Climate Politics

Primaries thread

This is the thread to discuss all things election related this evening. To kick things off: Obama wins Vermont, handily, as expected. From what I hear the other three are tight. UPDATE: According to CNN, McCain has won Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island, thereby securing the Republican nomination. Guess Huckabee should have majored in […]

California waiver update

Earlier this year I wrote about a new (EPA-sponsored) study showing that increased CO2 in the atmosphere is directly correlated with increased ozone, particulates, and carcinogens in the air. Since California suffers disproportionately from those traditional air pollutants, it follows that California does have "extraordinary and compelling conditions" in the face of climate change, and […]

EPA unions withdraw from cooperation agreement

Union local presidents representing the vast majority of U.S. EPA employees have withdrawn from a cooperation agreement with their Bush-appointed supervisors, claiming “abuses of our good nature and trust.” In a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, the unionized workers wrote that he retaliates against whistleblowers and ignores principles of scientific integrity “whenever political direction […]

McCain’s environmental record

Don’t miss Brad Plumer’s excellent review of John McCain’s environmental record in The New Republic. He covers a lot of the same ground I covered in my piece on the same subject, only with more of the entertaining details and anecdotes that make him a magazine feature writer and me a mere blogger. On the […]

Why the disaster trust fund is bad news

The following is a guest essay by Britt Lundgren and Jason Funk. Britt Lundgren is an agricultural policy fellow at Environmental Defense Fund. Jason Funk is a Lokey Fellow in the Land, Water and Wildlife program at Environmental Defense Fund.

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The recent fires in California and the severe drought in the Southeast are just two of the litany of disasters that have hit agriculture in recent memory. When natural disasters happen, members of Congress (at least those who want to get reelected) want to respond quickly, with cash for those that are affected.

Currently they must go through the clunky and often-slow process of getting disaster dollars for their district by passing an emergency supplemental appropriations bill (PDF). For this reason, the Senate approved a farm bill that includes a new $5.1 billion piggy bank, called the Agricultural Disaster Assistance Trust Fund, for the seemingly innocuous purpose of having money set aside in advance to help farmers out when they're struck with calamity.

Unfortunately, there are many reasons to think that this new trust fund is itself going to be a disaster for taxpayers, most farmers, and the environment.

Border wall brings peace in the Middle East

Fighting the border wall, that is.

Listen to ‘Ohio’ by Damien Jurado

Listen Play “Ohio,” by Damien Jurado While we all wait.

Clinton v. Obama on SNL

Medium funny:

Oil and the status of women in the Middle East

I'm not sure this falls under my "campus news" beat for Grist, but I heard it at a seminar at a college campus, and it's compelling enough that I'm going to say that because it falls within academia, it counts. Michael Ross is a political scientist at UCLA who was published in the February 2008 American Political Science Review with the assertion (PDF) that much of the gender inequality in the Middle East relative to the rest of the world can be explained not by traditional Islam, but by the presence of oil.

The quick version is that Ross makes a strong case that women are hurt by a previously unappreciated effect of the infamous "resource curse" that imperils democracy in countries with abundant fossil fuels.

Western states look into building new dams

Concerned about climate-caused drought, officials in at least six Western states are looking into building new dams to create rain-capturing reservoirs — even as dams across the country are being torn down over environmental concerns.