The New Republic

Do Republicans have to go green to have any prayer of winning a statewide race in California? For awhile, it sure looked that way. Back in 2006, Arnold Schwarzenegger managed to revive his gasping campaign by reinventing himself as an environmentalist. He scampered around the state in a lime-colored bus with a Yosemite National Park vista spray-painted on the side, scissored his way through all manners of ribbons on solar-paneled schools and the like, and signed A.B. READ MORE >>

Looks like this week's climate banter wasn't totally substance-free. Earlier today, G20 governments finally agreed to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, which jack up demand for oil, gas, and coal by artificially lowering prices. The phase-out would happen in the "medium term," with no specific timetables (countries like India want a slow transition so poor people don't get hit with a swift price spike). READ MORE >>

So you know those large sickle-shaped claws Velociraptors have on their hindfeet? Of course, everyone does. Well, once upon a time paleontologists thought the claws were used to disembowel the raptors' prey—certainly that was the working theory in Jurassic Park. READ MORE >>

The other day, Tyler Cowen flagged this jaw-dropping sentence from James Workman's new book, The Heart of Dryness: READ MORE >>

Earlier today in the Senate, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski was planning to introduce an amendment that would've blocked (at least for a year) the EPA's authority to craft its own carbon regulations—even in the absence of a climate bill. But, in the end, she backed down, and the amendment never came up for a vote. READ MORE >>

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There's been a lot of climate-related gabbing at the U.N. today, and Neil MacFarquhar has a handy rundown in the Times. One of the few dribbles of quasi-news, it seems, was that Chinese President Hu Jintao pledged to curb the growth of China's carbon-dioxide emissions by a "notable margin" by 2020. (His speech is here.) READ MORE >>

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For the last 15 years, the Burmese python has been the biggest, most ruthless snake in South Florida. The python's not exactly native to the region—it's an invasive species, imported from abroad, gradually introduced into the wild after hurricanes start ripping apart the state's many "exotic species" shops, or after various python-owners grew weary of their 200-pound pets and set them free. So the pythons have now made the Everglades their home, and are wreaking all sorts of python havoc, chowing down on local wildlife and endangered species like the Key Largo wood rat. READ MORE >>

Score one more for the corporate responsibility crowd: Pacific Gas & Electric has up and left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, citing “irreconcilable differences” with the business lobby’s climate policy. READ MORE >>