This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Before Tom Steyer was a high-profile figure calling for the president’s impeachment, before the attacks directed at him escalated from name-calling to threats and violence, and before the president demeaned him as a “crazed & stumbling lunatic,” the Democratic donor was familiar with being a target for the extreme right because of his prominent work in climate change advocacy.
Last week, Steyer learned he was the intended recipient of one of the 13 bombs mailed to prominent critics of President Donald Trump. It was a violent escalation of attacks on the billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist from those that I had observed early in 2015. At that time, he surpassed Al Gore as the most hated environmentalist in conservative America after spending millions advancing pro-climate candidates in the midterms.
In the days after the attempted bombing, Trump lashed out at Steyer for a critical interview he had with CNN. Then came the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, which sharpened the national conversation about the connection between extreme rhetoric and violent actions. Republican defenders of Trump have dismissed the relationship, although there has been a surge in racist and anti-Semitic attacks since he took office.
The link between hate groups and climate denial is complex and anecdotal at best, with little research examining the overlap between the two. But there is enough anecdotal experience to prompt prominent figures who study and advance science and policy to see a connection. In an interview with Mother Jones, Steyer said he sees the intolerance and hyperpartisanship that has marked the GOP as fundamentally connected with the party’s “willingness to directly lie” on climate change science.
“Climate change was really one of the seminal points for the Republicans because they decided they could straight-up lie,” he said in a phone interview. “When you look at the kind of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric that the president has indulged in, it’s entirely consistent with the idea that there is no cost to lying, there is no cost to really attacking the basic interest of the American people. So I think climate was the template.”
These questions about tensions concerning the climate change debate are not as well understood or explicitly drawn as the immigration debate, where George Soros is charged in coded language with pulling all the strings in a vast global conspiracy, as the New York Times reported, to “undermine the established order and a proponent of diluting the white, Christian nature of their societies through immigration.”
But the right’s denial of climate change science nonetheless repeats many of the same patterns that have appeared in other extremist targets, from guns to immigration to abortion. These patterns include the appropriation of Nazi or anti-Semitic imagery, the demonization of funders and prominent advocates, and the distortion of the terms of the debate. Climate change has become another flashpoint for irrational, hateful, sometimes violent rhetoric, and even personal attacks on people who have risen to some prominence as scientists, funders, and advocates.
Stephan Lewandowsky, a University of Bristol cognitive scientist who studies science denial, notes how the virulently anti-government message that has long dominated climate denial discourse shares common themes with people who believe in conspiracy theories writ large. “Science as well as respect for others’ religions or ethnicity are considered establishment norms, just like truth-telling, and hence the people who support (and are incited by) Donald Trump are likely to reject all of those norms,” Lewandowsky tells Mother Jones, “which again would link science denial, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theories as a cluster or related phenomena.”
The appropriation of particular labels, often involving Nazis, has also appeared in environmental debates. Self-described climate change skeptics have rejected being called “deniers,” arguing, as the conservative think tank figure and Trump EPA transition official Myron Ebell has, that the label is meant to tie “some people to Holocaust denial.” But the skeptic side has deployed an even more direct appropriation of Holocaust imagery.
In 2014, University of Alabama-Huntsville meteorologist Roy Spencer suggested on his blog that the best defense against the label “denier” would be to call those who were concerned with rising temperatures “global warming Nazis.” He even used an image of a swatsika on the post to illustrate his point, sparking a flurry of news coverage. His suggestion drew condemnation from the Anti Defamation League Southeast chapter.
In another incident, while talking to a gathering of oil and gas representatives in March, Representative Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, casually and repeatedly referenced the “Three Percenters,” a movement linked to violent white supremacy that sprung up after Obama’s election, taking its name from the myth that 3 percent of colonists were behind the American Revolution. “You, ladies and gentlemen, are the Three Percenters of the modern era,” he said in remarks first reported by DeSmog Blog, “where wars are fought with monies and strategies and energy.”
Climate change denial extends across a spectrum, ranging from arguments against solutions, to assertions that scientific findings have been exaggerated, but they all tend to return to a central point: Blaming a small number of alarmists for perpetuating large-scale fraud that has convinced thousands of scientists and countries to devote billions of dollars to combating a myth that the planet is warming. The climate-denial world has an even more tightly knit web of industry-connected groups, shown for decades to undermine the science out of self- preservation and profit. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the more far-flung Heartland Institute work to provide a patina of intellectual legitimacy for the same talking points that wind up on Fox News — and on social media.
