Climate Politics
All Stories
-
House Republican leader continues to distort costs of cap-and-trade
As David noted yesterday, the figures Republicans are using to malign the cap-and-trade plan that Democrats put out this week are utterly, certifiably false. But that didn’t stop Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) from repeating them in yet another press release on Thursday. “Families and small businesses are struggling to get by, but the Democrats’ […]
-
Myth: Democrats support good climate policy and Republicans oppose it
Energy and climate scramble the usual left-right political divisions. Many of the big fights are not among parties but among regions and levels of government. In the U.S. Congress, to be sure, the Republicans=obstructionists formula holds with virtually no exceptions save a tiny handful of remaining Senate “moderates.” Republican obstructionists are joined in the House […]
-
Myth: Unlike cap-and-trade, a carbon tax is simple, immune to manipulation, & politically palatable
A strange-bedfellows political coalition, everyone from the CEO of Exxon to climate scientist James Hansen, supports a carbon tax as an alternative to cap-and-trade. Tax proponents allege that cap-and-trade is too complicated; too friendly to financial industry tricks and manipulations; too open to loopholes, cheating, and special pleading; too weak to work. This is all […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
-
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. […]
-
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.
-
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 […]
-
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 […]
