U.S.

Obama Tested BY US-UAE Nuke Deal

August 4, 2009

In her hour-long appearance on Meet The Press last weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made much of the threat that North Korea poses not only as a potentially unpredictable nuclear weapons deployment state, but also as a proliferation agent. Similarly, the question of possible repurposing of civil nuclear technology has been a talking point in US policy on Iran, and that question specifically has been a bone of contention in the triangular posturing between the US, Iran and Russia.

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Lobbyists Forge Letters Urging Vote Against Waxman-Markey Climate Bill

July 31, 2009

Freshman congressman Tom Perriello, a Democrat representing the 5th district of Virginia, had a hard decision to make in voting for the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES). His hard fought seat and freshman status left him vulnerable to Republican attacks vehemently opposed to the bill, yet he voted for the legislation nonetheless, believing it the right thing to do.

The decision to do so was made even harder after he received five letters from local constituency groups, including a Hispanic advocacy group and a local chapter of the NAACP, opposing the legislation. Or so he at first thought. According to an investigation by DailyProgress, it turns out those letters weren’t what they appeared to be and were in fact forged by Washington DC-area lobbyists.

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Red Rocks, Rock n’ Roll, and FDR’s New Deal

July 30, 2009

I’m such a geek. This week, I’m headed to the legendary Red Rocks Park, in Morrison, Colorado, for four sold-out nights of music from the Vermont-based band, Phish, at what is arguably one of the greatest outdoor music venues in the United States, if not the world. And I will, at some point or another, be thinking about the New Deal.

That’s right, in the middle of some twenty-minute swirling, epic jam, my mind will undoubtedly stray a little and wonder about the millions of unemployed Americans that were employed during and after the Great Depression building thousands of roads, bridges, post offices, schools, dams and, well, amazing places like Red Rocks.

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Cap and Trade, Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin: Auto-Tuned [video]

July 29, 2009

I’m well aware that poring over the details of cap and trade can be a little boring. But thanks to the folks at Auto-Tune the News, all that has changed. If you haven’t seen this yet (or even if you have) prepare to laugh.

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Sarah Palin Farewell Speech: As Performed by William Shatner

July 29, 2009

Outgoing Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s farewell speech to the people of Alaska left more than a few people scratching their heads about the tone, message, and even the general point of it. I was particularly struck by the allusions to nature, the turning of the seasons, Alaskan wildlife, and the climate. And While Palin’s chain of independent clauses may have sounded a little disjointed to the untrained ear, they didn’t to William Shatner.

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Obama Declassifies Spy Satellite Images Revealing Climate Change Devastation Bush Tried to Hide

July 29, 2009

Images that were kept secret under President Bush have just been declassified by the Obama administration. These images reveal what scientists have predicted: “In recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.” The Guardian reports:

The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

One particularly striking set of images – selected from the 1,000 photographs released – includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow. One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore. A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.

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House GOP Hopes to Hobble Clean Air Act Regulation of Greenhouse Gases

July 28, 2009

House GOP hopes to blog EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions House Republican Representatives Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Michael Conaway of Texas hope to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act – come hell or high water.

In the spring of 2007 the Supreme Court ruled the Clean Air Act provides the authority for the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas pollution. The ruling cleared the way for the EPA to consider scientific evidence to determine if greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to public health, and if so, should be regulated. Despite that decision, little headway was made under the Bush Administration and then-EPA administrator Stephen Johnson.

The stage was set for change when the Obama administration took office, and the GOP immediately set out to block the EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in anticipation of action from the EPA finally moving forward and acting on the court’s ruling. Here’s how it has played out:

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YOUR Beer with Obama

July 27, 2009

Unless you spent last week celebrating Apollo 11’s fortieth anniversary cut off from the world in your backyard model of the lunar module, you are no doubt familiar with the story of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s arrest two weeks ago, the “race in America” sturm and drang that surrounded the story last week, and the headline-grabbing role President Obama stumbled into at the end of his prime time presser.

An “American” story of race and class, the arrest and aftermath narrative now seems to have settled comfortably into a hackneyed old gender stereotype; namely, that there is no better way for three “guys” to sort things out than over a beer. We know what the chatter will be about, and Cambridge’s local reports that it will be conducted over Blue Moon if Sergeant Crowley does the choosing, which leads me to ask:

What’s on the agenda for your beer with Obama?

I’ll post my top three items below, but I’m most interested in your comments. You can tell me what you would be drinking if you like, but I’m more interested in your talking points. What are the two or three key messages you would deliver to the White House on energy and environmental policy?

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Californians Still Not Ready for New Offshore Oil

July 27, 2009

California State assembly rejects offshore oil, budget still passes

Shortly after winning approval from the California State Senate, a controversial deal that would have allowed the first new offshore oil leases in California state waters in forty years, was rejected by the California State Assembly by a vote of 43-30.

The deal would have revived a lease that had been rejected by the State Lands Commission earlier this year and allow a single oil company, Plains Exploration and Production Company, to bypass the existing public environmental review process and gain access to oil reserves off of the Santa Barbara coast — the site of a massive spill in 1969 that poured 80,000 barrels of crude into the Pacific and onto Southern California beaches, effectively halting the issuing of any new offshore leases in state waters.

Despite improvements in offshore drilling technology, small spills are still fairly routine. In 2007, the oil industry spilled 2,256 barrels of oil, fuels and chemicals, into the oceans off America’s coasts. Even though natural oil seepage rates are much higher, an estimated 1,700 barrels per day off the coast of North America, Californians are still leery of another Santa Barbara.

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Three Ways Obama Wins Republicans on Climate Change

July 24, 2009

$Obama\'s$ Energy didn’t get a sniff in last night’s Obama press conference. That wasn’t really a surprise given the way that health care has elbowed its way into the political spotlight. You can count climate change among the “priorities” now in the shadows. Health care is all touch-and-feel…it plays with everyone.

Climate change? Not so much. If Jon Stewart is snoozing, we know that the rest of America – a goodly percentage of which is far across the spectrum from Stewart and outwardly hostile to climate change arguments – is tuned all the way out. That is partly because climate change, energy and the environment still are considered Birkenstock and granola issues. The Obama operatives that are still engaged on climate change have finally started to tweak the message in a way that might help sell a bill even to science skeptics and the generally apathetic.

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