14 item(s) were returned.
Last Wednesday, the Obama administration officially denied approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. A rider included by the GOP in the payroll tax plan President Obama signed last month required the Administration to decide on the pipeline within a 60-day window. In rejecting the pipeline, the White House said “imposing an arbitrary 60-day deadline on this process would make it virtually impossible for an adequate review [of the pipeline] to take place.” House Speaker John Boehner criticized the decision saying “President Obama is destroying tens of thousands of American jobs and shipping American energy security to the Chinese. [There’s] no… [more]
View Insight
Professor of Physics
City College of the City University of New York
Despite aggressive requests from the Obama Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the House in the most recent appropriations debate made significant efforts to reduce funding for climate-related science. The Senate prevailed in the subsequent negotiations, and nearly all Office of Science programs received modest funding increases. Although it lost its appropriations battle, the House’s efforts to trim the Office of Science’s funding demonstrate its strong skepticism about climate science. Further reflecting its attitudes, the House defunded enforcement of standards for more efficient light bulbs, publicly challenged the validity of climate science, relentlessly pushed the Keystone XL … [more]
View InsightBetween the Solyndra scandal, the disaster at the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, the deliberation over the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama’s aggressive new CAFE Standards, protests over lighting standards, EPA’s MACT rules, and more, 2011 proved to be a controversial year for energy and energy policy, even without major energy legislation.
View InsightEarlier this year, the Obama Administration announced that it would be delaying its decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, drawing criticism from some pipeline proponents. In negotiating the FY2012 spending bill, the House and Senate have included language that would require the Administration to decide on the pipeline within 60 days. Republican lawmakers have made the Keystone XL pipeline issue a centerpiece of the spending negotiations. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) described his party’s spending-debate concessions on this issue as “giving the sleeves off a vest” because the State Department has said that they will withhold… [more]
View Insight