Climate Politics

Notable quotable

“I think some people have overlooked the major news that the President made yesterday, which was committing a national economy-wide goal to halt carbon emissions.” — White House spokesflack Tony Fratto, confusing a policy that would allow unrestrained growth of carbon emissions for the next 17 years for one that would “halt” carbon emissions

A biologist explains what security experts can learn from nature

Raphael Sagarin. Marine biologist Raphael Sagarin has eclectic interests. During the course of his career, he’s scoured an Alaskan gambling record for clues to climate change, retraced John Steinbeck’s and Ed Ricketts’ survey of the Sea of Cortez, and even studied how Easy Cheese escaped early chlorofluorocarbon regulations. In 2002, as a science fellow on […]

A bright trend for dark times: kitchen gardening

Last week, we ran a guest post about a topic dear to my heart: serious home vegetable gardening. In that piece, Bill Duesing argued that the USDA should take home food production seriously, by providing research and extension services to gardeners. Now Anne Raver, the veteran New York Times garden writer, has come out with […]

Governors will pester candidates about climate

A gaggle of governors will conclude a meeting at Yale with an agreement to pester the presidential candidates about climate change. Governors of 18 states, representing more than half of the U.S. population, pledge to “reach out to major presidential candidates as a means of shaping the first 100 days of the next administration.”

Sebelius to Kansas legislature:

No, I really meant it.

Climate ‘central’ to McCain’s campaign?

In the course of an NYT story about McCain’s tax policies (short summary: he wants to punch a $200b hole in the budget via regressive tax cuts), political reporter Michael Cooper says: One of Mr. McCain’s tax proposals would take effect even before the Republican Convention: he called on Congress to suspend the 18.4 cent […]

Mag’s green issue exalts cap-and-trade

I now seem to be on some media distribution list to gin up early PR. Green publicists of the world, bring it on!

Here are links to key stories (plus some summaries, from Time):

This Week's Cover Features a Green Border -- Only the Second Issue in TIME's 85-Year History Without the Trademarked Red Border

(New York, April 17, 2008) -- In this week's issue, TIME managing editor Richard Stengel writes in his Letter to Readers, "This is our latest environment special issue but also a historic first: for this one issue, we've exchanged our trademarked Red Border for a green one. By doing so, we are sending a clear -- and colorful -- message to our readers about the importance of this subject, not just to Americans but to everyone around the world as well." The cover story -- "Green Is the New Red, White and Blue" -- written by TIME's Bryan Walsh, "is our call to arms to make this issue -- perhaps the most important one facing the planet -- a true national priority."

(Note: It's a pretty good story, as one expects from this magazine. That said, I take issue with one of the paragraphs in the cover story -- honorable mention to whoever figures out which paragraph it is. I'll post the answer tomorrow.)

Let’s rebuild our national rail network instead of repealing the gas tax

At the rate things are going, any money that would be available for global warming mitigation is going to go into subsidizing the oil used by airplanes, trucks, cars, and heating oil so that most Americans do not become hysterical -- or am I being hysterical? From Michael T. Klare's latest article:

Me in the Guardian

I have a column up at the Guardian‘s CIF on Bush’s speech last night: On Wednesday, President Bush gave a major speech on climate change policy. Sounds like the setup for a joke, right? And perhaps it is — a joke on the national media, which went into full scramble yet again for this, the […]

British prime minister chats climate with Bush

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was in Washington, D.C., Thursday to sit down for a chit-chat with President Bush. Brown told press that he and Bush “agreed we must work internationally to secure progress at the G8 and toward a post-Kyoto deal on climate change. … I look forward to continuing to work with President […]