Climate Politics

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  • Vilsack: biotech will solve our ag problems

    USDA chief Tom Vilsack has been in Italy at the G8 meeting, talking ag policy with reporters. As the global hunger crisis lingers and climate-change and population fears fester, Vilsack is using the opportunity to push agri-biotech as the solution to the globe’s food needs. Here is the Financial Times: Mr Vilsack said the challenge […]

    Tom Philpott Politics

  • LCV targets GOP Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri in new ad

    The League of Conservation Voters is taking a swing at Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) for not supporting climate and energy legislation, accusing him of being short on patriotism. In a new television ad launched on Monday, LCV argues that Blunt does not believe in American ingenuity and the ability to develop new, clean energy sources, […]

    Kate Sheppard Politics

  • Eustace Tilley says ‘Screw Earth Day’

    Ok, the New Yorker magazine’s cartoon mascot didn’t really say that. The New YorkerBut Elizabeth Kolbert, the magazine’s star journalist covering the climate crisis, has a very interesting essay on Earth Day at the front of this week’s issue. In it, she bemoans the fact that Americans seem to be unenthusiastic about the environment in […]

    Russ Walker Politics

  • Vilsack names former head of Iowa’s Health and Human Services as new USDA nutrition chief

    Phil Brasher at the Des Moines Register is reporting that USDA chief Tom Vilsack has named Kevin Concannon the new Undersecretary of the Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services, i.e. the head of the federal food and nutrition programs — which include food stamps and the national school lunch program. Concannon ran Iowa’s Department of Health […]

    Tom Laskawy Politics

  • House Republicans bring strange theories and wacky witnesses to climate hearings

    Democratic leaders in the House are pushing hard to get a comprehensive climate and energy bill passed by summer, with discussion of their draft bill slated to begin this week. But at hearings designed to discuss the particulars of climate policy, Republican representatives and their witnesses have been bogging down the proceedings with skeptical rants […]

    Kate Sheppard Politics

  • Obama’s carbon-cap plan tests Democratic coalition

    This piece was originally published in the Omaha World-Herald. Democratic gains in the Plains, the interior West, the Rust Belt and the Old Confederacy have transformed the political landscape. But one primary goal of the Obama administration is straining the geographic diversity of the new Democratic coalition: capping carbon pollution to avert a climate crisis. […]

    Bill Scher Politics

  • GOP leader: the idea that CO2 is harmful to environment is “almost comical”

    Here’s Rep. John Boehner, the Republican leader in the House, talking to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos today: “George, the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, […]

    Chip Giller Politics

  • King coal takedown: Maria Gunnoe

    Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living” — Mother Jones. Maria Gunnoe is one of seven recipients of the 2009 Goldman Environmental PrizePhoto: Tom DusenberyListen here, King Coal. Maria “Mother” Gunnoe, a fearless community organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in West Virginia, whose home sits on the frontlines of […]

    Jeff Biggers Politics

  • Gunnoe gets Goldman

    Proud to say that one of the Orion Grassroots Network’s own, Maria Gunnoe, an organizer for Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, has won the “environmental nobel” for her courageous grassroots activism to end mountaintop removal (MTR) in the face of fierce intimidation: Grist’s own Ken Ward has the story in today’s Charleston (WV) Gazette. Maria Gunnoe […]

    Erik Hoffner Politics

  • States left wondering about EPA’s greenhouse gas ruling

    Eighteen months ago, I watched the head of the Environmental Protection Administration shake hands with Mickey Mouse after the two had hoisted a compact fluorescent light bulb for a Disneyland photo op. I’d been promised a sit-down interview with Stephen Johnson, the career EPA staffer tapped by George W. Bush in 2005 to run the […]

    Janet Wilson Politics