The latest story out of Copenhagen has to do with a leaked draft agreement put together by Denmark, the U.S., and the UK. According to the Guardian's breathless coverage, the leak has climate talks in "disarray," with developing countries at war with rich countries and the whole edifice...

Paul Krugman had a post the other day on the "aura of inevitability" and how it finally seems to be working for progressives instead of against them. I think he's on to something.

Summer was brutal for greens. "Cap and tax" attacks were bouncing around the Foxosphere. House Dems...

The greenosphere is all abuzz with the news that a few Republican Senators, led by Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), have signaled that they’re open to coming around on the climate bill if certain conditions are met. In classic form, Senate Dems have responded by rushing to signal they they...

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...

SEE UPDATE BELOW

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. Jones is not an "ex-con," he's not a communist, he's not even a czar. He's not,...

A while back I lampooned a Glenn Beck segment on Van Jones, who's an advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to Beck, Jones is the man on the inside for a vast cryptosocialist conspiracy involving the Apollo Alliance, Color of Change, the Center for American...

grist.org

The other day I highlighted a new piece from Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker, which was critical of No Impact Man and other “stunts” in hyper-green living. Mainly I used it as an excuse to point to my old piece on the civic sphere, which,...

grist.org

In a Tuesday conference call with Iowa agricultural reporters, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) offered some state-of-the-art Republican doubletalk on climate change (maybe he read it in Glenn Beck's book). This is worth reading in full, in part to admire the blithely inconsistent muddle of it all, but...

grist.org

Things are pretty grim among progressives these days, what with health care bogging down and climate legislation on indefinite delay; right wing crazies everywhere and Blue Dogs intransigent; the organized coalition that brought Obama to office fractured and ineffective. Disillusionment is...

grist.org

I was fully prepared to hate this op-ed from T. Boone Pickens and Ted Turner, mainly because Pickens is kind of shady and I’m generally sick of rich old establishment white guys telling us how to transform our energy systems. However! It turned out to be pretty...

grist.org

One of the most excellent pieces of the climate bill now awaiting defenestration at the hands of Senate Blue Dogs is its creation of a Clean Energy Bank that would help finance nascent clean energy projects. More specifically, it is “an autonomous Clean Energy Deployment Administration...

grist.org

I just returned to Seattle from Netroots Nation, the yearly gathering of progressive bloggers, journalists, and activists. Last year, in Austin, the atmosphere was absolutely electric, with the election approaching and a clear sense of battle lines drawn, victory within reach. Also, lots of great parties.

This year,...

grist.org

The New York Times turned over some of its valuable opinion space to Harvard economics professor Gregory Mankiw last weekend, so that he could discuss the merits of various carbon policies. His record on that score is not great, and he...

grist.org

It's now fairly widely understood that Cash for Clunkers has worked great as a stimulus program but is negligible as an emissions-reduction program. That's fine -- it did what it was supposed to do. Now that we know how well people respond to cash incentives, though, it's time to...

grist.org

Glenn Beck has uncovered a plot! (Yes, another one.)

Turns out Van Jones, President Obama's green jobs czar, is going to coordinate a vast radical/communist/black nationalist takeover of our sweet, virginal land of liberty. Most diabolical of all, he's going to do it by organizing...

This column from Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times really pushes my buttons. There’s something beneath the surface that is downright pathological, and not at all unique to Rachman. It besets most political pundits on this issue. I’ll try to dig it out.

The premise of Rachman’s column is...

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee and coauthor of the ACES bill passed by the House in June. Naturally, political observers are curious about his thoughts on the fight to pass climate/energy legislation this year, but in media interviews he tends...

grist.org

There isn’t nearly as much coal left as most people think. “Clean coal” will run down limited reserves even faster. If humanity doesn’t begin massive, sustained investment in renewable power sources immediately, civilization could be at risk before the end of the...

While I was away on vacation (it was wonderful, thanks for asking), the Washington Post editorial page featured opinion pieces from Sarah Palin and George Will, two of conservatism's leading leading, um, thinkers, revealing a great deal about the WaPo editorial page and the quality of conservative thinking.

Rebuttal...

grist.org

Let's take a look at a few studies that have come out recently and see if we can find a common thread.

• A West Virginia University researcher found that "coal mining costs Appalachians five times more in early deaths as the industry provides to the region in jobs, taxes...