Climate Politics

McCain is closer to Bush than to the Democrats

Originally posted at the Think Progress Wonk Room.

Newsweek's cover story on the presidential candidates and global warming quotes UC Berkeley energy professor Dan Kammen, a supporter of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)'s presidential campaign:

It's unusual to have a Republican candidate who openly disagrees with the Bush administration on the need for capping carbon emissions. There's more disagreement with the current administration than with each other.

The idea that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is closer to the Democratic candidates running for president than he is to the president is popular with the political elite. Joe Klein similarly said "McCain's distance from George W. Bush seems greater than from the Democrats" on foreign policy issues like global warming. What McCain says he wants to do about global warming certainly sounds better than what the Bush administration has accomplished.

A look at the facts paints a different picture:

State’s governor pursuing clean energy and GHG reductions

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.

-----

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has prioritized clean energy policy and aims to reduce the state's energy consumption 15 percent by 2015. In addition, Maryland is a part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric utilities.

With those goals topping the governor's agenda, Maryland's Senate chambers have been a hot spot for progressive policy lately, juggling a handful of issues that will become magnified this summer as we launch into the national debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.

Kansas coal bill redux

Once again the Kansas legislature has passed a bill pushing for coal plants, and once again Kansas Gov. Sebelius has vowed to veto it. Kansans should be proud. That’s quite an ass-kicker they elected!

McCain and perception

Jerry Adler has a rundown on climate change in this year’s presidential campaign. Somewhat miraculously for a mainstream publication like Newsweek, it’s pretty good. This is a good point: So, ironically, McCain — with a voting record that would put him at the bottom of the heap among Democrats — is sometimes perceived as more […]

New York City’s congestion pricing plan …

… is dead.

Manhattan congestion-pricing plan kicks the bucket

Hopes had run high that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ambitious congestion-pricing plan for the Big Apple would move forward, but the measure has died a quiet death. Democratic members of the State Assembly, determining that the measure was overwhelmingly opposed, neglected to even bring it to the Assembly floor, instead shooting it down with […]

Enough with the ‘children are our future’ already

On the notion that idealistic young people should save the planet, Natasha Chart on MyDD writes:

It's deeply frustrating to me to to hear someone with 20-30 years worth of professional experience, social networking, capital accumulation, and political influence say that what they're really waiting on is for a bunch of people with none of those advantages to come do what they couldn't manage. In the same vein, I know that leading figures in many activist issue camps, whether elected officials or NGO staff, hope that young people, or bloggers, or 'local' activists, really, anyone else, will get out and start rocking the boat so it doesn't have to be them. I've heard some version of this conversation too many times.

MLKJr.’s words about Vietnam apply to Iraq and the environment

Forty years ago, writes the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne, liberalism's moments seemed to have passed:

From the death of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 until the congressional elections of November 1966, liberals were triumphant, and what they did changed the world. Civil rights and voting rights, Medicare and Medicaid, clean air and clean water legislation, Head Start, the Job Corps, and federal aid to schools had their roots in the liberal wave that began to ebb when Lyndon Johnson's Democrats suffered broad losses in the 1966 voting. The decline that 1966 signaled was sealed after April 4, 1968.

I'm struck by the fact that another great burst of liberal legislation took place almost exactly 100 years prior, during the Civil War, when the reactionary Southerners were not in Congress: the Land-Reform colleges were set up, the Homestead Act was passed, giving millions of farmers access to farms and economic powers, and the first intercontinental railroads were built.

Why Michael Pollan and Alice Waters should quit celebrating food-price hikes

As their grocery bills rise, Americans should take comfort: the price they’re paying for industrially produced food in the supermarket is starting to approach that of artisanally produced food at the farmers’ market. And that might make more of them choose healthier, less environmentally destructive diets. At least, that’s the message of an article in […]

Ron Sims on MLKJr., climate change, and green jobs

Ron Sims, the African-American executive of a county whose name now honors Martin Luther King Jr., has led efforts to make King County one of the climate leaders among American counties. In today's Climate Solutions Journal, he writes about Dr. King's dream and how it connects to climate change, green jobs, and social justice. (County residents a number of years ago decided to shift from honoring 19th century slaveowner and political figure Rufus King to MLKJr. Recently the county logo finally caught up -- see upper left-hand corner.)