..and then takes a U-Turn the very next day!

In a reported letter to the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, the Indian Environment Minister proposed a radical shift in India’s stand on climate change–away from its national position on climate negotiations–which India has backed since 1990 and which was defended robustly even in UN talks in Bangkok earlier this month.

Minutes after the news spread, political parties sitting in the opposition were quick to respond. Within the next few hours, the Environment Minister issued a clarifying statement for national media and the entire Nation!

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Although politicians themselves may be relative newcomers in the world of communicating in 140-character or less, those who write about and study politics aren’t. And that goes for those who favor environmental politics, too.

What is to follow is by no means an exhaustive list. I’ve also left out those accounts that only RSS feeds (while recognizing their value). I’ve certainly left off a few that belong here, but I encourage you to add them below. Remember, this is not necessarily a “Best of”, but rather a few of the eco-political twitterers I find value in. Here they are, in alphabetical order:

10 twitter users you should follow:

@emilygertz The lead blogger at change.org’s Stop Global Warming blog, Emily Gertz’s work is all over the interwebs, including powerhouses like WorldChanging, Scientific American, and Grist.

@forestpolicy Deane Rimerman keeps the Forest Policy Research website updated with news and commentary about, you guessed it, forest policy. Good stuff.

@ghoberg I first came across Prof. Hoberg while doing some research on Canadian forest policy in grad school. Though relatively new to the twitterverse, his tweets are insightful and have even given me a few story ideas.

@greenskeptic Blogging the new green economy as The Green Skeptic since 2004, Scott Anderson lends his expertise on cleantech and social-entrepreneurial ventures, along with updates on his hoops game.

@grist More than just a twitterfeed, the folks at Grist.org have developed a nice mix of links and conversational tweets on their twitterstream. While the content at Grist is not entirely politics, the content at Gristmill pretty much is — and it rocks.

@kgrandia Kevin Grandia is the Managing Editor of DeSmogBlog and also Director of New Media for Hoggan and Associates in Vancouver, Canada. When he’s not clearing the PR pollution that hovers around climate debate, he’s tweeting about politics, society and life. Never mundane.

@revkin Andrew Revkin is a long time science writer for the New York Times and leads their Dot Earth blog in addition to his print duties. His tweets often offer little snippets of what he is currently writing/researching (thus giving his followers a taste of what they can expect in tomorrow’s Times).

@sheagunther Green Options co-founder and mainstay on the green blogosphere, Shea Gunther is now blogging at Mother Nature News; a project that is already garnering considerable attention.

@sustainablog Jeff Mcintre-Strasburg has been blogging at sustainablog since 2003, which I think is right around the time Guttenberg invented the blog. Co-founder and former Senior Editor at Green Options, Jeff has a PhD in English and more than once been my go-to guy when I get caught in a grammatic pickle.

@YaleE360 With some of the most respected thinkers and doers in science and the environment, the  YaleE360 website hit the ground running with some of the most thought-provoking environmental journalism on the net when it launched in the Summer of 2008.

Of course you can follow us on twitter at @redgreenandblue; or me, Tim Hurst, at @ecopolitologist, where I tweet about environmental politics and cleantech from my Green Options and ecopolitology work, along with other links I find worthy of sharing and the occasional personal tweets and twitpics.

Now it’s your turn. Who do you follow on twitter for environmental politics (broadly defined). Maybe people should be following you, that’s cool too, just tell us. Now’s your chance.

Image: carrotcreative via flickr

Obama Wants to Double Renewable Energy in Three years: In Barack Obama’s weekly TV address he outlined a plan to create three to four million new jobs. Half a million of those jobs would be in the area of clean energy and energy efficiency. The president-elect also said he would commit to doubling the country’s renewable energy production in three years.

Waxman Thinks House will Pass Carbon Legislation This year: The new chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, U.S. Representative Henry Waxman said he is “determined” to pass a climate bill this year in the House.

Timber Company Drops Road Deal with Forest Service: Plum Creek Timber Company announced it will no longer pursue changes in rules governing its use of U.S. Forest Service roads. Despite the innocent-sounding name, Plum Creek Timber is actually the largest owner of forestland in the U.S. Critics complained the rule change could transform forests into housing subdivisions.

Bush Creates More Marine Protected Areas in Pacific: George W. Bush is clearly working to make his environmental legacy through the preservation of marine areas. This week, Bush moved to protect another swath of area in the Pacific by designating them National Monuments. The new monuments will protect the Mariana Trench, the deepest canyon on Earth; coral reefs off the cost of the Mariana Islands; and an atoll known as the “Islands of Seabirds.”

