Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Better speculate than never

Speculation runs rampant as Dems reportedly reach a deal on climate bill 4
Posted 6 months, 2 weeks ago
House leaders have reportedly reached a tentative deal on a climate and energy bill -- and in the absence of details, speculation is rampant about how the bill has been weakened or otherwise changed.
Cool Companies, Part 1: How the best businesses boost profits and productivity by reducing GHGs 0
Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago
Baracking in the free world

Obama’s green achievements at 100 days 8
Posted 7 months ago
What have Barack Obama and his administration done to meet green expectations in their first 100 days?
Hot air

Rep. Michele Bachmann says CO2 is ‘a natural byproduct of nature’ 5
Posted 7 months ago
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) explains the 'science' of carbon dioxide on the floor of the House.
Sunset the rip-offsets

One simple change that could vastly improve Waxman-Markey 1
Posted 7 months ago
Certainly the weakest part of Waxman-Markey is the 2 billion rip-offsets that polluters are allowed to purchase each year in place of reducing their own greenhouse gas emissions. After all, total U.S. GHGs in 2005 were about 7.2 billion tons.
TerraCab confessions

Emission-free TerraCabs could hit Seattle streets at no cost to you, or the planet 6
Posted 7 months, 1 week ago
Lookin' for a free ride this summer? A fleet of TerraCabs could soon provide free -- and emission-free -- rides around Seattle.
The bill formerly known as ...

Washington’s cap-and-trade legislation no longer involves cap and trade 0
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago
Washington state's cap-and-trade legislation is no more. Or rather, it has been so stripped of capping and trading that it is no longer worthy of that moniker.
Share your feelings

How to comment on the EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health 1
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago
Tell the EPA what you think of its finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health and welfare -- it's easy.
Clear and present endangerment

EPA says greenhouse-gas emissions a threat to public health 25
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago
The EPA has determined that greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health -- a long-expected finding that moves the Obama administration closer to regulating CO2.
Carbon goes the wrong way

Power plant performance down in 2008 6
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago
Even though total carbon emissions from power plants fell in 2008, the carbon intensity of the power sector -- that is, the amount of CO2 released per megawatt-hour of power produced -- increased last year.
More dirty hands needed

Are we hearing enough from real-world climate pollution reducers? 3
Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago
It's well know that actual markets don't behave like Ideal Markets full of Rational Actors -- that real-world markets are lumpy and distorted in various ways, full of high barriers to entry, imperfect knowledge, inertias of culture and habit, irrationalisms, what have you. These things can only be discovered through real on-the-ground experience in such markets, or through bottom-up, microeconomic (as opposed to macroeconomic) study.

My observation: There's too little of that knowledge integrated in energy/climate policy discussion.
Like fairies, unicorns, and clean coal ...

The breakthrough technology illusion 0
Posted 7 months, 3 weeks ago
This post will explain why some sort of massive government Apollo program or Manhattan project to develop new breakthrough technologies is not a priority component of the effort to stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm.
Deny this!

Survey says: Americans concerned about global warming, want policy change, like money 1
Posted 7 months, 4 weeks ago
A survey that is both heartening with respect to the public perceptions of global warming (and needs for policy response thereto) and frustrating for what they suggest about the policy conversation in Washington.
Need another hedge on that row?

Memo to WSJ: You can do better than that 0
Posted 7 months, 4 weeks ago
The media misinforms the public about climate science in many different ways. One, as we’ve just seen, is by publishing long-debunked disinformation over and over again.
Claussen in a Pickle

Does Pew Center’s Eileen Claussen get the dire nature of our climate predicament? 0
Posted 7 months, 4 weeks ago
Waxman impressions

Waxman-Markey bill gets a B+ 0
Posted 8 months ago
House Energy and Commerce Chair Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Energy and Environment Subcommittee Chair Ed Markey (D-Mass.) are releasing their long-awaited draft energy and climate bill today.
The end of an era

Closing the door on building new coal-fired power plants in America 2
Posted 8 months ago
A poor strategy for halting climate change

Reducing emissions isn’t an economy killer 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
The last thing we need at this juncture is for Americans to begin thinking that efforts to address climate change will plunge the economy back into the throes of deep recession.
Endangerment ahead

EPA tells White House that greenhouse gases are threat to public welfare 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
The Environmental Protection Agency told the White House on Friday that climate change is a danger to public welfare -- a move that takes the administration a step closer to regulating planet-warming greenhouse gases.
Pep squad

Obama hypes the green aspects of his budget plan 0
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago
President Obama is giving top billing to clean energy and green jobs as he promotes his $3.6 trillion budget plan.

Addressing a group of clean-tech entrepreneurs and researchers on Monday, the president noted that his proposed budget includes $150 billion over 10 years for direct investments in clean energy and efficiency, as well as $75 billion to make permanent a tax credit for research and experimentation. "At this moment of necessity we need you, we need inventiveness," he told the crowd.

"We can remain the world's leading importer of foreign oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy," Obama continued. "We can allow climate change to wreck unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can create those jobs right here in America." The event was the first in a series of budget pep talks the president plans to give this week.