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  • Big Oil lobby announces it will start donating directly to candidates

    Apparently their current amount of influence isn’t good enough.Cross-posted from the Wonk Room. The American Petroleum Institute (API), Big Oil’s chief lobbying organization, will start directly backing political candidates in the second quarter of this year. API, whose membership includes oil giants like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, already spends tens of millions of dollars every year on […]

  • New polls: Americans trust the EPA over Congress

    Cross-posted from the Natural Resources Defense Council. Just days after a series of budget votes in the U.S. House, which NRDC Executive Director Peter Lehner called “an unprecedented assault on public health, clean air, fresh water, open space and wildlife,” NRDC is releasing 20 new polls to probe how Americans nationally and in 19 key […]

  • For once, developments in Washington could make things better on the farm

    The outlook for small farms could be getting a bit sunnier.Photo: andyrobeI write on Grist about my small farm, but my day job is different. I’m an organizer for the Nebraska-based Center for Rural Affairs (CFRA). One of the things we do at CFRA is try to tweak federal farm policies in ways that help […]

  • The Climate Post: Obama’s new budget would make Big Oil pay for clean energy

    The president gives a preview of his budget in his weekly address.Republicans are vowing to fight President Obama’s newly released budget for the 2012 fiscal year. Among other things, the new budget includes a few significant changes to spending on climate and energy research. In the energy sector, it calls for slashing tax breaks and loopholes for fossil […]

  • Life under the leadership of budget axe-man Hal Rogers

    In case you haven’t heard, dozens of proposed amendments to the House Budget Bill would strip EPA of funding to update and enforce safeguards for mountaintop-removal mines, coal ash storage ponds, and emissions of hazardous air pollutants from coal-fired power plants. If these amendments are approved, House Republicans would successfully turn back the clock on […]

  • Budget for rainforests puts Obama’s $1 billion pledge at risk

    Photo: Rhett A. Butler, MongaBayBoth President Obama’s proposed budget and especially House Republican proposals fall significantly short of the administration’s $1 billion pledge for short-term forest finance made at the Copenhagen climate summit – putting the United States’ climate credibility at even further risk. However modest, the $1 billion pledge was one of the few […]

  • House Republican budget cuts would strangle innovation

    This article was cross-posted from the Center for American Progress. President Barack Obama’s State of the Union on Jan. 25, 2011, waved the green flag for innovation and competition in the cleantech sector. He proposed a number of programs to speed the development and manufacturing of domestic energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors to help […]

  • Budget posturing is a game, and the left is losing

    Chop chop.Today is Budget Day — Obama unveils his FY 2012 budget proposal — and political reporters the land over are aflutter. I’m being bombarded with press releases, think tank analyses, denunciations, and counter-denunciations. Politico is having multiple Os. Meh. Ryan Avent gets it right: it’s political theater, and poor theater at that. Congress controls […]

  • Obama, Chu try to slash the multi-miracle hydrogen program once again

    Technology Review: It used to be thought, five to eight years ago, that hydrogen was the great answer for the future of transportation. The mood has shifted. What have we learned from this? Steven Chu: I think, well, among some people it hasn’t really shifted. I think there was great enthusiasm in some quarters, but […]