Climate Politics

Sierra Club prompts voters to call legislators about energy bills over the holiday weekend

The Sierra Club began running radio ads this week in six states whose U.S. senators are key votes for energy legislation. Though both Republicans and Democrats were hoping to have accomplished something so they could go home for the holiday and claim victory, Congress went into recess for the 4th of July holiday this week […]

McCain just not that into Amtrak

Over at the Boston Globe, columnist Derrick Z. Jackson does an excellent job of highlighting John McCain’s beef with Amtrak: For years, McCain, in the comfort of cheap gasoline for autos and airplanes, made Amtrak a personal whipping boy. Despite the fact that governments in Western Europe and Asia zoomed far ahead of the United […]

Harry Reid passionately disses fossil fuels, goes viral on YouTube

This video of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) talking about fossil fuels on the Fox Business Network was one of the “most viewed” on YouTube yesterday: It’s been viewed 351,710 times so far, largely because it was linked to from the Drudge Report. As Politico reports, “Senate Republicans are sending around the video as […]

Climate policy isn’t a pill to swallow, it’s a way off a sinking ship

This Ezra Klein post echoes what has rather rapidly become conventional wisdom among progressives on climate legislation, and it makes me want to tear my hair out. The idea is that climate legislation will inevitably hurt people financially in the short-term, in order to secure environmental benefits in the distant future, so the only way […]

White House disses Supreme Court, kills $2 trillion savings

The following post is by Earl Killian, guest blogger at Climate Progress.

The Wall Street Journal published new material ($ub. req'd) on the White House's emasculation of last year's Supreme Court global warming decision: The court told the EPA that the Clean Air Act requires it to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The White House seeks to nullify that decision by stuffing the EPA document down a memory hole and substituting antithetical language. The WSJ has seen the EPA's draft document and reports:

The draft ... outlines how the government, under the Clean Air Act, could regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from mobile sources such as cars, trucks, trains, planes and boats, and from stationary sources such as power stations, chemical plants and refineries. The document is based on a multimillion-dollar study conducted over two years.

The EPA documents the White House doesn’t want you to see

Brad Johnson over at Wonk Room acquired a copy of the EPA’s recommendations on regulating greenhouse-gas emissions that the White House has been trying so hard to hide. The documents give you a good idea why: EPA officials concluded that the benefits of new, tougher standards “far outweigh their costs.” In fact, if gas prices […]

Mainstream media realizes that McCain’s energy rhetoric and record don’t match up

The mainstream media has started to pick up on the fact that John McCain’s energy policy is totally inconsistent. Bloomberg: As a senator, John McCain has condemned policies that pick market winners and losers, aiming particular criticism at government ethanol subsidies as a taxpayer rip-off. As a presidential candidate, the Arizona Republican himself is backing […]

New edition of AP American Government book retains false information about climate change

Back in April, we reported that the American Government textbook in use in classrooms across the country implies that the cause of climate change is in doubt, and that global warming could even be a net benefit for the planet and all who dwell upon it. At the time, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt assured concerned […]

Mountain advocates and legislators take on mountaintop removal

The practice of mountaintop removal (MTR) has gotten more attention from environmental and social justice advocates in recent months, including the Goracle himself. “Mountaintop removal is a crime and ought to be treated as a crime,” Gore said in April. He was addressing the audience at the 2008 Nashville Film Festival, where he presented director […]

Texas Sen. John Cornyn hearts drilling and a good brew

Okay, so this campaign ad for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has nothing to do with the environment, but it needs to be posted: Cornyn’s latest ads focus on his energy plan, which includes offshore drilling and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for exploration and drilling. He also says he supports “viable alternative sources,” which […]