Tag Archives: energy

ANWR Proposal Shows That Obama’s Power to Set the Agenda Is Alive and Well

by Myrna Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Here’s the latest salvo in President Obama’s flurry of executive activity following the 2014 election:

President Obama proposed designating 1.4 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as protected wilderness, drawing cheers from environmentalists but setting off a bitter new battle Sunday with the Republican-controlled Congress over oil and gas drilling in pristine areas of northern Alaska.

The plan would permanently bar drilling and other forms of development in the 19.8-million-acre refuge’s coastal plain, a narrow strip between the Brooks Range mountains and the Arctic Ocean where caribou give birth. The area, estimated to hold 10.3 billion barrels of oil, is home to more than 200 species, including polar bears, wolverines, musk oxen and thousands of migratory birds.

Now, technically this is meaningless. ANWR has been a battleground for years, as much symbolic as anything else. The amount of oil it could produce isn’t really huge, but then again, the environmental damage that a pipeline would produce probably isn’t that huge either.1 In any case, the Interior Department already bans drilling in ANWR, and there’s no way that a Republican Congress is going to pass a bill to make a drilling ban permanent. So what’s the point of Obama’s proposal?

It’s simple: once again he’s using the agenda-setting power of the presidency. Basically, he’s making ANWR something that everyone now has to take a stand on. Talking heads will fulminate on one side or the other, and Republicans will respond by introducing legislation to open up ANWR to drilling. This isn’t something they were planning to spend time on, but now they probably will. Their base will demand it, as will the Republican caucus in the House and Senate. Nothing will come of it, of course, but it will eat up time that might otherwise have been spent on something else.

And that’s why Obama is doing this. It also lays down a marker and lets everyone know that Democrats are the party of natural beauty while Republicans are the party of Big Oil. It can’t hurt to make that clear. Still, that’s not the main goal here. The main goal is to toss some sand in the gears of Republican plans for the 115th Congress. Obama is proving once again that even with the opposition in control of Congress, he still has the power to decide what people are going to talk about.

1Please address all hate mail regarding this assertion to my editors. Thanks.

Read more: 

ANWR Proposal Shows That Obama’s Power to Set the Agenda Is Alive and Well

Posted in alo, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ANWR Proposal Shows That Obama’s Power to Set the Agenda Is Alive and Well

Obama’s trade agenda is a disaster for the environment, greens warn

by Earnest54I Posted on January 23, 2015

Obama’s trade agenda is a disaster for the environment, greens warn

By on 23 Jan 2015commentsShare

In a State of the Union address that hit most of the right notes on the environment and other progressive issues, Obama pushed one policy that has green groups up in arms: fast-tracking of trade deals. In a letter sent this week to every member of Congress, environmental advocates warned that two particularly far-reaching deals that are in the works could “significantly weaken public health and environmental protections.” The letter was signed by nearly 50 groups.

They warned that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a deal with Asian and Pacific nations, not including China, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a deal with Europe, contain “rules that would grant foreign corporations the right to sue governments, in private tribunals, over environmental, public health, and other laws and policies that corporations allege reduce the value of their investment.” These agreements also contain “rules that would require the United States Department of Energy to automatically approve exports of liquefied natural gas to countries in the pacts with no analysis to determine whether exporting natural gas is in the public interest.”

That all sounds pretty bad. Obama, though, presented things in a different light in the State of the Union. He claimed that his trade policy will “level the playing field” for American workers as Asian economies grow. “I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free but are also fair,” he said. Labor groups disagree with about “leveling the playing field”; they say the deals might generate more income for American companies, but would do little to protect American workers’ jobs.

Negotiations on both deals have been going on for years, more or less in secret. Advocates and even members of Congress still don’t know exactly what’s in them. As details leak out, partisans are finding themselves with odd bedfellows. In a twist on the usual, mainline Republicans are on board with this Obama initiative. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has pledged to push for the fast-track authority the president wants, which would prevent Congress from amending any trade deal he presents — legislators would simply vote “yes” or “no.” Opposing Obama and McConnell are many Democrats, environmentalists, unions, civil libertarians, and a handful Tea Party Republicans who don’t want to give Obama any more power.

