Climate Politics

A look at Hillary Clinton’s environmental platform and record

Update: Clinton suspended her campaign for the presidency on June 7, 2008. Hillary Clinton. Photo: Roger H. Goun During her years representing New York state in the U.S. Senate (2001 to the present), Hillary Clinton has earned an 87 percent lifetime voting score from the League of Conservation Voters (lower than it might have been […]

Activists pester him about the most trivial stuff

OK, I’m back to defending Dingell (sorry Brian!), mainly because the activists attacking him are acting like idiots. At a town hall in Ann Arbor, Mich., Dingell unveiled the various climate-change proposals he’s going to introduce to Congress on Sep. 1. Press coverage of the event is fairly sketchy, and I can’t find a transcript […]

Damn Environment, It’s Always Getting in the Way

Partisan eco-impasse stalls budget vote in California California’s massive state budget is nearly six weeks overdue, and a partisan eco-impasse is a major factor. The state Assembly passed a spending plan in late July, but it’s stalled out in the state Senate. The current sticking point: the 37-year-old California Environmental Quality Act, under which the […]

Is he losing his influence?

Glenn Hurowitz writes that Dingell may finally be losing his influence: Part of the reason for Dingell’s decreasing power is that he’s become rather unpopular within a Democratic caucus that’s willing to tolerate internal policy differences, but increasingly unwilling to accept his barely veiled attacks on Pelosi and his open war with the environmental movement, […]

Micropower is smarter military strategy

This post from Tom Grant at his excellent blog Arms & Influence reinforces the point I (channeling Amory Lovins) made in this post, namely: The centralized power grid in Iraq is intrinsically vulnerable to terrorist attack, thereby crippling our efforts to create some measure of security and civil society. Our determination to rebuild it, rather […]

Reversing Reagan’s joke

This phrase was the punchline to Ronald Reagan's cruel joke about the nine most dangerous words in the English language. Well, maybe it's getting to the point that those words can be used in a positive way. Paul Waldman, in an online article at The American Prospect, writes:

As hard as it may be for many progressives to accept it, scarred as they are by years of GOP abuse and the tepid, apologetic stance of their own allies, the time has finally come for them to defend, without reservation, the idea of a vigorous, engaged government. They can finally say, without fear of disastrous political consequences, that sometimes government is not the problem, it's the solution.

On the other hand, Roger Cohen of the International Herald Tribune, writing in the New York Times op-ed page on August 6, seems to want us to not think about solutions:

Economic power lies with central bankers, global corporations and high-rolling masters of the universe. Military power is constrained by mutually assured destruction and the 24-hour news cycle. What remains are image, perception and identity.

That is, just watch the political fun and games, and strutting, and symbolism; don't worry about global warming, the end of cheap oil, mass extinction, the dying oceans, rivers, and lakes, and the deforested landscapes. The "central bankers, global corporations and high-rolling masters of the universe" will be sure to keep business-as-usual going, and there's nothing we can do about it.

Watch him on ‘OnPoint’

Very good piece here from E&ETV ($ub req'd). Worth the time to watch. Description:

Honk if you think I’m a giant asshole

New specialty license plate option being offered in Oklahoma: “For Sooners looking to show their terror-fighting pride while tearing up the asphalt,” writes one USA Today blogger. (h/t: TP)

BPA: Here to Stay?

Controversial panel will decide whether bisphenol A poses a health risk Last week, several dozen scientists issued a consensus statement that ubiquitous chemical compound bisphenol A likely poses health and reproductive risks to humans. This week, an expert panel will finalize a report for the U.S. National Toxicology Program on whether humans should indeed try […]

An interview with Mike Gravel about his presidential platform on energy and the environment

This is part of a series of interviews with presidential candidates produced jointly by Grist and Outside. Update: Mike Gravel switched from the Democratic Party to the Libertarian Party in March 2008; after failing to secure the Libertarian nomination, he ended his presidential campaign in May 2008. Mike Gravel. In his “Rock” campaign ad, Mike […]