Rethinking the Economy

One of the reasons why most folks in the US eat lots of dairy, meat, and junk food instead of organic, locally grown fruits and vegetables is because it’s a lot cheaper – the government subsidizes the cost of meat, dairy, and junk food. What if we flipped those subsidies around? Michael Pollan says it [...]

[Read more →]

I really would like to stop writing about the Solyndra pseudo-scandal, but the Republicans are making it hard. The latest: House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, who’s been leading the charge, explains why denouncing the idea of government loan guarantees while fighting hard to get them for your district isn’t hypocrisy:
Issa [...]

[Read more →]

This just in: engineers are pissed off enough that they are calling politicians on their shit around the climate crisis (hat tip to Jess Zimmerman):
The technology needed to cut the world’s greenhouse gas emissions by 85% by 2050 already exists, according to a joint statement by eleven of the world’s largest engineering [...]

[Read more →]

The dustup over Solyndra’s failure is getting more entertaining. Courtesy of a NYT editorial, a great stat. Even by Republican standards, this is pretty impressive:
at least 10 of the 23 Republicans on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee — including Mr. Issa — have lobbied the Department of Energy to approve green projects [...]

[Read more →]

What will the deficit-cutting mania mean for the environment? In a sick, twisted way, says Jeff Goodell, it might be good news:
environmental and clean energy activists have no choice now but to reevaluate their strategy now the federal government is being strangled to death…
As Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress [...]

[Read more →]

Does pushing for cleaner energy kill jobs & growth? No, says Google (via Grist’s Stephen Lacey). In fact, waiting will cost us dearly:
Google, a leader of innovation in the digital economy, says that without a private and public focus on innovation in renewables, storage, and electric vehicles, the cost of delaying the clean energy [...]

[Read more →]

Going after players like the Chamber of Commerce is a good idea for greens. But, says Grist’s Dave Roberts, how about also rattling some Dem’s cages?
It would be a terrible mistake for climate hawks to abandon the top-down/money field of battle and decamp entirely to People Politics…. The problem is that greens have [...]

[Read more →]

A little more than a year ago, I wrote a snarky post about Bill McKibben’s plans for 350.org; it didn’t seem like he had a real analysis of power or a real game plan. A year and a quarter later, it’s a different story. 350.org has merged with 1Sky and Naomi Klein [...]

[Read more →]

An interesting idea from Alexis Madrigal, via an interview with Grist’s David Roberts:
DR: Your book is about a series of failures, but it shows that there are better and worse failures. Some increase our knowledge, but in some cases, a bunch of work and thought and science just goes poof. How do we fail well [...]

[Read more →]

So far, most economic models have shown that cutting greenhouse gas emissions will reduce growth, but only by a little. But a study commissioned by the German government argues that it could actually increase GDP — and not just by a little.
Increasing the EU’s 2020 greenhouse gas reduction target from 20% to 30% could [...]

[Read more →]