But, as Carter Dougherty reports at Bloomberg, the administration is successfully rallying the business lobby to get behind the deals — the same lobby that, 20 years ago, supplied the push needed to make NAFTA a thing. Caterpillar, of bulldozer fame, got its employees to write 17,500 letters to members of Congress supporting fast track. IBM has executives from all 50 states inviting members of Congress to tour plants that produce products that could be sold abroad.

For awhile, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was standing in the way of fast-track authority going anywhere. But Republicans control the Senate now, and enough of them seem inclined to follow the lead of McConnell and the business lobby. “I’ve got a lot of members who believe that international trade agreements are a winner for America,” McConnell said after the midterms. “And the president and I discussed that right before I came over here, and I think he’s interested in moving forward. I said, ‘Send us trade agreements. We’re anxious to take a look at them.’”

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) plans to introduce some legislation to give the president expanded trade powers next week. So, unless environmental groups and their motley assortment of allies can raise a loud enough alarm, the TPP — the president’s top trade priority — might get pushed through this year.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Continued:

Obama’s trade agenda is a disaster for the environment, greens warn

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama’s trade agenda is a disaster for the environment, greens warn

Watch a US Senator Cite the Bible to Prove That Humans Aren’t Causing Global Warming

by RemonaNecaise Posted on January 22, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

To understand the craziness that just went down on the floor of the US Senate, you first have to understand the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. It’s pretty simple, actually: The planet is getting warmer, largely because humans are releasing heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide. Or, as the world’s leading climate scientists put it in a recent report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” and it’s “extremely likely”—that is, at least 95 percent certain—”that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

These are well established scientific facts, but congressional Republicans have had a hard time accepting them. So on Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sought to put his colleagues on record by having them vote on a simple measure declaring it the sense of the Senate that “climate change is real and not a hoax.”

When Whitehouse first introduced this amendment a couple days ago, he made clear that by “climate change,” he was referring to “what our carbon pollution…is doing to our atmosphere and what it is doing to our oceans.” But the amendment didn’t literally say that, and the Senate’s most outspoken climate science denier saw this as an opportunity. James Inhofe—an Oklahoma Republican who has previously pointed to the Bible as evidence that human-caused global warming is a hoax—urged his fellow senators to support the amendment.

Addressing his Senate colleagues before the vote, Inhofe once again cited the Bible to argue that the climate does indeed change but that humans aren’t the cause. “Climate is changing, and climate has always changed,” said Inhofe, who chairs the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. “There’s archeological evidence of that. There’s biblical evidence of that. There’s historic evidence of that.” He continued: “The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful, they can change climate. Man can’t change climate.” You can watch the back-and-forth above.

And with that, every Republican except Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), voted “aye.” The amendment passed 98-1, and the Senate was on record agreeing to the obvious fact that climate change sometimes occurs.

But they weren’t done. Next, Republicans brought up their own climate amendment, which stated that climate change is indeed “real” and that human activity “contributes” to it. This amendment got 59 votes (one short of the 60-vote threshold for passage), but just 15 of the chamber’s 54 Republicans supported it.

And of course, the scientific consensus isn’t merely that human activity “contributes” to climate change. Rather, scientists say that humans are the “dominant cause” of the recent warming. That was the subject of a third amendment, from Democrat Brian Schatz (Hawaii), which stated that human activity “significantly contributes” to climate change. That was too much for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who objected specifically to the word “significantly.” Murkowski, an Alaska Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, urged her colleagues to vote no. In the end, Schatz’s amendment received just 50 votes, and only five of those came from Republicans.

On Thursday morning, the Senate began discussing yet another amendment, from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). This one declares that climate change is real, that it is caused by human activity, that it’s already causing significant problems, and that it is “imperative” that we actually do something about it—specifically, that we transition our economy away from fossil fuels. We’ll see how many GOP votes that one gets.

View post: 

Watch a US Senator Cite the Bible to Prove That Humans Aren’t Causing Global Warming

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch a US Senator Cite the Bible to Prove That Humans Aren’t Causing Global Warming

Climate Hawks Aren’t Impressed With Obama’s Methane Plan

by DarrylSwitzer Posted on January 20, 2015

Mother Jones

This article originally appeared at Grist and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

You would expect environmentalists to offer effusive praise as President Obama releases the final major component of his Climate Action Plan: a proposal to clamp down on methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. And at first glance, they did.

