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Brentin Mock

Brentin Mock is lead reporter for Voting Rights Watch, a partnership between Colorlines.com and The Nation magazine. Over the past year, he covered the voter-ID law controversy, felony disenfranchisement, voter intimidation and challenges to the Voting Rights Act.

Recent Articles

NOT EQUALLY BOUND BY CLIMATE.

Brentin MockMay 18, 2009

Ezra Klein's "first day at school," as he referred to it via Tweet, at The Washington Post included a keen observation about President Barack Obama's Notre Dame speech. Among the hullabaloo over abortion, Klein pulled out Obama's newer nuanced framing of climate change, placed in both a religious and broader global context for the college crowd. Drawing on a study from the British medical journal The Lancet, Klein wrote:

KRUGMAN: CHINA, DO OR DIE.

Brentin MockMay 15, 2009

Back from a visit to China, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman yesterday confronted the ever worsening Co2 emissions problems that plague the globe as most nations are finally taking the consequences of climate change seriously. His China-malaise column noted that the country is the world's largest carbon producer (they're building new coal-burning plants at the insane rate of at least two a month), but they seem to care less about the construction's devastating implications.

KILL BILL: GOP HOPES TO NIX CAP AND TRADE.

Brentin MockMay 14, 2009

The Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are looking to destroy any chance for a cap-and-trade measure to reach the final text of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, as it heads to markup next Monday. Led by Rep. Joe Barton, a denier of climate change who believes reducing carbon emissions would be like "living in Nigeria," the minority gallery of Republicans are refusing to endorse anything resembling cap-and-trade.

"We're not going to try to kill the bill," Barton told reporters yesterday. But only before he declared: "Cap-and-trade is dead. ... I don't think they can get it out of committee."

HOUSE CLEAN ENERGY BILL MARKUP FINALLY SCHEDULED.

Brentin MockMay 13, 2009

After the House Energy and Commerce committee's April hearings on its climate and energy bill, the markup phase was delayed for weeks. Perhaps the committee was nursing the stings and pelts from skeptical Republicans and agnostic coal-state Democrats about global warming. Today, the committee finally announced a new dawn for the bill:

The Committee on Energy and Commerce will meet in open markup session on Monday, May 18, 2009, at 1:00 p.m., and subsequent days as necessary, in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building, to consider the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

WHEN GREEN JOBS AREN'T ENOUGH.

Brentin MockMay 01, 2009

Has "health based" environmentalist activism become passe? The new green movement has called for concerted focus on green jobs as a way to turn economically devastated ghettos into functional neighborhoods. Activism that hopes to hold industrial facilities accountable for pollution that disproportionately impacts the health of vulnerable populations is weak and not worth the trouble, say the new environmentalists.

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