Your daily briefing for all the top news in Energy, Technology, Finance, and Politics.
Energy
Climate Science Is Not Settled
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Steven E. Koonin
The idea that “Climate science is settled” runs through today’s popular and policy discussions. Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy discussions that we need to have about our climate future.
People’s Climate Demarche
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Editorial
Tens of thousands of environmental protestors paraded through New York City on Sunday, in a “people’s climate march” designed to lobby world leaders arriving for the latest United Nations climate summit. The march did succeed in messing up traffic, but President Obama won’t achieve much more when he speaks Tuesday at this latest pit stop on the global warming grand prix.
Rowdy greens take charge
POLITICO
Elana Schor
An estimated crowd of nearly 400,000 climate activists flooded New York City’s streets on Sunday in a coming-out party for a new breed of environmentalism – one that’s louder and rowdier than the old-school greens who dominated the movement when Barack Obama entered the White House. These upstarts like 350.org are brushing aside the staid Washington lobbying strategies of groups that failed to pass a climate bill in 2010. Instead they’re getting arrested outside the White House gates, staging costumed protests around the president’s travels and planning to clog Wall Street on Monday.
Dangers Aside, Railways Reshape Crude Market
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Russell Gold and Chester Dawson
Initially conceived of as a stopgap measure until pipelines could be constructed, and plagued by high-profile safety problems, crude by rail has nevertheless become a permanent part of the nation’s energy infrastructure, experts say. Even pipeline companies have jumped into the rail business, building terminals to load and unload crude.
Rockefellers, Heirs to an Oil Fortune, Will Divest Charity From Fossil Fuels
NEW YORK TIMES
John Schwartz
John D. Rockefeller built a vast fortune on oil. Now his heirs are abandoning fossil fuels. The family whose legendary wealth flowed from Standard Oil is planning to announce on Monday that its $860 million philanthropic organization, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, is joining the divestment movement that began a couple years ago on college campuses.
Global Rise Reported in 2013 Greenhouse Gas Emissions
NEW YORK TIMES
Justin Gillis
Global emissions of greenhouse gases jumped 2.3 percent in 2013 to record levels, scientists reported Sunday, in the latest indication that the world remains far off track in its efforts to control global warming.
Bottom-Up Climate Fix
NEW YORK TIMES
Daniel Esty
As one of those who, as an official at the Environmental Protection Agency, negotiated that first United Nations treaty in 1992, I believe we need to shift gears and try something new. Relying on national governments alone to deliver results is not enough, as the last two decades have shown. The real action on climate change around the world is coming from governors, mayors, corporate chief executives and community leaders. They are the ones best positioned to make change happen on the ground. Accordingly, we need to move from a top-down strategy to a bottom-up approach.
US shale gas exports to hit Gazprom revenue
FINANCIAL TIMES (Subscribe)
Ed Crooks
Russia’s Gazprom could lose 18 per cent of its revenues as a result of competition from US liquefied natural gas exports, according to a New York-based think-tank.
Technology
Nobody’s neutral in net neutrality debate
USA TODAY
Michael Wolff
It is to the advantage of various sides in this debate to continue to cast the Internet as what it once was, a commons and a free-for-all, and our own thing, deserving of special protection. And it would surely be politically ill-advised for any of the sides to suddenly argue that the Internet isn’t about freedom. But everybody — except die-hards, John Oliver and many members of the Obama administration — knows that the Internet is fast becoming the television business.
How Republicans Might Accidentally Make Net Neutrality Stronger
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Brendan Sasso
If the two Republican commissioners won’t back any of his proposals, Wheeler will have to rely on the votes of both Democrats to get anything passed. That dynamic gives the two Democratic commissioners—Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel—the leverage to demand changes to make the regulations more stringent.
Courts Nix More Software Patents
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Ashby Jones
Since the country’s top court struck down patents on a computer program that reduces risk in financial transactions, federal trial courts have rejected software patents in nine cases, according to Lex Machina, which supplies patent data to lawyers. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which sets much of the nation’s patent law, has nixed software patents in three others.
Sharing Economy Faces Patchwork of Guidelines in European Countries
NEW YORK TIMES
Raphael Minder and Mark Scott
Start-ups like Uber and Airbnb want European consumers to embrace their companies. Yet when it comes to persuading policy makers, these companies have run into regulatory hurdles that have exposed the European Union’s uneven response to technological innovation.
