Category Archives: Bunn

Watch Nancy Pelosi Explain Why Questions About Her Stepping Down Are Blatantly Sexist

by KarissaRamaciot Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Yet again, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was forced to defend her decision to remain in leadership following the disappointing midterm elections, a position she says she would not have to uphold if it weren’t for being a woman.

Speaking at her weekly press conference on Thursday, Pelosi schooled reporters with the following:

“What I said to the most recent person who asked ‘Well you’ve lost now three times. Why don’t you step aside?’ And I said, “What was the day that any of you said to Mitch McConnell, when they lost the Senate three times in a row, lost making progress in taking back the Senate three times in a row, ‘Aren’t you getting a little old, Mitch? Shouldn’t you step aside?’ Have you ever asked him that question?”

This is far from the first time Pelosi, who at the age of 74 is just two years older than McConnell, has been the target of sexist inquiries from the media. In 2012, Luke Russert asked Pelosi the very same question about stepping down to make room for younger leadership, to which Pelosi slammed as “offensive.”

Pelosi’s defense today comes in the the midst of similar jabs aimed at Hillary Clinton, after Rand Paul (R-Ky.) suggested in a Politico interview Clinton may be too old to run for president.

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Watch Nancy Pelosi Explain Why Questions About Her Stepping Down Are Blatantly Sexist

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The US Will See 50 Percent More Lightning Strikes, Thanks to Global Warming

by heloltiki554 Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

By now we’re familiar with some of the scarier potential impacts of climate change: Floods, fires, stronger hurricanes, violent conflicts. Well, here’s a new one to add to your nightmares. Lightning strikes in the continental United States will increase roughly 12 percent for every degree Celsius of global warming, a study published today in Science finds. If warming continues unchecked, that could translate into a 50 percent increase in lightning by the end of the century—three strikes then for every two strikes now. (On average, there are currently about 25 million strikes per year.)

Does this mean an increase your odds of getting struck by lightning? Technically yes, I guess, but I wouldn’t worry about that. Instead, the increase matters because lightning strikes are the principle cause of wildfires, which are already predicted to become more severe due to global warming. In one 24-hour period in August, lightning in Northern California started 34 wildfires. The study doesn’t make any specific predictions about wildfire activity, but knowing about future lightning conditions is an important part of that equation.

Lightning is notoriously hard to account for in climate models, because the models can only represent large-scale atmospheric forces like wind speed, moisture, and temperature; they can’t show relatively small electric pulses, said Anthony Del Genio, an atmospheric scientist for NASA who was not involved with the study. So to get a sense of how lighting patterns will change in future climates, scientists have to rely on “proxies”—third-party forces they can model that have a known relationship to lightning. Early lightning studies in the 1990s, for example, made inferences based on how the heights of clouds—thought to be one contributor to lightning patterns—are expected to change with global warming, Del Genio said.

But lightning is a complex phenomenon that still isn’t fully understood by atmospheric scientists, so proxies have mostly proven to be imperfect for one reason or another. As a result, the Science study explains, previous estimates for how lightning will change with global warming range from an increase of 5 percent to and increase of more than 100 percent for each degree of temperature rise. Not very informative.

This study presents a new proxy for lightning—a proxy that author David Romps of the University of California-Berkeley thinks is much stronger than any of the previous ones. It’s actually a combination of two proxies: precipitation and “CAPE,” a standard measure of the kinetic energy clouds hold as they rise in the atmosphere. Lightning is the product of electrical charges caused by ice particles of different densities colliding in clouds, so Romps chose factors that would be necessary for lightning to occur: Enough precipitation to form ice, and enough upward energy to keep the ice suspended.

Taken together, those proxies accurately predicted 77 percent of actual lightning strikes observed in the US in 2011 by a national web of electromagnetic sensors. That result, Romps said, is a sign that these proxies are “doing a remarkably good job” of representing lightning patterns.

The video below shows the data Romps used to compare his hypothesis to observed lightning strikes, here represented as red dots. The original was over five minutes long—with one second for every day of the year—so we sped it up a bit.

