Climate Politics
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Myth: Consensus on policy is possible even among those who disagree about climate change
John McCain popularized this notion during his ill-fated presidential campaign, assuring skeptical conservative audiences that whether or not they believed in climate change, they should support clean energy policy. The appeal is clear enough: climate change is politically divisive. It’s “environmental” (ew!). It’s associated with Dirty F***ing Hippies (double ew!). If everyone can agree on […]
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Myth: Europe’s experience shows that cap-and-trade can’t work
It is now widely acknowledged that Europe’s carbon trading program — the ETS — made several key mistakes in its initial trial period. The system covered a narrow slice of the EU economy, yielding a relatively small market wherein price fluctuations could not be effectively smoothed out. The data on baseline emissions was poor and […]
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Myth: Climate policy is primarily about putting a price on carbon
Environmentalists and economists alike are obsessed with putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, and with good reason: climate pollution is a classic “externality,” a cost paid not by polluters but by society at large. Pricing carbon internalizes that cost. The policy is “market-based” because it is agnostic toward particular practices, products, or technologies; the […]
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Memo to WSJ: You can do better than that
[You might try sending emails to the reporters below. My guess is they didn’t put a lot of thought into what they were writing and might be open to writing it differently in the future — since this isn’t the WSJ editorial page.] The media misinforms the public about climate science in many different ways. […]
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EPA to Ethanol Lobby: Drop Dead!
For a while, I was afraid the EPA might actually bow to political pressure and raise the so-called blend wall for ethanol, i.e. the amount of ethanol that can currently be mixed into gasoline and sold at the pump.
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New climate legislation overlooks a major GHG source: industrial ag
Like many others in the climate movement, I have been waiting for weeks (well, years actually) for broad and sweeping climate change legislation. Back in January the economy captured Congressional attention and I knew global warming legislation would simply have to wait. Finally, yesterday, Representatives Markey and Waxman introduced their “American Clean Energy and Security […]
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Senate rules out using budget process to pass cap-and-trade
Prospects for using the Congress’s budget process to pass cap-and-trade legislation were extinguished on Wednesday night as the Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a measure to bar that option. The amendment, sponsored by Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.), prohibits the “use of reconciliation in the Senate for climate change legislation involving a cap and trade […]
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Senate susses out climate plan positions
As attention focused on the climate and energy bill unveiled by key House Democrats on Tuesday, the Senate quietly held a couple of votes that reveal a great deal about where that chamber stands on upcoming legislation. The first was a measure sponsored by Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). It inserts […]
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Responding to the “energy tax” attack
I’ll get more into the specifics of the Waxman/Markey bill in a bit, but first let’s address something lots of people have been asking me about these past few days: how to respond to Republican attacks that Dem energy/climate legislation constitutes an “energy tax” that will cost every American family 178 katrillion dollars every time […]
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Cable talkers take note of Shimkus flat-earthism
The idiocy of John Shimkus has attracted some attention from cable talkers. Here’s Rachel Maddow: Here’s Keith Olbermann:
