Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Six Threats Bigger Than Climate Change
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Sen. John Barrasso
In a speech this month in Hawaii, Mr. Kerry called climate change “the biggest challenge of all that we face right now.” Not 10, 20 or 100 years from now—right now. If only Mr. Kerry were right. Unfortunately, America faces much bigger immediate challenges and threats than climate change. Our enemies around the world are intent on harming us—right now. America’s secretary of state should worry more about them and less about the Earth’s temperature decades from now.
Democrats: Climate Change Is as Frightening as ISIS
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Ben Geman
Sixty-eight percent of Democrats see climate change as a “major threat” to the U.S., compared with just 25 percent of Republicans, according to Pew Research Center data released Thursday. That 43-point spread is the largest division in views over any threat that Pew asked about in the poll, which was conducted earlier this month. The data also show that Democrats consider the threat of climate change to be on par with that of the radical group ISIS. Sixty-five percent of Democrats see the group as a major threat to the U.S., compared with 78 percent of Republicans.
A climate for change: The U.S. can help drive a new round of global carbon cuts
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Probably the most persuasive argument against U.S. action on global warming is China. No U.S.-only initiative can stop the planet from warming. Any effective response to climate change will require broad, international effort. All true. But such coordination is not as out of reach as many believe. It is quite possible — if the United States does its part.
A New American Oil Bonanza
NEW YORK TIMES
Clifford Krauss
The United States now accounts for 10 percent of the world’s oil production. As it sharply curtails imports from countries like Angola and Nigeria, those producers are then compelled to sell their oil to China and other Asian markets at steep discounts, compounding the impact of American production on world markets.
Previous UN climate talks have failed. Will this one be any different?
VOX
Brad Plumer
So why should this latest round of climate talks be any different? It’s a fair question. Some analysts are deeply skeptical that countries will achieve their ultimate goal of limiting global warming to no more than 2°C 3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels (we’re already at 0.8°C and rising). Other analysts, however, have argued that this time really might be different — clean energy is getting dramatically cheaper, and countries like the United States and China are gradually starting to take individual actions to tackle global warming. These latest talks could build on that slow progress.
Shell Submits a Plan for New Exploration of Alaskan Arctic Oil
NEW YORK TIMES
Clifford Krauss
Royal Dutch Shell submitted a plan to the federal government on Thursday to try once again to explore for oil in the Alaskan Arctic, following years of legal and logistical setbacks as well as dogged opposition from environmentalists.
Technology
Net Neutrality Vs. Free Speech
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Robert M. McDowell
The FCC’s attempt to turn the Internet into what amounts to a federally regulated public utility—all in the name of protecting consumers—has produced tortured logic among cable interests: If Internet service providers are going to be regulated, then websites that their subscribers watch—especially broadcasters’ sites—should be regulated too. According to comments filed with the FCC by Time Warner Cable and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, broadcasters should not be allowed to take down or withhold the content they produce and own from online distribution even if subscribers have not paid for it—as a matter of federal law. In other words, edge providers should be forced to stream their online content no matter what. Such an overreach, of course, would lay waste to the economics of the Internet. It would also violate the First Amendment’s prohibition against state-mandated, or forced, speech—the flip side of censorship.
The FCC’s next CTO is a net neutrality expert
WASHINGTON POST
Nancy Scola
The Federal Communications Commission has announced that it has named a new chief technology officer: Scott Jordan, a professor of computer science at the University of California at Irvine.
14 years ago, DOJ said letting one broadband company run half the country was a bad idea
WASHINGTON POST
Brian Fung
The year 2000 also happened to be when federal regulators approved a merger between two tech titans that some now say should be instructive for the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, as the two agencies review a current-day proposal by Comcast to acquire Time Warner Cable. The 2000 merger, known as AT&T-MediaOne, offers a precedent. But it also raises further questions about certain rules we’ve established to ensure competition in the marketplace. As a matter of fact, as communications technologies have begun to blend and overlap, it’s no longer clear that those rules adequately address the problems they were created to solve.
GoogleX takes to the skies with secret drone project
USA TODAY
Marco della Cava
late last year, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos showed off his company’s drone delivery prototypes, and now Google reveals it has been secretly testing its own drones in Australian cattle country. Dubbed Project Wing, the three-year mission successfully completed its first delivery Aug. 13, a bundle of Cherry Ripe chocolate bars.
Finance
Businesses Are Winning Cat-and-Mouse Tax Game
NEW YORK TIMES
David Gelles
Across corporate America, companies large and small are finding new ways to address one of the business world’s oldest irritations: paying taxes. By exploiting existing loopholes and devising new ones, some of the country’s best-known companies are making it harder than ever for the federal government to replenish its already depleted coffers.
