing more than $1 trillion to convince private investors to buy up the "toxic assets" that are fouling up the system.

Lobbyists for the big banks praised the plan, the New York Times reported. Investors were less impressed. Shares of Bank of America, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley plunged by well more than 10 percent Tuesday; Goldman Sachs fell by a relatively merciful 8 percent. Overall, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed nearly 400 points.

Why the ugly reaction? Martin Wolf, the venerable markets reporter for the Financial Times, ventured an answer on a TV news program (part I and part II): the U.S. banking system appears to be insolvent, sunk under the weight of bad investments. According to Wolf, the Obama team is too "politically frightened" to tell the public and investors that our banking system has essentially failed.

To a casual observer me, Wolf's analysis seems obviously right. What's weighing the system down is bad real estate bets. Essentially, our bank execs -- decorated with fancy b-school degrees and robustly compensated for their trouble -- bet heavily U.S. real estate prices would rise indefinitely. Now that prices have plunged, they're left with reams of essentially worthless mortgage-backed paper. And as the economy continues to unravel, real estate prices look set to continue falling -- which means still more of the assets held by the banks will become "toxic," i.e., worthless.

And here's where we get to the trouble with the Geithner plan: He seems to be assuming that private investors can be convinced, by government guarantees and financing, to buy assets that are essentially worth nothing. But where's the upside in buying worthless assets in the first place?

One of two outcomes now look likely: 1) a wholesale nationalization of the U.S. banks (an extremely dicey proposition for a Democratic president); 2) or the the descent into bancruptcy of a vast and iconic bank like Citigroup -- with who knows what consequences.

None of this should be contemplated with panic. Rather, as the banking system teeters, we should be thinking about other finance models, other styles of economic development. In the weeks to come, I'll be focusing on other models laid out in Woody Tasch's Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered and Gus Speth's The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability.

Update [2009-2-11 7:42:54 by Tom Philpott]:

Martin Wolf has now aired his dire view in the pages of the FT. Wolf lays out two scenarios for the banks: the rosy one being acted on by the Obama team, and a more urgent one, which he says he says he has "little doubt" is correct. The second scenario is as follows:

Under the second view, a sizeable proportion of [U.S.] financial institutions are insolvent: their assets are, under plausible assumptions, worth less than their liabilities. The International Monetary Fund argues that potential losses on US-originated credit assets alone are now $2,200bn (€1,700bn, £1,500bn), up from $1,400bn just last October. This is almost identical to the latest estimates from Goldman Sachs. In recent comments to the Financial Times, Nouriel Roubini of RGE Monitor and the Stern School of New York University estimates peak losses on US-generated assets at $3,600bn. Fortunately for the US, half of these losses will fall abroad. But, the rest of the world will strike back: as the world economy implodes, huge losses abroad - on sovereign, housing and corporate debt - will surely fall on US institutions, with dire effects.

E.U. to launch environment project ‘auction’

BRUSSELS — The European Union will offer almost 100 environmental projects from developing countries around the world in an auction to try to attract donors to back them, the European Commission said Tuesday. The “Auction Floor,” to be held in Brussels on March 13, will allow developing projects to meet potential donors such as local […]

Green(ish) news from around the capitol

• Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) is expected to be named the new chair of the energy subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday, according to a press release from her office. • First Lady Michelle Obama stopped by the Department of Interior on Monday to visit with Secretary Ken Salazar and employees, […]

Obama administration puts halt to Bush-era oil and gas policies

In a rebuke of the Bush administration’s oil and gas policies, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on Tuesday announced that his department is shelving a plan to open new areas of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas drilling. The agency will gather more public input before deciding how to proceed on offshore drilling, and […]