Climate Politics

Learning from the gas tax episode, Obama could treat rural whites like adults

Though the nation’s pundits have decided that the primary race is over, someone failed to get Clinton the memo — she is determined to stay in to the bitter end. The next primaries are in West Virginia and Kentucky, states where the number of poor whites is high and consequently the Obama campaign expects to […]

Candidate tips his hand at New Jersey event

In his remarks in Jersey City, N.J., on Friday, GOP presidential contender John McCain appeared to offer an off-handed endorsement of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. “I hope it will pass,” he told the crowd, “and I hope the entire Congress will join in supporting it and the president of the United States would sign […]

Fewer Republicans saying earth is warming

The science is clear about the reality of global warming and the fact that humans are the dominant cause. But, sadly, that isn't clear to most Republicans.

Anybody who thinks the public debate is over -- anybody who thinks the Big Lie doesn't work -- should look at the latest poll results from the Pew Research Center:

No more subsidies for nuclear power, McCain et al

Once your power source has reached, say, 10 percent of the electricity grid, let alone 20 percent, it should be time to cut the cord to government funding.

Yet after more than $70 billion dollars in direct subsidies, billions more in insurance subsidies, plus another $13 billion available through the energy policy act of 2005, Sen. McCain and others still feel that climate legislation must not merely create a price for carbon dioxide that would advantage all carbon-free sources of energy, but that we must also throw billions more dollars of pork at the industry. At some point, infatuation has turned to obsession.

I am not against building new nuclear power plants; far from it. But when is enough enough, in terms of massive taxpayer support for a mature industry? We had such an incredible clamor for welfare reform in the 1990s, to change "government's social welfare policy with aims at reducing recipient dependence on the government." If we reduced the poor's dependence on government, why not the super-duper rich?

Administrative law judges give controversial coal plant thumbs down — final decision up to PUC

One of the most controversial coal plant proposals in the country just took yet another big hit.

Minnesota's two administrative law judges on the hearings for the Big Stone II plant in South Dakota, Steve Mihalchick and Barbara Neilson, recommended today that the state Public Utilities Commission deny a certificate of need for the plant's transmission lines in western Minnesota. If adopted by the PUC, the ruling will kill the highly controversial project.

According to the ALJs' recommendation [PDF], the sponsors of the plant "have failed to demonstrate that their demand for electricity cannot be met more cost effectively through energy conservation and load-management measures ..."

In September 2007, two of the co-sponsors of Big Stone II, representing about 27 percent of the plant's capacity, pulled out of the project. The withdrawal rocked the project, but the remaining sponsors announced plans to redesign it and continue seeking permits.

Today's ALJ recommendation, which has been closely watched by the broad multi-state coalition that had gathered against the plant, is not curtains for Big Stone II -- but we may be in the final act. The demise of the plant promises to unlock the huge wind potential of the Upper Midwest region, which to date has scarcely been tapped.

Polar-bear listing would hurt the poor, says industry

If the U.S. Interior Department decides that polar bears are endangered, litigation will be immediate from a group arguing that bear protection will “result in higher energy prices across the board, which will disproportionately be borne by minorities.” So says Roy Innis, chair of the Congress for Racial Equality — a recipient of Exxon funding […]

Tom Friedman on the need to invest in infrastructure and revitalize the U.S.

Sometimes Tom Friedman drives me crazy, but he often has a good nugget hidden in the middle of his columns, like this one last Sunday:

A few weeks ago, my wife and I flew from New York's Kennedy Airport to Singapore. In J.F.K.'s waiting lounge we could barely find a place to sit. Eighteen hours later, we landed at Singapore's ultramodern airport, with free Internet portals and children's play zones throughout. We felt, as we have before, like we had just flown from the Flintstones to the Jetsons. If all Americans could compare Berlin's luxurious central train station today with the grimy, decrepit Penn Station in New York City, they would swear we were the ones who lost World War II.

I've often wondered what would happen if Germany, Italy, and Japan fought a world war against the U.S., Russia, and Britain in today's world -- but on a more positive note, perhaps we can move past the "private wealth, public squalor" contrast that John Kenneth Galbraith pointed to long ago.

McCain kicks off series of environmental events with address in N.J.

John McCain gave a campaign speech in New Jersey today in which he touched on environmental issues and talked up his record in that area. “There is no doubt our environment is globally challenged,” McCain said in a stop at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J. “I’m proud of my environmental record.” But […]

U.S. fails to be climate leader because of war, says Obama

The war in Iraq is one reason the U.S. is such an environmental laggard, Barack Obama said in a CNN interview Thursday. “I think the way we have run this war in Iraq has … led us to ignore the critical needs for us to focus on a sound energy policy in this country,” Obama […]

How rising oil prices are obliterating America’s superpower status

The following was originally published on Tom's Dispatch, which has graciously permitted us to use it here.

-----

Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated the Soviet Union as the world's other superpower. Yes, the USSR as a political entity stumbled on for another two years, but it was clearly an ex-superpower from the moment it lost control over its satellites in Eastern Europe.

Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to superpower status when a barrel crude oil roared past $110 on the international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at American pumps, and diesel fuel topped $4.00. As was true of the USSR following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. will no doubt continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the nation's economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as an ex-superpower-in-the-making.

That the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the erasure of the Soviet Union's superpower status was obvious to international observers at the time. After all, the USSR visibly ceased to exercise dominion over an empire (and an associated military-industrial complex) encompassing nearly half of Europe and much of Central Asia. The relationship between rising oil prices and the obliteration of America's superpower status is, however, hardly as self-evident. So let's consider the connection.

Dry hole superpower

The fact is, America's wealth and power has long rested on the abundance of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time, the world's leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while generating a healthy surplus for export.