Climate Politics
All Stories
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Interior Dept. plans huge water giveaway to Big Agribiz
Brad Plumer points to this, which tells the story of how the Interior Department is planning to give away gargantuan amounts of water to Big Agribiz in California. If you’d like to dig into the background details, check out some posts we ran by Lloyd G. Carter, president of California’s Save Our Streams council — […]
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Small protest may be start of agrodiesel’s biggest nightmare
A link to John Cook's Venture Blog in the Seattle P-I via a post by Glenn Hurowitz brought my attention to a guy named Duff Badgley (not to be confused with Duffman or Ed Begley). Duff is an old-school, grassroots, car-free, long-haired, bleeding-heart, dirty hippie environmentalist. His protests may very well turn out to be Imperium's worst nightmare. From an article about the filing of Imperium Renewables' IPO (initial public offering) where they must, by law, warn potential investors of known potential risks:
In its filing, the company said that palm oil is the cheapest feedstock available and noted that shifting public opinion about the use of palm oil could hurt its business.
"Unfavorable public opinions concerning the use of palm oil, soybeans and other feedstock, or negative publicity arising from such use, could reduce the global supply of such feedstock, increase our production costs and reduce the global demand for biodiesel, any of which could harm our business and adversely affect our financial condition," the company wrote.An all-important goal in any power struggle is to gain and then hold the moral high ground.
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Experts to Utah: Climate change is real
If this happened any place else but Utah, it might not be worth noting, but in that state I believe it’s progress: A state blue ribbon task force on climate change stated emphatically Monday that humans are to blame for global warming and offered a slate of recommendations on ways Utah can fight the changes. […]
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Emission Accomplished
Indiana regulators give BP a pass on meeting federal soot regulations Last week, oil company BP backed off of a plan to dump lots more ammonia and sludge into Lake Michigan; this week, Indiana regulators granted the same refinery an exemption to a federal rule that would have required it to halve its soot emissions. […]
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Latest round of UN climate talks focuses on energy investment
Just how excited can one get by the latest round of international talks on climate change? This one is focused on business, specifically energy investment: A new report by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change says additional investments of about $210 billion a year will be needed – mostly in the developing world – […]
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Why is green so low on the political agenda?
Why, with green so ubiquitous in media and culture, is it not higher up on the political agenda? Emily Gertz says it’s because the green grassroots aren’t involved in party politics. Matthew Yglesias points to new survey data from American Environics (PDF) which indicate that concern for the environment is broad but shallow. While everyone […]
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How much wind and solar could we have gotten for the cost of the Iraq War?
Paul Gipe does the math.
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China’s central government faces a choice between democracy and eco-collapse
"Choking on Growth" is the apt title of the new New York Times series on the "human toll, global impact and political challenge of China's epic pollution crisis." Epic, indeed. The first installment shows how "As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes." The statistics are daunting:
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East Asian countries could save money shifting to renewables, but aren’t gonna
According to Greenpeace International, East Asian countries can save about $2 trillion in fuel costs over the next 23 years by shifting to renewable energy (abandoning plans for both coal and nuclear plants). Said dazzlingly monickered Greenpeace campaign coordinator Athena Ballasteros … … investment costs for new power plants in East Asia projected by the […]
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Fear of death leads to authoritarianism, not sustainability
It’s tempting to think that if you scare the shit out of people — really convince them, down to their bones, that hurricanes, diseases, and starving refugees are hiding just around the corner — that mass mobilization against global warming will at long last ensue. There’s good reason to doubt it. Fear causes fairly predictable […]