Liberal Talk Radio

One of the big knocks on increasing the cost of emitting carbon as a solution to global warming is that it’s “regressive,” i.e., it hurts the poor disproportionately. I don’t really buy that argument, for a number of reasons. One, the poor are going to be hit the worst by climate change, which [...]

Even Al Qaeda celebrates Earth Day:
Al-Zawahri spoke on a wide range of topics in Tuesday’s message. . . .
. . .
Al-Zawahri even addressed global warming, saying it showed “how criminal, brutal and greedy the Western Crusader world is, with America at the top.”
He predicted global warming would “would make the world more sympathetic to [...]

I’m glad to see that Bush has put out a weak-ass climate change proposal. It means that the Bush, Cheney, and the polluters who bankroll them are concerned enough about the chances of real climate change legislation coming out of the Senate that they feel the need to try to pre-emptively kneecap it. [...]

It’s hard to get outraged at American Airlines for flying a plane with just five passengers from Chicago to London. After all, they lost a ton of money on it, and they just made the business decision that made the most financial sense. So I’m glad that instead the environmental group who brought [...]

Wanna build a coal plant? Starting soon, the banks may not be willing to give you a loan. Why? They know that some kind of carbon tax (or cap-and-trade system) is coming, and they realize your little coal plant might be a long-term money loser.
It just goes to show how policies — or [...]

The bill I blogged about last week on climate change and the GMA is out of committee, says Josh Feit, but that may or may not be a good thing:
Yesterday, the bill got the yay vote out of committee and the green light from leadership to get it into Rules (the last stop before it [...]

A genius idea, methinks. Let stormwater get naturally filtered into the ground, instead of channeling it to a sewage system where it needs to be treated.
Downside? Well, it will make it that much harder to find out how much blow you all used last weekend (so maybe that’s an upside, actually?).

Following up on this post from last week, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle highlights some efforts underway in CA to combat climate change via smart growth:
In Oakland, Fruitvale Village demonstrates how infill development, where new land uses are created on sites previously used for another purpose such as manufacturing, can encourage economic revitalization [...]

I’ve long harped on the fact that changing land use policies is central to curbing emissions. We simply can’t cut greenhouse gases substantially without changing our living, traveling, and commuting patterns. In that vein, here’s a good bill being debated in Olympia that would tie climate change to the State’s Growth Management Act. [...]

Credit where due. Wal-Mart is rolling out some newer, more energy efficient stores:
The High Efficiency stores use technology tested and developed in two experimental green stores Wal-Mart opened in 2005 in McKinney, Texas, and Aurora, Colorado, including a white roof that deflects the sun’s heat.
The latest generation takes the energy savings built into the [...]