Though the science itself is nonpartisan, the belief or disbelief in climate change is not, embodying many of the establishment norms that large swaths of the GOP have come to reject, from accepting science to embracing global cooperation as a solution to complex problems. In the same way that the right has transformed Steyer and Soros into all-powerful villains of the left, some climate scientists have long been targets of similar abuse.
Get Grist in your inbox
Always free, always fresh.
The Beacon The Weekly
Ask your climate scientist if Grist is right for you. See our privacy policy
The small world of climate skeptics, who often tend to be older, white, and male, has responded to the mailed bombs with a similar kind of denial they show on the science. Steve Milloy, a member of Trump’s EPA transition team who rejects climate science on his JunkScience blog, suggested the bomb threats were a false flag. “Having a fake bomb addressed to you is the new Democrat status symbol,” he tweeted. E&E News caught a number of prominent climate skeptics advancing a similar line.
“When it comes to climate denial, the No. 1 scientist who is accused of pretty much everything that you can possibly be accused of is Mike Mann, who is accused of single-handedly getting the world’s governments to commit billions of dollars to this hoax,” Lewandowsky says. “[It] is entirely consistent with what conspiracy theorists always do, which is to say they identify a few people who are targets. And then they say they are so powerful that everything in the world is driven through these few.”
Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann is familiar with the phenomenon, having been the subject of decades of attacks that reached a critical point when climate scientists’ emails were hacked and dumped on the web in 2009, feeding a media frenzy that gave undue weight to conspiracy theories. Around that time he was named alongside other experts on a neo-Nazi website, Stormfront.
“The same hatred and conspiratorial ideation that is that the center of Trumpism also underlies the poisonous atmosphere that pervades the public discourse when it come to the issue of climate change,” Mann wrote in an email. He has described the harassment he faced in more detail in his book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, explaining an envelope of white powder he received and the flood of hate mail and death threats charging him with orchestrating a global hoax.
NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt has also long been on the receiving end of both anti-Semitic and climate change denier hate mail and emails, sharing some of his experiences on his Twitter feed. Social media has amplified and provided a platform for toxic harassment, but “I’m not seeing a commensurate rise in climate denial,” he wrote in an email. “If anything it’s the other way: the denialist positions in prominent speakers are moving towards acceptance of the science — not all the way of course — while still pushing back on solutions. And the out-and-out denial is not getting the audience it did.”
Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech climate scientist and self-identified evangelical Christian, often invokes her faith in explaining the need to act to slow down the progress of global warming. Often prominent deniers invoke their faith to advance fossil-fuel-friendly talking points — think Scott Pruitt, who invoked God to justify burning fossil fuels. Hayhoe, who also finds herself facing harassment for her work, draws on her religion to make a moral case to act on the scientific evidence, not bury one’s head in the ground. A scientist alarmed by the impacts of climate change, she has also observed that the anger surrounding the climate debate may have its roots in similar impulses present in other toxic debates. “I think that right now we’re facing a time of tremendous change in race, gender, socioeconomic status, and privilege. It’s especially frightening if you feel you’re going to lose from the change.”
That fear of change and uncertainty, Hayhoe thinks, is connected to the anger. Replacing coal, oil, and gas, which we’ve used for hundreds of years, with solar panels and wind turbines, is still another example of the unpredictability inherent in change.
“I think we often tend to treat these issues as all separate issues,” she says. “Rejection of climate change and harassment of scientists is a package. It’s not an issue that stands by itself. It goes along with symbols of change, racial issues and gender issues and political.”
See the article here:
Tom Steyer and the link between hate groups and climate denial
This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Within two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Richard Birt, a Las Vegas fire captain, flew to San Juan on what would be the first of many missions to try to get the island’s 96 fire stations up and running — not by fixing the problematical grid but by using solar power.
With the encouragement of San Juan fire chief Alberto Cruz Albarrán, logistical help from San Juan firefighters, and donated equipment from the company Sunrun, within a day-and-a-half a team outfitted the flat roofs of the fire department in Barrio Obrero — one of the poorer neighborhoods in San Juan — with solar panels. The panels and connected battery meant the station could be taken off the downed grid to run the most critical equipment including its 24-hour watch office that fielded calls, and its radio, lights, and doors.
Dear reader, like what you see here?
Keep Grist’s green journalism humming along by supporting us with a donation today. All donations made between now and September 29 will be matched dollar-for-dollar.
“When we got there the generator was broken, so there was no lights, no watch office, no radio, no anything,” Birt tells me in between his shifts at the Las Vegas fire station. “The idea [was] getting the watch office up so when someone walked up and said they had an emergency, they could respond.” With solar, the fire station had a backup option when the hastily repaired grid went down again — as it would repeatedly over the last 12 months. When Birt returned a few months later, he found that the crew had never unplugged the solar equipment. “With the grid going down, the firefighters felt they needed this up and running 24-hours a day and not have any gaps,” Birt recalls. “They said, ‘this works and the grid doesn’t.’”
