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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

FROM THE ADVANCING CLIMATE JUSTICE CONFERENCE.

Brentin MockJan 29, 2009

The “Advancing Climate Justice” conference at Fordham University in New York City (organized by the NY-based environmental justice group WE ACT) today and tomorrow, is billed as an attempt to raise awareness about the need to protect vulnerable communities from the consequences of climate change. Within that rubric, they’ve wasted little time exposing their advocacy for a carbon tax bill.

Dr. James Hansen, leading siren on the dangers of global warming, didn’t make the opening session due to sickness, and he undoubtedly was invited in some part due to his aggressive advocacy for a carbon tax regime as opposed to a cap-and-trade regime.

Will Environmental Justice Finally Get Its Due?

Obama's environment, energy, and urban affairs appointees are poised to enact policies that environmental justice activists have long been pushing for.

Brentin MockDec 19, 2008

If President-Elect Barack Obama's recent cabinet choices are any indication, the decades-old environmental justice movement may finally see many of its top policy goals fulfilled. The Obama administration is poised to finally deliver on White House promises made in the early 1990s to protect minorities from toxic waste, and with the addition of an Office of Urban Policy, it may go even further toward correcting historical racial disparities when it comes to environmental hazards.

SHELL WON'T DRILL, BABY, DRILL.

Brentin MockDec 19, 2008

Shell Oil has decided that drilling for oil and gas in the Beaufort Sea outside of Alaska is probably not worth the aggravation right now:

"Shell Oil has canceled its drilling and other exploration plans for next year in the Beaufort Sea while it focuses on court challenges to its offshore plan.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last month that federal regulators improperly granted Shell permission to drill in the Beaufort. The court ordered the Minerals Management Service to reconsider how exploratory drilling would affect wildlife and Inupiat Eskimo subsistence hunting and fishing."

MORE ON CARBON TAXES AND AGRICULTURE.

Brentin MockDec 10, 2008

Earlier, I posted a quote from the Environmental Defense Fund's Joe Rudek that stated that a carbon tax would have probably no effect on agriculture. Technically that should say no direct effect on agriculture. There is a possible indirect impact. Last week, the federal Biomass Research and Development Board released a "Biofuel Feedstocks Report" that stated farms could be impacted by a carbon tax due to a rise in fertilizer production costs.

Green Standards Aren't Just for Detroit

As Congress looks to attach environmental requirements to the automaker bailout, it should consider not just the Northern Big Three manufacturers but also the Southern Big Three: Honda, Hyundai, and Mercedes Benz.

Brentin MockDec 09, 2008

As heads of the Big Three automotive corporations go before Congress looking for at least $15 billion in bridge loans, they come with greener promises. The automakers and members of Congress have offered greater fuel efficiency, even going so far as to pledge working toward a 45-miles-per-gallon threshold (much higher than the "35 miles per gallon by 2020" requirement called for in the energy bill).

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