“This announcement once again demonstrates the President’s strong commitment to tackling the climate crisis,” said League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski. A number of other environmental groups echoed that sentiment. If you didn’t read between the lines, you might think Obama had given them all they wanted.

He did not. Not even close. Environmental leaders, while praising the Obama administration’s intentions, warned that it will have to do much more than it pledged to last week if it is to meet its own stated goal for cutting methane emissions.

Methane, you’ll remember, is a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year timeframe. When natural gas or oil is extracted through a fracking well, some methane often leaks out. (Natural gas is pretty much just methane.) Methane can also leak from old, abandoned wells, and from pipelines during transport. Between 1 and 3 percent of all US natural gas production is lost to leakage. According to government estimates, methane makes up 9 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, and roughly one-third of that comes from the production and transportation of oil and gas. When natural gas is burned as a fuel, it releases about half as much CO2 as coal, but studies have found that methane leakage can wipe out natural gas’s climate advantage over coal. Methane from oil and gas is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gases in the US and it is projected to grow 25 percent by 2025 if no action is taken to stop it.

Hence the Obama administration now says it will take action—but what it’s proposing is not nearly far-reaching enough, activists say. The administration last week laid out an ambitious target for reducing methane emissions, but no definite way of getting there. They say that they intend to reduce methane leakage by 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025. But their plan does not propose to regulate leakage from existing wells and pipelines, just from new and modified sources. This despite the fact that existing wells will continue to be big leakers into the future; one study last year projected that nearly 90 percent of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector in 2018 will come from sources that were in existence in 2011.

The EPA hasn’t actually unveiled its draft regulations yet—that will happen this summer, followed by a public comment period, and then the regs will be finalized next year. Meanwhile, EPA says it will work with the oil and gas industry to help it voluntarily control leaks at existing wells without federal rulemaking.

Even the enviros who had nice things to say about the plan still urged Obama to address existing sources as well as new ones. Leading Senate climate hawk Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) subtly expressed his hopes for a more complete plan, saying, “While these are important first steps, we also need to pin down the full scope of the methane leakage problem and implement strong, enforceable standards throughout the oil and gas supply chain.” Asked by Grist for clarification of what that meant, Whitehouse spokesperson Seth Larson said in an email, “we hope more will be done in the future on both methane leakage and on existing sources.”

The Environmental Defense Fund, which has been criticized by other enviros for working with the oil and gas industry to improve fracking practices, also called for rules that govern existing sources. “We will need a clearer roadmap and more decisive action to ensure the administration tackles the most important part of the problem—emissions from existing wells, pipelines, and facilities,” said EDF President Fred Krupp. “Otherwise, the goal will not be reached. There is no reason to wait 10 years to fix a problem that can be addressed right now at low cost.” And based on its own experience, EDF thinks industry can’t be counted on to do it without being forced. “The smarter companies are already taking steps to address methane emissions, but the vast majority are not,” observed Mark Brownstein, who heads EDF’s natural gas program. “That is why we need a policy that makes ‘best practice’ the standard practice.”

Some green groups dropped the diplomacy altogether and expressed outright disappointment. “We cannot afford to wait,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. “EPA and BLM must act quickly to reduce methane emissions from all new and existing sources of methane pollution in the oil and gas sector, including the transmission and distribution of natural gas.” Greenpeace, Public Citizen, and Friends of the Earth issued a joint press release declaring, “The Obama administration must reconsider their strategy on methane and put out a much stronger proposed rule than they suggest today.”

These enviros specifically criticize the slow pace of the administration’s effort, which threatens to leave the job unfinished when Obama’s successor—possibly a climate science-denying Republican—takes office. “We hoped at this point they would propose a rule itself,” said Kate DeAngelis, climate and energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth. The administration had previously said it would introduce regulations last fall.

