Climate Politics

Got any ideas for a better Toxic Release Inventory system?

As the letter below indicates, OMB Watch has spent a lot of time on defense since the Supreme Court installed "W" (they use W so he can spell it properly) in 2000. The group fights for government openness and accountability and supports the nonprofit sector.

One of their campaigns has been to preserve the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), one of the most useful things ever to emerge from the era of unashamed environmentalism. Just knowing that the TRI was out there led corporations to huge reductions in toxic releases.

Naturally, gutting TRI was high on the Bush junta's agenda. But it seems like most of the bad ideas have gone away, and OMB Watch is now looking for ideas for making TRI even better, now that the Democratic majority runs Congress.

So get creative -- how would you like to see information displayed? What would be most useful for your town?

New transportation proposals to ease energy dependence

This is one of those weeks when it feels like things are changing fast. Here are two stories that caught my attention:

1. A panel organized by Congress -- the melodically-named National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission -- just called for higher federal gas taxes. In fact, they recommend a 40-cent-per-gallon hike. It sounds like the tax would go mainly to repair and maintain current road infrastructure rather than road expansion. The panel also recommended a bevy of other fees, including tolling, congestion pricing, weight fees, and so on. And they recommended big investments in transit and other alternatives too. (Via Erica at Slog.)


2. Meanwhile, British Columbia continues to lead. Not only is the province considering a carbon tax, but the provincial government just released a $14 billion transit plan. That's $14 billion just for transit. In fairness, however, not everyone in B.C. is thrilled by the proposal. As Andrew points out on the Livable Region blog, the transit projects may be delayed until after some major road-building work is completed.

Edwards puts the coal issue into the Dem debate

Below the fold, I’ve put the entire portion of the transcript from last night’s Dem debate that deals with climate and energy. It is to the candidates’ credit that they took a narrow, stupid question about Yucca Mountain and managed to expand it into a discussion of energy. JMG scolded me for not giving kudos […]

Leading Dem candidates talk nuclear power at Nevada debate

The three leading Democratic presidential candidates came together in Nevada last night for yet another debate. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama all wooed Nevada voters by voicing opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear-waste repository, with Edwards taking his opposition a step further and coming out against all new nuclear construction. The highest drama […]

Nukes don’t replace oil

Over at the New Republic‘s blog, Adam Blinick writes: As it stands, nuclear power is the only environmentally friendly, economic, and efficient source of energy that can help the U.S. wean itself off foreign oil. For the record: Oil is primarily a transportation fuel. Nuclear power, in contrast, is a source of electricity. Ergo, nuclear […]

Bush and big U.S. banks beg for help from the oil barons

Bush has been doing some fast talking in the court of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, imploring His Majesty to boost oil production to so that gas prices for U.S. consumers can come down in time for the fall election. As part of his charm offensive, Bush has promised to bolster the dictatorship’s arsenal with “900 […]

Eco-conscious White House may have destroyed evidence

Who says the White House ain’t green? It’s been busily recycling backup tapes of old emails, “consistent with industry best practices,” and may have destroyed evidence related to the CIA leak in the process. And who knows what else. Gooooo recycling! Yeah!

White House talks up its Hawaii climate-change meeting

The White House has released a statement regarding its very own climate-change meeting for the world’s biggest economies, to be held Jan. 30-31 in Hawaii. “The two-day meeting will further the shared objectives of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, increasing energy security and efficiency, and sustaining economic growth, and will help to advance the negotiations under the […]

What is the Green Party up to, exactly?

The Green Party assembled in the counterintuitive location of San Francisco recently for its presidential debate, wherein ex-Dem Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was joined by this cast of luminaries: The other three candidates included Jared Ball, a hip-hop scholar and assistant professor of communications at Morgan State University in Baltimore; Kat Swift, a 34-year-old dread-locked activist […]

The Conservation Security Program

This is the fourth in a series of five farm bill fact sheets from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. For more information about the status of other sustainable agriculture programs in the Senate and House versions of the bill, please see this 2008 Farm Bill legislative tracking chart (PDF). The 2008 Farm Bill conference committee negotiations are just getting underway at the staff level -- please contact members of the Agriculture Committee and weigh in!

In addition to food and fiber, farmers and ranchers are in a unique position to help provide healthy soils, clean air and water, habitat for native wildlife, carbon sinks to help mitigate global warming, energy savings and renewable energy sources, and other conservation benefits. The Conservation Security Program rewards environmental performance rather than the overproduction of commodity crops or expansion of industrial livestock waste storage, and in doing so, provides an alternative form of farm and conservation program support for family farmers and rural communities that re-enforces the public interest in a more resilient, healthy environment.

The added ecological stress caused by the recent ethanol boom and associated expansion of corn acreage makes it more important than ever that the 2008 Farm Bill provide for a strong Conservation Security Program (CSP).