Climate Politics

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 […]

Makah tribe members sentenced for illegal whale hunt

The five members of the Makah tribe who participated in an unsanctioned hunt of a gray whale last year were sentenced earlier this week. The Makah tribe, whose reservation is located in northwestern Washington state, is the only tribe in the country with treaty rights to hunt whales. However, the long, arduous process of obtaining […]

Georgia judge finds that coal plant must obtain emissions permit from state EPA

The AP has the bombshell news. A judge has finally used the Supreme Court decision that carbon dioxide is a pollutant:

The construction of a coal-fired power plant in Georgia was halted Monday when a judge ruled that the plant's builders must first obtain a permit from state regulators that limits the amount of carbon dioxide emissions.

Read Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore's ruling [PDF]. What did the judge find?

Former EPA official talks about White House’s unwillingness to regulate greenhouse gas emissions

As we’ve reported here over the past week, the White House is trying to block the Environmental Protection Agency from releasing a document that shows how the Clean Air Act could be used to regulate greenhouse gases. Over the weekend, Grist talked to former associate deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Jason Burnett about […]

The importance of elections for a renewable energy economy

This article in Business Week is both a fascinating read and a perfect illustration of why national leadership is so essential for a sustainable energy future. Many environmentalists (including myself) believe that electricity generated through clean renewable sources can power not only most of our homes and industry, but also our transportation sector through plug-in cars and buses. There is little doubt that the solar and wind capacity exists, but the major obstacle is a lack of transmission lines to transport the energy from the deserts or the wind farms to the large urban areas where most power is used.

This is where the federal government has to step in.

First, these transmission lines are incredibly expensive, and it is unlikely that power companies will foot the bill themselves for a national grid; the total cost is in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Second, and no less important, is the fact that the siting of these lines is very cumbersome and filled with extensive red-tape, which means that it takes many years to get them off the ground.

An administration that helps to both finance such a grid and to streamline the siting process is desperately needed if we are going to make serious strides in the share of renewable energy in our national energy mix. This type of work would employ hundreds of thousands of people, stimulate many local economies, and vastly upgrade America's domestic energy capacity thereby making us more energy secure. Of course, it would also help us to greatly reduce our carbon footprint.

This is why elections matter so much.

Eight more years of doing next to nothing on the energy front may leave America's economy and world standing so damaged that we may not be able to recover.

While both political parties have their share of bad ideas and are beholden to special interests, I trust much less the party which has spent the past decades demonizing government at every turn.