Tag Archives: power

Hansel and Gretel Finally Get the Stopping Power They’ve Always Deserved

by JuniorSmithies Posted on March 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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

It appears that Hansel and Gretel have been updated for the 21st century:

“Let’s go a little deeper into the forest,” Hansel said….Before long, they heard a rustling in the leaves, and slowly turned to see a magnificent 10-point buck drinking from a stream. Gretel readied her rifle and fired. Her training had paid off, for she was able to bring the buck down instantly with a single shot. She and Hansel quickly field-dressed the deer and packed up to head back home, hardly believing their luck.

Wait. Wasn’t there a witch and a boiling pot and a gingerbread cottage? No worries: that stuff is still there.

”Help us!” the whisper said, as Hansel and Gretel looked to see who it was. “We’re in the gingerbread cottage.”…“We’re going to get you out of here,” Hansel told the boy….The hinges gave a groan and the sound of the witch’s snoring stopped, the silence filling the room as they looked at each other in panic. Gretel got her rifle ready, but lowered it again when the snoring resumed.

….After reuniting the boys with their parents, it was time to take on the witch…and get some hunting done in the meantime. Villagers, prepared with rifles and pistols, headed into the forest, Hansel and Gretel leading the way. When they came upon the witch’s cottage, the sheriff locked her into the cage in which the boys had been locked just the night before, to be taken away so she could never harm another child.

That’s not much of a witch if all it takes is a few villagers with rifles to take her down. Still, at least everyone else lives happily ever after, thanks to our constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.

Continue reading here:  

Hansel and Gretel Finally Get the Stopping Power They’ve Always Deserved

Posted in alternative energy, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hansel and Gretel Finally Get the Stopping Power They’ve Always Deserved

The world’s energy supply relies on water. Guess what we’re running low on?

by JeffreyCoy Posted on March 18, 2016

The world’s energy supply relies on water. Guess what we’re running low on?

By on 18 Mar 2016commentsShare

Not to make you do math on a Friday or anything, but here’s a simple word problem: If 98 percent of global power generation requires water, the U.N. predicts a 40 percent shortfall in global water supply by 2030, and the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, then approximately how screwed are we? Please present your answer in units of Stacey Dash accidentally driving on the freeway:

Now, before you grab a pencil and paper, some context: A new report from the World Energy Council says that we’re heading for a global water crisis, and we need to improve the resiliency of our energy infrastructure by, among other things: better understanding the water footprints of coal, gas, nuclear, hydropower, and other renewable energy sources and thus better understanding the risks of investing in certain types of future energy infrastructure.

Advertisement – Article continues below

The report points to a recent warning from the U.N. that dwindling water reserves might only be able to meet 60 percent of global water demand by 2030 — meaning that by the time today’s infants grow into pimply bags of hormones, the world could be a serious water crisis. And since power generation is second only to agriculture in global water consumption, that could translate into a serious energy crisis.

Just how serious became clear when researchers reported in a recent study published in Nature Climate Change that hydropower and thermoelectric power provide about 98 percent of the world’s electricity, and both rely heavily on water. That means, the researchers report, that more than 60 percent of the 24,515 hydropower plants they studied and more than 80 percent of the 1,427 thermoelectric power plants they studied could show reduced capacity between 2040 and 2069.

Still, some experts say that couching this as a global issue might not make sense. Kate Brauman, lead scientist for the Global Water Initiative at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment, for example, told Scientific American that she didn’t think we were facing a worldwide crisis:

“There are places where we’re using all or nearly all of our available water, but those are localized places on the globe,” she said. “So by the end of the day, to say something like, on a global scale, we’re using more water than we have or we’re running out of water” doesn’t paint the situation correctly.

Indeed, plenty of people are already mired in pretty serious water crises. Venezuela, for example, is about to enter a mandatory one-week vacation because a water shortage is making it hard for the country to meet energy demands. So for them and others around the world, this dire warning from the World Energy Council might elicit nothing more than a “So what else is new?”

And besides, Brauman pointed out, as cities grow and “densify” — which they are — they tend to improve their water efficiency by updating leaky infrastructure and lowering overall per capita water use.

