Category Archives: green energy

Are Big Power Companies Pulling a Fast One on Florida Voters?

by MichaelIredale Posted on March 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Florida Supreme Court is set to weigh in on a controversial ballot measure that environmentalists warn could erect a new obstacle for the state’s struggling renewable energy industry.

On Monday, the court is expected to begin hearing oral arguments over Amendment 1, a proposed ballot imitative that purports to strengthen the legal rights of homeowners who have rooftop solar panels. But critics in the solar industry and environmental groups claim that if the measure passes in November, it would actually deal a major blow to rooftop solar by undermining one of the key state policies supporting it.

Amendment 1 was created by an organization with a grassroots-sounding name: Consumers for Smart Solar. In reality, though, the organization is financed by the state’s major electric utility companies as well as by conservative groups with ties to the Koch brothers. The measure qualified for the ballot in late January, after nabbing nearly 700,000 signatures from Floridians. A competing measure—pushed by Floridians for Solar Choice, a group backed by the solar industry—did not get enough signatures to make the ballot.

In Florida, the Supreme Court is commonly asked by the attorney general to review ballot initiatives to ensure that what voters will read on the ballot accurately characterizes the legal effects of the measure. And in this case, it does not, according to a legal brief filed by the environmental group Earthjustice:

If passed by the voters, the utility-sponsored amendment would be a constitutional endorsement of the idea that rooftop solar users should pay higher utility bills than other customers. Solar users could end up paying twice as much as other customers pay to buy power from the utilities. This utility-sponsored amendment pretends to be pro-solar but is actually a disguised attempt to derail rooftop solar in Florida.

“This is really shrewd, cynical deception,” said David Guest, the Earthjustice attorney who will argue the group’s position to the court on Monday.

A spokesperson for the utility-backed Consumers for Smart Solar countered in an email that “our amendment is not misleading” and that its opponents “are manufacturing false arguments and using scare tactics.”

The court battle over the ballot measure is just the latest episode in a long and brutal fight in Florida pitting solar companies and their environmentalist allies against power companies that fear losing their customers to rooftop solar power. Despite being one of the country’s sunniest (and largest) states, Florida ranks just 15th for solar installations. As Tim Dickinson recently explained in a great feature for Rolling Stone:

Key policies that have spurred a rooftop solar revolution elsewhere in America are absent or actually illegal in Florida. Unlike the majority of states, even Texas, Florida has no mandate to generate any portion of its electricity from renewable power. Worse, the state’s restrictive monopoly utility law forbids anyone but the power companies from buying and selling electricity. Landlords cannot sell power from solar panels to tenants. Popular solar leasing programs like those offered by SolarCity and Sunrun are outlawed. Rooftop solar is limited to those who can afford the upfront expense; as a result, fewer than 9,000 Florida homes have panels installed.

The controversial ballot measure would amend the Florida constitution to guarantee that “electricity consumers have the right to own or lease solar equipment installed on their property to generate electricity for their own use.” Sounds great, right?

Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that. For one thing, Floridians already have that right, even though it’s not explicitly mentioned in the state’s constitution.

“There already is a right to own or lease solar,” explained Hannah Wiseman, a professor of energy law at Florida State University. In this area, she said, Amendment 1 “is entrenching existing laws.”

What the amendment won’t do, however, is legalize the type of solar lease offered by SolarCity, which is currently banned in Florida. “Third-party ownership” is a business model in which a contractor such as SolarCity installs solar panels on your roof free of charge, retains ownership of those panels, and then sells you the electricity they produce at less than the cost of buying electricity from the grid. That model has been extremely successful for SolarCity in California and other leading solar states, since it’s simple and allows homeowners to avoid the big up-front costs of installing and maintaining their own panels. In Florida, only electric utilities have the right to sell electricity to homeowners; you can buy or lease your own solar panels, but you can’t arrange to buy power from a third-party solar contractor. The failed ballot measure backed by Floridians for Solar Choice would have changed that, but Amendment 1 will not.

But according to Guest, there’s an even more insidious provision in Amendment 1’s fine print. The amendment says that state and local governments have the authority “to ensure that consumers who do not choose to install solar are not required to subsidize the costs of backup power and electric grid access to those who do.”

The issue here is net metering, a policy that exists in almost every state (including Florida) that requires electric utilities to purchase excess electricity from solar homes. In effect, the extra power your panels produce in the afternoon offsets the cost of power you take from the grid at night. The policy is widely loathed by power companies, because they not only lose a paying customer to solar, but have to pay that customer and take the customer’s extra power off their hands. Electric utilities across the country have waged a variety of wars against net metering over the last several years; one of their biggest wins was in Nevada last month.

Often the fight comes down to a complicated, sometimes esoteric, debate about whether or not net metering forces utilities to raise their rates for non-solar homes to cover the cost of solar homes. (In addition to having to buy the excess power, utilities say that solar homes still make use of transmission lines and other grid infrastructure without paying their fair share for it.)

That brings us back to the amendment: If passed, Wiseman said, it would allow utilities to argue that net metering is a “subsidy” for solar and that lawmakers have the authority to prohibit it.

“It could open the door for utilities charging solar users high fixed fees, and potentially getting rid of net metering,” Wiseman said.

Guest was more blunt: “They’re trying to kill net metering, is really what it is.”

All of this seems to be pretty confusing for Floridians, who appear to hold conflicting views on the controversy. According to the solar industry-backed Floridians for Solar Choice, 82 percent of the state’s voters said they would support changing the law to permit third-party ownership of solar. But a recent poll from the utility-backed Consumers for Smart Solar found that 73 percent of voters support their ballot measure.

One of the amendment’s opponents is Debbie Dooley, a Georgia-based Tea Party activist who has rallied conservative opposition to this measure and other potentially anti-solar policies around the country. Consumers for Smart Solar is engaged in “a campaign of lies and deception,” she said. The group “claims to support free market principle, but they are taking an anti-free market position by siding with monopolies to stop competition from solar.”

Now it’s up to the court to determine if Amendment 1’s wording is, in fact, deceptive. If they decide it is, they could throw the measure out. The case is much more ambiguous than the ballot measure language the court normally reviews, Wiseman said. But she added that it’s rare for the court to remove initiatives from the ballot.

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Are Big Power Companies Pulling a Fast One on Florida Voters?

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WTO swats down India’s massive solar initiative

by RacheleODowd Posted on February 25, 2016

WTO swats down India’s massive solar initiative

By on 24 Feb 2016commentsShare

The World Trade Organization delivered a blow to India’s ambitious solar power program on Wednesday at the behest of the United States. So much for all that nice chatter about international climate cooperation back in December.

Responding to a U.S. complaint, a WTO dispute panel ruled that several provisions of India’s National Solar Mission were “inconsistent” with international trade norms. The point of contention? India’s solar plan, which seeks to install 100 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2022, requires a certain percentage of cells and panels to be manufactured locally.

These types of provisions, called domestic content requirements, are prohibited under most international trade agreements. Want to be part of the WTO? You gotta be open to trade — every time — or you’re guilty of the dreaded protectionism.

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An estimated 300 million Indians don’t have access to electricity. The country’s solar plan, launched in 2010, aims to change that — while simultaneously combating poverty via job creation. And while India has indeed made strides in adding solar capacity, the U.S. argues that the Solar Mission’s domestic content requirements have led to a 90 percent decrease in its solar exports to India since 2011. The export losses led the U.S. to file a WTO complaint, which has been staunchly opposed by several U.S. environmental groups. In August of last year, the WTO panel released a preliminary ruling against the Indian domestic content requirements, and Wednesday’s ruling finalized that decision.

U.S. solar industry leaders praised the WTO panel ruling. (Recall that they stand to make more money by selling their equipment in India.) “This decision helps us bring clean energy to the people of India, as that nation’s demand for electricity rapidly grows,” Dan Whitten, vice president of communications for the Solar Energy Industries Association, told PV-Tech. This, of course, ignores the fact that domestic content requirements allow a country like India to provide themselves with clean energy. (And to potentially do so with fewer emissions, as domestically produced solar panels don’t have to be shipped in from overseas — but this story isn’t exactly about what’s right for the environment.)

The ruling is a particularly harsh kick in the gut to climate cooperation, coming so soon after the (quasi-)promising results reached in Paris last December. “The ink is barely dry on the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement, but clearly trade still trumps real action on climate change,” said Sam Cossar-Gilbert, a program coordinator at Friends of the Earth International, in a statement.

You might be tempted to call the U.S. a hypocrite at this point: On the one hand, it led the Paris climate talks in all but name, while on the other hand, it pressed ahead with its WTO complaint against India. But this isn’t so much a demonstration of American inconsistency on the issue as it is of the disconnect between trade policy and climate policy more generally. If there’s hypocrisy to be found anywhere, it’s in U.S. trade policy itself: The United States supports some degree of subsidies for local renewables in nearly half of all states. India could likely file a WTO complaint against the U.S. if it wanted.

This isn’t the first time that trade agreements have cast a shadow over a domestic solar initiative. In 2012, for example, in response to a complaint filed on behalf of Japan and the E.U., the WTO ruled against the government of Ontario’s green energy program, which incentivized renewable producers to source goods and services from inside the province. As the free-trade logic goes, these types of local content requirements discriminate against foreign manufacturers.

Wednesday’s decision comes at a time of rampant coal and waste burning for India. In Delhi, air quality is now worse than in Beijing. While India will now consider an appeal to the WTO Appellate Body, it’s worth noting that when Canada appealed the Ontario WTO ruling, it lost.

Said Cossar-Gilbert: “Trade policies are preventing a sustainable future.”

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WTO swats down India’s massive solar initiative

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Congress Actually Did Something Pretty Great on Climate Change

by JaninaBeauchamp Posted on February 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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In December, Republicans in Congress struck a deal with Democrats to extend a package of tax breaks for wind and solar energy projects. Prior to the deal, things looked bleak. The tax credit for wind had already expired the year before, and the one for solar was set to expire by 2016. So the extension, which came after Democrats agreed to support lifting the long-standing ban on US oil exports, was a big and unexpected win for clean energy—one that will help buoy the industry for the next six years.

It could also prove to be one of the most significant actions taken by this Congress to reduce America’s carbon footprint, according to a new analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Thanks to all the new wind and solar that will likely get built because of the legislation, electricity-sector greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by as much as 1.4 billion metric tons by 2030 compared with what they would have been without the extension, the study found. That’s roughly the savings you’d get if you removed every passenger car from US roads for two years.

In other words, the tax breaks—2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by a wind turbine and about 30 percent off the total cost of solar systems—add up to “one of the biggest investments in clean energy in our nation’s history,” Dan Utech, deputy assistant to President Barack Obama on climate, told reporters today.

How much wind and solar actually gets built (and thus the actual carbon savings) will also depend on what happens to the cost of natural gas, which has been low for the last few years thanks to the fracking boom but could rise again. Low gas prices make renewables less competitive, especially without the tax credit. But having the tax credit in place will enable solar and wind to compete in the market even if gas prices do stay low. The extension will also make wind and solar less vulnerable to state-level attacks on clean energy, as well as attacks on Obama’s broader climate agenda.

So, for once: Good job, Congress.

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Congress Actually Did Something Pretty Great on Climate Change

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How Nevada’s Solar Showdown Could Play Into the Caucuses

by HenryMarasco Posted on February 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last month, solar power suffered a major blow in Nevada. Under pressure from the state’s largest electric utility, NV Energy, state regulators agreed to drastically roll back a key financial incentive for rooftop solar installations. The move, which applied both to new solar users and to homes already equipped with panels, could leave existing customers on the hook for thousands of dollars in higher electricity costs. It also obliterated the economic case for prospective solar buyers. And it prompted a mass exodus of solar contractors in the state with the most solar jobs per capita. SolarCity, the country’s largest solar installer, fired 550 workers; two of its main competitors, Vivant and Sunrun, plan to shut down their Nevada operations.

Now, the fight over solar could become an important issue in the presidential election.

The controversial public utility commission decision relates to net metering, the policy that allows homeowners to sell the excess electricity from their solar panels back to the utility at set prices. Most states have adopted some form of net metering. It enables solar customers to defray their upfront costs and has been widely credited as a major driver of America’s solar boom. But the policy is generally loathed by utilities, who not only lose a customer but have to pay that lost customer for their power. In response, utilities and their allies in conservative think tanks such as the American Legislative Exchange Council have waged a nationwide battle against net metering, particularly in sunny states like Arizona and Florida. The Nevada decision is one of the utilities’ biggest victories yet: It allows them to raise the flat monthly fee on solar customers threefold by 2020, from $12.75 to $38.51. It also reduces the net metering credit by 18 percent. This is especially harmful to customers who made big investments in solar under the expectation that it would generate big savings into the foreseeable future.

