Liberal Talk Radio

View of Mt. Adams from within the Goat Rocks Wilderness, taken during a hiking trip last summer.
Just to put Earth Day in context, a couple of recent headlines from around Western Washington:
On the plus side, the newly-Democratic congress passed a bill to create the Wild Sky Wilderness, one of the first wilderness areas created in [...]

Seattle is thinking about some really aggressive recycling programs to avoid building a new landfill. Good idea. But of all the proposals on the table, only one has to do with actually reducing the amount of trash we generate:
• Ban or tax some products, such as plastic bags, disposable diapers, plastic beverage bottles and [...]

Is the Carbon Tax a better idea than a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gases? That’s the question. (See also Time.)
Carbon taxes are simpler to administer and harder to cheat on. On the other hand, cap and trade systems guarantee a reduction. With a tax, it’s possible that the system will [...]

I’m sure that Drudge, Limbaugh, and the other right-wingers who attacked Al Gore’s “hypocritical” power consumption at his Tennessee home will rally to his side now that it’s been revealed that onerous local regulations prevented him from installing solar panels on his roof.
It’s clear that the city of Nashville hates freedom, and wants to tell [...]

As the Professor has often noted, corporate liability concerns will drive the global warming debate:
“What businesses need to move forward is a mandatory policy that finally will address the global financial risk of climate change,” Mindy S. Lubber, Ceres president, said in an interview. “It’s very hard for businesses to act without certainty.”
(via Autopia, which [...]

Win some, lose some.
Anyone headed down to Mt. Rainier — be careful! From what I can tell, the park’s infrastructure was badly damaged in last December’s storms. Much of it won’t re-open for months or, given the backlog of NPS maintenance projects, probably years.

Thanks to Muscleman Political Consulting, LLC:
Late last year, [British Columbia Premier Gordon] Campbell sought advice from Schwarzenegger, who had reversed his own sagging political fortunes by championing some of the toughest environmental regulations in the United States.
Schwarzenegger dispatched his chief environmental adviser, Terry Tamminen, to Victoria, B.C., where he worked quietly with Campbell’s staff to [...]

Congrats to Western WA’s Jay Inslee for being named to the “Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.” Inslee’s always been a good voice on environmental issues, and if his appearances at Drinking Liberally are any indication, a super nice guy.

You mean you write a story about Bangkok’s huge success this decade curtailing pollution and you don’t mention the city’s fancy new Skytrain? No, actually, it’s in there:
Giving pollution a name was far easier than cleaning the air. And as pedestrians in Bangkok can attest, some of the poison still lingers. The city still [...]

Following up on last week’s post, where I alienated all of our Southern Nevada readers by refusing to provide them with adequate water supplies, John Judis writes [$] in The New Republic today about a new study on the fate of the Colorado Basin.
There are two main reasons for the crisis: one, the [...]