What cap? Dems join climate word war - POLITICO.com Print View

Enter the rebranding strategy — a controversial overhaul that many Republicans still see as spin. Some Democrats remain dubious, too. Last week, Reid’s office brought in Drew Westen, an Emory University neuroscience professor, to explain the best messaging practices to about 30 Democratic Senate chiefs of staff and communications directors.

A Senate Democratic aide in the room said Westen covered a lot of ground, starting with a call to “get us out of acronym land, get us out of Senate-speak and [get] it down to regular terminology of what’s effective and what’s not.”

That means no longer referring to climate legislation by any one particular author, such as Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) or Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.). It’s also about playing up the patriotism angle, including the prospect of losing out to the Chinese on development of clean energy technologies. And then Westen urged them to go for the political jugular by associating Democrats with new ideas for clean fuels [What "new" ideas?  What "clean" fuels?] while labeling GOP opponents as “trying to go backward with dirty fuels.”

- Bishop Hill blog - More on Oxburgh's eleven

The other redaction, the other person consulted about whether the sample of papers was reasonable, was...Phil Jones.

The Hockey Schtick: EIA Analysis: American Power Act creates $2.7 Trillion Hit on US Economy

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has just released it's analysis of the Kerry Lieberman "American Power Act" a.k.a. Cap & Tax Bill, and projects a stunning $2.7 trillion blow to the struggling US economy under the (likely) scenario of limited international implementation of similar cap & tax proposals.

Underwriters explore goldmine in climate change [fraud] « Vanguard

Insurance industry in the country is cashing in on the opportunities that climate change has availed the sector in terms of premium generation.

Sheryl Crow on multitasking - The Globe and Mail

Wyatt was three months old when I made [Detours] and we’d just gone to war and the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports were coming out about how sick our planet was becoming and also George Bush was in office. It had a huge impact on how I felt about raising a child in that climate and what I wanted to write about.