There are a few other components of the administration’s methane plan. The two most significant ones are that the Bureau of Land Management will propose new rules to prevent venting, flaring, and leaking natural gas from all wells on federal lands, and that EPA will propose limits on volatile organic compound (VOC) leakage from new and existing wells in a large swath of the Northeast with elevated smog levels and a few other high-pollution regions. (VOCs are a precursor to smog production.) While a rule to limit VOC leakage from gas wells is not targeted at methane, the VOCs and methane come out together and any policy that restricts one will help to cut back on the other. But these rules will only cover a small fraction of wells, which are mostly on private land in rural areas.

And, of course, some greens point out that the federal government shouldn’t be selling leases to drill for oil and gas on public land in the first place.

The most charitable interpretation of the administration’s tentativeness is that they are trying to be realistic. “My sense is they feel they would be biting off more than they can chew in the remaining time in the administration to get new- and existing-source regulations through the whole review process,” said Joanne Spaulding, a senior managing attorney with the Sierra Club. “We’ve been saying this is achievable, but they’re making a decision about their own resources to get the job done.”

They may also be trying to avoid an industry backlash. “The industry has been lobbying and saying, ‘We don’t need regulations, we can do this on a voluntary basis,'” said Spaulding. The American Petroleum Institute attacked the plan on Wednesday. “Onerous new regulations could threaten the shale energy revolution, America’s role as a global energy superpower, and the dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions made possible by an abundant and affordable domestic supply of clean-burning natural gas,” said API President Jack Gerard. Since methane leakage can wipe out the benefit of those reductions in CO2, Gerard’s statement is nonsensical and misleading. As Spaulding says, “Industry will not be happy being regulated at all, so you might as well do the whole thing.”

Optimists in the environmental movement note that Obama hasn’t ruled out adding on methane rules for existing sources at a later date. But time is running out.

See the article here:  

Climate Hawks Aren’t Impressed With Obama’s Methane Plan

Posted in alo, Anchor, Citizen, Cyber, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Climate Hawks Aren’t Impressed With Obama’s Methane Plan

Mitt Romney Shifts His Position on Climate Change—Again

by ErwinHanson Posted on January 20, 2015

Mother Jones

Is Mitt Romney becoming a climate change crusader?

During his 2012 presidential bid, Romney was dismissive about Democratic efforts to combat the effects of climate change, and he pushed for an expanded commitment to fossil fuels. But in a speech in California on Monday, Romney, who is considering a third run for president in 2016, signaled a shift on the issue. According to the Palm Springs Desert Sun, the former Massachusetts governor “said that while he hopes the skeptics about global climate change are right, he believes it’s real and a major problem,” and he lamented that Washington had done “almost nothing” to stop it.

Continue Reading »

Follow this link: 

Mitt Romney Shifts His Position on Climate Change—Again

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, global climate change, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Mitt Romney Shifts His Position on Climate Change—Again

Yup. A Climate Change Denier Will Oversee NASA. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

by Myrna Posted on January 20, 2015

And another one will oversee NOAA. Gage Skidmore/Flickr So, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was just named to be the chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness as Republicans take over the Senate. This subcommittee (which used to be just Space and Science but was recently renamed) is in charge of oversight of, among other things, NASA. This is not a good thing. Just how bad it is will be determined. Before I rip into this, I want to be as fair as possible here: Poking around the Web, I don’t see any statements from Cruz that I’d consider directly antithetical to NASA’s efforts specifically to explore space. For example, in 2013 he wanted to reduce NASA’s budget, but that was more so that it would comply with the caps set by the Budget Control Act. In fact, he made a statement saying, “Proceeding with an authorization while pretending that the existing law is something other than what it is, is not the most effective way to protect the priority that space exploration and manned exploration should have.” That’s at least superficially heartening. But that’s not to say he doesn’t pose a clear danger: Cruz is a staunch denier of global warming. In 2014, he said this in an CNN interview: The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that—that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened. Read the rest at Slate. See original: Yup. A Climate Change Denier Will Oversee NASA. What Could Possibly Go Wrong? ; ; ;

Link:

Yup. A Climate Change Denier Will Oversee NASA. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Posted in ALPHA, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, Pines, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Yup. A Climate Change Denier Will Oversee NASA. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Obama Wants to Crack Down on Fracking Emissions

by DemetriHmi Posted on January 13, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

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

President Barack Obama will unveil a new plan to cut methane from America’s booming oil and gas industry ahead of the State of the Union address, in an attempt to cement his climate legacy during his remaining two years in the White House.