Through the nonprofits Empowered By Light and Givepower, 10 fire stations in Puerto Rico have set up similar microgrids, and Birt hopes to raise millions more to finish the job. Other emergency responders have installed solar power as well. Solar panels filled the parking lot of a children’s hospital in San Juan, after Tesla made a donation to replace the hospital’s diesel generators.
Ensuring power for first responders in the wake of a disaster is a matter of life or death. “People died because of the lack of power,” Sunrun’s director of public policy in Puerto Rico Javier Rúa-Jovet said — 2,975 people in total. But the experiences of the children’s hospital in San Juan and the Barrio Obrero fire department are exceptions, because very few people in Puerto Rico have the option and resources to go solar.
Renewables account for just 2 percent of Puerto Rico’s electricity supply, making it among the most fossil-fuel reliant of nations and territories in the Caribbean. Which is to say, Puerto Rico is far from recognizing the vision solar companies had for a robust and self-reliant solar market. The reasons for this are a complicated mix of the lack of political will, legal obstacles, and the absence of enough federal assistance.
Maria, and the more recent storms like Hurricane Florence, tell a story about reliable power that’s quite different from what President Trump has claimed — which boils down to his usual support of fossil fuels. In a bid to subsidize the coal and nuclear plants that have struggled to compete economically against cheap gas and renewables, the Trump administration has floated a variety of plans — including stalling the retirements of coal plants for national security reasons and creating a strategic reserve for coal — that would allow it to subsidize these sources. One of the administration’s favorite arguments confuses the largely accurate observation that solar and wind are intermittent sources for energy (as in, the sun doesn’t always shine) with the more dubious logic that renewables are somehow more susceptible to security threats than a physical stockpile of coal.
It’s “a tremendous form of energy in the sense that in a military way — think of it — coal is indestructible,” Trump said at an August fundraiser on Long Island. “You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the windmills, boom, boom, boom, bing, that’s the end of that one.”
But that’s not what we’ve been seeing after catastrophic hurricanes. After Maria, solar power became a symbol for more reliable power, even if few had access to it. And more recently, Hurricane Florence tested the most solar-powered state after California. In North Carolina 4.6 percent of the state’s electricity comes from the sun. InsideClimate News reports that large solar farms and even rooftop solar (which face more variable conditions and are more susceptible to damage) remained intact following the storm. At the same time, those who live in North Carolina still saw massive power outages — at one point more than 300,000 residents were without power.
The upside of solar is that it easily lends itself to decentralized power and micro-grids that could maintain the power for more people in the wake of a disaster. Solar is “an easy distributed resource and obviously a clean one,” Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment Director Kevin Jones says. But the downside is that on its own it doesn’t lead to a more resilient a power grid, unless it is combined with advanced battery technology that allows people to disconnect from the grid to become self-reliant. Consider those fire stations: For a microgrid, panels on the roof had to be hooked up to long-lasting storage options. The combination of battery storage and solar could mean that “you have additional resilience when the grid goes down,” Jones notes.
An investigation by Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism conducted after Hurricane Maria backs that up: “Most of the more than 10,362 renewable energy units installed by Puerto Ricans ended up as a roof ornaments,” they concluded. These units were connected to the grid; if they were microgrids with storage attached, things might have been different.
There are other barriers for more hurricane-resilient power. One is money. “You can have solar panels in a parking lot serving a children’s hospital in the short term, but in the longer term you have to put them in a place where you can have them permanently,” Jones says. “Those things take time and money and effort.” The second is public policy priorities. Supplying power to community members in a microgrid gets complicated, legally, because solar customers and companies must get permission from monopoly utilities. The uncertain future for Puerto Rico’s monopoly utility PREPA means an uncertain future for microgrids as well.
For now, multiple solar and storage companies are eyeing markets in Puerto Rico, and both companies and some residents have some hope for the future. Sunrun’s Javier Rúa-Jovet fits into both categories. He considers himself one of the lucky few who was able to take out a loan to buy a diesel generator after the storm, but remembers the frustration of dealing with maintaining and keeping the generator stocked with fuel, sometimes in the middle of a rainy night. “The costs aren’t only economical, there’s the psychological toll,” he said. But a switch to maintenance solar promises to be “a positive experience, not a stressful experience.”
