Climate Politics

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.]

Feds approve floating liquefied-natural-gas terminal in Long Island Sound

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved a $700 million floating liquefied-natural-gas terminal to be built in the middle of Long Island Sound. The energy companies Shell and TransCanada are partners in the project, which is expected to supply 1.25 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day to New York and Connecticut — […]

Enviros file supreme suit to stop border wall

Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife have filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging elements of the REAL ID act, which gives Secretary of Homeland Security the power to waive any environmental laws that would get in the way of the 700-mile-long double-layered concrete wall Congress authorized for the U.S.-Mexico border.

From the press release announcing the lawsuit:

By granting one government official the absolute power to pick and choose which laws apply to border wall construction, the REAL ID Act proves itself to be both inherently dangerous and profoundly un-American. The issue here is not security vs. wildlife, but whether wildlife, sensitive environmental values, and communities along the border will be given fair consideration in the decisions the government makes," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will take up this case in order to protect the fundamental separation of powers principles enshrined in the United States Constitution."

The lawsuit seems to have some legs; a government official familiar with it said it had some chance of success.

Clinton’s MTR comments spark outrage

Hillary Clinton’s wishy-washy, confused comments on mountaintop-removal mining yesterday have set off an internet sh*tstorm. Appalachian Voices rounds up the outrage.

A look at Ralph Nader’s environmental platform and record

Updated 22 Aug 2008 Ralph Nader. Though Ralph Nader is running as an independent and not under the Green Party banner this time around, he still has some serious small-G green cred (at least among those not still livid over his alleged role in Gore’s 2000 presidential defeat). In the heyday of his consumer advocacy, […]

The money we’ve spent on the five-year Iraq War could have shifted the world to renewables

Today is the five-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. I don’t have a whole lot to say about it that other people haven’t said better. I would just stress one point: People frequently fret that we can’t afford the measures necessary to fight climate change. That is false. We are an enormously […]

Hillary Clinton gives tepid response on question about mountaintop-removal mining

Hillary Clinton was asked about mountaintop-removal mining in an interview on West Virginia public radio (mp3 link) this morning. Her answer was, in my eyes, terribly disappointing. Here it is: I am concerned about it for all the reasons people state, but I think it’s a difficult question because of the conflict between the economic […]