The next step was to use data from 11 existing climate models to find out how precipitation and CAPE are predicted to change with global warming. Although Romps said the correlation between warming and CAPE is still being studied, all 11 models predicted it would increase by the end of the century. In other words, global warming will probably produce clouds that have stronger upward momentum. Combine that with predicted precipitation and, according to Romps, you get a sense of how much more lightning we can expect to see.

In this study, Romps’ dataset paints its predictions with a broad brush; the data isn’t detailed enough to know how lightning will change in specific parts of the country, or how the frequency will change in different seasons. But Del Genio says that the study advances our understanding of which weather forces contribute most to lightning. What’s more, he says, Romps’ work give us a strong indication of what lies ahead.

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The US Will See 50 Percent More Lightning Strikes, Thanks to Global Warming

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I Cannot Stop Watching This Video of Super Mario Hurting People

by CamilleDickens Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

Via our friends at Gizmodo, this video is why I have not gotten any work done today.

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I Cannot Stop Watching This Video of Super Mario Hurting People

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Justice Scalia Goes to Conservative Legal Event, Gives Boring Speech

by VictorF32nso Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

The Federalist Society kicked off its national convention Thursday in Washington, DC, with a speech from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who is one of two justices headlining the event. The other is Justice Samuel Alito, who is on tap for the conservative legal group’s big dinner Thursday night.

For years, liberal good-government types have been criticizing Scalia and the other conservative justices for participating in Federalist Society functions. The events also serve as fundraisers for the organization, which promotes conservative positions in the nation’s ongoing legal debates. Critics contend that the involvement of Scalia et. al. violates various legal ethics codes. In 2011, for instance, Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas attended the annual dinner associated with the Federalist Society’s national convention—hours after the Supreme Court decided whether to take up the main challenges to the Affordable Care Act. And it just so happened that the law firms representing the Obamacare challengers were sponsors of that dinner and that lawyers from those firms were among the guests rubbing shoulders with Scalia and Thomas.

Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause, said at the time, “This stunning breach of ethics and indifference to the code belies claims by several justices that the court abides by the same rules that apply to all other federal judges. The justices were wining and dining at a black-tie fundraiser with attorneys who have pending cases before the court. Their appearance and assistance in fundraising for this event undercuts any claims of impartiality, and is unacceptable.”

But such complaints have not caused Scalia and his conservative brethren to rethink their cozy relationship with the Federalist Society, and this morning the group could once again boast a big get—the often fiery justice who is a hero within conservative legal circles. But if any of the conventioneers were hoping for fireworks from Scalia, they were sorely disappointed. Rather than opine on Hobby Lobby and religious freedom or the Affordable Care Act and government overreach, Scalia spent 30 minutes at the dais lecturing on the history of Magna Carta—”No definite article!” he insisted—and its influence on American law.

Scalia mostly stuck to legal issues from the 13th century. He might well have been a curator from the Library of Congress, where the Magna Carta is currently on exhibit (sponsored, incidentally, by the Federalist Society). Scalia ended his speech by urging everyone to go see the 800-year-old document.

In years past, the conference has drawn an all-star lineup of firebrand conservative politicians and aspiring presidential candidates: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Republican Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), and incoming Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). But this year, the only politician of note on the schedule is Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R). The rest of the usual suspects are basking in the glow of the GOP’s Election Day victories and preparing for their takeover of the Senate. As for Scalia, if attendees want to see him let loose, they might have to wait for his next Supreme Court opinion.

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Justice Scalia Goes to Conservative Legal Event, Gives Boring Speech

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Here’s Why China Cares More About Climate Change Than Congress Does

by HyeMarshall Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, China and the United States announced an unprecedented plan to work together to fight global warming. The deal includes new trade partnerships and significant new greenhouse gas goals for both countries. The US pledged to cut its emissions by up to 28 percent by 2025, while China agreed that its emissions would peak around 2030 and promised to get one-fifth of its power from non-fossil-fuel energy sources by the same year. Environmental groups have roundly welcomed the plan as an important step. But critics of the deal—including congressional Republicans—say China has been let off lightly and that it won’t follow through with its commitments.