Since the decision, solar has been one of the top headlines in Nevada. The change has been decried by local solar contractors, their customers, and environmentalists. Two homeowners have filed a class-action lawsuit against NV Energy (owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway), and a coalition of solar companies known as the No Solar Tax PAC is pushing a ballot measure that would reverse the regulators’ decision.

The Nevada caucuses are just around the corner, Saturday for Democrats and this coming Tuesday for Republicans. Solar enjoys widespread support from Nevada voters in both parties: A poll last month from Colorado College found that 75 percent of voters in the state support tax incentives for solar, while a solar-industry-commissioned poll last year found that 69 percent of Nevada Republicans and 80 percent of Nevada Democrats wouldn’t vote for a candidate who doesn’t support pro-solar policies.

“The fallout from the solar decision has been so severe on both sides of the aisle,” said Barbara Boyle, a Sierra Club staffer in Nevada. “I think there’s going to be a lot of activity in the caucuses related to the issue.”

On Tuesday, the Alliance for Solar Choice, a lobbying group backed by SolarCity and Sunrun, emailed a memo to thousands of solar supporters in Nevada urging them to “make sure the presidential candidates can’t avoid this issue.” Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have already charged into the fight. Last week, Clinton issued a statement expressing her support for federal legislation that would limit states’ ability to raise fees for existing solar users, as was done in Nevada:

On Monday, Sanders met face to face with a group of solar workers in Reno, where he called the regulators’ decision “incomprehensible” and encouraged solar supporters to petition Buffett to back down.

Eli Smith, who operates a small solar installer in Reno called Black Rock Solar, attended the meeting with Sanders. He said that although no presidential candidate can offer much of an immediate remedy to the state’s solar woes, he plans to support Sanders in the caucus because he has “the kind of commitment I personally look for” on clean energy issues.

Smith added that he was surprised that thus far, the Republican candidates “aren’t even acknowledging the issue,” given solar’s bipartisan appeal in Nevada.

Indeed, none of the GOP contenders have weighed in on the controversy yet, and they didn’t respond to requests for comment for this story. A few have come close: In New Hampshire, John Kasich said it’s “not acceptable” to slow the development of solar, and Marco Rubio said the United States should be “number one” in solar (although his proposed energy plan focuses on promoting fossil fuel extraction and ignores renewables). In South Carolina on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested that because his campaign is self-funded, he wouldn’t be held captive to the interests of utilities, as some environmentalists have suggested Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) is:

Avoiding this issue would be a big missed opportunity for Republicans in Nevada, said Debbie Dooley, whose Green Tea Party group organizes conservative support for solar because it represents “energy choice” and freedom from monopolistic utilities. Dooley is in Nevada this week working to promote the No Solar Tax PAC’s ballot measure. She said she expects Republicans to take up the issue once they make it past the South Carolina primary on Saturday.

“If I were a presidential candidate, I would certainly come out and start talking about energy freedom and energy choice,” she said. “I think the person that does grab hold of it will gain votes.”

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How Nevada’s Solar Showdown Could Play Into the Caucuses

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The Supreme Court Just Dealt a Huge Blow to Obama’s Climate Plan

by EugenioOIBS Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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In a setback for the Obama administration, the Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily halted enforcement of Obama’s signature climate initiative.

The Clean Power Plan, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency last summer, requires states to limit coal-fired power plant emissions—the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases—by a third by 2030. The regulation was expected to revamp the energy industry in the coming decades, shutting down coal-fired plants and speeding up renewable energy production. But 29 states, together with dozens of industry groups, sued the EPA, claiming the rule was “the most far-reaching and burdensome rule the EPA has ever forced onto the states.”

In a 5-4 vote today, the Supreme Court issued an unusual, one-page emergency order for the EPA to put the plan on hold until the US Court of Appeals, which will hear the case this summer, comes to a decision. While the hold is temporary, many see the order as a sign that the Supreme Court has concerns about the policy.

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The Supreme Court Just Dealt a Huge Blow to Obama’s Climate Plan

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Florida Is Sinking. Where Is Marco Rubio?

by CandacePaquin3 Posted on February 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

An unusual January storm bent palm trees and turned city sidewalks into creeks as a small group of Miami-area mayors and administrators huddled in Pinecrest, one of Miami-Dade County’s 34 municipalities. They had come at the invitation of Pinecrest’s mayor to discuss rising sea levels, long predicted by climate change scientists and now regularly inundating their towns. The mood in the room was somewhere between pessimism and panic.

