#US Senate

I might more accurately call this post The Catastrophe of the Senate, but that won’t get us anywhere – for the moment.  In any event, as you know by now, the concatenation of Republican anti-environmentalism and fear (and no doubt loathing), plus intransigence from Democratic Senators from states where coal and oil are king, has […]

(Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with Senator John Kerry and Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy Carol Browner during a media conference in Washington. Photo: AP) If you follow the climate and energy story, I’m not telling you something you don’t know – or couldn’t have predicted:  the US […]

For the moment, please refer to my comment on Joe Romm’s tirade about President Obama’s “failed presidency” in light of the decision by the Senate Democratic leadership’s to punt on climate change and energy.  If Obama had tried harder, Romm opines, we’d have cap-and-trade.  I have enormous respect for Romm’s perspectives and his energy, but […]

David Leonhardt, an economics columnist and blogger for the “NY Times,” has just taken a good swing at the compelling arguments for a cap-and-trade bill.  See Saving Energy, and Its Cost.   (For a recent post from me on this and an exchange with an opponent, see The Facts of Cap and Trade.)  Leonhardt has about […]

Okay, the Obama Administration is gathering up the laurel wreaths for its landmark victory on health care reform.  Nancy Pelosi, my all-time personal favorite Speaker of the House, deserves a lioness’s share of the credit as well.  Here’s a happy picture at the bill signing today.  Nancy looks pretty darn jazzed! But this blog is […]

There’s been a lot of hoopla recently about the question of whether or not Barack Obama will go to Copenhagen.  He settled that yesterday by saying that he would go if he’s needed to finalize an agreement.  This story from Reuters quotes the President:  “If I am confident that all of the countries involved are […]

Paul Krugman had a couple of columns, today and Friday, with some complementary posts at his blog, “The Conscience of a Liberal,” on the economics of cap-and-trade as well as the dire situation in which we find ourselves relative to warming and its impacts.  To refute some of the nonsensical – and false – claims […]

I wrote recently about some solid policy analysis that would move the US off its massive dependency on coal for electricity toward a greater reliance on natural gas – until renewables fully kick into their potential.  (Limitless, not incidentally.)  A few days after my post, there was a depressing article in the “NY Times” about […]

Senatus Populusque Romanus – The Senate and the People of Rome.  The old Roman Senate was, on paper, representative of the people.  Because the US is a representative democracy, the US Senate was meant, up to a certain point, to perpetuate this same principle.  It was, however, certainly less representative, from Day One, than its […]

The past week of events – from a U.S. Senate hearing, to remarks by China’s State Council, to high-level talks in Beijing – have scattered a layer of rich soil from which robust US-China cooperation on climate change might spring forth. However, that soil is not uniform in content. The issue of quantifiable emissions reductions, […]