Keith Schneider | ModeShift

Hour of Choosing Arrives: American Power Act Introduced

by Keith SchneiderMay 12, 2010May 12, 20101

In a long-awaited proposal designed to secure existing domestic energy sources and develop new ones that begin to reverse the damaging effects of global climate change, New England Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman today introduced comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. The co-authors of the bill, one a Democrat from Massachusetts and the other an Independent from Connecticut, insisted that its vision is to change the direction of some of the nation’s toughest systemic …

A Turning Point in Attack on Climate Science

by Keith SchneiderMay 10, 2010May 11, 20100

On May 5, in an unusually aggressive response to what they saw as an academic witch hunt, the University of Virginia Faculty Senate condemned state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelliâ€™s demand to turn over six years of documents related to the work of Michael Mann, a former UVa climate scientist. Two days later, members of the National Academy of Sciences published a letter in the journal Science that focused on the “political assaults” directed at climate …

Oil Devotion Could Mean Climate No Motion

by Keith SchneiderMay 7, 2010May 7, 20101

The one-foot waves today in the Gulf of Mexico were described as â€œtranquilâ€ as BP started to lower a 70-ton case through 5,000 feet of water to contain the source of an oil leak that threatens the shorelines of four states. Guiding the steel cover over the well shaft in pitch-black waters at crushing depths, said engineers, is like floating a toy parachute off the Empire State Building and landing on a paperclip in the …

Curt Guyette’s Good Piece on Grassroots Resistance to Clean Energy

by Keith SchneiderMay 6, 2010May 7, 20102

Curt Guyette, a first-rate senior editor at MetroTimes, Detroit’s very good weekly newspaper, just posted one of the most even-handed pieces on the grassroots resistance to clean energy projects that I’ve seen. He interviewed me earlier this week and jotted down this quote: “The environmental community on a national level is pushing like hell for more clean energy,” Schneider says. “I know that because I work in Washington and I see it happening. But what …

Bubbling and Crude: Gulf Coast Spill Reflects Devotion to Wealth, Power, and Oil

by Keith SchneiderMay 5, 2010May 6, 20102

On March 17, two weeks to the day before President Barack Obama laid out a new plan to expand offshore oil exploration in the United States, a government auction of federally controlled oil and gas reserves in the Gulf of Mexico was held at the New Orleans Superdome. It took just a few hours for 77 energy companies to pledge $1.3 billion to the U.S. Treasury to look for oil and natural gas across a …

As Gulf Slick Spreads Environmental Movement Takes Unexpected Heat

by Keith SchneiderMay 4, 2010September 9, 2010

Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate economist,Â Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, and friend of most things green wrote a piece over the weekend that should give environmentalists heartache. In a column about the big Gulf oil spill, Krugman described how the environmental movement has been steadily losing political momentum because it’s been so successful in scrubbing the skies and clearing the waters of the visible hazards of pollution. He also lays …

Go Blue! “Be Nice” While You “Shape Destiny,” Obama Counsels at University of Michigan Commencement

by Keith SchneiderMay 2, 2010May 3, 20101

Barack Obama addressed 90,000 people Saturday at the Big House, the University of Michigan’s football stadium, where he was greeted warmly by the largest crowd to hear the president since the inauguration. Among the nearly 10,000 graduates was my daughter Kayla. The university is a place of innovation, stability, and optimism in a state that has endured more negative consequences of the recession, and the underlying transitional factors that caused it, than any other. The …

A Miserable Week

by Keith SchneiderMay 1, 2010May 1, 20100

A week that began with a political blow â€“ the disruption of the bipartisan Senate team drawing up climate and energy legislation â€“ ended in environmental disaster. A vicious oil spill, produced by the explosion and sinking last week of the Deep Horizon drilling rig, inundated the Gulf shoreline and threatened to wreck the aquatic diversity that makes the Louisiana coast one of the worldâ€™s most productive fisheries. Twenty one years ago, as a reporter …

Climate-Denying US Chamber Has A Point When It Comes to Grassroots Resistance to Clean Energy

by Keith SchneiderApril 29, 2010September 9, 20101

The US Chamber of Commerce and many of its state-based affiliates, including the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, are nests of ideological movement conservatives devoted to all manner of influential key words that have shaped how states and Washington view their duties to mother nature. The Chamber has promoted such concepts as “free-market environmentalism” — which means allowing market trends to strip the earth — and “sound science,” which is a euphemism for ignoring science-based fact …

Earth, Wind, Fire On Day of Onrushing Risks

by Keith SchneiderApril 28, 20100

The accelerating consequences of the warming Earth, the hazards associated with increasing reliance on fossil fuels, the promise of big clean energy projects, and the difficulties in advancing a national climate and energy policy fit for the 21st century came into sharp focus today in Washington and across the nation. In Boston, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that aftter nine years of public confrontation, the United States had reached a decision to approve crucial permits …