In a research paper, due to be presented at a Harvard forum next month, scholar Theda Skocpol in effect accuses the DC-based environmental groups of political malpractice, saying they were blind to extreme Republican opposition to their efforts.
Environmental groups overlooked growing opposition to environmental protections among conservatives voters and, underestimated the rising force of the Tea Party, believing – wrongly, as it turned out – they could still somehow win over Republican members of Congress through "insider grand bargaining".
That fatal misreading of the political realities – namely, the extreme polarisation of Congress and the Tea Party's growing influence among elected officials – doomed the effort to get a climate law through Congress. It will also make it more difficult to achieve climate action in the future, she added.
Skocpol, meanwhile, lets Obama off the hook for the political inaction on climate change, overturning the conventional wisdom among environmental leaders that political cowardice by the White House ultimately doomed climate legislation.
Activists from the environmental group Greenpeace said they were able to disrupt operations at a Statoil...
Emergency workers battled on Sunday to contain an oil spill near a joint Kuwaiti-Saudi oilfield in...
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to rewrite limits on toxic waste from power plants, the...
Last year was Earth's warmest on record, according to an international climate report issued Thursday by...
