The New Republic

The New Republic

Is climate change a wedge issue versus Romney? “Looked at another way, though, climate change might not be a bad thing for Obama to talk about—as a wedge issue, with certain audiences. Specifically, the well-educated swing voters who backed him last time around but may be taking a look at Romney, who showed strength with upscale voters in the Republican primary. National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar recently argued that this is a real vulnerability for Obama: It’s easy to forget, now that Obama is preaching a populist message on the campaign trail, that a major part of his support came from the very 1 percent that he’s now calling on to pay their fair share in taxes. Obama carried the super-wealthy—those making $200,000 or more a year—with 52 percent of the vote, 17 points more thanJohn Kerry won in 2004. But now surveys show Obama losing significant ground with affluent voters, trailing Romney 49 percent to 43 percent among those making $100,000 or more in the latest Quinnipiac poll—his worst showing among any economic demographic.” - Alec MacGillis (and a quote from Josh Kraushaar), Is Climate Change A Wedge Issue vs Romney? Photo courtesy of Earth beat Radio
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Is climate change a wedge issue versus Romney?

“Looked at another way, though, climate change might not be a bad thing for Obama to talk about—as a wedge issue, with certain audiences. Specifically, the well-educated swing voters who backed him last time around but may be taking a look at Romney, who showed strength with upscale voters in the Republican primary. National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar recently argued that this is a real vulnerability for Obama:

It’s easy to forget, now that Obama is preaching a populist message on the campaign trail, that a major part of his support came from the very 1 percent that he’s now calling on to pay their fair share in taxes. Obama carried the super-wealthy—those making $200,000 or more a year—with 52 percent of the vote, 17 points more thanJohn Kerry won in 2004. But now surveys show Obama losing significant ground with affluent voters, trailing Romney 49 percent to 43 percent among those making $100,000 or more in the latest Quinnipiac poll—his worst showing among any economic demographic.”

- Alec MacGillis (and a quote from Josh Kraushaar), Is Climate Change A Wedge Issue vs Romney?

Photo courtesy of Earth beat Radio

Why has Romney changed his tune on gas prices? “Curiously overlooked, though, is just what a shift this rhetoric is from the approach that Romney took on the issue of gas prices while governor of Massachusetts. Befitting his profile as a moderate Republican who cared about the environment, Governor Romney responded to price spikes by describing them as the natural result of global market pressures and by calling for increases in fuel efficiency—the same approach that he now derides Obama for taking as president.” - Alec MacGillis, “When Romney Liked High Gas Prices”
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Why has Romney changed his tune on gas prices?

“Curiously overlooked, though, is just what a shift this rhetoric is from the approach that Romney took on the issue of gas prices while governor of Massachusetts. Befitting his profile as a moderate Republican who cared about the environment, Governor Romney responded to price spikes by describing them as the natural result of global market pressures and by calling for increases in fuel efficiency—the same approach that he now derides Obama for taking as president.”

- Alec MacGillis, “When Romney Liked High Gas Prices”

One year after the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, why has recovery been so slow in Japan? “But, according to Japan’s NHK news, 110,000 people are still living in temporary housing communities. One city official I met in Rikuzen Takata was still sleeping in his car in July. Even today, many are unable to find jobs or regular income. A December survey of the largest temporary housing community, near the city of Ishinomaki, revealed that 47 percent of households included someone out of work. The situation was even worse for those involved in the fishing industry: Only 10 percent of approximately 200 Ishinomaki seafood-related companies have reopened. Small business owners cannot rebuild because, having lost their collateral in the tsunami, they are unable to obtain new loans. Even those who were not directly affected by the tsunami have found it hard to make a living in post-disaster Japan. -Ethan Segal, “One Year After Fukushima, Why Has Progress Been So Slow in Japan?” Photo courtesy of National Geographic
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One year after the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, why has recovery been so slow in Japan?

“But, according to Japan’s NHK news, 110,000 people are still living in temporary housing communities. One city official I met in Rikuzen Takata was still sleeping in his car in July. Even today, many are unable to find jobs or regular income. A December survey of the largest temporary housing community, near the city of Ishinomaki, revealed that 47 percent of households included someone out of work. The situation was even worse for those involved in the fishing industry: Only 10 percent of approximately 200 Ishinomaki seafood-related companies have reopened. Small business owners cannot rebuild because, having lost their collateral in the tsunami, they are unable to obtain new loans. Even those who were not directly affected by the tsunami have found it hard to make a living in post-disaster Japan.

