Climate Politics

Is the Obama administration backing away from LNG terminals?

Will the Obama administration back away from building liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals along the coasts of the U.S.? Obama’s appointee at the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission suggests that it will. Though George W. Bush talked a lot about weaning the U.S. off foreign oil, he wanted a massive increase in imports […]

Beware utilities seeking free pollution permits

America’s electric utilities (PDF) are waging a no-holds-barred campaign to get 40% of carbon emission permits allocated free to local distribution companies and merchant coal generators. They argue that free allocation will protect consumers better than auctions and cash back. Just give us free permits, they say, and we’ll pass through the savings to our […]

Friedman uses perch at Gray Lady to push for carbon tax

Tom Friedman says cap-and-trade is in truth a form of taxation. But taxes don’t suck. Why don’t Dems and the adminstration just tell it like it is and push for something more straightforward: a carbon tax. Such a tax, he goes on to say, should be pitched as a way of renewing the American economy […]

Granholm tries to convert Michigan “from rust to green”

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) is trying to rescue her state’s tanking economy by taking it “from rust to green.” On Monday, Granholm signed a law that will channel $220 million toward tax credits for the development and manufacture of electric-vehicle batteries, on top of $335 million in credits the state approved in January. “This […]

Energy politics shouldn’t depend on whether you’re Republican or Democrat, says Chu

“We have a problem and we’ve got to get it solved. The politics of energy are such that it actually shouldn’t be a political question. Let’s get to a different point in the discussion about what American needs, and what this country really needs is something where it doesn’t really matter whether you’re a Republican […]

Where's the national outrage on Blair Mountain?

When Walmart recently announced its intention to build a super-center near the Wilderness Battlefield in Virginia, filmmaker Ken Burns and a host of Pulitzer Prize-winning historians denounced the move for its obvious offense to our national heritage site.

We need that same outrage for another battlefield under assault.

Moving beyond vintage-differentiated regulation

A common feature of many environmental policies in the United States is vintage-differentiated regulation (VDR), under which standards for regulated units are fixed in terms of the units’ respective dates of entry, with later vintages facing more stringent regulation. In the most common application, often referred to as “grandfathering,” units produced prior to a specific […]

McDermott’s cap and trade alternative may have unintended consequences

Washington’s Congressman Jim McDermott just released a new climate plan, but I can’t quite wrap my head around it. It gets some things right, but it may cause some relatively serious problems too. Here’s how he described it in a recent blog post: In brief, here’s how it would work: Producers of products and resources […]

A teaching moment at the G20 summit

Logs being transported out of the Amazon rainforest. Shazari via Flickr It was a mistake, I know, to try to cross the street last Thursday evening. There I was, not far from the Tower of London, hoping to get across the main road east to the city’s former docklands. But every time I tried to […]

Washington state renewable plan avoids watering down

Washington state’s Initiative 937, the renewable energy bill voters approved in 2006, looks to be safe from meddling state legislators. From Josh Feit at Publicola: The state Senate bill I’ve been following all session—the one that supporters like Sen. Chris Marr (D-6, Spokane) says will “amend” I-937 (the voter-approved renewable energy initiative) and Greens say […]