The reality, of course, is far more complex. So I asked experts on US-China relations to explain why this deal was so attractive to the leaders of two countries that have historically locked horns over everything from human rights to lingerie imports. Here’s their explanation of why China really does want to want to act on climate change, and why the bargain makes sense for President Barack Obama, as well:

China has to act on air pollution. If it doesn’t, the country risks political instability. Top Republicans have slammed the US-China deal as ineffective and one-sided. “China won’t have to reduce anything,” complained Sen. Jim Inhofe (Okla.) in a statement, adding that China’s promises were “hollow and not believable.”

Climate Desk

But the assumption that China won’t try to live up to its end of the bargain misses the powerful domestic and global incentives for China to take action. The first, and most pressing, is visible in China’s appalling air quality. President Xi Jinping needs to act now, says Jerome A. Cohen, a leading Chinese law expert at New York University. Why? Because “the environment—not only the climate—is the most serious domestic challenge he confronts.” And Xi has the power to follow through on this “ambitious and necessary commitment,” says Cohen, who notes that the Chinese president will likely be in charge for eight more years and has “no overt opposition to his impressive power.”

Over the past few decades, China has witnessed the fastest and deepest wealth creation in history, hauling millions out of poverty in the space a generation. That growth has been heavily reliant on coal, which makes up roughly 70 percent of the country’s total energy consumption. China is the world’s top coal consumer and producer. All that has come with big cost: toxic air. According to one Lancet study, pollution generated mostly by cars and the country’s 3,000 coal-fired power plants killed 1.2 million Chinese people in 2010.

That’s why, Cohen says, this new announcement is such a big win for Chinese people themselves—it’s a clear demonstration that the country’s leaders are confronting China’s largest crisis. “This is very encouraging progress on a crucial issue of human rights: the right to a nonthreatening environment,” he says.

China’s air has become a major political threat to the Communist Party. As we reported in our yearlong investigation into China’s fracking plans, the country has a daily average of 270 “mass incidents”—unofficial gatherings of 100 or more demonstrators—sparked in part by pollution and environmental degradation. The message is clear. As The New Yorker‘s Evan Osnos put it, if the government doesn’t figure out a way to respond, “then it’s a political crisis, not just an environment crisis.” That’s what my colleague Jaeah Lee and I found when we toured China last year: It’s impossible to escape the scourge of coal. To understand why China wants to act now, you need to understand just how desperate the crisis has become:

The Atlantic‘s James Fallows made this point Wednesday, writing that “when children are developing lung cancer, when people in the capital city are on average dying five years too early because of air pollution, when water and agricultural soil and food supplies are increasingly poisoned, a system just won’t last.”

You can watch Fallows explain just how closely tied China’s environmental crisis is to the fortunes of the Communist Party:

President Xi Jinping wants to be a powerful global player. Another motivation for Chinese action has to do with global politics, says Orville Schell, who directs the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

“Xi Jinping is a very tough, muscular, nationalist leader whose toolbox is taken from earlier Mao periods,” Schell said in a phone interview. According to Schell, Xi’s preference for assertive leadership on the world stage means that China is “going to accept much less hectoring and bullying” from the rest of the world, perceived or otherwise. “They are going to be much more defiant.”

This deal—in which China is appearing on the world stage as an equal partner with the United States—fits into that narrative, explains NYU’s Cohen. The “climate issue is needed to boost sagging and increasingly tense Sino-American relations,” he said. “Xi is pursuing a two-faced policy toward the US: progress on issues of critical importance to him and his party/state, and relentless hostility toward the continuing soft power influence of the US over the Chinese people and China’s neighbors. Xi is facing severe internal challenges. He sees that the US can help him on some and undermine him on others, so, following one of Chairman Mao’s famous maxims, he is ‘walking on two legs.'”

China is actually serious about climate change. It’s not the case that everything is about the machinery of global politics—or even simply about China’s domestic worries over air quality. China’s recent actions suggest that its policymakers are actually attempting to confront global warming. Beijing has committed to gradually shut down coal plants inside the city by 2017. Obama and Xi agreed last year to curb the use of hydrofluorocarbons—powerful greenhouse gases that are used in refrigerants. In September, China announced it was moving forward with plans for a massive, nationwide cap-and-trade program intended to help combat climate change. The program will launch in 2016, but there are already a series of pilot carbon markets across the country.