What’s more, Scientific American reports, we don’t actually have a firm grasp on how much water we’re consuming, because a lot of what we think we’re consuming actually just goes right back into the water cycle:

For example, a power plant that uses water to cool its condensers might pull water from a river, run it through the plant and release that same water back into the river. The water leaving the plant is warmer, but it still re-enters the river.

Power plants account for almost 80 percent of withdrawals in the United States, but in terms of consumption, their impact is much smaller, said Jerad Bales, the chief scientist for water at the U.S. Geological Survey. Currently, we don’t have good information on consumptive use, said Bales.

“That’s a hard number to get,” he said.

So the World Energy Council is probably right — we should get a firmer grasp on the water footprints of our energy sources and plan accordingly. But as for how screwed we are? Maybe not even one Stacey Dash — at least not as a globe.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get Grist in your inbox

Visit site – 

The world’s energy supply relies on water. Guess what we’re running low on?

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The world’s energy supply relies on water. Guess what we’re running low on?

This Is the Real Reason the GOP Should Worry About Merrick Garland

by JoleneHogg Posted on March 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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

Merrick Garland has spent the last decade in the weeds of some of the most contentious clean-air cases in history—and he’s consistently come out on the side of the environment and against big polluters.

Garland, the DC Circuit Court chief judge who is President Barack Obama’s pick to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, faces a steep climb to confirmation in the face of fierce opposition from Senate Republicans.

But if Garland makes it to the Supreme Court, the battle over Obama’s flagship climate regulations will likely be one of his first big cases. That policy, known as the Clean Power Plan, aims to slash the nation’s carbon footprint by restricting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency built the plan on a provision of the Clean Air Act that allows it to set emissions standards for existing “stationary” sources (i.e., power plants, rather than, say, cars) and then leave it up to each state to choose how to reach that standard. The rule was immediately challenged by two dozen coal-reliant states, which have argued that it oversteps EPA’s legal authority because it applies to the whole electricity system rather than to individual power plants. Shortly before Scalia’s death, the Supreme Court voted 5-to-4 to put the plan on hold while Garland’s current colleagues in the DC Circuit Court weigh its legality.

The climate regulations will likely wind up in front of SCOTUS sometime next year. So, Garland’s record on cases involving the Clean Air Act—which many legal experts see as the world’s single most powerful piece of environmental law—is a helpful guide for how he might rule. Garland once described the Clean Air Act as “this nation’s primary means of protecting the safety of the air breathed by hundreds of millions of people.”

Garland brings a very different perspective to the bench than Scalia, says Pat Parenteau, a former director of Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center. Whereas Scalia was famous for his strict, literalist interpretation of the law, Parenteau says Garland tends to focus on the real-world outcome of his cases, an approach that could make him more likely to accept the administration’s Clean Power Plan arguments.

“In a close case, with Garland on the bench, the Clean Power Plan’s chances of winning go way up,” he said.

A review of two of Garland’s recent Clean Air Act rulings sheds some additional light:

White Stallion Energy Center v. EPA: In 1990, Congress amended the Clean Air Act to require that the Environmental Protection Agency research how to cut down on mercury and other toxic air pollutants spewing out of coal- and oil-fired power plants. After more than a decade of false starts, the EPA finally issued a mercury rule in 2012 and was hit with a suit from industry groups charging that the agency hadn’t considered how much mercury controls on power plants would cost. The lead plaintiff, White Stallion, was a proposed coal-fired power plant in Texas that was ultimately canceled but whose name remained on the suit.

Garland joined the majority opinion, in April 2014, upholding the mercury rule. The majority found that, for one thing, the EPA did consider the costs ($9.6 billion per year, by EPA’s estimate, in return for $37-90 billion per year in public health benefits). Regardless, the majority found that the cost to industry was never meant to be a deciding factor when EPA writes air pollution regulations:

For EPA to focus its “appropriate and necessary” determination on factors relating to public health hazards, and not industry’s objections that emissions controls are costly, properly puts the horse before the cart, and not the other way around as petitioners and our dissenting colleague urge.