Visit source:
Leave this field empty if you’re human:
“cookieName”:”wBounce”,”isAggressive”:false,”isSitewide”:true,”hesitation”:””,”openAnimation”:false,”exitAnimation”:false,”timer”:””,”sensitivity”:””,”cookieExpire”:”30″,”cookieDomain”:””,”autoFire”:””,”isAnalyticsEnabled”:true
earth911
Follow this link:
Scientists believe solar panels and windmills will both bolster renewable energy sources and change the landscape of the immense Sahara desert
Link –
It seems like there’s always some good news about clean energy: We are breaking records, building more solar panels and wind turbines every day!
Despite clean energy’s meteoric growth, a new global assessment from the International Energy Association shows that fossil fuel projects are growing even faster. The money going to fossil fuel projects accounted for 59 percent of all energy investments last year. Sorry to say but clean energy’s share is shrinking.
You can see what’s going on in the following charts. First, improving energy efficiency (orange) is now big business. That’s great! Investments in renewables along with new transmission lines and batteries (the blue rectangle labelled “networks”), now dominate the electricity sector. Great again! But then there’s that big honking red section, which swings things back in the other direction.
“Investment in all forms of clean power, as well as in networks, would need to rise substantially,” according to the IEA report, for the world to have a shot at keeping climate change below 2 degrees Celsius.
So what happened to all that good news about renewables? Well, it’s real. Investment in solar photovoltaics reached record levels in 2017, while the price of solar power was falling fast, which means those investments are getting more bang for the buck. Investment in offshore wind also hit a record last year, but investment in land-based wind turbines, hydropower, and nuclear fell. The world put nearly $300 billion into renewables, which is a lot, enough to dominate the electric power sector:
But that’s not as much as we spent on in oil and gas drilling and exploration (also known as “upstream” investment) — $450 billion. And that doesn’t count all the money that went into building new pipelines, refineries, and gas stations.
We could kick our addiction to oil by switching to electric vehicles. And, indeed, the world is spending lots of money on EVs. People spent $43 billion on them last year, and more than one out of every 100 new cars sold is electric. Investors are also putting lots of money into build the lithium batteries powering Teslas and Chevy Bolts: Funding for lithium mining has increased by a factor of 10 since 2012.
It’s good news but not good enough. All our driving and shipping and air travel caused oil consumption to grow by “1.6 million barrels per day,” according to the IEA. All the electric cars on the road trimmed consumption by 30,000 barrels a day.
If there’s a true bright spot in this report, it’s found in the section on government research. Around the world, governments spent $27 billion on energy research in 2017, a record high. Most of the growth in government R&D went toward low-carbon technologies.
As the costs of renewables fall, and more wind and solar power surges onto the electric grid, it can start to seem as if the market is taking care of climate change on its own. This report is a bucket of cold water to dispel that fantasy. Yes, there’s good news, but fossil fuels are still growing faster than clean energy.
View this article:
New evidence shows we’re still way too addicted to fossil fuels
Massachusetts, Washington state, and the District of Columbia have a decent shot this year at passing the first law that looks anything like a carbon tax.
While 81 percent of economists say that a carbon tax or cap-and-trade policy is the most effective way to cut carbon pollution, state legislatures haven’t been so easy to convince. Carbon tax proposals keep crashing and burning, even in reliably blue states like Washington and Oregon.
The only state to put an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions is California, where a cap-and-trade program began more than a decade ago. Now, the concept of a carbon fee is gaining popularity. The strategy ensures that funds go straight to a designated purpose, rather than being collected and used by the government like a more general tax.
There’s some trepidation about passing a carbon price because there aren’t many examples out there, says Jamie DeMarco, state-level carbon pricing coordinator at the grassroots advocacy organization Citizens’ Climate Lobby. “Legislatures are hesitant to be the first one to enact a policy,” he says.
Will the second half of 2018 bring better luck for state-level climate action? Here are the three efforts to watch.
On Thursday, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan carbon pricing bill as part of a larger energy package. Now the bill is heading to the state House, where its fate is uncertain.
Its language around the carbon price is “pretty light on the details,” says DeMarco. Technically, the legislation calls for something called a “market-based compliance mechanism” (yawn). DeMarco anticipates that the state would implement a carbon fee if the legislation passes, but says that the language is vague enough to allow for a cap-and-trade system instead. The Massachusetts governor would determine most of the details of how it works, as Benjamin Storrow reports.
If the House fails to pass the carbon pricing portion of the energy bill, DeMarco says, it’s still possible that the provision could get added back in when negotiating the final version with the Senate.