So what does Obama get out of this deal? Despite Republican criticisms that the deal lets China off the hook, Schell says that Obama gets to own a big foreign policy success—one that actually helps him achieve a major domestic policy goal. Obama’s success with China was born out of failure at home: “He’s had to export his hopes and dreams for some sort of collaborative solution in China,” Schell said. “China, paradoxically, has allowed Obama to say that he has followed through with his earlier commitments to take climate change seriously.”

Cohen warns that opposition to climate action in the US could still undermine the bilateral agreement, but he says he’s hopeful that Obama “can implement the US commitment.”

As for whether the deal could signal a larger breakthrough by the Obama administration in US-China relations, the experts are skeptical. “The two big moments—the breakthrough moments—in US-China relations, were Nixon in ’72 and Carter recognizing China when Deng Xiaoping came to the US in ’79,” says Schell. “This is not the case this time with Obama in China.” Still, Schell says that any agreement with the tough Chinese leadership “does represent some progress.”

After all, he says, Obama “certainly can’t do anything at home.”

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Here’s Why China Cares More About Climate Change Than Congress Does

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Watchdog: Wednesday’s Big Wall Street Settlement Is “Laughably Inadequate”

by DwainOquinn Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, six massive international banks agreed to pay $4.3 billion to settle allegations from regulators in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland that their traders tried to manipulate the $5.3-trillion-a-day foreign-currency exchange market. But Wall Street watchdogs say the banks got off with a slap on the wrist.

From 2008 through 2013, traders at JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS colluded to coordinate the buying and selling of 10 major currencies to manipulate prices in their favor. The penalties—announced Wednesday by an alphabet soup of American and foreign regulatory agencies—mark the end of the first phase of investigations into the banks that could lead to further fines. They “should be seen as a message to all market participants that wrongdoing and foul play in the financial markets is unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” Tim Massad, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said in a statement.

But critics say the banks, which were not forced to admit wrongdoing, deserved a much harsher punishment. “The global too-big-to-fail banks are again allowed to evade responsibility and accountability by using shareholders’ money to pay big fines, which will generate headlines but do little if anything to stop the relentless Wall Street crime spree,” Dennis Kelleher, the president of Better Markets, a financial reform advocacy shop, responded in a statement.

David Weidner, who covers Wall Street for MarketWatch, agrees. The settlements “appear to be just another cost-of-doing-business budget line for the banks,” he wrote.

What’s more, financial reformers say, none of the employees involved in the rate-fixing will face criminal charges. “It’s corrupt, as usual,” says one House staffer. Regulators should “send crooks to jail.”

As part of the deal, the CFTC and Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority called on the banks to strengthen their internal monitoring of foreign exchange trading activity. But “while the banks did agree to take certain steps to better supervise their traders, that is laughably inadequate” to prevent future wrongdoing, Kelleher says.

The Justice Department and New York’s Department of Financial Services have been pursuing separate criminal investigations into the alleged rate manipulation. Those probes could result in criminal charges, although “if history is any indication,” Weidner says, the people charged won’t be high-level executives. To date, only one top banker who helped cause the financial crisis went to jail because of it. This time, he adds, they will likely “single out low-ranking traders who pushed the buttons.”

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Watchdog: Wednesday’s Big Wall Street Settlement Is “Laughably Inadequate”

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Fast Tracks: "Spanish Mary" From Lost on the River

by Brooks2875 Posted on November 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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TRACK 4

“Spanish Mary”

From Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes

electromagnetic recordings/harvest

Liner notes: “Is it a mystery to live/Or is it a mystery to die?” Rhiannon Giddens asks with cool grace, as banjo and mellotron add arresting texture to this spooky toe-tapper.

Behind the music: Entrusted with previously unseen Bob Dylan lyrics from 1967, T Bone Burnett recruited Elvis Costello, Giddens (Carolina Chocolate Drops), Taylor Goldsmith (Dawes), Jim James (My Morning Jacket), and Marcus Mumford (Mumford & Sons) to collaborate on these “new” songs.

Check it out if you like: Dylan’s Basement Tapes.

