Climate Politics

Obama or Clinton: who’s greener?

Photos: Roger Goun and Will Merydith The following post was first published on Passing Through, The Nation‘s guest blog, where I will be posting all month. If you’re a political junkie like me, all you can think about is the primary and the general election beyond. Can you remember a primary season so dynamic and […]

How to pick the president

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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A plaque on the wall at Wal-Mart headquarters carries a quote attributed to Sam Walton. It says:

Incrementalism is innovation's worst enemy.
We don't want continuous improvement,
we want radical change.

That plaque should be mounted on the door of every caucus room and voting place in America on Tuesday, because it gives the key to electing the next president of the United States.

If the most popular word of the 2008 presidential campaign is "change," then let's take a moment to think about what "change" means. For the sake of discussion, let's categorize change into two types: transactional and transformational.

Transactional change might be a new tax credit, a new regulation, a new policy that alters the way we transact business. When the candidates get into specific proposals about energy and climate policy, for example, they generally are describing transactional change. In that department, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both have issued detailed energy and climate platforms. They far outclass John McCain and Mitt Romney, who have not.

Transformational change is something altogether different. As Wikipedia explains:

Bush admin 2009 budget boosts nuclear and clean coal

The Bush administration released its 2009 budget today, with a price tag of $3.1 trillion. (Perspective: There are 3.1 trillion seconds in 99,200 years.) Relatively speaking, energy and environment issues were not high priority. But within environmental-type allocation, nuclear energy and “clean coal” saw a huge funding boost. The budget would also raise funding for […]

RFK Jr. for Hillary

Noted enviro Robert Kennedy Jr. makes a campaign ad for Clinton, trying to steal back a little of the Kennedy mojo from Obama:

EPA moves to veto wetland-destructive Army Corps project

The U.S. EPA has moved to block an Army Corps of Engineers flood-control project in the Mississippi Delta, the first time the agency has aimed to veto a Corps project since 1990. The $220 million project would have built the world’s largest hydraulic pump, sucking dry enough wetland area to cover New York City in […]

It’s alive!

A Philadelphia newspaper picks up Jake "Hack" Tapper’s Bill Clinton grotesque and makes it even more stupid. This is officially a ‘Winger Zombie. Aim for the head. (Via Horse’s Mouth)

Obama talks about fighting the nuclear industry, but his record is less strident

Barack Obama talks on the campaign trail about fighting the nuclear power industry, but the real story is more complicated, reports The New York Times in a front-page story. In 2006, Illinois residents were up in arms after finding out that Exelon Corp. had not informed them about radioactive leaks at one of its nuclear […]

Our command-and-control air-pollution regulations are working against our climate policy

With the climate policy discussion now settling into lines of cap & trade vs. carbon tax, and allocation vs. auction, it has implicitly moved beyond the top-down, command-and-control models favored by early plans (and in particular the multi-pollutant, "4P" bills).

This market focus is a good thing, on balance. What isn't good is that it's only being applied to greenhouse gas pollution. Our existing air pollution laws create disincentives to GHG reduction. Modernization of these (non-carbon) pollution laws may be the single most important thing the federal government can do to lower GHG emissions. As we head out of the harbor, it's time to haul up the anchor.

Relevant history

The Clean Air Act, coupled with New Source Review, has dramatically lowered SOx, NOx, and particulate emissions. It has also substantially increased GHG emissions. The reasons why are three-fold:

1. The rules were set on a so-called "input basis." Come under a certain parts-per-million of exhaust and you are OK. Exceed it and you're in violation.

This has the perverse effect of discouraging energy efficiency: if I lower absolute pollution (tons/yr) by 40% and cut fuel use by 50%, I have reduced the flow of fuel and combustion air by more than I've reduced pollution (e.g., the "millions" in the parts-per-million formulation). Thus my ppm actually increases and I can't get a permit anymore.

Obama Super Bowl ad

Far as I know, Obama was the only candidate to buy an ad during the Super Bowl today, one that ran in 24 states, to the tune of $250,000. It’s interesting to me that in perhaps the highest profile, highest stakes ad the Obama campaign has ever run, the focus is on two strongly progressive […]

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.