Climate Politics

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  • A Gore-aphobia

    The OMFG WILL GORE ENDORSE NOW?! stories are getting almost as tiresome as the OMFG WILL GORE RUN NOW?! stories got. One of the sillier aspects of the Silly Season, I guess. Noam Scheiber speculates why Gore might keep waiting, despite the many people begging him to enter the fray.

    David Roberts Politics

  • Dipdive

    This has been making the rounds. Pretty damn effective, I’d say:

    David Roberts Politics

  • The state of play on green incentives in the stimulus bill

    The following is a guest essay from Josh Dorner, deputy press secretary of the Sierra Club.

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    Greens were heartbroken last year when a package of tax incentives for clean energy and renewables fell short in a 59-40 vote during December's energy bill battle royale in the Senate. Greens, renewables folks, and the Democratic leadership have been looking for a clear path forward ever since. As these particular incentives actually do stimulate the economy, attaching them to the economic stimulus package now being debated is attractive both on the merits (more on that below) and for political reasons.

    First, some stimulus package is all but guaranteed to pass and be signed by the President (an increasingly rare outcome for legislation these days). As the Democrats have been pretty strict about offsetting new spending with cuts somewhere else, attaching green initiatives to this package sidesteps the issue of the finding the money to pay for them.

    (For reasons unclear to anyone of sound mind, taking the money out of Big Oil's hide bedeviled the energy bill's clean energy tax package. Only in Washington could the idea of shifting tax breaks and subsidies away from Big Oil toward renewables -- even as ExxonMobil reports a record $41 billion profit -- not be a shoo-in.)

    After the economic stimulus package negotiated between the White House and House leadership failed to include the energy incentives, the fight moved to the Senate. Sen. Maria Cantwell deserves major kudos for leading the charge. Though Senator Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, initially expressed skepticism about including the incentives in the stimulus package, Cantwell marshaled the support of nearly 40 other Senators -- including key Republicans.

    In addition to the support she pulled together, key players like Bingaman, Domenici, and Grassley, the Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, also weighed in favorably. Support became so strong that instead of offering the incentives as an amendment, a bipartisan deal was struck to simply incorporate them into the package prior to Wednesday's markup. In the end, it was approved by the Finance Committee 14-7.

    The $5.7 billion package includes quite a few goodies:

    Grist staff Politics

  • Clean-energy credits likely to be stripped from Senate economic stimulus bill

    Renewable-energy incentives and green-job boosts are likely to be stripped out of the current Senate version of the much-hyped economic stimulus bill when it goes before the full chamber next week. But hey, if the Senate gives in to pressure to quickly pass a pared-down version, at least you’ll get your check sooner. Consumerism will […]

    Grist staff Politics

  • Tapper: still a hack; Clinton: still smart

    Andy Revkin has a Dot Earth post today that reflects on Jake Tapper’s hackery and, in my humble opinion, lets Tapper off way too easily. Look at this: For his part, Mr. Tapper posted a series of updates through Thursday clarifying his intent, saying he found Mr. Clinton’s speech confusing and was posing questions more […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Idiot protest or brilliant parody?

    I got a strange PR release today that sent me to this. I’ve read it over pretty closely and I still can’t tell whether it’s intended to be parody. If it is parody, it’s quite clever — really nails the self-righteousness arms race underway in the eat-your-own faction of the green movement. If it is […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Green groups sue over delay in polar-bear endangered-species decision

    Environmental and native groups have sued — as they are wont to do — in an attempt to force the Interior Department to rethink its decision to sell oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, which is prime polar bear habitat. The lease sale by the department’s Minerals Management Service is scheduled to go […]

    Grist staff Politics

  • Kansas Republicans against global warming

    A prominent Republican Kansas legislator comes out in support of Sebelius and against his ideological brethren on the subject of Kansas coal plants: When every Academy of Science in every developed, industrialized nation agrees, and when the overwhelming number of scientists throughout the world state man-made global warming is a reality, then I would ask […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • China announces plans to modify weather for Olympics

    The Olympic stadium in Beijing, China, will be dry during the opening ceremony, officials said, but not because the structure has a roof (it doesn’t). Instead, Chinese meteorologists claim they can stop rain from falling over the stadium, despite the fact that the games will take place during the monsoon season this August. The process […]

    Grist staff Politics

  • Focus the Nation events aim for interactivity, accountability

    This week, college campuses across the country held events for Focus the Nation, a major education and action campaign around climate change. To see what it was all about, I headed to Seattle’s University of Washington campus to find out if the students behind Focus the Nation could teach me a thing or two. The […]

    Sarah van Schagen Politics