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Fast Tracks: "Spanish Mary" From Lost on the River

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US Police Brutality Is Bad. This Giant Western Country’s Is Way Worse.

by GroverJanssen Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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The high-profile killings of figures like Ferguson, Missouri’s Michael Brown have stirred a national conversation about police brutality as of late. But it turns out the Americas’ second biggest economy struggles with this issue on a much greater scale: Brazil’s police killed more than 11,000 civilians between 2008 and 2013; on average, a staggering six people every day. This jaw-dropping number was released today in a Brazilian Public Security Forum (BPSF) report which rounds up statistics illuminating the country’s struggles with public safety. To put the figure in context, it took police in the United States 30 years to kill the same number of civilians, despite the fact that there are at least 50 percent more people in the US.

Sao Paulo in particular has seen an increase in civilian deaths at the hands of the authorities. Between January and September of 2014, officers killed 478 people during confrontations, twice as many victims as during that same period last year. The uptick parallels an increasingly lawless criminal culture, say authorities. “Rather than turn themselves in to the police, criminals prefer to open fire,” Sao Paulo police department’s Jose Vicente da Silva told the AP. “That is what is causing the increase.”

Many of Brazil’s police killings happen in the predominately black favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where there’s been a heightened military presence, in part to try and pacify the area for the World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Brazilian journalist Juliana Barbassa, who’s writing a book on the issues feeding Brazil’s massive national protests, described this tension when she spoke with my colleague Ian Gordon in July. When more police entered Rio’s slums, “at the beginning there was this real hope that they could do something,” Barbassa said; for one, break up the drug rings controlling the community. But then “you’ve got military police fully armed, in your community 24/7, regulating things like when you can have parties—it’s not without its serious problems.” Barbassa explained that the city has seen some “very ugly cases of abuse of power,” including authorities torturing and killing civilians and then hiding the bodies. “To see these things happen, with this freshly trained, specifically chosen group of officers, really helped unravel a little bit the expectations and hopes that people had.”

While the BPSF report paints a grim portrait of police use of force in Brazil, it also reveals how officers themselves suffer at the hands of the country’s rampant violence. While fewer officers died on duty in 2013 than in 2012, many more were killed (from non-natural causes) on their off-hours: In 2013, 369 policemen perished while off-duty, compared to 191 just two years earlier. BPSF researchers note that it’s tricky to pinpoint exactly why officers are being targeted outside of work, but in some parts of the country, killing a cop is a gang rite of passage.

“Unfortunately, we are a country where police kill more and die more,” BPSF’s researchers write. They later conclude: “Death should be understood as taboo, and not an acceptable outcome of security policy.”

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US Police Brutality Is Bad. This Giant Western Country’s Is Way Worse.

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Did Obama Shoot Himself in the Foot on Net Neutrality?

by RoxanaSaunders Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Monday, President Barack Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to safeguard net neutrality and not allow internet companies to give preference (for a fee) to certain types of online traffic. After much debate, the president was declaring his support for a free-flowing internet in which telecom firms do not block or slow traffic in order to pocket more profits or promote their own commercial (and perhaps even political) interests. But there could be a problem: FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, whom Obama appointed, is not yet on board.

After Obama’s announcement, Wheeler, according to the Washington Post, told industry insiders he preferred to allow some for-profit fast-tracking. That seemed to suggest the president may have a fight of his own making. Last year, Obama had the chance to nominate an outspoken consumer advocate to chair the FCC. But he picked Wheeler—whose views on the issue weren’t entirely clear—instead. After the Post‘s story was published, Huffington Post reported that Wheeler had not taken a hard-and-fast stance against the president, but was still figuring out what to do—and perhaps hoping to slow down the process.

So Wheeler is in the hot seat—but he also could pose an obstacle to the man who put him there. When Obama had to name a new chair of the FCC—which oversees radio, TV, satellite, and cable communications nationwide—and Wheeler emerged as a front-runner, many free internet groups expressed concern. These advocates worried that Wheeler, who had been a prominent lobbyist for telecom trade groups, was too close to industry and not likely to champion the interests of consumers. Obama favors strictly regulating the internet as a public utility (so preferential access cannot be bought and sold) and millions of Americans have sent letters to the FCC urging the commission to treat all internet content equally. But Wheeler has been leaning toward allowing internet companies to charge content providers like Netflix and Facebook extra for faster internet speeds—which could result in the creation of a tiered system for the internet. There’s no telling yet whether Wheeler will throw a wrench into Obama’s plan to preserve an equal-access-for-all internet.

