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  • Grist talks to Tom Friedman about ‘green recovery’ and restoring America’s global role

    Grist caught up with Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of the recent book Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution — and How It Can Renew America, after his appearance on the “Green Recovery” panel at the Center for American Progress on Monday to chat about exactly that. His […]

  • Reading the tea-leaves on Obama’s national security staffing

    There’s a lot of commentary flying around about Obama’s security team, announced this morning. I recommend Spencer Ackerman. Everybody’s wrestling with the same questions. On natsec, just like with the economic team, Obama is appointing relatively centrist, establishment figures. What are we supposed to make of this? One interpretation is that Obama is abandoning the […]

  • CAP hosts ‘green recovery’ event

    The government in waiting Center for American Progress today organized a panel on “Green Recovery,” bringing together some power-players in that realm to talk about the prospects of getting energy and environmental components into both the short- and long-term vision for economic growth. Two of the players — former EPA administrator Carol Browner and Pennsylvania […]

  • Low-carbon roadmap comes into focus — with some notable gaps

    In a post-election editorial, Al Gore laid out a policy roadmap for addressing climate change. Gore’s plan looks like a bunch of other plans that have recently landed on the president-elect’s doorstep. I will now do you the favor of summarizing reams of policy expertise in five bullet points, henceforth referred to as the Grand […]

  • Will Poznań be a good COP, a bad COP, or just another COP out?

    International negotiators are flocking to Poznań, Poland to figure out how to extend the Kyoto protocol, whose climate targets end in 2012. I believe that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process is essentially dead — especially from a United States perspective — as I will discuss this week. Still, Poznań will be […]

  • Like Al Gore, but climbing skyscrapers with bare hands

    In GQ this month, rogue skyscraper-climber Alain Robert — who free climbs, using no ropes or equipment — offers an account of scaling the New York Times building to hang a banner halfway up: When I was about fourteen stories up, I took the banner from under my shirt and tied it. It said GLOBAL […]

  • Obama notes climate and energy policy will be key to national security

    President-elect Barack Obama this morning officially unveiled his national security team, and in his remarks cited the need for policy that addresses climate and energy concerns as coupled with national security. “The national security challenges we face are just as grave — and just as urgent — as our economic crisis,” said Obama. “We are […]

  • Canadian government may fall, bring in greener coalition

    It looks like Stéphane Dion might just make it to the Prime Minister’s office after all, at least for a little while. According to frenzied reporting out of Ottawa, opposition parties in Canada’s Parliament (who, while not forming the government, hold the majority of seats between them) are preparing to topple the Conservative government of […]

  • For stronger cities, build better connections

    Infrastructure is a dull business. The guy talking about pipes and wires is not generally the life of the party (to my chagrin). But infrastructure is all the rage these days, with economists calling for broad stimulus, and Barack Obama’s transition team planning big investments in the American economy. The excitement seems to be catching. […]

  • West Virginia DEP approves permit to blast Coal River Mountain

    We wrote this summer about Coal River Mountain, one of the last mountains in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley that hasn’t been destroyed by mountaintop removal coal mining. Massey Energy is planning to blast off a 10-square-mile area of the mountain for mining, but activists in the the area were hoping to turn into a […]