Obama Administration

Copenhagen climate crash

Hot planet to Obama: What’s your Plan B? 6
Posted 2 days, 7 hours ago The planet just can't endure another year of inaction. Obama should travel to the Copenhagen climate conference in December and guarantee dramatic action from the U.S. in 2010 even if it means blowing everything up in Congress and starting over.
BFF's?

U.S. and China announce plan for collaboration on clean energy and climate change 0
Posted 3 days, 5 hours ago On Tuesday in Beijing, U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao announced a comprehensive plan for U.S.-China cooperation on clean energy and climate change, and it's much more ambitious than we had anticipated. The plan calls for a number of cooperative programs on clean energy technologies and capacity building, and some important steps to help China build an accurate inventory of its greenhouse-gas emissions.
Know thine enemy

Is Bill McKibben right to be angry with Obama? 34
Posted 3 days, 17 hours ago In his latest column, Bill McKibben lays into Obama for insufficient leadership on climate change. But the many sins ascribed to Obama almost all trace back to a different source. Properly identifying the barriers to change is the first step in effective political action.
We need more than rhetoric and excuses

Mr. President: Time to quit fibbing and spinning 10
Posted 3 days, 18 hours ago President Obama has, at least for now, punted on the hard questions around climate, as evidenced by the announcement from the APEC meeting in Singapore that next month's Copenhagen climate talks will be nothing more than a glorified talking session.
Extending the runway

Delaying an international climate treaty: not as bad as it looks 26
Posted 4 days, 17 hours ago The big news this weekend was that a coalition of world leaders made it official: there will be no full-fledged, legally binding agreement out of the Copenhagen climate talks. Instead there will be what's being called a politically binding agreement, pledging to work out a full agreement in 2010 -- "one agreement, two steps." This was Denmark PM (and Copenhagen host) Lars Lokke Rasmussen's way of salvaging a half-win from what was threatening to be a total loss. Of course opponents of climate action are portraying it as a disaster that augers the death of UNFCCC process; they do that with every setback or delay. Climate activists don't seem to have decided quite yet what to think about it. My take: it's not as bad as it looks.
a really hot potato

Will South Carolina become the nation’s new Yucca Mountain? 0
Posted 1 week ago Earlier this year, President Obama canceled the federal government's plans to store high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and weapons facilities at the controversial Yucca Mountain site in Nevada -- but now there are concerns that the Savannah River Site in South Carolina could become the permanent dumping ground for the dangerous waste.
Alert Lou Dobbs and Glenn Beck!

American stimulus funds benefiting foreign wind energy firms 8
Posted 3 weeks ago The Investigative Reporting Workshop released a report on Thursday detailing how one of the first big chunks of money for clean energy under the stimulus package went to wind power projects owned by foreign companies.
Isi serious?

Obama’s attempt to tap an agrichemical-industry flack runs into trouble 2
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago When Obama nominated an agrichemical-industry point man to a top post in the U.S. Trade Office, I cynically thought he would skate right through the Senate confirmation process. Now I'm not sure.
President Obama announces $3.4 billion investment to spur transition to smart energy grid 0
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago As the Senate debates the Kerry-Boxer climate bill in Washington, President Obama travelled to Arcadia, Florida to announce a $3.4 billion investment in to modernize the U.S. energy grid. Grist shares the official White House press release on the president’s new smart grid proposal.
Swagga, bitchez!

Greens have finally got the Big Mo 1
Posted 4 weeks, 1 day ago It looks like greens pushing for clean energy legislation finally have the wind at their back, with a streak of positive media stories about new friends and very stupid enemies.
Badgering the green team at SEJ

Looking beyond Copenhagen, with no Plan B 2
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago President Obama's lieutenants put on their game faces as they fielded journalists' questions Friday, but there was a palpable sense that they know the game is already over going into the global talks on climate change in December.
GMO job--or new food paradigm?

Another Monsanto man in a key USDA post? Obama’s ag policy’s giving me whiplash 20
Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago With new ag appointments, the Obama administration's food/ag policy keeps zigzagging between progressive change and the agrichemical status quo.
Garbage in, garbage out, journalists in between, all but useless

Treasury memo hysteria shows media incapable of screening out junk 0
Posted 2 months ago
Is any piece of nonsense from right-wing opponents of clean energy policy too silly, too outrageous, to get its day in the national press spotlight? It would seem not.

Last week, CBS conservo-blogger Declan McCullagh breathlessly reported: "Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year." That figure spread like wildfire through right-wing blogs, then jumped to Glenn Beck, and eventually reached The Washington Post. Now Republican lawmakers are repeating it.

The number is completely and utterly misleading. At least in reference to current policy options, it's a lie. But now it's out there, forever part of conservative mythology and forever a "controversy" in the eyes of the establishment media. Is there any way it could have been stopped? Is there any way the next lie can be stopped?
What you can do

A message from Van Jones 16
Posted 2 months ago
My family and I want to thank everyone for the outpouring of love and support that we have received over the past week or so.
With bunnies!

Everything you always wanted to know about EPA greenhouse gas regulations, but were afraid to ask 10
Posted 2 months ago

Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority and the obligation to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. At a stroke, the politics of climate change were changed. The choice was no longer between legislation or no legislation -- it was between legislation or regulation. One way or another, climate pollution would be controlled by a federal program.

Most experts agree that EPA regulations will be complex and somewhat unwieldy. Industry believes they will be onerous and expensive. Conventional wisdom, at least initially, was that fear of regulation would drive utilities and manufacturers to the bargaining table, changing the dynamic in Congress. EPA was supposed to play the role of the big, silent goon in the corner, tapping his baseball bat in his hand.

That theory isn't holding up too well.
delete and reboot

Can Obama deliver health and energy security with a half (assed) message? 0
Posted 2 months, 1 week ago
On climate, at least we have one positive message: clean energy jobs, jobs, jobs. Normally, however, a winning campaign has four messages.
Sunday morning hot air

Talking about Van Jones 14
Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago
The resignation of President Obama's green jobs adviser was touched on during several of the TV networks' Sunday morning political gabfests. Here are the relevant excerpts...
Green jobs adviser Van Jones resigns White House position 5
Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago
President Barack Obama's special adviser for green jobs has resigned under pressure from leading Republican politicians and revelations about his controversial past statements.
Paranoid racists ascendent

Thoughts on Van Jones’ resignation 37
Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago
Van Jones had to resign. It became inevitable when Gibbs offered no support.

Much of the blame for this incident lies squarely on the White House. The information used against Jones was freely available on the web. All it took was a search. I thought by hiring Jones they intended to take a chance on a real left progressive, but now it appears they were simply caught flat-footed. Either Valerie Jarrett -- Jones' champion in the upper echelons of the administration -- didn't know much about him or didn't widely share what she knew. They certainly seemed disinclined to mount a vigorous defense with Glenn Beck gnoshing on his favorite new chew toy and the health care reform battle was about to heat up again.
Bile for all

Will Glenn Beck bring down Van Jones after all? 47
Posted 2 months, 2 weeks ago
A couple days ago I ran a post defending Van Jones from some of the more absurd charges leveled at him by noted race-baiter Glenn Beck over the last month. He's not an "ex-con," he's not a communist, he's not even a czar. He's not, to pick just one of Beck's darkly hinted smears, on a top-secret mission to secure the U.S. treasury and dispense slavery reparations. He is, however, two things that scare the whitey tighties off of Beck and his tighty whitey audience: black and liberal.

It was mostly a tempest in a teabag until the last couple of days, when Jones got tagged with a few things that could very well end up being the end of his career in the executive branch.