Campaign politics dominated the headlines in 2008, making it a banner year for the armchair pundit and the politically uninitiated alike. 2008 was also a year that issues like energy use, climate change and carbon footprints came to the forefront of popular culture and political reality. And that’s where we came in.

In the tradition of more credible media outlets, we’ve compiled our most popular stories of the year into an easily digestible top 10 list. As it is based purely on pageviews, we realize that our list of the top ten environmental politics stories of the year is by no means scientific - and we’re okay with that.

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The four were part of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac). Huntingdon Life Sciences is an animal research centre that tests products for safety (ie testing products on animals, safety being ours, not theirs) and Shac aimed to create a ‘climate of fear’ that was intended to force other firms to sever ties with what is one of the largest animal testing labs in the world. Their tactics ranged from hoax bombs, night visits to people’s houses and factories, through to criminal damage and threats of violence. Their nuisance phone calls and letters included sending used sanitary towels in the post, and claiming people were paedophiles.

What has all this to do with environmental politics? Well, it’s the nature of ‘the cause’ that drives extreme behaviour, and conversion to ‘the cause’: whether it’s global warming or anti-vivisection, can turn people from ‘unconcerned’ to ‘zealot’ in a single day.

What Animal Cruelty can teach us about Environmental Politics

And that’s why those who claim they ‘understand’ the nature of the environmental disaster and have the answers to the planet’s problems need to find different ways to express both the problem and the solution. And why those who don’t care about the problem, or don’t believe there is one, need to think again.

Most of us - and by ‘us’ I mean the world’s population with consumer choices – prefer not to think about what is done in our names. We buy toothpaste and antibiotics and contact lens cleaner and choose not to think about what makes us confident that we can use all those products on our bodies without care. Thinking about the pain and harm done to rats and mice, monkeys and rabbits, so that we don’t have to endure pain and harm ourselves is too much for us.

For a very few though, that realisation happens. The recognition of our comfort being built on the pain of animals occurs, and that recognition changes life, forever. From then on, the few cannot use toothpaste and antibiotics and wear contact lenses without immediately, irresistibly, unavoidably thinking of the horror inflicted on another living thing for their sake. For the few, this becomes unendurable and allows them to become extremists. In fact, it forces them to do so, because they cannot bear the idea that most people are unwilling to understand this fact: so bringing the fact home to the individual becomes their focus.

In exactly the same way, those who ‘get’ the nature of climate change thunder ever more loudly about sea levels rising, island states drowning, water running out, food shortages, forests dying …

And that’s exactly not the way to get most of us to listen.

Cruelty-free Environmental Policy?

Great work has been done in creating cruelty-free cosmetics and toiletries, although cruelty-free medicines are proving to be a completely intractable issue. Perhaps there’s something to be said for taking the cruelty-free approach to the environment? We might be able to deal with carbon, but not sea level, or perhaps we can tackle potable water but not our addiction to petroleum? Instead of insisting, like Shac, that we’re right and they’re wrong and anything and everything is fair in showing ‘them’ how wrong they are, we need to start thinking in terms of making ‘environmental politics’ into an attractive and easy consumer choice. That way we might find consumers driving the politicians into make better decisions, instead of ‘us’ bullying them into doing what we want.

Beagle and kitten photograph courtesy Claudio Matsuoka at Flickr under a Creative Commons Licence

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Grijalva is the current chair of the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands which has jurisdiction over Interior Department matters.

The groups praised Grijalva for assembling what is regarded as one of the most “far sighted endangered species protection plans in the nation” and for his “leadership pressing Interior and other federal agencies to integrate global warming issues into their planning and permitting.”

The next Secretary of the Interior will be taking over an rocked by some ethics scandals including, among other things, the imprisonment of its top deputy, losses of tens of billions of dollars from under-collection of oil royalties and, most recently, revelation of sex and drug parties involving key Interior employees and oil company executives.

5. Imagining a $700 Billion Bailout for the Environment

Stemming from the fall of mortgage-backed securities, spiking oil prices, and a host of other variables, the economic crisis came to a head in September and October when the federal government began looking at corporate bailouts of unprecedented proportions. In a piece that did particularly well at StumbleUpon, Jennifer Lance considered what investments of this size could do for the environment:

“What if the US government had responded to the twenty years of dire warnings by James Hansen in the same manner as the current economic crisis?  Such an aggressive response may have stopped climate change and saved our economy through green jobs and technology.”