As Ann Carlson, an environmental law scholar at UCLA, wrote in a recent blog post, the White Stallion case illustrates that Garland shows “significant deference to EPA both in its interpretation of ambiguous language in the Clean Air Act and in its technical determinations about how to craft regulations.” In other words, Garland is inclined to trust that the EPA’s experts know what they’re doing.

Later, Garland stood by the mercury rule a second time. Following the DC Circuit Court decision, the legal battle continued to the Supreme Court, which ultimately sent the rule back to the EPA with instructions to recalibrate the agency’s cost calculations. The rule is still stuck at that stage today, but Garland ruled that in the meantime, the rule should stand—essentially the opposite of how SCOTUS treated the Clean Power Plan.

The rule “wasn’t jettisoned during the bouncing back and forth,” said Pat Gallagher, director the environmental law program at the Sierra Club. “This is the pragmatic sensibility of Garland. He isn’t bringing ideology to the table. He’s not on the war path to show that the EPA is usurping powers.”

American Corn Growers Association v. EPA: In this case, Garland was the lone dissenter when the court threw out regulations from the EPA meant to reduce haze in national parks. This case in particular is a useful proxy for the Clean Power Plan because both regulations follow the same model (the EPA sets a standard and lets states decide how to implement it). In both cases, industry groups objected to how the EPA categorized polluters. In the haze case, Garland once again sided with the EPA.

Garland’s dissenting opinion also showed that he is more interested in helping the executive branch enforce the laws created by Congress than in searching out hair-splitting details that can be used to tie the administration’s hands, Parenteau said: “Garland is going to try to interpret a statute to be consistent with the purposes of the statue.” In other words, like in the White Stallion case, he generally trusts that EPA knows the best way to achieve the ends of the Clean Air Act. And he’s disinclined to second-guess the agency’s methods as long as they seem to accomplish what Congress intended.

“In the Clean Air Act, Congress declared a national goal of restoring natural visibility in the country’s largest national parks and wilderness areas,” Garland wrote. Overturning the haze regulation “will prevent the achievement of Congress’ goal.”

That doesn’t mean he automatically caves to the EPA; in fact, Garland has a record of ruling against the agency when he thinks it hasn’t done enough to enforce the law. In American Farm Bureau Federation v. EPA, he ruled that the agency hadn’t gone as far as the Clean Air Act requires to regulate airborne particulate matter. And in Sierra Club v. EPA, he found that the EPA had tried to let states circumvent the agency’s own regulations on ozone.

“Garland defers to the agency scientists as long as the reasoning looks sound,” Gallagher said. But, “if they are hiding the ball, he will dig in and ferret that out.”

That adds up to good news for the Clean Power Plan.

“It’s not a slam dunk, because EPA is using a provision that wasn’t designed to confront climate change,” Parenteau said. But the Clean Power Plan “is the most carefully crafted and supported plan I think EPA has ever produced. Garland might change the very dynamic of the situation.”

View post:

This Is the Real Reason the GOP Should Worry About Merrick Garland

Posted in alternative energy, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This Is the Real Reason the GOP Should Worry About Merrick Garland

Could there be a Fukushima-like disaster in the U.S.?

by RobynJeffrey Posted on March 12, 2016

Could there be a Fukushima-like disaster in the U.S.?

By on 11 Mar 2016commentsShare

Five years ago this Friday, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Japan triggered a massive tsunami that reached heights of 50 feet and traveled six miles inland. The quake moved the main island of Japan 8 feet to the east and shifted the Earth on its axis. An estimated 18,000 people died.

That was the “natural” part of this disaster. What happened next was made exponentially worse by the human: Flooding from the tsunami led to power failures at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which led to a now-infamous meltdown. Over 150,000 people fled their homes, and over 100,000 of those have yet to return, many out of fear of radiation poisoning. Much of the land will be uninhabitable for generations. As Japan marks the anniversary, you might think: Could it happen here?

That depends on who you ask.

Advertisement – Article continues below

In 2012, the American Nuclear Society’s Special Committee on Fukushima called the disaster a “complex story of mismanagement, culture, and sometimes even simple errors in translation.” In other words, it was human error. Experts from the Carnegie Endowment’s nuclear program agreed, writing in The New York Times that Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the plant’s owner, had been negligent: “Had Tepco and the nuclear safety agency followed international standards and best practice, the Fukushima accident would have been prevented.”

The Special Committee was optimistic about such a thing never happening in the United States. After a 30-year hiatus in nuclear plant construction, there are currently five reactors being built in the U.S, and they will be equipped with safety features that should prevent what happened at Fukushima.

But there are 99 existing reactors in the country that can’t be retrofitted with such features. David Lochbaum, a former nuclear industry whistleblower and director of the Nuclear Safety Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, writes that “if exposed to similarly complex challenges, all 99 operating reactors in the United States would likely have similar outcomes. Worse,” he continues, “Japanese and U.S. regulators share a mindset that severe, supposedly ‘low probability’ accidents are unlikely and not worth the cost and time to protect against.”

Lochbaum and other scientists have also raised concern about a design flaw, reportedly present in almost every nuclear plant in the country, that could impact the emergency core cooling systems and lead to Fukushima-like meltdowns. In early March, the group petitioned the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to either immediately either fix the problem or shut down these plants. The industry did neither.

Of course, the United States isn’t Japan. Japan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area of intense seismic activity. As many as 1,500 earthquakes are measured there each year, and the frequent underseas earthquakes make the island nation vulnerable to tsunamis. But even if earthquakes are less common in the U.S., there are plenty of other natural disasters to worry about.  

Take floods. Because nuclear reactors require water to operate, they’re often built in close proximity to lakes, rivers, or — in Fukushima’s case — the ocean. A dam burst upstream of a nuclear facility could cut off the power supply — which is exactly what happened in Fukushima. In 2009, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission found 35 reactors across the U.S. were vulnerable to flooding. That’s 35 potential disasters.

So could Fukushima happen here? Yes, it probably could. Nuclear energy is inherently dangerous. Even when sites are decommissioned, they require massive cleanup — and it’s massively expensive. After Fukushima, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered nuclear facility owners to improve safety and expand protections by December of this year. Let’s just hope the big one doesn’t hit before then.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Climate on the Mind

A Grist Special Series

Get Grist in your inbox

Originally from – 

Could there be a Fukushima-like disaster in the U.S.?

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Could there be a Fukushima-like disaster in the U.S.?

Marco Rubio keeps digging himself a deeper hole on climate change

by JRZAnhljyrpbrtu Posted on March 11, 2016

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio speaks during a campaign event in North Charleston, South Carolina February 19, 2016. Reuters / Chris Keane

Marco Rubio keeps digging himself a deeper hole on climate change

By on 11 Mar 2016commentsShare

Less than 12 hours after the Miami Republican presidential debate, Marco Rubio found himself grilled for a second time by CNN on climate change. The night before, Rubio responded to a question on climate from Miami Republican Mayor Tomás Regalado, who, as an appropriately concerned Floridian, acknowledges and cares about the science and policy causing his city’s flooding. “Well, sure, the climate is changing and one of the reasons why the climate is changing is the climate has always been changing,” Rubio said Thursday night. Which is really all you need to know to get a sense of his position on climate.

“Why not embrace the science though?” asked CNN’s Chris Cuomo Friday morning. “You didn’t speak to that specifically last night. The science to 99 percent of the community is clear. It’s something that’s seen as a future perspective. Why don’t you share it?”

“OK, there is a consensus among scientists around the world that humans are contributing to what’s happening in our climate,” said Rubio. “What there is no consensus on is how much of the changes that are going on are due to human activity, in essence the sensitivity argument.”

Advertisement – Article continues below

“You know, here’s the bottom line,” Rubio continued. “We don’t know how much of it is due to human activity, and that’s relevant in the policy world because they are asking me to support public policies that, by their own admission of the climate activists, these climate policies they want us to adopt would not have a measurable impact on the ecology or the environment now or for the foreseeable future, meaning in my lifetime, yours, or my children’s.”

It’s the kind of answer that has a whiff of nuance. Unfortunately for the senator, it’s also incorrect. Here’s what the sensitivity argument actually looks like, when adapted from the 2013 IPCC report, the world’s authority on climate science:

The probability density function for the amount of warming since 1950 attributable to human causes.

RealClimate

The IPCC explains: “It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by” greenhouse gas emissions and other human factors. Another way to think about it is the chance that humans are not the major cause of warming is improbably low, at less than 1 in 10,000.

But the science doesn’t tell us which policies to pursue. Climate policy is hard. Because Rubio has one thing right: Something like the Clean Power Plan won’t prevent a certain number of inches of sea level rise in his lifetime. But that’s also not the point. Climate policy requires looking past the immediate-term. For some communities, climate change is here, right now. For others, the effects won’t be felt for a century. Rubio bills himself as taking a courageous stand against consensus, but it’s more courageous to trust the science and stand up for people who haven’t yet been born.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Climate on the Mind

A Grist Special Series

Get Grist in your inbox

Source:

Marco Rubio keeps digging himself a deeper hole on climate change

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Marco Rubio keeps digging himself a deeper hole on climate change

JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

by ZenaidaBecerra Posted on March 8, 2016

JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

By on 8 Mar 2016commentsShare

The death rattle of coal industry grew a little louder when JPMorgan Chase announced last week that the bank will no longer be directly financing new coal operations in the developed world. “We believe the financial services sector has an important role to play as governments implement policies to combat climate change, and that the trends toward more sustainable, low-carbon economies represent growing business opportunities,” said the bank in a statement.

JPMorgan joins a growing list of banks that have pledge to cut ties with coal, including Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. But before you start to think big banks are closet progressives, it’s best to keep in mind that even if they do cut ties that they are still following the money: Coal is a poor investment right now. Demand for coal in the U.S. has dropped 10 percent in the last three years, and it will drop off even more in the next 15, since replacing the power sector’s favorite fuel with renewable energy and natural gas is a key component of  Obama’s Clean Power Plan. Right now, production is at a 30-year low, and coal companies are going bust left and right. At the State of the Union in January, the president called on the elimination federal subsidies for fossil fuels as well as an end to cheap leases on federal lands for oil and coal companies. So while JPMorgan’s plan to pull back from coal is good, it’s also smart.

The coal industry, of course, disagrees. Bloomberg Business reports that the the National Mining Association called JPMorgan’s changes “hardly a heroic gesture” given the market downturn. “The bank hedges its bets on financing projects in developing countries, because, not surprisingly, that’s where the growth is and will be,” said Luke Popovich in an e-mail to Bloomberg.

He’s got a point: JPMorgan isn’t divesting from fuel entirely. The bank will continue to finance coal projects in developing nations using ultra-supercritical technology, which have lower emissions and higher efficiency than conventional plants. So while this is a step in the right direction, it’s just that: A step.

“In order to have a chance at stabilizing the climate, we need financial institutions to follow these commitments on coal mining with further steps to end coal financing altogether,” said Ben Collins, senior campaigner at the Rainforest Action Network, an organization lobbying for coal divestment. “It’s time for the financial sector to step up and lead the just transition we need to a clean, renewable future.”

Clearly, we’re not there yet, but with JPMorgan’s announcement, the death of Big Coal looks even more inevitable.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Climate on the Mind

A Grist Special Series

Get Grist in your inbox

Visit site:  

JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on JPMorgan pulls out of coal. Kinda

Electric vehicles could be as cheap as gas-guzzlers soon

by MargotMinchin Posted on February 25, 2016

Electric vehicles could be as cheap as gas-guzzlers soon

By on 25 Feb 2016commentsShare

With gas prices at less than $2 a gallon, it may be hard to imagine trading in the old combustion engine for an electric vehicle, but according to new analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the age of the EV could be just around the corner.

The study published on Thursday predicts that battery prices — which have already fallen 35 percent in the past year — will continue to drop steeply in the coming years. By the 2020s, EVs could be just as affordable as, if not cheaper than, gas-powered vehicles. Sales of EVs, according to the report, will make up nearly 35 percent of market by 2040.

Thirty-five percent is huge growth considering that today EVs sales make up less than 3 percent of the market. Manufacturers are certainly taking notice: Chevy, Nissan, Fiat, Ford, Volkswagen, and Mitsubishi all currently have EVs on the market in the $30,000 range — and if price isn’t your main concern, you can always buy luxury EVs from BMW, Mercedes, or Tesla.

The growth of the electric vehicle does not bode well for the oil market, which is already suffering from crude oil prices as low as $30 a barrel. As Bloomberg News points out, “electric vehicles could displace oil demand of 2 million barrels a day as early as 2023. That would create a glut of oil equivalent to what triggered the 2014 oil crisis.”

But while the death of Big Oil is undoubtedly good for the planet, what exactly are the environmental costs of the electric vehicle? They don’t run on air, after all: The electricity powering your EV has to come from somewhere, and depending on where you live, that “somewhere” could mean coal-fired power plants. The good news is that a 2015 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists found that in U.S., EVs emit less than half the greenhouse gases than gas-guzzlers do on average, even when you account for the manufacturing process. But, as Mother Jones reports, the materials used to make EV batteries introduce other problems: Cobalt mining has been linked to child labor, and lithium mining linked to water pollution and depletion.

So, the electric vehicle can’t entirely assuage the conscientious driver’s guilt. But there’s always another choice beyond either gassing up or hitting the power station every couple hundred miles. It’s not for everyone, but for those of us who can make it work, there is a greater option, a greener option. It’s efficient, inexpensive, and already on the road. That’s right — the humble, old city bus.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Climate on the Mind

A Grist Special Series

Get Grist in your inbox

More: 

Electric vehicles could be as cheap as gas-guzzlers soon

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, Nissan, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Electric vehicles could be as cheap as gas-guzzlers soon

Here’s the Music Candidates are Rocking Out to on the Trail

by LuigiLandseer Posted on February 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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

I was supposed to be writing a wrap-up piece about the South Carolina Republican primary this afternoon, but an attack of writers’ block led me to more inspiring territory: the compilation of the (mostly) complete music playlists of every candidate I’ve seen speak over the last two weeks, in New Hampshire and now South Carolina. Shazam: It’s every political reporter’s best friend.

This list is incomplete, and can change a lot depending on the candidate’s audience or the whims of the artist (heaven forbid Rachel Platten decides to endorse Bernie Sanders). I don’t ascribe any deeper meaning to these musical selections either, although suffice it to say there is a pretty big difference between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, and for that matter, between Donald Trump and everyone else.

See for yourself.

Hillary Clinton:

Jill Scott, “Run, Run, Run”
Mary J. Blige, “Real Love”
Katy Perry, “Roar”
Kelly Clarkson, “Stronger”
American Authors, “Best Day of My Life”
Bon Jovi, “We Weren’t Born to Follow”
Pharrell, “Happy”
Rachel Platten, “Fight Song”

Bernie Sanders:

Simon and Garfunkel, “America”
Janelle Monae, “Tightrope”
Pearl Jam, “Lightning Bolt”
Bob Marley, “Revolution”
Disco Infernor, “The trammps”
Muse, “Uprising”
John Lennon, “Power to the People!”
Tracy Chapman, “Talkin’ bout a Revolution”
Steve Earle, “The Revolution Starts Now”
Neil Young, “Rockin’ the Free World”

John Kasich:

Florida Georgia Line, “Round Here”
Zak Brown Band, “Jump Right In”
Darius Rucker, “Wagon Wheel”
Jake Owen, “Anywhere With You”
Diekes Bentley, “Free & Easy”
Rodney Atkins, “It’s America”
John Fogerty, “Centerfield”
Eric Paslay, “Friday Night”

Marco Rubio:

Kid Rock, “Born Free”
Montgomery Gentry, “This is My Town”
Darius Rucker, “Homegrown Honey”
MercyMe, “Greater”
Eric Church, “Springsteen”

Donald Trump:

Elton John, “Tiny Dancer”
The Beatles, “Hey Jude”
The Beatles, “Revolution”
Rolling Stones, “Can’t Always Get What You Want”
Rolling Stone, “Sympathy for the Devil”
Rolling Stone, “Brown sugar”
Adele, “Rolling in the deep”*
Twisted Sister, “We’re not Gonna Take It”
Danude, “Sandstorm”

Jeb Bush:

Of Monsters and Men, “Dirty Paws”
Blake Shelton, “Hillbilly Bone”
Billy Currington, “That’s How Country Boys Roll”

Ted Cruz:

*Pulled at request of the artist.

