It's been awhile since we had an old-fashioned link roundup, so here are a couple enviro stories from around the Web that caught my eye:
* Nate Silver works his magic to figure out who voted for the House climate bill and why. Most of it's what you'd expect (ideology and the prevalence of carbon-intensive industries in one's district matter a lot), but a few surprises lurk: "Although the nuclear energy lobby is small, and the alternative energy industry lobby is very small, they nevertheless appear to have had some influence"—lobbying for the bill, of course.
* Speaking of K Street, the Center for Public Integrity surveys the feeding frenzy over climate and energy legislation and finds that Southern Company, an Atlanta-based utility with a carbon-heavy fleet, is leading the charge with a staggering 63 lobbyists in tow. Old-school power companies, automakers, and Big Oil still dominate the top ten, although the Environmental Defense Fund had 24 lobbyists and the Solar Energy Industries Association had 24.
* Kevin Drum has a great post on why cost-benefit analysis isn't the best way to think about action on climate change. Economist Marty Weitzman took a similar view in a NBER debate a few months ago, noting that with a few reasonable tweaks of assumptions, you can argue that we should spend anything from 2.5 percent of our income to stop climate change to 99 percent. Of course, we can't just abandon cost-benefit altogether—the best approach is probably to say it's worth considering, but it's not the only thing to consider.
* Kate Galbraith pleads with clich