Lower corporate tax rates. Now.
WASHINGTON POST
Charles Krauthammer
What is maddening is that the problem is so easily solved: tax reform that lowers the accursed corporate rate. Democrats and Republicans agree on this. After the announcement of the latest inversion, Burger King buying Tim Hortons and then moving to Canada, the president himself issued a statement conceding that corporate tax reform — lower the rates, eliminate loopholes — is the best solution to the inversion problem.
US rebound stronger than first thought
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Robin Harding
The US economy’s second quarter bounce was stronger than previously thought, with the official annualised growth estimate increased from 4 per cent to 4.2 per cent.
Bad news: Wages are down for pretty much everyone
WASHINGTON POST
Jonnelle Marte
Real hourly wages are down for workers at all education levels in the first half of this year compared to the first half of 2013, according to the Economic Policy Institute paper. Pay fell by 1.1 percent for people with high school diplomas, by 1 percent for people with some college, 1.6 percent for people with college degrees and by 2.7 percent for people with advanced degrees. “The last year has been a poor one for American workers’ wages,” writes Elise Gould, an economist with the institute, in the report.
Politics
Poll: Amid foreign crises, more Americans support U.S. action
USA TODAY
Susan Page
In more problematic findings for the White House, the nationwide survey also shows broad dissatisfaction with Obama’s handling of crises in Russia, Iraq and the Middle East. A 54% majority, including some of his most reliable supporters, complain the president is “not tough enough” in his approach to foreign policy and national security issues.
Obama’s ‘strategy’ misfire
POLITICO
Josh Gerstein
“We don’t have a strategy yet,” Obama said as he took questions from reporters in the White House briefing room. The president’s aim was clearly to defuse building expectations that U.S. military strikes in Syria were imminent as part of a broadening drive to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. But his awkward choice of words to describe a policymaking process still in midstream seems likely to haunt him for some time.
Democrats Wary of Benghazi Inquiry Stretching Into ’16 Election Season
NEW YORK TIMES
Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer
A House Republican-led investigation of the 2012 terrorist attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, will extend well into next year, and possibly beyond, raising concerns among Democrats that Republicans are trying to damage Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential prospects.
The core question in Bobby Jindal’s Common Core lawsuit
WASHINGTON POST
Max Ehrenfreund
All the same, the governor’s case raises anew an important question about the Common Core that divides its supporters and its detractors: whether the initiative is just a set of standards that specify what students should learn, or a curriculum that details how they should learn it.
Common Core repeal costs Oklahoma its NCLB waiver
POLITICO
Caitlin Emma
The Education Department said it’s yanking Oklahoma’s waiver from No Child Left Behind, making it the second state to lose its reprieve from the law. But Indiana will receive a one-year extension of its waiver because it did what the Sooner State could not: find a suitable replacement for the Common Core.
Two Senators Willing to Defy the Party Line
NEW YORK TIMES
Derek Willis
Not disagreeable in personality, but willing to buck their own party. That would be Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both Republicans. … Bucking a majority of their party on roll-call votes has become much less common among senators over the past quarter century. As recently as 2008, as many as 10 senators disagreed with a majority of their party colleagues on at least one in five votes. Now there are only these two who do.
Mr. Putin Tests the West in Ukraine
NEW YORK TIMES
Editorial
Comments from European leaders on Thursday showed they recognize the danger of this moment. European Union leaders meeting on Saturday must join the United States in expanding the economic sanctions. France should seriously reconsider delivering the Mistral assault ships it has sold Russia. And when NATO leaders gather next week, they should give strong reassurances to NATO members along Russia’s borders that they will be protected should Moscow turn its attentions on them.
The West must make Mr. Putin pay for his aggression
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
It is time to hit Russia with the full brunt of financial sanctions, to supply Ukraine with the arms and intelligence it needs to defend its territorial integrity (which Russia itself once pledged to respect), to halt all military sales to Russia by Western nations — and to bolster the neglected North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Mr. Obama made little effort Thursday to explain or defend the “broader principle” that he said is at stake in Europe. Nations around the world that rely on U.S. leadership and its commitment to the rule of law can only hope that he brings more passion to the cause at what deserves to be a historic NATO summit in Wales next week.
Putin Marches Ahead
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
A serious response to this serious challenge to Europe’s political order remains now what it was when we first suggested it six months ago. Arm the Ukrainians so they can defend themselves. Impose punitive sanctions on Russian energy and finance that will damage the economy and raise the domestic political costs for Mr. Putin. Deploy arms and soldiers to Poland and the Baltic states, and demonstrate the political will to rearm NATO. Alas, Mr. Putin has concluded that the chances that Mr. Obama and Mrs. Merkel will do this also remain the same—zero.