China Clamps Down on Web, Pinching Companies Like Google
NEW YORK TIMES
Keith Bradsher and Paul Mozur
Chinese exporters have struggled to place Google ads that appeal to overseas buyers. Biotechnology researchers in Beijing had trouble recalibrating a costly microscope this summer because they could not locate the online instructions to do so. And international companies have had difficulty exchanging Gmail messages among far-flung offices and setting up meetings on applications like Google Calendar.
Finance
Should Mortgage Lending Standards Ease?
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Nick Timiraos
Easy lending standards have helped set postrecession records for new-car sales. New-home building is barely rising, due in part to much tighter standards among mortgage lenders. This disparity underscores the divergent paths the two sectors have taken in the years since the financial crisis.
The next (nasty) economic surprise?
WASHINGTON POST
Robert Samuelson
The gist of [Robert] Gordon’s argument is that the nation’s productive capacity — what economists call “the supply side” — will expand only slowly. It won’t keep up with the stronger consumer demand embodied in other forecasts. As a result, inflationary pressures will be higher and GDP lower. The “economy is on a collision course between demand-side optimism and supply-side pessimism,” he writes in a study released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Regulators, Accounting Firms Bicker Over Audit Rule
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Michael Rapoport
Regulators are poised to require that accounting firms identify exactly who is in charge of each audit they perform at thousands of publicly traded companies. Just where that disclosure will happen is still up for debate, however.
Politics
In heated midterm contests, GOP candidates explore a move to the middle
WASHINGTON POST
Philip Rucker and Reid Wilson
The shift is evident in some of the most contentious Senate and gubernatorial races — in traditional swing states as well as decidedly conservative ones such as Alaska and Arkansas — where Republican nominees have endorsed increases to the minimum wage, legalizing medical marijuana or granting in-state college tuition to some illegal immigrants. Even on social issues, an area where the GOP traditionally has hewed to the wishes of its evangelical Christian base, many Senate hopefuls have backed same-sex marriage or over-the-counter access to birth-control pills.
Over-the-counter availability of ‘the pill’ wouldn’t be a panacea
WASHINGTON POST
Editorial
Over-the-counter sales of birth control pills would be no panacea for religious dilemmas posed by Obamacare. It could, however, help improve women’s access to needed health care, thus preventing the individual and social costs of unintended pregnancy — if and only if accompanied by measures to ensure affordability. To make that happen, Congress would have to adjust both Obamacare and the food and drug laws, which, in turn, would require a sustained bipartisan effort in both houses. Judging by this year’s campaign rhetoric, a serious, bipartisan approach is the last thing anyone has in mind.
Ahead of Midterms, Conservatives Lament Lack of Clear Agenda
NATIONAL JOURNAL
Tim Alberta
Particularly among members of the conservative Republican Study Committee, the unwillingness to act more boldly this year on health care—which, they have frequently pointed out, comprises one-sixth of the U.S. economy—is symptomatic of a broader failure to offer a specific agenda that contrasts against the Democrats’ and tells voters what Republicans would do if given more power to govern.
World in turmoil marks Barack Obama’s return to U.N.
POLITICO
Josh Gerstein
President Barack Obama is back at the United Nations this week, but the more peaceful world he saw emerging just a year ago is looking like a distant, even naive, dream.
Panetta: US paying the price for not arming Syrian rebels
THE HILL
Kyle Balluck
Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said in an interview broadcast late Sunday that the threat from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) can be tied in part to President Obama’s decision not to arm moderate Syrian rebels.
How the GOP stopped caring about you
WASHINGTON POST
Heather Cox Richardson
Perhaps with the influx of young people, immigrants and minorities into the voting population, the cycle can finally be broken. These voters are too young to remember the Cold War and are more comfortable across ethnic lines, making it harder to rally them with the specters of socialism or racial conflict. Forced to adapt to a changing nation, in this century, perhaps, the Republican Party will find a way to stay committed to the ideals of its founders.
U.S. Ramping Up Major Renewal in Nuclear Arms
WALL STREET JOURNAL
William J. Broad and David E. Sanger
This expansion comes under a president who campaigned for “a nuclear-free world” and made disarmament a main goal of American defense policy. The original idea was that modest rebuilding of the nation’s crumbling nuclear complex would speed arms refurbishment, raising confidence in the arsenal’s reliability and paving the way for new treaties that would significantly cut the number of warheads. Instead, because of political deals and geopolitical crises, the Obama administration is engaging in extensive atomic rebuilding while getting only modest arms reductions in return.
Exclusive: Lois Lerner breaks silence
POLITICO
Rachael Bade
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country.”
