Barack Obama

Democrat gets black mark from environmental lobby for backing of corn-based ethanol

This Guardian story was written by reporter Ed Pilkington. Grist is a member of the Guardian’s Environment Network. —– BROWNSVILLE, Neb. — Barack Obama has enjoyed near-universal backing from American environmentalists, with the Sierra Club, the country’s largest grass-roots environmental group, and Friends of the Earth both endorsing the Democratic nominee for president. But there […]

A roundup of greenish news from the presidential campaign trail

• Not shocking, considering how many “clean coal” ads we’ve seen this election season, but The Wall Street Journal looks at what Big Coal is doing to make sure its industry is on the candidates’ minds this year. The coal-mining industry as a whole has given $2,640,226 to candidates this election cycle, but that’s just […]

‘I was just reading an article in The New York Times by Michael Pollan about food’

I was just reading an article in The New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that […]

Obama pitches green to 100K

“If I am president, I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create five million new, green jobs over the next decade — jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and fuel-efficient cars; jobs that will help us end our dependence on […]

Spokesfolk from the presidential campaigns talk transit in Our Nation’s Capital

Via Greater Greater Washington, representatives for both Barack Obama and John McCain spoke on a panel about transportation here in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. Local radio station WTOP reports on what they had to say, at least about transit in Our Nation’s Capital: Where does your candidate stand on rail to Dulles? Mortimer Downey, adviser […]

New LCV ad in Oregon calls for enviro backup in the Senate

The League of Conservation Voters is running this ad in Oregon promoting both Barack Obama and Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Merkley, whom the group has also endorsed. “How far would a rock star get without a band?” the ad asks. “Barack Obama will create new jobs and fight global warming, but he’ll need some help […]

Obama muses on the connection between energy/climate and our other problems

Obama sat down for a long and fascinating interview with Time‘s Joe Klein yesterday. It’s well worth reading the whole thing, but in particular there’s juicy stuff on energy and climate. The biggest problem with our energy policy has been to lurch from crisis to trance. And what we need is a sustained, serious effort. […]

Global warming is an important issue for undecided voters

So says a poll [PDF] done by Yale and George Mason Universities. Some highlights: Nearly two out of three undecided voters say that the presidential candidates’ positions on global warming will influence their vote in the upcoming election, according to a new national survey released jointly today by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry […]

Short-term cost assessment skews the CW on carbon regulations

Joe says Andy Revkin’s article on the candidates’ climate plans is reasonably fair, and I suppose I agree. It’s fair as a representation of conventional wisdom, if not particularly accurate as a representation of reality. (That’s not Revkin’s fault — claiming one side in a dispute is correct, while both the other side and the […]