Climate Politics

RFK Jr. advocates for cap-and-trade, renewables, smart grids

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s got a three-point plan for the next president. I think it would work.

New analysis explores whether Congress can do a better job with CCS than Bush administration

One of biggest debates about climate solutions is whether coal generation with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is going to be practical and affordable on the timescale needed to avoid catastrophic outcomes. And, of course, there are many who don't think coal should be saved at all.

I am not in the second camp, but I doubt coal with CCS is likely to exceed one wedge (I'll discuss this more next week). And we probably need 14 wedges to stay below 450 ppm. I have no doubt concentrated solar will delivery far more power than coal with CCS -- two or three wedges are possible.

The coal industry has long been in denial about the reality of human-caused global warming, so they are woefully unprepared for what is to come. And the administration has botched FutureGen, the centerpiece of its CCS effort.

Can Congress do a better job? The answer can be found in a new analysis by Bob Sussman and Ken Berlin for the Center for American Progress, "Maximizing Carbon Capture and Storage Under the Lieberman Warner Global Warming Bill." Here is a summary:

NYT columnist gives president too much credit on climate, which ain’t hard

New York Times columnist Gail Collins begins today’s piece with a glaring error. She says: Didn’t know we had any goals for curbing global warming? Where were you in 2002 when the president put us on the road toward reducing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent by 2012? Now, Collins spends the […]

Cap-and-dividend: YEAH!

I think "cap-and-dividend" is a clever climate policy, if unlikely to win the day in Congress. But I have trouble imagining how any climate policy could get me as excited as these people.

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 […]