Climate Politics
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Memo to Hansen 2: Why is the country’s top anti-science blog reprinting your stuff?
I got a lot of responses to my first Memo to James Hansen on his ill-conceived and unhelpful opposition to Waxman-Markey. Needless to say, it gives me no joy to criticize the nation’s top climate scientist, a man who inspired me to write my book and this blog, a man whose work is reprinted more […]
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Urgent letter to EPA and Interior Dept. from coalfield residents
As three million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives continue to rip through the lush green Appalachian mountains and historic mountain communities every day, coalfield residents from West Virginia issued an extraordinary letter on Wednesday asking EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to assert primacy over the negligent West Virginia […]
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Is China ready to act on climate? Part 2
Part 1 looked at the “Rise of the Green Dragon?“ Yet, even as China aggressively pursues world leadership in key clean technologies like solar and wind, it has also announced plans to keep expanding coal use at a pace so rapacious it would single-handedly finish off the climate no matter what we and the other […]
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Obama and Biden press House Dems for fast action on climate bill
The Washington Post reported today: President Obama and Vice President Biden urged a group of House Democrats at a White House meeting this morning to move forward with climate-change legislation that has become a subject of controversy among some Democrats and threatened to stall health-care reform. At the same time, E&E News PM (subs. req’d) […]
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The EPA holds corn ethanol accountable … sort of
In February 2008, a group of researchers led by Tim Searchinger of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School published a paper (PDF) in Science Express called, “Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change.” Their conclusion was startling: the government policy of supporting biofuel production, which had begun in the […]
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U.S. pledges something or other on climate
Details aren’t in focus in this climate doc.Photo: circulating via FlickrToday U.S. negotiators promised “ambitious actions,” “robust targets,” and pretty much nada details in a proposal overdue to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The paper suggests a structure for the international climate treaty to be hashed out in Copenhagen this December—something the UNFCC […]
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What do you get when you buy a nuke? You get a lot of delays and rate increases….
Progress Energy said Friday it has pushed back by 20 months its schedule for bringing on-line two planned new nuclear reactors in Florida, after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said its review of the plant site will take longer than expected. Progress also said it will spread out over five years certain early–stage costs for the […]
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Kansas, without coal-fighting guv, approves new plant
Not in Kansas anymore.That better be one helluva of a health care plan you’re drafting, Kathleen Sebelius, because Kansas already misses you. The state approved a new coal-fired power plant today, undoing a signature environmental accomplishment of former Gov. Sebelius, who left the state last week to become President Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human […]
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Memo to James Hansen: Your opposition to Waxman-Markey is ill-conceived and unhelpful
Climate Wire (subs. req’d) reports today: NASA’s leading climate scientist says he hopes that climate legislation proposed by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman (CA) and Edward Markey (MA) to introduce carbon emissions trading to the United States fails. He says lawmakers should abandon cap-and-trade initiatives altogether and implement a simple carbon tax instead…. “Trading of rights […]
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White House bombshell: Cap-and-trade for drilling offshore … California!
Buried inside The New Yorker’s profile of Peter Orszag, Obama’s budget director, is this stunning paragraph: Obama’s White House is filled with former members of Congress and congressional staffers. They are legislative strategists and dealmakers, and these days they often use the phrase “grand bargain” when asked how they expect to achieve their ambitious agenda. […]