It didn’t have to be this way. Several other candidates Obama was considering for the FCC post in 2013 were ardent net neutrality backers. There was Karen Kornbluh, who advocated for global open internet policies as Obama’s ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And there was Susan Crawford, a Cardozo Law School professor specializing in tech policy who favors net neutrality and has been called “the Elizabeth Warren of tech policy.”

Mignon Clyburn, an FCC commissioner since 2009, was also floated as a potential nominee to chair the FCC. In 2010, she spoke on the importance of net neutrality for people of color, saying it was “essential…for traditionally underrepresented groups that the FCC maintain the low barriers to entry that our current open internet provides.” Another potential candidate, California Public Utilities Commissioner Cathy Sandoval—who worked in the Clinton-era FCC—also has a reputation for being consumer-minded.

Yet the president went with Wheeler—a major Obama donor and friend of the administration. At the time, Wheeler was the managing director at a venture capital firm. But he had previously spent 12 years as CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, a telecom trade group, and before that served as president of the National Cable Television Association, a cable lobbying shop. “He’s beloved in the telecom industry,” a former Obama administration official told Mother Jones in March 2013. After securing the backing of a few public interest advocates—including Crawford—Wheeler sailed to confirmation in the Senate.

The decision on whether to keep the internet truly open is not Wheeler’s alone. Two other Democratic commissioners and two Republican commissioners sit on the FCC’s five-member panel and must vote to finalize new rules. But a public interest-minded FCC chair would make it easier for the agency to implement strong net neutrality regulations.

The basic issue is whether the FCC can regulate the internet as a public utility—say, like phone lines. If the commission claims this power, then it can adopt rules that maintain open and equal access to the internet. The two Republicans on the commission are likely to vote against any form of internet regulation. (They don’t accept the notion that the internet should be regulated by the FCC, whether as a public utility or under the more lax regulations Wheeler has been considering.) That means it’s up to Wheeler and his two fellow Dems to agree on an overall approach and specific rules governing the internet providers’ management of the information super-highway.

Wheeler’s industry-friendly stance makes that difficult. Democratic commissioners Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel have both expressed opposition to allowing internet companies to provide tiered service. Obama’s public push for net neutrality could help persuade Wheeler, Clyburn, and Rosenworcel to agree to regulate the internet as a public utility. But the president’s announcement could also backfire, stiffening the spines of Clyburn and Rosenworcel and making them less willing to compromise with Wheeler on allowing some form of paid prioritization of internet services. That could create a stalemate among the three Democrats, leaving the FCC without a rule specifically governing internet service. Internet service has been essentially unregulated since January—when a court struck down an earlier attempt by the FCC to implement net neutrality rules—leaving internet service providers free to demand extra money for faster content delivery. That happens to be a situation that Republicans on and off the commission do not find troubling.

Wheeler could choose to sidestep a fight with his fellow Democratic commissioners by allowing the GOP-controlled Congress, which will assume office in January, to make the net neutrality decision for him. Though Obama could veto any Republican-passed legislation aimed at gutting net neutrality, a Republican-dominated Congress could try to attach an amendment that partly defunds the FCC to a large must-pass bill. In other words, it could be a mess.

Wheeler could “run out the clock on this Congress,” explains Sascha Meinrath, the founder of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, then “wait until Republicans take over, and then claim that he cannot act due to pressure from Republican congressmen.” Which is not what one would expect from a commissioner appointed by the president. But if Wheeler does thwart Obama’s call for net neutrality, the president cannot say that he wasn’t warned.

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Did Obama Shoot Himself in the Foot on Net Neutrality?

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Obama’s Deal With China Is a Big Win for Solar, Nuclear, and Clean Coal

by johnsmith2345as Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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The plan announced last night for the United States and China to join forces in the fight against climate change is a big deal. It sets a new, more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target for the US (although the target will only bring emissions slightly below 1990 levels, which isn’t as aggressive as climate scientists have advocated). It establishes a goal for China to get one-fifth of its power from low-carbon sources by 2030. And it lays out what both countries will bring to the table at next year’s international climate negotiations in Paris. That should help other countries set their own goals, and it increases the likelihood that the talks will be productive.

