Climate Politics

McCain talks climate change with European leaders

Republican presidential candidate John McCain traveled to Europe and the Middle East last week, meeting with various European leaders to discuss climate change and U.S. foreign policy. McCain broached climate change in separate meetings with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, current U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, who recently announced […]

Richardson endorses Obama

Bill Richardson, who aspired to be the “energy president,” has endorsed Barack Obama. In his endorsement letter, he cites race and this stuff: To reverse the disastrous policies of the last seven years, rebuild our economy, address the housing and mortgage crisis, bring our troops home from Iraq, and restore America’s international standing, we need […]

Weak brew in Maryland

Maryland climate bill passes state Senate after being severely weakened: The Global Warming Solutions Act would require a 25 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions from Maryland businesses by 2020. But under the amendment approved Thursday, the state’s environmental agency would have to get the General Assembly’s approval each time it issued rules to cut […]

As Corps series ends, big questions remain about the future of the Mississippi

There are 8 million stories in the Mississippi Basin, and this week we’ve told only a few. As lead editor of this Army Corps series, I’ve been immersed for the last few months in all things Mississippi River. Coming out the other side, I have a few answers, yes, but even more questions to explore. […]

Governor plays chicken with legislature over coal in Kansas

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has vetoed Senate Bill 327, whereby the state legislature would have constrained the powers of Kansas Dept. of Health and Environment Secretary Roderick Bremby, prohibited "consideration of any standards beyond the Clean Air Act" (which, remember, U.S. EPA refuses to apply to CO2, despite the Supreme Court’s orders), and green-lit two […]

Bill to allow new dirty coal plant vetoed by Kansas governor

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has vetoed a bill that would have allowed a new two-unit coal plant to be built in her state. The legislation would have overturned an October decision by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to deny Sunflower Electric a coal-plant permit on the basis of greenhouse-gas emissions. The bill Sebelius […]

Clinton and Obama boost coal in West Virginia

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both did some coal-boosting while campaigning in West Virginia this week. Clinton told West Virginians she’s always been in favor of “the cleanest coal possible,” but that “coal fits in very importantly” to America’s energy future. Asked about mountaintop-removal mining in a radio interview Wednesday, she hedged, saying she didn’t […]

Biggers to Obama: Free Appalachia from coal

Jeff Biggers suggests an ambitious and risky Appalachian strategy for Barack Obama: By the 1920s, plundered for their coal and unable to compete with the non-union labor in Kentucky and West Virginia, the southern Illinois coal towns had turned into deforested and eroded wastelands, and were depicted by one government report as a “picture, almost […]

Bill Richardson endorses Barack Obama for president

Sen. Barack Obama has been endorsed for president by New Mexico governor and former presidential racer Bill Richardson. Among other things, said Richardson, Obama “will make the historic and vital investments into renewable energy, to help create clean energy jobs and fight global warming.”

McCain’s crooked talk on nuclear power

This week John McCain has an article in the Financial Times: "America must be a good role model." It has two paragraphs on the need for leadership on greenhouse gas reductions but endorses only one low-carbon energy source:

Right now safe, climate-friendly nuclear energy is a critical way both to improve the quality of our air and to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.

That dependence, I am afraid, has become a vulnerability for both the US and Europe and a source of leverage for the oil and gas exporting autocracies.

You can tell a politician is being wishy-washy when he or she uses the phrase "dependence on foreign energy sources." There is really only one foreign energy source Americans care much about -- oil. It comes from unstable and undemocratic regions, and our trade deficit in it now exceeds $1 billion a day.

But nuclear power can't significantly reduce US oil consumption or imports -- because very, very little electricity in this country is generated by burning petroleum (only 1.6 percent of electricity in 2006 came from oil). [In the future that could change when a significant number of vehicles on the road substitute electricity for gasoline, but that is not imminent.]