Climate Politics

McCain touts gas-tax holiday as well as ‘long-term solutions’

McCain on the long-term solution to dependence on foreign oil: Nuclear! Despite what those “extremist environmental organizations” tell you. And despite the fact that only 2 percent of our electricity comes from oil.

Tar sands are hardly ‘environmentally responsible’

Alberta's tar sands got yet another huge black eye this week when as many as 500 ducks died after simply landing on a giant pond full of highly toxic oil sands tailings. Only five were said to have survived their toxic plunge. A member of a Canadian environmental watchdog group described the water found in the ponds as follows:

Drinking a glass of water from a tailings pond would be like drinking a diluted glass of oil or gasoline.

Whether the bitumen is cooked in situ while still underground or scraped off, carted away, and processed elsewhere -- either process requiring both huge amounts of energy and water -- millions of tons of global warming pollution are produced and nearly unfathomable amounts of toxic wastewater and tailings are left behind. Indeed, it is estimated that producing one barrel of oil from tar sands requires between 2 and 4.5 barrels of water. Last year alone, the Alberta tar sands industry was permitted water withdrawals totaling a staggering 119.5 billion gallons.

Bush supporter apparently fired for doing her job

An EPA controversy brewing in the Midwest calls to mind the U.S. attorneys scandal, as Brad Johnson noted yesterday. Top officials in the agency have forced Mary Gade, head of the EPA’s Region 5 office in Chicago, to step down from her post or be fired by June 1. The ouster comes after Gade pressured […]

Veto override fails in Kansas; embattled coal plants remain dead

Two new coal-fired power plants will not be built in western Kansas due to a failed attempt to override the governor’s veto. The coal-plant saga began when a state environment official last year rejected Sunflower Energy’s permit to build the new plants — the first such rejection in the U.S. on the basis of carbon […]

A gas tax holiday would be cynical and indefensible

(I write this post with some sadness. I would not have expected a major progressive politician who obviously cares about global warming to propose a gas tax holiday, which has no public benefits whatsoever and at the same time undermines the entire rationale behind a national climate strategy that includes, as it must, a pricing mechanism for greenhouse gases. Kudos to Sen. Obama for opposing this absurd proposal -- double kudos because it might cost him a few votes.)

The gas tax holiday proposed by McCain and Clinton is indefensible. That, of course, is why just about every independent observer has criticized it. The Washington Post and, separately, Huffington Post have catalogued an impressive list of serious critiques, starting with the rather obvious point that in a demand-driven price shock, a gas tax holiday probably won't even save consumers a penny -- it will just enrich the poor, suffering oil companies:

Diverting war spending to green investments is both politically possible and neccesary

Is it possible to divert war spending into green investment? (David is skeptical.) The current military budget for fiscal year 2008 is around 650 billion dollars, not including supplemental requests, which so far have been made every year since the Iraq war started. That $700 billion-plus total compares to the around $400 billion of military spending in 2001. Given the current unpopularity of the Iraq war, would it really be politically impossible to gain public support for reducing our military budget back to pre-Operation Clusterf*ck levels? (I'd like to see much deeper cuts, but let's look a mere $300 billion reduction for the moment.)

Tory swelling

The Tories are kicking Labour’s ass in the U.K. elections. More about the Tories’ surprising degree of green here.

Candidates, Congress split on ‘gas tax holiday’

The “gas tax holiday” has officially emerged as the latest bickerfest big issue in the presidential race. Hillary Clinton and John McCain say drivers need a break this summer, while Obama is aggressively pushing back against the idea. In a new ad, Obama emphasizes that cutting the tax this summer would save most consumers a […]

Obama on gas prices

If you can overlook the silly “price gouging” bit, this strikes me as an enormously effective push-back against Clinton’s attacks:

Top EPA official forced out by political appointees

Cross-posted from the Wonk Room.

I've previously described Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson as "the environment's Alberto Gonzales." After years of scandal as White House Counsel and Attorney General, Gonzales finally resigned after it was revealed that numerous U.S. attorneys were fired without cause under his watch.

Now it seems the EPA is following the Department of Justice's efforts to rid itself of staffers who are not "loyal Bushies."

The Chicago Tribune reports:

The Bush administration forced its top environmental regulator in the Midwest to quit Thursday after months of internal bickering about dioxin contamination downstream from Dow Chemical's world headquarters in Michigan.

In an interview with the Tribune, Mary Gade said two top political appointees at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington stripped her of her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.