Climate Politics
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Hawaii switches to digital TV early to help endangered petrel
Hawaii’s television broadcast signals are going digital a month earlier than the rest of the country in an attempt to avoid disturbing the endangered petrel‘s nesting season with the destruction of the old transmission towers, which are near the birds’ nesting sites.
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Nick Kristoff praises Obama’s ability to ‘exult in complexity’
Nicholas Kristof’s terrific Sunday NYT column, “Obama and the war on brains,” opens: Barack Obama’s election is a milestone in more than his pigmentation. The second most remarkable thing about his election is that American voters have just picked a president who is an open, out-of-the-closet, practicing intellectual. Maybe, just maybe, the result will be […]
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House Dems taking sides in Dingell/Waxman battle over
Fighting words are being exchanged in the brewing battle over the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In an interview on Detroit’s WJR Radio last week, current Chair John Dingell (D-Mich.) called challenger Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) an “anti-manufacturing left-wing Democrat” who has a “serious lack of understanding of people in the auto industry […]
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Obama brings California dreaming
“Now we’ll get our phone calls returned.” — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, on what effect an Obama presidency would have on California, possibly including approval of the state’s tailpipe standards and big green energy investments that would boost Silicon Valley
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Chorus of intellectuals and activists call on Obama to think big
Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman to Barack Obama: be ambitious (really ambitious)! Beltway CW bellwether Fareed Zakaria to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Former Secretary of Labor and current Obama adviser Robert Reich to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Nobel-winning climate advocate Al Gore to Barack Obama: be ambitious! Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to Barack Obama: be ambitious! […]
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More enviro groups argue in favor of factoring greenhouse-gas emissions into EPA biofuel rules
More environmental groups are calling on the U.S. EPA to consider biofuels’ life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions as the agency draws up rules for the Renewable Fuel Standard. The groups want to make sure that any emissions resulting from land-use changes are taken into consideration. On Oct. 21, a handful of biofuel-industry representatives and academics asked EPA […]
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Why polluter lobbyists are rallying to protect ‘Tailpipe Johnny’
While the Obama transition team starts assembling the pieces of his administration, one of D.C.’s most intriguing subplots is unfolding: the contest between Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) for chairmanship of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees clean air, global warming, and other critical environmental legislation. Last week the […]
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Tardy reflections on the election of Barack Obama
It feels a little weird that Obama won the election and I haven’t written anything about it. Everyone with a platform apparently feels obliged to say something profound, but after several aborted attempts, I find myself drained and utterly inadequate to the historical moment. I just want to take the world’s longest nap. Rather than […]
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Michael Pollan and other food authors and activists offer their elevator pitches for Obama
We asked a number of leaders in sustainable food and agriculture to imagine they found themselves in an elevator with the president-elect — giving them one minute of his undivided attention. Here are their messages to Obama about how he should approach environment, energy, climate, and food policy. (For more perspectives, check out Part 1, […]
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Island nation of Maldives to buy land elsewhere, fearing effects of climate change
The new president of the Maldives, a tiny nation comprised of low-lying islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean, has said the country will begin using a portion of its tourism money to buy a new homeland for its citizens given that sea-level rise from climate change may eventually make many of the islands uninhabitable. […]
