Climate Progress » Blog Archive » Mississippi burning — and flooding: Haley Barbour to be remembered as man who gave his state 90°F temps 5 months a year plus countless Katrinas?

Over the next few months, senators and other major state political figures will be taking sides on the climate and clean energy bill in front of Congress. Thanks to the new landmark 13-agency report, Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States, we now know how those state “leaders” who oppose action will be remembered if they succeed.

I will start with Mississippi because Governor and former dirty-energy lobbyist Haley Barbour is helping to lead the GOP charge to destroy a livable climate at a hearing Tuesday — and because one of the main reasons I wrote Hell and High Water and started this blog is that my brother lost his Pass Christian, Mississippi home to Hurricane Katrina

Something that Flabbergasts Me | Coyote Blog

So, after years of demagoguing oil companies for purposefully limiting refining capacity and output to drive up gasoline prices, Democrats in Congress are on the verge of passing Waxman-Markey, which will have the very focused and predictable result of… limiting US refining output and driving up gas prices. In fact, the only possible way it will achieve its goals of limiting CO2 output is if it is wildly successful in reducing gasoline supply and driving up gas prices. Amazing.

Political Constraints on Programs - Megan McArdle

There's something else that has been bothering me. I have been urged to support Waxman-Markey on the grounds that we musn't make the perfect the enemy of the good, and maybe I do. But the mediocre can also be the enemy of the good. Even if you support national healtch care, you certainly wouldn't build Medicare in its current form. But there is path dependance in institutions: once they exist, they're precious hard to change. Enacting a crappy climate trading system in order to do something forestalls the possibility of enacting a better design five or ten years from now. Given that this bill is universally expected to accomplish virtually no significant emissions reduction in the foreseeable future, that should worry people. Other than me, I mean.