The new methane rules—expected ahead of the State of the Union speech next week—are the last big chance for Obama to fight climate change, campaigners said.

“It is the largest opportunity to deal with climate pollution that this administration has not already seized,” said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Methane is the second biggest driver of climate change, after carbon dioxide. On a 20-year timescale, it is 87 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas.

US officials acknowledge that Obama will have to cut methane if he is to make good on his promise to cut US greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025.

“It is the largest thing left, and it’s the most cost-effective thing they can do that they haven’t done already, and all the signs are there that they intend to step forward on that,” Doniger said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to roll out a combination of regulations and voluntary guidelines for the oil and gas industry, people familiar with the plan said.

The rules represent Obama’s first big climate push on the oil and gas sector, after moving to cut emissions from power plants and, during his first term, cars and trucks.

But the clock is ticking. Any new EPA regulations would have to be finalized by the end of 2016—and Republicans in Congress and industry lobby groups are already mobilizing to oppose the standards.

Methane accounts for about 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. The biggest share of this by far comes from the oil and gas industry, which has exploded over the last decade.

The US is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas, and is on track to become the world’s largest oil producer in 2015.

Most of those greenhouse gas emissions are from leaky equipment—faulty casing on newly fracked wells, but also millions of miles of pipelines and aging infrastructure.

The EPA had originally promised to announce a new methane plan by the end of last year.

The agency administrator, Gina McCarthy, indicated that the agency would combine regulations with voluntary guidelines for industry.

Unlike the power plant rules, which left industry a fair amount of latitude in cutting emissions, the methane standards are believed to be tightly focused on plugging leaks.

The new rules could directly target leaking valves and other equipment that allow methane to escape from wells, pipelines and other infrastructure.

The new rules could also be backed up with voluntary guidelines for other types of air pollutants that would also lower methane emissions.

“If you take steps to reduce volatile organic compounds, those steps would automatically have the secondary benefit of reducing methane emissions,” said Sandra Snyder, an environmental attorney at the Bracewell Giuliani law firm.

Read this article:

Obama Wants to Crack Down on Fracking Emissions

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama Wants to Crack Down on Fracking Emissions

72 Percent of Republican Senators Are Climate Deniers

by MartinMccarter Posted on January 10, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Thursday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offered a simple amendment to the controversial bill that would authorize construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Sanders’ measure, which he proposed to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would have declared it the “sense of Congress” that climate change is real; that it is caused by humans; that it has already caused significant problems; and that the United States needs to shift its economy away from fossil fuels.

Sanders’ amendment went nowhere. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the chair of the committee, used the opportunity to take a shot at climate science. “I do believe that our climate is changing,” she said. “I don’t agree that all the changes are necessarily due solely to human activity.” Murkowski didn’t elaborate on her current thinking about the causes of global warming, but in the past she’s advanced a bizarre theory involving a volcano in Iceland.

Sanders will get another chance next week, when the full Senate debates the Keystone bill—but he’s likely to run into stiff resistance from GOP climate deniers. As Climate Progress revealed Thursday, more than half of the Republican members of the new Congress “deny or question” the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change. If you just look at the Senate, the numbers are even more disturbing. Thirty-nine GOP Senators reject the science on climate change—that’s 72 percent of the Senate Republican caucus.

The list includes veteran lawmakers like James Inhofe (Okla.), who is the incoming chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) and has written a book titled, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. And it includes new senators like Steve Daines (Mont.), who thinks climate change might be caused by solar cycles. (For a great interactive map showing exactly how many climate deniers represent your state in Congress, click here.)

