Josh Dorner’s Posts

• Getting warmed up on warming

  Obama hits green home run in remarks to govs on clean energy and climate 2

  Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago

  Much like Al Gore's surprise appearance at Netroots Nation this summer (which seems like eons ago at this point), I am told that President-elect Barack Obama's taped message to the Bi-Partisan Governor's Global Climate Summit was met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation.

  President-elect Obama's remarks should quiet any remaining suspicions that his campaign pledges -- the strongest energy and environmental platform by a presidential candidate ever -- were merely fleeting campaign promises to be discarded after Election Day. (Though it should have long since been clear to anyone paying attention that Obama is very serious about clean… Read More

• Dome-ing it down

  New McCain ad repeats discredited claim that Obama will raise taxes on electricity 0

  Posted 1 year, 1 month ago

  After releasing an ad earlier this week that contained debunked lies about offshore drilling and gas prices, John McCain unveiled a new ad today, "Dome," that hits on classic conservative fears of "massive government," and both "painful" and "skyrocketing" taxes. The ad's voiceover specifically stokes fears of "skyrocketing taxes on life savings, electricity, and home heating oil."

  This resurrects an old, discredited claim made this summer in the original "Celeb" ad. (Remember when we thought that was as low as the McCain camp could go?)… Read More

• Bachmann drilling overdrive

  Cuckoo bananas energy policy from House conservatives 2

  Posted 1 year, 2 months ago

  Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) personifies just how haywire House conservatives have gone lately, particularly on energy issues.

  She quickly made a name for herself after being elected to Congress in 2006. In fact, she gained some dubious notoriety even before being elected, announcing to a Brooklyn Park, Minnesota congregation in October 2006 that "God then called [her] to run for the United States Congress."

  If possibly violating election laws weren't enough, Bachmann really upped the ante once she got to D.C. Following the 2007 State of the Union speech, she got an autograph from President Bush as he… Read More

• Post-Carbon County

  Clean energy comes to the coalfields 0

  Posted 1 year, 2 months ago

  The name says it all. Carbon County, Pennsylvania is a county of 58,000 located in the heart of the Keystone State's famed anthracite coalfields. The county was famous not just for its coal, but also the notorious Molly Maguires that exemplified the kind of organized violence between workers and bosses that marked 19th century American industrialism. Pennsylvania is also the state that launched the petroleum industry, with the sinking of the Drake Well in Titusville (on the opposite end of the state from Carbon County) in 1859. But times, they are a changin'.

  Carbon County, in a poetic… Read More

• Houston, we have a solution?

  Four encouraging signs from Big Oil's backyard 3

  Posted 1 year, 3 months ago

  After Nerdi Gras (Netroots Nation), I took a couple days off to dry-out and trotted over to Houston to visit my parents. It came as no surprise that Houston is booming due to the skyrocketing price of oil. But I also learned a few surprising things that gave me hope that brighter days are ahead for the rest of us well. Because if Houston can get it right, who can't?

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Josh Dorner’s Recent Comments

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  Better start praying

  This a joke--and not a very good one.  

  Earlier today Carl Pope, our Executive Director, said:

  "The president is throwing a Hail Mary to polluters in a last-ditch effort to stave off any meaningful action on global warming.  Under the president's plan we'll need a real miracle to save us from global warming."

  Better start praying...On President Bush's speech on climate change, 16 April 2008, as prepared for delivery posted 1 year, 6 months ago 10 Responses

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  Squatting on the biosphere's commons

  Dear Tom,

      In September 2005 our grass-roots leadership -- the leaders of our distributed, semi-autonomous organization -- met in San Francisco after four months of local deliberation, and voted for change -- among the changes they called for was for us to shift our focus towards "visionary solutions."  They told us that after 115 years of stopping bad ideas -- at which we have become, we think, very adept -- we needed to emphasize making good things happen, because climate change would not be curbed by resistance alone.

       Yes, change is hard, but sometimes getting others to notice change is even harder.  We are explicitly and vigourously in favor of one version of cap-and-trade, which we call, "cap and auction", because we believe that in real markets, people pay for what they take, and that giving away or allocating permits to emit carbon dioxide, as the EU mistakenly did, is a license to steal and a reward for polluting.  We were, I think, the first large national environmental group to make the "pay for what you take" principle central to our view of cap-and-trade.  We have struggled with the reality that no form of energy production is environmentally benign, and that most communities have grown accustomed to externalizing and exporting the costs of their energy consumption to places like Appalachia, New Mexico, Wyoming or the Persian Gulf.  So we are resisting our tendency to say, "not here" -- we have set a very high bar for our local entities if they want to oppose wind or solar, for example -- and supported both Cape and Delaware Wind. (No, we don't think geothermal belongs at Old Faithful.  But we think a wind turbine might improve the National Observatory where Dick Cheney lives.)

     As for markets, we believe in them, ferociously -- but we do wonder whether most businesses do. (So did Adam Smith.)   After all, it is not a market if I go into the Safeway and walk out with a gallon of milk without paying -- it's shop-lifting.  But the US Chamber of Commerce seems fine with trade agreements that allow the continued reliance on the importation of mahogany from Peru, 90% of which was logged without paying for it.  (Pay for what you take.)  And if I go into your back yard and dig up the plants and sell them off a pick-up-truck,  it's fencing. (Own what you sell.)  But Exxon-Mobil seems quite willing to sell you CO2 in a gas tank that will flood the Maldives -- even though I am reasonably sure that the corporate vaults in Irving, Texas, do not include a deed to that nation.

     Gettting real markets in natural resources will be very hard, because global capital  has become used to squatter's rights on the biosphere's commons -- are you ready to join us in calling the sheriff to kick them off?

  Carl PopeOn Carl Pope reviews Break Through by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger posted 2 years, 1 month ago 14 Responses