Link:  

Here’s the Music Candidates are Rocking Out to on the Trail

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s the Music Candidates are Rocking Out to on the Trail

The Supreme Court Just Did Serious Damage to the Fight Against Climate Change

by LawannaCrossley Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to President Barack Obama’s climate agenda Tuesday evening by putting his flagship greenhouse gas emissions rules on hold. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices granted the stay in response to a lawsuits by coal companies and two dozen coal-reliant states. The plaintiffs have argued that by setting new limits on carbon pollution from power plants, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency is overstepping its authority to control the electricity sector.

The ruling is far from a death knell for the Clean Power Plan, as the policy is known. Rather, it allows power companies and state official to hold off on preparing for the new regulations until the courts decide whether the administration went too far. The cases will most likely end up in front of the Supreme Court sometime next year, so there’s still plenty of time before the plan’s fate is sealed.

According to Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center, the Court’s track record on EPA regulations is pretty favorable for environmentalists.

“Every regulation from EPA is attacked legally,” she said. “There might be delays, but there is almost always a rule that come out the other end.”

But in the meantime, the ruling could throw a wrench in the delicate diplomacy surrounding the global climate agreement reached in Paris in December. One defining feature of the Paris summit that made it the most successful round of climate talks in two decades was the leadership of Secretary of State John Kerry and other US officials. It was the Clean Power Plan that gave other countries confidence that the US was finally willing to do something about its own massive carbon footprint. In other words, the plan was supposed to be Obama’s proof that the US would follow through on its Paris promises. Now, the trust of other big polluters—China, India, the European Union—could be shaken. That could have a chilling effect on climate action around the globe.

“I think the stay raises doubts in other countries’ minds,” said Jake Schmidt, international program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “I’m already getting a lot of questions and confusion from policy analysts abroad. There will be a lot of outreach to explain what this really means.”

Their concerns may well be justified—even if the Supreme Court ultimately does rule in favor of the administration. That’s because, regardless of the case’s final outcome, yesterday’s stay will make the Clean Power Plan more vulnerable if a Republican wins the presidential election in November. All of the leading GOP candidates have vowed to roll back Obama’s climate agenda. (Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have both promised to carry it forward.)

The problem is the timeline, explained Robert Stavins, director of Harvard’s Environmental Economics program. Until yesterday, state regulators and power companies were in the early stages of putting together their plans to comply with the regulation. But with the stay in place, power companies can push off the investments and upgrades required by the plan—switching coal-fired power plants to natural gas, improving efficiency on the electric grid, building more wind and solar energy, etc. That means that by the time the next president takes office, the power companies will have sunk less capital into implementing the plan, and will have less incentive to see it survive than if they had already made those investments, Stavins said. With that potential roadblock out of the way, a Republican president would have an easier time killing the plan.

“That’s a subtle chain of causality, but it’s the one that—if understood—may reasonably cause concern to other countries regarding the ability of the USA to live up to its Paris promises,” Stavins said.

Still, at least in the short term, the US doesn’t need the Clean Power Plan to follow through on its initial Paris commitments, Schmidt said. The US will be required to submit its first progress report under the agreement in 2020, a couple years before the Clean Power Plan was originally scheduled to take effect. Moreover, he said, even if countries such as China and India are spooked by the Supreme Court’s new ruling, they’re unlikely to jump ship on their own climate plans.

“When you look at what’s happened over the past couple years, it’s really hopeful that the US is moving forward,” Schmidt said. “But most countries aren’t moving forward solely on the basis of what the US is doing.”

Source article – 

The Supreme Court Just Did Serious Damage to the Fight Against Climate Change

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Supreme Court Just Did Serious Damage to the Fight Against Climate Change

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

by EugenioOIBS Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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

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.

Read more:  

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

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, green energy, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Supreme Court Just Dealt a Huge Blow to Obama’s Climate Plan