Author Archives: Lovell Mao

Even Republican voters support Obama’s new climate rule

Even Republican voters support Obama’s new climate rule

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Republican politicians are railing against President Obama’s new draft power-plant pollution rules, portraying them as job killers that will leave the economy in unrecognizable tatters.

But their rank-and-file voters haven’t yet gotten the message.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, conducted from Thursday to Sunday as the media was ramping up coverage ahead of the rules’ release, included this question: “Do you think the federal government should or should not limit the release of greenhouse gases from existing power plants in an effort to reduce global warming?”

Not only did 70 percent of all respondents reply in the affirmative, but more than twice as many Republicans said “yes” as said “no.” Check it out:

Washington PostClick to embiggen.

There’s more good news from the poll on whether Americans would be willing to pay more for their electricity if it meant cleaner air and a more stable climate. From The Washington Post‘s write-up:

The cross-party agreement extends to a willingness to pay for such limits with higher energy bills, a flashpoint for debate and a key area of uncertainty in new regulations. Asked whether Washington should still go forward with limits if they “significantly lowered greenhouse gases but raised your monthly energy expenses by 20 dollars a month,” 63 percent of respondents say yes, including 51 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of independents and 71 percent of Democrats.

(And it’s not clear that the rules even would cost Americans anything; the Natural Resources Defense Council argues that they’ll save Americans money by increasing energy efficiency.)

This from a national electorate that’s better known for yawning at climate change — relegating it close to the bottom of their list of national concerns — than for caring about climate action.

It seems that even Republicans are tiring of boys who cry wolf.


Source
A huge majority of Americans support regulating carbon from power plants. And they’re even willing to pay for it, The Washington Post

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Even Republican voters support Obama’s new climate rule

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Washington coal export project dumped by Goldman Sachs

Washington coal export project dumped by Goldman Sachs

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Goldman Sachs is looking a tad less evil. It has dumped its holdings in a shaky project that would build the Gateway Pacific Terminal near Bellingham, Wash., intended to be the West Coast’s biggest coal export terminal.

It’s not that the banking giant discovered a soul. Rather, it’s realizing that coal projects in the U.S. are a dumb gamble. Last year, the group’s commodity research team warned of “a sharp deceleration in seaborne demand” for coal in a paper titled “The window for thermal coal investment is closing.”

Here’s Oregon Public Broadcasting with the latest:

New York-based Goldman Sachs has sold its stock back to the companies proposing to build the Gateway Pacific Terminal. If built it would transfer 48 million tons of Wyoming coal each year from trains to ocean-going vessels bound for Asia. …

Before the stock transfer, Goldman Sachs had a 49 percent stake in the Gateway Pacific project.  …

Coal-export opponents said the departure of Goldman Sachs as an investor is the latest sign that Wall Street no longer sees a profitable future in mining, shipping and burning coal — considered the dirtiest source of energy and one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change.

Not so long ago, there were six coal export terminals proposed to be built in the Pacific Northwest. Now just three such projects are still considered viable, thanks to intense local and environmental opposition and to the uncertain market for coal abroad.

The remaining investors in the Gateway Pacific Terminal are trying to sound upbeat about the latest development, but Goldman Sachs’ pullout is just the latest bad news for them. It follows the November election of Whatcom County councilors opposed to the terminal, who could now help to kill the environmental nightmare of a project.


Source
Wall Street Giant Backs Away From Washington Coal Export Project, Oregon Public Broadcasting

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Climate & Energy

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Washington coal export project dumped by Goldman Sachs

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We Could Do a Lot More to Fight Poverty If We Wanted To

Mother Jones

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Today is the 50th anniversary of LBJ’s war on poverty, so we’ll be getting a lot of retrospectives. CBPP has a whole series of charts here, and they’re worth a look. Child poverty is way down since 1963, which is a big win, and elderly poverty is down too, which is a big win for Social Security.