4. New York City to Get LED Street Lighting

This is the story responsible for a major re-arrangement in this year’s best of.  Just last week, Jerry James stone reported on big news out of New York City that city officials would be testing energy efficient LED street lights. If successful, all of the city’s 300,000 street lamps could potentially be replaced with the LED models. This post did well at digg, reddit, and StumbleUpon.

3. Did McCain’s Colorado River Gaffe Cost Him in the West?

While campaigning in Colorado, Sen. John McCain told the Pueblo Chieftan that, as president, he would consider renegotiating the Colorado River Compact:  a virtual no-no in headwater states like Colorado where Democrats and Republicans alike think downstream states already get more than their fair share of water. In a post that did well at digg, Timothy Hurst wrote:

“John McCain has again said something to cause his fellow western-state Republicans to wince at his political inexpedience and apparent naivete for the issue at hand. And even though the Senator has now recanted and begun damage control, Democrats are hoping that this one will cost him. Some even argue that the gaffe was so severe, he may have just lost Colorado.”

2. European Union Bans the Incandescent Light Bulb

EU energy ministers meeting in Luxembourg gave final approval to an EU-wide ban on incandescent light bulbs that would begin in 2010. The new light bulb scheme will initially apply to bulbs of 75 watts and higher. The phasing out of the traditional bulbs set to begin on March 1, 2009, is part of a larger EU strategy to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This story got a good bit of attention at reddit and digg.

1. How 1900’s Environmental Predictions Fared

Admittedly, the most viewed post in 2008 at Red, Green, & Blue is not about environmental politics, per se, and it didn’t really happen in 2008, but using our simple metric of popularity, it was the ‘biggest.’

In 1900,  John Elfreth Watkins put together a collection of predictions in the Ladies Home Journal about the future of the U.S. and the world by the end of the 20th century. Timothy Hurst cherry-picked 14 enviro-related predictions and looked at what actually happened one hundred years later. Some of the predictions are uncannily accurate, yet others were more than a little wide of the mark. This post had good traffic from digg and reddit, and especially Yahoo! buzz.

*We’ve included links to some of the social media networks where individual posts have performed well. For brevity’s sake we kept the number of those links to one or two per post. That notwithstanding, we are exceedingly grateful to ALL of you for the support you have shown on ALL of the social media and web 2.0 spaces in 2008. We would be nowhere without your help.

Images: © Imre Forgo (2008); © Foto.fritz (solar panel); (Palin); Clemson via flickr (flat tire); My Heromudpig via flickr (NY nightscape); laszlo-photo via flickr (light bulb); yahoo! buzz (crystal ball). (solar install).

What’s wrong with this picture?

Could it be the carbon footprint of the two candidates, spreading to Sasquatch-like proportions as they criss-cross the United States exhorting voters, already reeling from the economic kidney-punches of the past few months, to get out there and vote?  Is it possible that this kind of environmental irresponsibility is ringing warning bells with the average voter, wondering when gas prices will fall and whether they can heat their homes this winter?

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The UK’s third party, the Liberal Democrats are not some kind of Ross Perot outfit who snipe from the sidelines. Liberalism is a a huge part of the British psyche — 100 years ago it was in the defacto Government/Opposition in a two party system and many UK politicians still cling to their liberal credentials.

Subsumed for a small time by the socialist agenda, liberalism may be set for a resurgence. Both Conservatives and Labour wish to prescribe remedies to the population, but only Liberalism allows the people to be educated and make their own decisions.

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In the spirit of collaborative politics, I’d like to make this a collaborative project. Here’s what I’m thinking; in stead of me popping off the five most important, most-visited, or my otherwise favorite environmental politics blogs (which I did an iteration of already), I’ll just start us off with a couple of good ones and why I like them. Then we want you to tell us what you all are reading and why you are reading them for your environmental politics fix.

The universe of environmental politics blogs is ever-expanding, so keeping track of all the growth can be a dizzying enterprise. This project is all about spreading the word about good blogs, and in particular, about blogs that might fly under the radar of the “mainstream” green blogs. Obscure, international, and highly specialized blogs are encouraged and welcomed. This can even be an exercise in self-promotion. If you think your blog is a valuable source of information or analysis on the major themes found in environmental politics. Alright, let’s have at it!

Open Thread: Environmental Politics Blogs:

Hill Heat: Edited and published by “The Cunctator,” located in Washington, D.C., Hill Heat provides informative commentary and analysis of covering global warming developments on Capitol Hill. What I find particularly helpful is the complete listing of global-warming related congressional hearings and other events in and around D.C.

DeSmogBlog: With a tag-line like, “We’re here to clear the PR pollution that clouds the science of climate change,” what’s not to love? DeSmogBlog is loaded with well-written, timely, and insightful content. I particularly enjoy how they focus on covering the coverage and watching the watchers.

