Week's End Blogwrap: Take the red pill, and more policy goodness

Video: "The Economic Wisdom of a Green Recovery"

Oh brave new world. Now that the US has a reality-based federal government, blogging on the politics and policies of stopping global warming is heating up:

At Gristmill, in my favorite post of the week, Dave Roberts tells enviro-advocates to take the red pill, already:

If you want carbon pricing out of this Congress, cap-and-trade is what you're getting. It follows that your energies are best spent ensuring that cap-and-trade legislation is as strong as possible.

...Through some process I find truly mysterious, the carbon tax has become a kind of totem of authenticity among progressives, while cap-and-trade now symbolizes corporate sellouthood. Across the interwebs, lefties now proclaim with absolute confidence and no small sanctimony that we should entrust our children's future to economists (whose historical contribution to environmental policy has been hostility, doomsaying, and an unbroken record of error) and the Congressional committees that control tax policy (climate champions all)...

It doesn't seem to daunt these folks that their hostility toward cap-and-trade and support for carbon taxes has been taken up by a growing cadre on the far right, including Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson, economist Arthur Laffer, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), and yes, even climate wingnut Sen. James Inhofe (R-Gamma Quadrant).

(Disclosure: I occasionally write for Grist, and its blog Gristmill.)

Climate Progress ran the first of a multi-part analysis by Bill Becker, on whether the economic stimulus plan has real green merit:

it’s important to understand is that the White House has the fundamentals right: The stimulus package must do more than spark a short-term boost to the economy. It must invest in the nation’s mid- and long-term economic security - and that security must be based on a new energy economy that reverses the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and weans us from our dependence on fossil fuels.

That is the first intelligent energy policy to come out of the White House in a decade. As Congress finalizes the stimulus packages proposed by the Obama Administration and House Democrats, Job No. 1 is to keep that enlightened strategy intact.

Job No. 2 is to make the package greener.

DeSmogBlog makes a good catch that some politics, they aren't a-changin' (even though the climate clearly has):

If you're looking for  evidence of the gathering campaign to game the public conversation about climate change, check out this CNN post of Al Gore's presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Scroll to the bottom of the story and you will see that in less than two hours from the time of posting, the story attracted more than 150 comments, nearly all of them hysterical, bitchy, vitriolic sneers or classic denier talking points.

In a country that just elected President Barack Obama, this is not a representative sample - and I don't believe for a minute that this is accidental.

Wonder what that smart grid is that President Obama keeps bringing up? Worldchanging is here to help, in part with a lot of good links to more information, and in part by quoting Tyler Hamilton:

The true vision of the smart grid is a self-healing, automated grid that can manage complex flows of electrons, from the hundreds — potentially thousands — of large and small sources of power to the millions of homes, businesses, industrial customers and, potentially, electric cars that require that energy.

The Oil Drum: Europe worries that the pace of wind power expansion will decline this year, and hopes Pres. Obama might do something about it:

...all that wind needs is a stable regulatory framework. The PTC [[Production Tax Credit, a federal incentive that sweetens the financials for erecting wind turbines]] works, but it needs to remain in place for more than a year or two at a time. State RPS (renewable portfolio standards, ie obligations for utilities to produce a given % of their power from renewables within agreed timeframes) work, but they create a patchwork of different rules across the country. There is a need to provide a simple, consistent and permanent set of federal rules.

It's Getting Hot in Here got excited about how the "simultaneous collapse of our economic and ecological systems has created a great opportunity to support industries that at once rebuild the market and the planet," as covered in an article titled "Doing Recovery Right, in the current issue of The Nation.