Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
A little ray of sunlight peeked through the clouds on Wednesday, the opening day of the latest round of the climate treaty talks, taking place in Accra, Ghana. The meeting began with a workshop on “sectoral approaches.” Country presentations focused...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
Nine members of Congress, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, have introduced a malicious little bill – curiously numbered H.R. 6666 – to block the regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and any other...
Posted by David Doniger in Greening China , Solving Global Warming
I just returned from a week of talks with Chinese experts and officials in Beijing on global warming. They are intensely interested in how American climate policy may change under a new president next year. And they are ready to...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
So today we learned an odd new twist in the White House's refusal to let EPA regulate global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act. Felicity Barringer reports in the New York Times today that last December officials of the...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
It’s Wednesday afternoon at 3:15, and looking out my window in downtown Washington, I am watching a huge thunderstorm buffet the city. The sky grew dark. Lightning, thunder, wind, and rain. Tornado warnings -- very rare here in the nation's...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
President Bush’s advisors claimed this week that using the Clean Air Act and other existing laws to fight global warming will cause “a regulatory train wreck.” The only “train wreck” we’ll have is if the president’s own engineers and switchmen...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
So last night I caught the classic film, “A Man for All Seasons,” about Sir Thomas More’s principled refusal to take orders from King Henry VIII. There was a character in there who reminded me of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
Want a fun read? Check out EPA’s January 18 letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, Chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, explaining why Administrator Stephen Johnson doesn’t want the public to see documents showing why his professional and legal...
Posted by David Doniger in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
John Adams, our second president, famously said: "Facts are stubborn things." In a 1988 slip of the tongue, Ronald Reagan said: "Facts are stupid things." For the Bush administration, the slip of the tongue has been going on for seven...
Posted by David Doniger in Curbing Pollution , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Seven years ago, incoming President Bush brashly withdrew America from the international effort to stop global warming. Then national security advisor Condaleeza Rice told European diplomats that the Kyoto treaty was dead. That only galvanized the rest of the world...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
UPDATE: I participated in a round-table discussion of the Bali talks on the NewsHour on PBS on Dec. 17th -- please see the video and transcript. Late Saturday in Bali, after overcoming last-minute U.S. objections, more than 180 countries agreed to...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
As an American citizen attending climate treaty talks on behalf of NRDC, for too many years I’ve had to endure watching my country’s government play the role of “Dr. No.” Just wait, I’d tell people from other countries, things are...
Posted by David Doniger in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, together with Senators Diane Feinstein and Daniel Inouye and other leading Senators, have pulled off agreement on the first significant increase in fuel economy standards since 1985.Under the new fuel economy legislation hammered out on Friday, new...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is not going to take it any more. He and Attorney-General Jerry Brown are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today, because the federal government is standing in the way of state efforts – led by California...
Posted by David Doniger in Solving Global Warming
Speaking at a meeting of the world’s biggest global warming polluters in Washington today, President Bush said “the moment is now” for action. But he let the moment go by without making any change in his dogged refusal to put real...