But at the risk of being a buzzkill, I want to reprint a chart I put up last month. It answers a simple question: if you count income from all the welfare programs we’ve put in place over the past half century, how have working-age folks done? The answer is in the red line in the chart below. The Great Society programs of the 60s got the working-age poverty rate down from 20 percent to 15 percent, but then we gave up. Since the mid-70s, the poverty rate has stayed stubbornly stuck at about 15 percent:

This is a chart to really keep in mind as you read the inevitable retrospectives. The overall poverty rate has gone down substantially in the past half century, but that’s largely because of the huge effect of Social Security on elderly poverty. But as much as this is a great achievement, it’s not what most people think of when you talk about “poverty.” Rather, they’re mostly thinking of working-age people who are either unemployed or earning tiny wages. And among those people, we simply haven’t done much for the past 40 years.

It’s probably not possible to eliminate poverty, or even to get it down to 5 percent or so. But we could do more if we wanted. We could make Medicaid more generous. We could raise the minimum wage and the EITC. We could, at an absolute minimum, decide not to cut food stamps. We could do all these things. All we need is a bit of empathy for the worst off among us and the will to do something about it.

Source: 

We Could Do a Lot More to Fight Poverty If We Wanted To

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WATCH: Why Carbon Pollution Is Destroying the Ocean

Mother Jones

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One of the major themes in today’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the significance of oceans, which absorb 30 percent of the carbon dioxide we emit. This turns the water increasingly acidic, which threatens to dissolve many marine critters’ hard shells. I sat down with Monika Rhein, an oceanographer at Germany’s University of Bremen and a lead author of the IPCC report’s chapter on oceans, to talk about the state of the science on ocean acidification.

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WATCH: Why Carbon Pollution Is Destroying the Ocean

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What’s Good And Isn’t Really Good Concerning Solar Panels

A bunch of people are making use of solar panels and enjoy their choice to get them. In some cases individuals don’t enjoy them as a lot since they didn’t understand exactly what to anticipate.

Right here is a checklist of exactly what is good and what you might not such as regarding solar panels, they could set you back quite a bit to apply to your home. They do repay after a while, nevertheless, yet that pay off takes fairly time. If the panels were to get damaged or something before you could possibly get your refund from them, after that you ‘d run out good fortune unfortunately on ever getting your financial investment back. Fortunately is that your solar panels will not be near where anybody could damage them but you will need to make certain you care for them by determining how to protect them if a bad hurricane is coming through.

You have to have a roofing that’s big sufficient for the panels to be on. This is because they need to be higher up so they could accumulate the most electricity possible. If you have a huge tree that screens your roof, after that you might not manage to get the most from your solar panels till you get that tree taken out. If your roofing system isn’t really big sufficient after that the investment won’t be worth it due to the fact that the power you make won’t really do you any good unless you’re only powering small things or devices that don’t take a lot of power.

One good thing about a solar panel device is that it makes no sound. They are silent unlike a great deal of generators and things that make electricity. This indicates that you’re visiting have the ability to put the panels everywhere without having to fret about listening to sounds like whirring and warning all the time. The only point that will certainly be making noise is when you power on something that you have actually been powering with your solar panels. Not needing to stress over neighbors whining about noise is going to be nice if you decide to choose solar panels.

Yet another thing you need to don’t forget is that throughout the night you’re not visiting have any power can be found in via your solar panels. If you don’t have any batteries to keep the excess power you obtain during the day, then you’ll need to count on normal electricity as an alternative. Not that this is regrettable of a point due to the fact that you’re still able to make use of the solar panels at dusk, yet you really ought to get the batteries to save the extra power since if you do not then you’re visiting invest much more on energy during the night which costs a whole lot in the future.

As this short article has shown you, there are a lot of things that are good regarding solar panels, and some points that aren’t so excellent about them. Usage this details to help you determine whether they satisfy your necessities. Invest your cash carefully so you don’t regret your purchasing later.how to build solar panels

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