White House Mulls Drastic Action on Climate Change

President's miscalculations include scale, momentum

(NEWSER) - Scott Brown’s Senate victory in Massachusetts is the final nail in the coffin of the Obama administration’s first-year political strategy, John F. Harris and Carol E. Lee write for Politico . The miscalculations cover “three major counts":

• Believing 2008 was a game-changer: The Obama team thought the "election represented something seismic." But "the assumption that Obama would be swimming mostly with the current rather than often against it on issues such as health care, financial regulation and global warming was naive in retrospect."

(NEWSER) - The EPA's decision today to declare carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases dangerous pollutants could have enormous consequences for US businesses, writes Andy Stone in Forbes. The big winner: green technology. The ruling could eventually give the EPA unprecedented regulatory control over everything from power plants to oil refineries to automobiles. The US Chamber of Commerce says the decision could wreak havoc on the economy. More»

(NEWSER) - President Obama and PM Stephen Harper today announced an environmental partnership between the US and Canada, the Globe and Mail reports. Harper spoke of a “clean energy dialogue” between top officials to “collaborate on the development of clean energy science and technology.” Said Obama, who was making his first trip out of the country since taking office: “We are so closely linked that we have a tendency to take our relationship for granted.” More»

Environmental crisis at tipping point—and US must show way

(NEWSER) - Carbon levels are skyrocketing, ice caps are melting, and global flooding is on its way if Barack Obama doesn’t do something about it, and quickly, a NASA scientist says. Top climate expert Jim Hansen says it’s crucial that within 4 years the next president change America—the world’s biggest carbon emitter and its largest economy—after 8 years of ignoring global warming, the Guardian reports. More»

(AP) - Barack Obama today selected a Harvard physicist and a marine biologist for key science posts, in a sign he plans a more aggressive response to global warming than did the Bush administration. John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco are leading experts on climate change who have advocated forceful government action. “It's time we once again put science at the top of our agenda,” Obama said today. More»