On Monday, John McCain will deliver a speech on climate change from Portland, Oregon. In it he will lay out the framework for climate policy under a McCain administration. After a primary spent shoring up his credentials among the Republican base, this...

Though the nation's pundits have decided that the primary race is over, someone failed to get Clinton the memo -- she is determined to stay in to the bitter end.

The next primaries are in West Virginia and Kentucky, states where the number of poor whites is high and...

grist.org

Senate Democrats have just proposed a new energy bill: the Consumer-First Energy Act. It is meant as a response to the Republican bill introduced last week, which R's are currently trying to pass as an amendment to the flood insurance bill.

Now, the Republican bill -- the Drill,...

grist.org

The right-wing Heartland Institute has been making a big fuss about "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares."

Five hundred skeptical scientists? Sounds bad!

Kevin Grandia at DeSmogBlog had the radical idea of actually contacting the scientists, to see if they are being accurately characterized by Heartland.

You...

Gas prices are high, which is the worst thing that's ever happened in the history of America, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. It's a violation of the spirit of the Constitution of Independence as written by Jefferson Davis. We must declare preemptive war on gas prices before...

The whole media world is in a frenzy, yet again, over a Bush speech on climate change. A new strategy! An effort to secure a legacy! Exciting new principles and goals!

Sigh.

I hate to be the party-pooper. But we've been here before. How many times does Lucy expect us to...

Jerry Adler has a rundown on climate change in this year's presidential campaign. Somewhat miraculously for a mainstream publication like Newsweek, it's pretty good.

This is a good point:

So, ironically, McCain -- with a voting record that would put him at the bottom of the heap among Democrats -- is...

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has vetoed Senate Bill 327, whereby the state legislature would have constrained the powers of Kansas Dept. of Health and Environment Secretary Roderick Bremby, prohibited "consideration of any standards beyond the Clean Air Act"...

The bar for national climate policy just inched up again.

In April of last year Australia's State and Territory Governments commissioned a comprehensive independent study from economics professor Ross Garnaut. The Garnaut Climate Change Review is meant to...

Hillary Clinton was asked about mountaintop-removal mining in an interview on West Virginia public radio (mp3 link) this morning. Her answer was, in my eyes, terribly disappointing. Here it is:

I am concerned about it for all the reasons people state, but I think its a difficult question because...

grist.org

There was a lot going on at the Wall Street Journal's ECO:nomics conference las week, but one underlying dynamic is particularly notable. I mentioned it in my post on GE CEO Jeff Immelt's panel, but it's worth discussing at more length.

The conservative ideologues -- the WSJ editorial...

The following post was originally published on The Nation's guest blog, Passing Through, where I was in residence throughout February.

It is a rudimentary introduction to carbon cap and trade systems and the question of allocating permits, an argument (or three) in favor of auctioning permits, and a review...

grist.org

You're likely aware that the notorious Exxon Valdez case is back in court yet again. Yesterday, the Most Profitable Company of All Time argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that it shouldn't have to pay $2.5 billion in damages to Alaskans harmed by the spill. (That...

grist.org

I have predicted that Al Gore won't endorse a candidate during the primary. I still think that's probably true, and appropriate. But I'm starting to wonder.

What if Obama's momentum -- from SC and his recent endorsements -- gives him just enough juice to reach near-parity with Clinton...

It's conventional wisdom that Clinton and Obama are fairly close on policy, so the choice between them will come down to "character" and theories of change. While I think that's broadly accurate, there are some differences in their voting records, and recently Elana...

grist.org

On national security, Brian Katulis says progressives need a story to tell, and Matt Yglesias says they need some confidence. On climate change I'd make basically the same points: the progressive line is too much prose and too little poetry, and it's delivered from a defensive posture. I...

I argued the other day (and Chris Mooney argued here) that we'd be better off waiting until 2009 to push for climate legislation, since anything likely to be passed this year will be fatally weakened and the political terrain is likely to be much friendlier next year.

I do...

grist.org

Wow. You don't see gall this unmitigated every day.

Here's Pete Domenici, with a "Statement on Renewable Energy Tax Credits in Economic Stimulus Package":

Over the last several years, it is apparent that America's renewable energy industry has shown great promise. Much of the growth of these industries,...

Today, Google announced it's investing $10 million in eSolar, a company that builds solar thermal power plants, as part of its RE<C project. Here's what eSolar has to say about itself (PDF):

To serve the renewable electricity needs of utility-scale energy providers, eSolar has developed a...

Now that Congress is back, there's been a mini-flurry of stories about the prospects of climate legislation this year. See Politico here and here, a really superb analysis of Lieberman-Warner's chances by Darren Samuelsohn (sub rqd), and another E&E story today on trade groups panicking.

Politico's...