On the agenda: making flood prediction maps to help prioritize which roads, schools and hospitals to save as waters rise; how to keep saltwater from leaching into the aquifer; and what to do about 1.6 million septic tanks whose failure could create a Third World sanitation challenge. Someone also brought up the alarming possibility of the sea engulfing the nearby Turkey Point nuclear power plant.

The scale of South Florida’s looming catastrophe—$69 billion worth of property is at risk of flooding in less than 15 years—is playing out like a big-budget disaster movie, but dealing with it has been largely left to local political and business leaders in tiny rooms like the Pinecrest Municipal Center’s Council Chamber. Their biggest problem is the one climate scientists have struggled with for decades: creating a sense of urgency. Before adjourning, the mayors considered finding a mascot to get people’s attention, like a climate change Smokey Bear or Woodsy Owl of the “Give a hoot, don’t pollute” campaign. Coral Gables Mayor Jim Cason suggested a WWE wrestler could be hired for television and billboard ads with the slogan “Climate change: The problem is bigger than you think.”

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Florida Is Sinking. Where Is Marco Rubio?

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Palin Stumps for Trump, and It Gets Weird

by HoracioBar Posted on January 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Fresh off her endorsement of the real estate mogul, Sarah Palin teamed up with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for a campaign rally Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma (or, according to press credentials provided by the Trump campaign, “Tusla,” Oklahoma). In her signature rambling style, the former Alaska governor delivered sweeping attacks of President Barack Obama, accusing him of wearing political correctness “like a suicide vest.”

Trump, not to be outdone by his opening act, hammered Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders for being “a socialist, a communist,” repeatedly berated the camera crews for not panning to see how huge the crowd was, threw out several protesters, and, before leaving the stage, made his boldest promise yet of just how much winning America would experience under the leadership of a Trump administration.

“You people are going to get sick and tired of winning,” Trump said. “You’re going to say, ‘Please, please, President Trump, we can’t take this much victory. Please stop, we don’t want any more wins.’ And I’m going to say to you, ‘We’re going to win, I don’t care what you say.'”

Palin, meanwhile, appeared to use the Monday night arrest of her son Track, after he allegedly punched his girlfriend and child’s mother in the face and then threatened to shoot himself with an AR-15, to attack Obama. Palin slammed Obama for his disregard for veterans like Track, who often experience difficulty after they return from combat.

“I can speak personally about this, I guess it’s the elephant in the room because my own family, going through what we’re going through today with my son, a combat vet in a striker brigade fighting for you all, America, in the war zone,” Palin said, to cheers. “But my son, like so many others, they come back a bit different, they come back hardened…and it makes me realize more than ever, it is now or never for the sake of America’s finest that we have that commander in chief who will respect them, and honor them.”

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Palin Stumps for Trump, and It Gets Weird

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The Time Gloria Steinem Made Bernie Sanders an "Honorary Woman"

by Elizbeth4898 Posted on January 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the fall of 1996, locked in a tough re-election fight against Republican Susan Sweetser, then-Rep. Sanders got a big boost when feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem came to Burlington. At the time, Sweetser was running negative ads attacking Sanders’ liberal positions, and so the Sanders campaign held an event to highlight his support among progressive women. An opening act, a former state senator, told the audience that “a feminist is a person who challenges the power structure of our country” and “Bernie Sanders is that kind of feminist.” When it was Steinem’s turn, she started off with an announcement: “I’m only here today to make Bernie Sanders an honorary woman.”

In his memoir, Outsider in the House, Sanders, who went on to beat Sweetser comfortably, called the event “the nicest moment of the campaign.”

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Sanders won’t be able to count on a repeat performance this time around. Steinem, supported Hillary Clinton for president in 2008 and is back in her corner again.

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The Time Gloria Steinem Made Bernie Sanders an "Honorary Woman"

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When I Was a Prisoner in Iran, I Came to Fear the Sound of Hillary Clinton’s Voice

by VernaCand Posted on January 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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I rarely think about being a prisoner in Iran anymore. I’ve been free for more than four years. It’s been a long time since the sounds of hard soles on a cement floor would remind me of my interrogator or I would suddenly need to bolt from a restaurant because I couldn’t take the throngs of people after so much time in a prison cell.

