Climate Politics

Obama says nice things about clean energy as he signs the $787 billion stimulus package

President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package into law Tuesday during a ceremony at the Museum of Nature and Science in Denver. The package includes $62.2 billion in direct spending on green initiatives and $20 billion in green tax incentives. The Obama team apparently picked the signing location to promote the stimulus law’s initiatives […]

Marc Morano's secret list of climate deniers

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

Marc Morano, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK)'s environmental aide, sits at the center of the right-wing global warming denier propaganda machine -- of fifty-two people. Conservative columnist Fred Barnes recently refused to tell TPM Muckraker who's informed him "the case for global warming" is falling apart, but all signs point to Marc Morano. Morano's "entire job," David Roberts explains, "is to aggregate every misleading factoid, every attack on climate science or scientists, every crank skeptical statement from anyone in the world and send it all out periodically in email blasts" to the right-wing echo chamber. The Wonk Room has acquired Morano's email list, and we can now reveal the pack of climate skeptics, conservative bloggers, and corporate hacks who feed the misinformation machine.

Promoted on the Drudge Report and Fox News, Morano's moronic misinformation enters mainstream discourse through columns by Barnes, George Will, Robert Samuelson, and others. Many in the Morano gang are funded by right-wing think tanks, though a few are committed activists, conspiracy theorists who believe their home-brew interpretations of climate data. Others are aging scientists with strong conservative beliefs, motivating them to challenge action on global warming not because they disbelieve its existence, but because they are ideologically opposed to regulation of pollution:

The stimulus bill provides serious money for high-speed rail

There are those who have expressed dismay at reports the high-speed rail provision of the stimulus bill was destined to build supertrains to carry gamblers back and forth between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Thankfully, they were woefully misinformed. Matt Yglesias cleared things up when he uncovered a legal analysis of the actual language from the bill:

The Stimulus Plan includes two provisions modeled after the [High Speed Rail] Act that finance high-speed rail development. First, the Stimulus Plan provides a $2 billion grant for high-speed rail projects that will remain available until September 30, 2011. The grant will be distributed among applicant states, interstate compacts, public agencies having responsibility for providing high-speed rail service and Amtrak for capital projects associated with inter-city passenger rail services reasonably expected to reach speeds of at least 110 miles per hour. The Secretary of Transportation will have discretion to award grants based on an extensive set of criteria, including the legal, financial and technical capacity of the applicant to carry out the project; compatibility with relevant national plans; and anticipated economic, environmental and transportation effects.

Sorry, Vegas. No earmark for you. Looks like Reid's statement that a Los Angeles-Vegas route "could get a big chunk of the money" was more wishful thinking than act of Congress. This statement is no doubt causing further heartburn in Sen. Reid's office now that it's been embraced by the right as a supposed example of the pork that lards the stimulus package. In fact, according to the Sierra Club, Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood has set up a new entity called TIGER (an acronym that just oozes efficiency, no?) to prioritize stimulus projects based on merit, rather than whim. Really.

Yglesias also uncovered this fantastic map of officially designated HSR rail corridors, some of which would presumably get first dibs on the money. Note the absence of a little green line between L.A. and Vegas:

The game plan: regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act

This element of Obama’s impending energy policy hasn’t gotten nearly the attention it deserves. If he does it right, it could be the secret weapon that kills new coal plants for good — with far greater certainty than a middling cap-and-trade program. Obama has always said, to those who were listening closely, that he plans […]

EPA reopens possibility of regulating CO2 from coal-fired power plants

Anti-coal activists scored a win on Tuesday as the U.S. EPA signaled that it is reconsidering the Bush administration’s late decree that greenhouse-gas emissions shouldn’t be taken into account when determining whether to approve the construction of new coal-fired power plants. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson said in a letter [PDF] to the Sierra Club that […]

UNEP: Urgent need for ‘Global Green New Deal’

NAIROBI — The United Nations called Monday on rich nations to forge a “Global Green New Deal” that puts the environment, climate change, and poverty reduction at the heart of efforts to reboot the world economy. Leaders from the Group of 20 nations, meeting in April, should commit at least 1 percent of gross domestic […]

E.U. foiled in bid to force France, Greece to allow GM crop

BRUSSELS — The European Commission was foiled Monday in its bid to force France and Greece to allow genetically modified maize from U.S. biotech giant Monsanto to be grown in their fields. Food chain experts from the E.U. member states, meeting in Brussels, could not reach agreement on whether to back or oppose the French […]

Will U.K.'s prime minister act to address the biggest threat to Britain's youth?

This is a guest post by noted NASA climate scientist James Hansen. It has also been submitted to the Observer.

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Over a year ago I wrote to Prime Minister Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, and other world leaders. The reason is this -- coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet.

Our global climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear, and there is potential for explosive changes with effects that would be irreversible -- if we do not rapidly slow fossil fuel emissions over the next few decades.

Tipping points are fed by amplifying feedbacks. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As tundra melts, methane -- a strong greenhouse gas -- is released, causing more warming. As species are pressured and exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

The public, buffeted by day-to-day weather fluctuations and economic turmoil, has little time or training to analyze decadal changes. How can they be expected to evaluate and filter out advice emanating from special economic interests? How can they distinguish top-notch science and pseudoscience -- the words sound the same?

Leaders have no excuse -- they are elected to lead and to protect the public and its best interests. Leaders have at their disposal the best scientific organizations in the world, such as the United Kingdom's Royal Society and the United States National Academy of Sciences. Only in the past few years did the science crystallize, revealing the urgency.

Expanding on Barbara Boxer's principles for climate legislation

This post is by Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, announced earlier this month that she hopes to have a cap-and-trade bill blessed by her committee by the end of the year. Her announcement left room for criticism.

Action advocates wished Boxer had been more specific about goals for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. The Wall Street Journal posted a piece suggesting the Senator's new principles were vague and stale.

Moreover, if we want Uncle Sam to wow the world with new-found religion on climate action and to do so in time for the U.S. to take its seat at Copenhagen in a morally upright position, then a committee vote by year's end will be too little too late. A better goal would be affirmative votes by the House and Senate well before Copenhagen, along with aggressive, progressive energy legislation and continuing bold action by the Obama Administration this spring and summer.

Still, if we want principled action, then principles are a good place to start. Boxer's are as follows:

Until real middle-class wages start rising, we can't end agricultural subsidies

Watching this gripping animation (h/t Ezra Klein) that charts the spread of Wal-Marts across the country got me thinking. I felt like I was really watching the spread of wage stagnation across the country. I'm not suggesting there's any clarity as to which came first -- Wal-Mart or the grinding halt in middle-class wage growth. But Wal-Mart's accelerated growth in the 1980s matches this chart on wage inequality nicely (note the bottom two lines).

It's a pointless chicken-and-egg debate at a certain level. You can't blame Sam Walton (much less Sebastian Kresge or James Sinegal) for the fact that discounters that thrive on downward price pressure represent the only means most Americans have of maintaining the illusion of a rising standard of living.