The Sietch Blog: Although I don’t visit as often as I used to (the same can be said for virtually all of the blogs I visit), the Sietch Blog always has something good in store for its dedicated cadre of readers. The blog focus is not only on environmental politics, but on clean tech, renewable energy, and the larger “green” movement. On any given day, you can find some good writing mixed with a smattering of video content and even a little humor thrown in for good measure.

I could keep going, but now it’s your turn…

5. Imagining a $700 Billion Bailout for the Environment

Stemming from the fall of mortgage-backed securities, spiking oil prices, and a host of other variables, the economic crisis came to a head in September and October when the federal government began looking at corporate bailouts of unprecedented proportions. In a piece that did particularly well at StumbleUpon, Jennifer Lance considered what investments of this size could do for the environment:

“What if the US government had responded to the twenty years of dire warnings by James Hansen in the same manner as the current economic crisis?  Such an aggressive response may have stopped climate change and saved our economy through green jobs and technology.”

4. New York City to Get LED Street Lighting

This is the story responsible for a major re-arrangement in this year’s best of.  Just last week, Jerry James stone reported on big news out of New York City that city officials would be testing energy efficient LED street lights. If successful, all of the city’s 300,000 street lamps could potentially be replaced with the LED models. This post did well at digg, reddit, and StumbleUpon.

3. Did McCain’s Colorado River Gaffe Cost Him in the West?

While campaigning in Colorado, Sen. John McCain told the Pueblo Chieftan that, as president, he would consider renegotiating the Colorado River Compact:  a virtual no-no in headwater states like Colorado where Democrats and Republicans alike think downstream states already get more than their fair share of water. In a post that did well at digg, Timothy Hurst wrote:

“John McCain has again said something to cause his fellow western-state Republicans to wince at his political inexpedience and apparent naivete for the issue at hand. And even though the Senator has now recanted and begun damage control, Democrats are hoping that this one will cost him. Some even argue that the gaffe was so severe, he may have just lost Colorado.”

2. European Union Bans the Incandescent Light Bulb

EU energy ministers meeting in Luxembourg gave final approval to an EU-wide ban on incandescent light bulbs that would begin in 2010. The new light bulb scheme will initially apply to bulbs of 75 watts and higher. The phasing out of the traditional bulbs set to begin on March 1, 2009, is part of a larger EU strategy to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. This story got a good bit of attention at reddit and digg.

1. How 1900’s Environmental Predictions Fared

Admittedly, the most viewed post in 2008 at Red, Green, & Blue is not about environmental politics, per se, and it didn’t really happen in 2008, but using our simple metric of popularity, it was the ‘biggest.’

In 1900,  John Elfreth Watkins put together a collection of predictions in the Ladies Home Journal about the future of the U.S. and the world by the end of the 20th century. Timothy Hurst cherry-picked 14 enviro-related predictions and looked at what actually happened one hundred years later. Some of the predictions are uncannily accurate, yet others were more than a little wide of the mark. This post had good traffic from digg and reddit, and especially Yahoo! buzz.

*We’ve included links to some of the social media networks where individual posts have performed well. For brevity’s sake we kept the number of those links to one or two per post. That notwithstanding, we are exceedingly grateful to ALL of you for the support you have shown on ALL of the social media and web 2.0 spaces in 2008. We would be nowhere without your help.

Images: © Imre Forgo (2008); © Foto.fritz (solar panel); (Palin); Clemson via flickr (flat tire); My Heromudpig via flickr (NY nightscape); laszlo-photo via flickr (light bulb); yahoo! buzz (crystal ball). (solar install).

For Teddy Roosevelt it was the creation of our system of National Parks. For Richard Nixon it was the passage of landmark environmental reforms found in the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. For Bill Clinton it was an eleventh-hour preservation of millions of acres of public lands. For George W. Bush it will be tackling the issues of global warming and climate change.

huh?

In light of my recent post about the demoralizing effect this administration has had upon EPA scientists and other agency ‘lifers’, I was more than just a little surprised to hear about the story leaked in Monday’s Washington Times that reports President Bush is “poised to change course and announce as early as this week that he wants Congress to pass a bill to combat global warming, and will lay out principles for what that should include.”

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined on Monday to confirm rumors that action was imminent, though she would not rule it out. She said the administration’s discussions are building toward an expected debate on climate change in the Senate in June [watch video of White House press conference here].

If President George W. Bush throws his support behind mandatory carbon dioxide regulations, it would indeed be a major shift away from his insistence that placing binding caps on emissions would harm the U.S. economy.

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