Kidnapped by Iran: Read Shane Bauer’s account of how he was captured and held by Iran for more than two years.

Last Saturday, I was dripping coffee on myself during an early morning drive when I heard that four Americans were being released from Iran as part of a prisoner swap. Suddenly, my eyes welled up. I could feel the knot of excitement and confusion that had turned in my gut when my plane from Tehran hit the tarmac in Muscat, Oman, in September 2011. I pictured the way my and my friend Josh’s families looked small in the distance, their little hands waving, as we taxied toward them. I remembered the force that pulled me—running!—down the stairs of the airplane and how, at the bottom, I laughed and cried at the same time. Everyone else did too.

I was elated for these men and their families.

Later, the joy was tempered by an old, familiar frustration. While scouring the internet for updates on the four Americans, I read that shortly after their release, Hillary Clinton called for new sanctions on Iran for testing two ballistic missiles last year. I was shocked. The prisoners had not yet been let out of the country. Why would she provoke Iran when their freedom was still on the line?

I remembered sitting in my cell in 2009—I think I was trying to memorize a family tree from Greek mythology or something equally random—when I heard then-Secretary of State Clinton’s voice from a television in a neighboring cell. I ran to the door and pressed my ear into its little window. She was commanding Iran to release us immediately. My heart sank. I imagined my interrogator bringing me into his padded room, blindfolded, and ranting about how Iran would not be bossed around by America, “The Great Satan.” I came to fear the sound of Clinton’s voice. Whenever I heard her publicly slam Iran about something, I would mentally prepare for at least another couple of months in prison.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Many of our family members grew frustrated with their meetings with her and White House officials. My wife, Sarah, who was released a year before Josh and I were, shared this frustration. Once, during a meeting with us in the prison, Swiss Ambassador Livia Leu, who represented American interests in Iran, broke from her usual reassuring demeanor and said, “They will never respond to your government demanding they release you. They need to talk to the Iranians.”

Then there was Salem Al Ismaily. He was the envoy from Oman, the country most responsible for our eventual release. “No one wanted dialogue to happen,” he said to me recently. “Not Iranians. Not the US.” Our freedom was part of a larger calculus for Oman. Sitting at the mouth of the Persian Gulf just a couple hundred miles from Iran, Oman’s government believed that if tensions between Iran and the United States escalated to the point of military conflict, it would damage its economy—or worse. Salem believed that if he could get the two countries to negotiate over our case, it would provide an opening for talks on Iran’s nuclear program. To call what ended up happening in our case “negotiation” would be a stretch: It mostly took the form of Salem flying between Washington, DC, and Tehran to convince each side to do something, or sending messages to the White House through Sarah after her release.

Shane Bauer, left, Josh Fattal, and Sarah Shourd after meeting with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in October 2011 AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt

This was not gratifying work. On one occasion, Sarah passed on a message from the Iranian government to Special Assistant to the President Dennis Ross, saying that if President Barack Obama would write a letter to then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad describing a general wish to improve relations between the two countries—without naming specific measures—then Iran would release us. Ross called it a “non-starter.” The two sides didn’t speak directly to each other, but it was through this channel that the groundwork for nuclear talks were ultimately laid.

During Salem’s efforts to free us, he was repeatedly frustrated by Clinton. “Why can’t your Hillary just keep quiet?” he blurted to me once, in a break of his characteristic poise, on a visit to Evin Prison. It was a paternalistic sounding outburst, but the stakes were high. He believed he was going to be bringing us home with him on that occasion. He said he was so close to convincing the Iranians, but they backed out at the last minute after another blustery statement by Clinton.

So far as we know, the extent of Clinton’s role in our ordeal was limited to making public demands and speaking to our families. In fact, there isn’t evidence of much action from the US government on our case. Two years ago, I filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the State Department, CIA, and FBI for records on our case. I received some records only after suing. The lawsuit is ongoing, but the records I have received over the last year indicate State Department officials did little beyond meeting with our families and receiving news reports from staffers.

Thankfully, the United States’ relationship with Iran has improved since then. Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly speaks regularly with his Iranian counterpart. A monumental agreement over the nuclear issue is in place and the international sanctions on Iran’s oil and finances have been lifted. The tension is easing, and the release of these four Americans is further proof of that.