More coverage of the historic US-China climate deal.


The US and China Just Announced a Huge Deal on Climateâ&#128;&#148;and It’s a Game Changer


Is the US-China Climate Pact as Big a Deal as It Seems?


Obama’s Deal With China Is a Big Win for Solar, Nuclear, and Clean Coal


Awkward: Watch a Supercut of Republicans Using China As an Excuse to Do Nothing About Climate Change


Deep Inside the Wild World of China’s Fracking Boom


Here Comes the Sun: America’s Solar Boom, in Charts

The deal could also be a big win for the clean energy sector. It calls for more funding for research and development projects focused on renewable energy, energy efficiency, and clean vehicles. It also includes a major new pilot project in China to study carbon capture and sequestration, the controversial technology that—at least in theory—could help China curb its emissions while continuing to burn coal for electricity.

Perhaps most significantly, the plan says that for China to meet its clean energy production target, it will have to roll out an additional 800 to 1,000 gigawatts of low-carbon energy sources by 2030. That’s roughly equivalent to the size of the US’s current electric grid, but made up entirely of non-fossil energy. So the renewable energy market in China, already the world’s biggest, is poised to grow by a lot over the next decade or so. That’s not necessarily a new development, but now we know that the growth expectation is nailed down to some specific numbers—and that it will happen with the support of the US government and American companies.

In other words, China’s climate goals represent a big economic opportunity for both countries.

“I think the technology stuff is the most important part of this agreement,” said Alex Trembath, an energy analyst with the Breakthrough Institute. “This is what energy innovation looks like: Not only partnerships in deploying new technologies, but innovation that takes advantage of demand in growing markets” like China.

Up to this point, trade relations on clean energy have been a little icy between China and the US, especially on solar power. Over the last couple years, the explosion of the solar power market has led to some bitter trade wars between Chinese and American solar panel manufacturers, with US regulators complaining that Chinese companies were dumping super-cheap panels on the American market. The Commerce Department already raised tariffs on Chinese solar technology this summer, and it’s poised to do so again in December.

But Nick Culver, a solar market analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, says yesterday’s announcement effectively signals a pivot in the Obama administration’s attitude that will ultimately benefit the US solar industry.

“Folks in the solar world are worried about a discrete number of things that can really throw the brakes in US, and one of those things is a trade war with escalating tariffs,” Culver said. “This seems like it really relieves that fear,” because the plan makes it US policy to promote, not inhibit, China’s clean energy sector.

Culver cautioned that it could be several years before China’s new commitments translate to a noticeable uptick in manufacturing, so don’t expect solar stock prices to necessarily skyrocket right away. The bilateral plan is light on details, so it’s hard to say exactly when and how China envisions ramping up its solar deployment. But now the tone is set for a relationship between the countries that is less combative and more collaborative.

That attitude applies beyond solar power. China is the world’s biggest coal consumer; it gets more than 70 percent of its power from coal. Thanks to China’s skyrocketing growth, its coal addiction is expected to rise until 2030, when the International Energy Agency predicts China will, at its peak, consume more than half the world’s coal. To reconcile China’s need for more cheap energy with its climate goals, the plan calls for a major pilot project to study carbon capture and sequestration, a technology intended to capture carbon dioxide from coal plants and either bury it underground or repackage it for use as an industrial chemical.

The project will be a fresh opportunity to prove that CCS can be made economically viable—the closest equivalent project in the US, a coal plant in Mississippi, is a $5 billion boondoggle.

“Having CCS called out specifically is a good sign that the technology is necessary” for China to meet its climate goals, said Elizabeth Burton, director of the Global CCS Institute, a Melbourne-based think tank.

Nuclear power could also be a winner. China already has 26 nuclear reactors in the works, with an additional 60 planned, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. These will likely become a key component of China’s push for low-carbon energy.

Trembath said the agreement is a model for international collaboration on climate action that reduces our collective carbon footprint without the geopolitical hassle of a legally binding global treaty.

“If you really want to gather momentum for clean energy,” Trembath said, “you have to take advantage of China.”

Original source – 

Obama’s Deal With China Is a Big Win for Solar, Nuclear, and Clean Coal

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