|
|
U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, speaking to Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner in a new interview. Obama went on to defend his nuanced positions on the Keystone XL pipeline and Canadian tar sands, arguing that while he was unhappy with Republican attempts to circumvent the pipeline approval process, Canada was likely to develop the tar sands no matter what [...]
Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, speaking to supporters in Gettysburg, PA last night after losing the Republican primary in Illinois to Mitt Romney. Santorum has repeatedly emphasized that he—unlike Romney and former Speaker Newt Gingrich—has always rejected the scientific consensus that man-made greenhouse gases are causing dangerous climate change. (For their part, Romney and Gingrich [...]
I have a brilliant idea that will solve the nation’s energy problem. We need to invest in a massive research program—I mean Apollo Project-sized—to invent a silver bullet. Because all I keep hearing is that we’re all waiting for a silver bullet to solve our energy woes, if only we could find one. Take President [...]
Last week the climate world was rocked — or at least, strongly buffeted — by the publication of memos that were allegedly from the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit research group that takes a strongly skeptical attitude toward climate science. The memos detailed budget information — including news that groups like the archconservative Koch Foundation and corporations like [...]
Before we move to the green news of 2012, let’s take a look at some holiday leftovers: like Climategate. This past November—right before the latest U.N. climate change summit—an unknown person or person released another batch of hacked emails from the databases of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at Britain’s East Anglia University. As I [...]
RICK PERRY, Texas governor and Republican candidate for President, scolding a college student who questioned his support for shale gas fracking at an event in Decorah, Iowa. Sorry, governor—there has indeed been a proven case of groundwater contamination from fracking. Earlier this month the Environmental Protection Agency released a draft report that concluded chemicals from [...]
Given that there are already more than 2.3 million miles of pipelines in the U.S.—carrying petroleum products, chemicals and natural gas—it might seem odd that so much political energy has been expended on a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline. Yet the controversial Keystone XL pipeline—which would cross the upper Midwest to carry crude from Canadian oil sands [...]
President Obama came into office promising to restore scientific integrity to policymaking, but his Administration has allowed politics to trump science several times—including with this week’s move to keep the emergency contraceptive Plan B from being sold without a prescription. But science—in climate change and in other areas—can only tell us so much. Ethics and [...]
There was a time—not that long ago—when climate change was almost a bipartisan issue. Both Barack Obama and John McCain said on the 2008 campaign trail that they were worried about the threat of climate change, and they both had relatively similar carbon cap-and-trade proposals. Seriously, this happened—I’m almost positive that I didn’t hallucinate the [...]
From TIME contributor Joe Jackson: As oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in May 2010, and then CEO Tony Hayward made his infamous statement that he wanted his life back, he likely had little fear of it being taken in a court of law. But that reality could be [...]