For years, Iran has operated a revolving door of American captives; one gets released and then another is picked up. Amir Hekmati was arrested just days before Josh and I were released. The charges against these captives are inevitably bogus and the reasons for their detention are always political. My interrogator was frank about that: After two months of blindfolded interrogations, he told me he knew I was innocent, but that our release was dependent on political negotiations. The correct term for people in that situation is “hostages.”

It’s too soon to say whether the era of Iranian hostage taking is over. The unjust imprisonment of innocent people will always be Iran’s responsibility, and it’s up to its government to end it. But we don’t need to make things worse. Right after these four Americans flew out of Iran, the Obama administration announced it would be applying new sanctions on Iran—the same sanctions Clinton had called for. It had been planning to do this, it turns out, for some time, something the former secretary of state and presumptive Democratic nominee was likely aware of. To be sure, these sanctions, which target just a few individuals and small companies that send crucial technologies to Iran, are nothing like the ones that were just lifted. The old ones cost Iran $30 million a day, draining its economy and weighing on the lives of regular Iranians, many of whom oppose their government. But these sanctions send the wrong signal. There may have been a time when they would have made sense as a way of putting pressure on Tehran. But if our goal is to move forward with Iran, the day after such a breakthrough is the wrong time.

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When I Was a Prisoner in Iran, I Came to Fear the Sound of Hillary Clinton’s Voice

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3 Ways Climate Change Affects How We Spend Money

by TVEJarred6824744 Posted on January 20, 2016

Climate change is predicted to have a major impact on many aspects of our lives. Average global temperatures will increase, sea levels will rise, allergiesmay get worse (seriously, it’s likely that they will) theres little question that there will be many complicated biological ramifications.

But what about the cultural and economic changes that might accompany climate change? Some have argued that climate change may increase violence, and surely there will be other societal implications we cant yet predict. Experts do have ideas, though, for what a warmer planet might mean for our spending habits. Here are three trends you may see come to pass in the coming decades:

Fewer luxury goods

A recent study put forth by Swiss banking group UBS suggests that in cities where the threat of climate-related disasters looms large, middle-class families are spending less on luxury goods than they have in the past. They found that in climate-strapped cities such as Los Angeles, Taipei, Tokyo, Mumbai, Shanghai and New Orleans, families had to spend more of their income on housing and repairs, forcing them to scale back on expensive splurges in the realms of entertainment and luxuries.

“More fear, less fun is how we might sum it up,” said the authors of the study.

The study noted that 2015 was the most expensive year on record in terms of natural disasters; a whopping $32 billion were lost within the first half of 2015 alone due to instances of extreme weather.

More sharing

Though the rise of the sharing economy is no doubt attributable to a number of factors, its a huge trend thats expected to continue growing as temperatures rise. This may or may not be a good thing for the environment. While car ownership appears to be decreasing overall, primarily among millennials, the word is still out on whether or not this will actually lead to a reduction in transportation emissions.

There are two sides to the argument, according to environmental blog Grist. On the one hand, sure, ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft free people from needing to use cars to get around on a daily basis. On the other, theres some evidence that the popularity and convenience of these unconventional cab services has actually increased the number of cars on the roadsparticularly in dense cities like New York and Chicago, where residents might have previously been more inclined to use public transportation.

Nonetheless, the sharing economy continues to grow, and its not just about cars. The popularity of sites like Airbnb remains strong, and according to a reportby PwC, 72 percent of Americans say theyre likely to participate in a sharing service in the coming two years.

More renewable energy

Though the warming of the planet is ultimately bad news, theres still plenty of indication that the green energy economy will continue to improve, diversify and grow. According to Scientific American, the U.S. Energy Information Administration is expecting renewable energy to be the fastest-growing source of power in the coming years.

More and more consumers are switching to green power within their own homes, if they have the means to do so. The Solar Energies Industry Association reported that the second half of 2015 was the biggest quarter yet for solar power, with nearly 1,400 megawatts of power installed nationwide.

As both individuals and communities look to transition to renewable energy, it will undoubtedly change the energy landscape. Well have to see what other surprises global warming and climate change action will have on consumer behavior in the coming years.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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3 Ways Climate Change Affects How We Spend Money

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