Climate 411

This post is by Mark Brownstein, Managing Director of Business Partnerships at Environmental Defense.

A little over a year ago, Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Ceres sent a letter to the three lead banks financing the TXU deal we helped broker. We said the banks no longer could ignore CO₂ in their investment decisions.

Today we are seeing the culmination of this effort. The three banks – Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley – have announced that they will require utilities seeking financing to prove the new plants would be economically viable under an expected federal cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

This will make it much harder for utilities to build conventional coal plants.

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

If (when) global warming legislation is introduced in the House, it will first be debated in the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA). If it passes after mark-up, it will then go to the full House Energy and Commerce Committee, chaired by Rep. John Dingell (D-MI).

Rick Boucher and John Dingell are among the most influential players in the House when it comes to global warming. Who are some of the others? Check out our list of House Members to Watch on Global Warming.

This post is by Tony Kreindler, Media Director for the National Climate Campaign at Environmental Defense.

I’m down in Florida now, for the Republican debate that will take place tonight from 9-11 pm. Environmental Defense is a lead underwriter of the Republican debate. There’s no signage about this in the debate hall (no signage for anyone in the debate hall), but you can see our name in the so-called “spin room”, where political supporters and advisers speak to media after debates.

This isn’t something special we decided to do for Republicans. We also were sponsors of the Democratic debate before it was cancelled.

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

We’re sorry that many of you had trouble getting to our pages in recent weeks. Over the long weekend, we switched to a new service that is more reliable and offers more features.

While the pages should be much faster now, there is one remaining inconvenience: If you have registered to post comments, you will need to re-register. We think everything is working smoothly (thank you, Porter!), but if you notice any other problems, please let us know.

We’re glad to have the page-loading troubles behind us, and thanks for your patience.

This post is by Carol Andress, Economic Development Specialist at Environmental Defense.

Operation Climate Vote

This post is part of a series on the work of the Environmental Defense Action Fund to enact an effective climate law. You can help by writing to Congress.

The U.S. House of Representatives is back in session this week, and they have some important work to do.

Last month, the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (CSA) was passed out of committee in the Senate. This means that the bill now can be considered by the full Senate – an important step. But for a bill to become law in this country it has to be passed by both the House and Senate, and the House has not yet moved on climate legislation. (See our previous post for more on the legislative process.)

Before the break, the House was preoccupied with the energy bill, but that’s now been passed. Next up should be climate legislation, and support is building for it. Here’s what House members have been saying:

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story about light bulbs. If you only read the beginning of the article, you might think it was saying that compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) have poor quality light. But in fact, its conclusion – after testing a wide array of bulbs – was that some are better than others.

It’s true – some are better than others. For information on CFLs and how they differ, check out our online guide, How to Pick a Better Bulb.