What’s more, the Climate Progress analysis shows that many of the congressional committees that deal with climate and energy issues are loaded with global warming deniers:

…68 percent of the Republican leadership in both House and Senate deny human-caused climate change. On the committee level, 13 out of 21 Republican members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, or 62 percent, reject the science behind human-caused global warming, joined by 67 percent, or 21 out of 31 Republican members, of the House Energy and Commerce Committee…In addition to Inhofe, 10 out of 11, or 91 percent, of Republicans on EPW have said climate change is not happening or that humans do not cause it.

All this could have serious policy consequences: Republicans are threatening to use their majority to cut the EPA’s budget and derail the power plant regulations at the heart of President Barack Obama’s signature climate initiative.

Original post:  

72 Percent of Republican Senators Are Climate Deniers

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, Hagen, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 72 Percent of Republican Senators Are Climate Deniers

Finally Some Good News About Clean Energy Investment

by DeannaColleano Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

Clean energy investment around the world is rebounding after a three-year decline, according to new figures released today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Globally, the total amount of clean energy investment jumped 16 percent in 2014, to $310 billion. That number is just shy of the record amount of investment set in 2011.

BNEF produces quarterly reports that track how much money governments and the private sector are pouring into wind, solar, biofuels and other green energy projects. In 2014, the United States enjoyed its biggest investments since 2012, but it was China that once again drove the numbers. China’s clean energy spending shot up 32 percent to a record $89.5 billion, cementing its place as the world’s top market for green investment. (You can get a sense of just how impressive Chinese investment is by peaking inside the the world’s biggest solar manufacturing factory, which is run by Chinese company Yingli.)

Solar is getting the lion’s share of investment around the world, according to the figures. Almost half the money spent on clean energy this year—just shy of $150 billion—was in the solar industry. Wind investment also reached record levels—$19.4 billion globally—thanks in part to offshore projects in Europe.

There was one darker patch in the numbers: Australia, where the government is trying to slash the country’s Renewable Energy Target, a policy that creates mandates for the amount of clean energy in the electricity mix. Bucking the global trend, investments there fell by 35 percent.

Read this article:  

Finally Some Good News About Clean Energy Investment

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, green energy, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar panels, solar power, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Finally Some Good News About Clean Energy Investment

Nebraska Supreme Court clears the way for a Keystone decision

by DavidKitchen Posted on January 9, 2015

Nebraska Supreme Court clears the way for a Keystone decision

By on 9 Jan 2015 11:06 amcommentsShare

President Obama recently cited a pending court case in Nebraska as a reason for delaying his final decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The court has now ruled in the case, so that excuse for inaction is gone.

From The New York Times:

The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for the Keystone XL pipeline to be built through the state, removing President Obama’s chief reason for delaying a decision on the project.

Gov. Dave Heineman had approved the Keystone project after the pipeline company, TransCanada, proposed a route that avoided Nebraska’s ecologically delicate Sandhills region. In making their decision, the Nebraska justices effectively overturned a lower court’s ruling that had blocked a state law giving the governor the right to approve the pipeline project.

Both opponents and supporters of the proposed pipeline are now calling on Obama to make a damn decision already.

Oil-loving Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), new head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee: “Today’s court decision wipes out President Obama’s last excuse. He’s had six years to approve a project that will increase U.S. energy supplies and create closer ties with our nearest ally and neighbor, and he’s refused to act.”

350.org Executive Director May Boeve: “President Obama is now free to act and reject Keystone XL outright. No matter the route, as long as the pipeline is carrying tar sands oil it is a global warming disaster and fails the President’s climate test.”

More immediately, though, the Nebraska decision puts Secretary of State John Kerry in the hot seat. From Politico:

Friday’s ruling will let the State Department resume its almost-completed review of the Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline, which the department halted in April amid uncertainty about the Nebraska case.

State Department officials have indicated it could still take months for Secretary John Kerry to offer his own judgment on whether building Keystone would be in the interests of the United States.

Meanwhile, the House is gearing up to approve a bill today that would push through Keystone, and the Senate is expected to do the same next week — even though Obama has already threatened to veto the measure.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

sponsored post

In 2015, make a New Year’s resolution that will actually change the world

How the power of positive energy turns you into a climate superhero.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Read this article – 

Nebraska Supreme Court clears the way for a Keystone decision

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Nebraska Supreme Court clears the way for a Keystone decision