-Ethan Segal, “One Year After Fukushima, Why Has Progress Been So Slow in Japan?”

Photo courtesy of National Geographic

Could a carbon tax fix the deficit and the environment? “Most carbon tax proposals envision an initial tax rate of $15 per ton of carbon dioxide. The carbon tax is meant not to raise revenue but to change behavior: The ultimate goal is to have polluters avoid paying the tax by shifting to renewables. Nonetheless, Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf, in a 2007 paper, calculated that a $15 carbon tax would raise about $82.5 billion per year, which would easily cover the $70 billion cost of extending the payroll tax cut through 2013. To maintain pressure on polluters to keep reducing carbon emissions, the carbon tax would have to rise steadily. Inglis and Flake’s bill would raise it to $53 in its twentieth year, which is about what’s envisioned in a report by Robert Shapiro, Nam Pham, and Arun Malik of the private U.S. Climate Task Force. The task force calculated that the revenues could keep the Social Security tax a little below its current lowered rate and still leave 10 percent of the money to pay for other programs to fight climate change. Alternatively, you could use this money to provide even greater payroll tax relief for people at lower incomes.” -Timothy Noah, “The Best Way to Fix the Deficit—and the Environment” Photo courtesy of the New York Times
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Could a carbon tax fix the deficit and the environment?

“Most carbon tax proposals envision an initial tax rate of $15 per ton of carbon dioxide. The carbon tax is meant not to raise revenue but to change behavior: The ultimate goal is to have polluters avoid paying the tax by shifting to renewables. Nonetheless, Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf, in a 2007 paper, calculated that a $15 carbon tax would raise about $82.5 billion per year, which would easily cover the $70 billion cost of extending the payroll tax cut through 2013. To maintain pressure on polluters to keep reducing carbon emissions, the carbon tax would have to rise steadily. Inglis and Flake’s bill would raise it to $53 in its twentieth year, which is about what’s envisioned in a report by Robert Shapiro, Nam Pham, and Arun Malik of the private U.S. Climate Task Force. The task force calculated that the revenues could keep the Social Security tax a little below its current lowered rate and still leave 10 percent of the money to pay for other programs to fight climate change. Alternatively, you could use this money to provide even greater payroll tax relief for people at lower incomes.”

-Timothy Noah, “The Best Way to Fix the Deficit—and the Environment”

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

How did Energy Secretary Steven Chu lose his battle with Washington? “The president who brought him to Washington three years ago had promised nothing less than an environmental revolution, and Chu was supposed to be at its center, presiding over the most dramatic expansion of the clean energy industry the federal government had ever attempted. Now Chu may have no choice but to preside over its similarly dramatic retreat.” —Charles Homans, “The Experiment: How Steven Chu lost his battle with Washington.” Image by Sean McCabe.
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How did Energy Secretary Steven Chu lose his battle with Washington?

“The president who brought him to Washington three years ago had promised nothing less than an environmental revolution, and Chu was supposed to be at its center, presiding over the most dramatic expansion of the clean energy industry the federal government had ever attempted. Now Chu may have no choice but to preside over its similarly dramatic retreat.”

—Charles Homans, “The Experiment: How Steven Chu lost his battle with Washington.”

Image by Sean McCabe.

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In the United States, concern about the limits of nature used to be primarily a Republican priority. Theodore Roosevelt, of course, made conservation a governmental concern. But Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon also made their marks as conservationists—in Nixon’s case, as the president who presided over the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Democrats, and liberal Democrats, were more associated with a kind of can-do/anything-is-possible Americanism that aimed for everything from going to the moon to eradicating poverty.

But the political parties and ideologies have reversed dramatically on these issues. Republicans and conservatives have become not just less concerned than Democrats and liberals about the limits that nature puts on humanity; they insist, for the most part, that these limits don’t exist. They are in denial—whether about the availability of petroleum or the danger of global warming; and their denial imperils not just America’s future, but that of the world…

…what happened in Japan shows vividly that millions of years after humans began inhabiting the earth, nature is still a force to be reckoned with, and it still imposes limits on the decisions we make as a society. Will Republicans come to understand that? Or will they continue to believe that the only limits worth acknowledging are those that government puts on the bank accounts of their corporate sponsors?

John Judis on Republicans, the environment, and the limits of nature.