Another carbon fee is brewing in the country’s capital. D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh is expected to introduce a bill in July. Her initial proposal outlined in May calls for a $10 fee per metric ton on carbon pollution that would increase to $100 per ton by 2038.
Some environmental advocates say that Cheh’s proposal doesn’t go far enough toward meeting the city’s climate goals. A coalition called Put A Price on It D.C. put forth an alternate plan that starts at $20 per ton and increases to $150 by 2032. The group also argues for a rebate program that would return the majority of the revenue to D.C. residents.
We’ll wait and see if Cheh takes their advice. With D.C.’s overwhelmingly progressive city council, DeMarco says a carbon fee proposal would have a decent chance of passing.
After a carbon tax fizzled out in the Washington legislature in March, the state is getting another chance. If Initiative 1631 gathers 260,000 signatures, voters will be deciding on the so-called “fee on pollution” this November.
The ballot measure calls for a $15 charge on each metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted in Washington starting in 2020, with the price rising $2 each year until the state meets its climate goals. The money raised would go toward investing in clean energy, protecting natural resources, and helping communities prepare for wildfires and sea-level rise.
Washington isn’t the only state that’s trying to pass a carbon price after recent failures. DeMarco says that Maryland, Oregon, Vermont, and Utah are all places to watch in 2019. New Jersey is a likely newcomer to the carbon pricing game next year, too.
The ultimate goal for environmental advocates, though, is a national carbon price. Flannery Winchester, communications coordinator at the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, says that these state-level carbon proposals are putting pressure on Congress come up with a countrywide solution. After all, a patchwork system that charges different prices for carbon across the country could be logistically challenging for businesses.
“Whatever roadblocks come up,” she says, “the big value is that they’re all really loud signals to Congress to move on a national carbon price.”
Read More:
Three Republican representatives — Tom MacArthur of New Jersey, Peter Roskam of Illinois, and Erik Paulsen of Minnesota — just joined a bipartisan climate change caucus. Given their voting records on environmental matters, these guys are unlikely messengers for climate action. But hey, this is 2018, and the climate will take what it can get!
The Climate Solutions Caucus was founded in 2016 by two Florida lawmakers, Democrat Ted Deutch and Republican Carlos Curbelo. The group has expanded to 78 members since then — a solid 18 percent of all House representatives. (By rule, a Democrat can only join if a Republican does too.)
But the requirements for joining the Climate Solutions Caucus are a bit wishy-washy. It’s become a safe space for House Republicans who want to “‘greenwash’ their climate credentials without backing meaningful action,” as Mother Jones’ Rebecca Leber and Megan Jula write. The average Republican in the caucus voted in favor of the environment just 16 percent of the time last year, according to the League of Conservation Voters. (House Democrats averaged 94 percent.)
Dear reader, like what you see here?
Keep Grist’s green journalism humming along by supporting us with a donation today. Your gift will help us fight for a planet that doesn’t burn and a future that doesn’t suck.
Many of the new Republican members are fighting for their seats in competitive districts, according to the Cook Political Report — including MacArthur, Roskam, and Paulsen. The theory is that these incumbents may want to distance themselves from Trump’s brand of climate denial right before election season.
As for whether joining the Climate Solutions Caucus marks a turning point in their careers or an empty badge of honor, only time will tell. Here’s how the newest Republican members have approached climate issues in the past.
Like many other Republicans, MacArthur doesn’t want his state’s shores ruined by Trump’s offshore drilling plan.
“My district is home to the heart of the Jersey Shore, Barnegat Bay, the Pine Barrens, and the Delaware River,” MacArthur said in a press release about joining the caucus. “Climate change and other environmental issues directly impact our area and our South Jersey economy.”
On other environmental issues, MacArthur’s record isn’t as clean. He recently voted to exempt coal plants from meeting certain clean air standards and delay public health protections against toxic pollution from brick manufacturers. He voted for environmental legislation just 23 percent of the time last year, according to LCV.
But at least he’s spoken up for climate change before. After President Trump announced his intent to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement last summer, MacArthur responded on Facebook: “Climate change is a critical issue and it is vital that we act as good stewards of the environment.”
Then there’s Roskam — the Illinois representative who earned a jaw-droppingly low score of 3 percent from LCV last year. What’s he doing in climate-friendly territory?
Roskam reportedly called global warming “junk science” in 2006, and his opponent in Illinois’ 6th District race, scientist Sean Casten, is giving him hell for it. Casten, who’s making climate change his main issue, is quick to point out that Roskam voted to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases and voted against renewing tax credits for people who install solar panels on their homes or buy electric cars.
Casten calls Roskam’s decision to join the climate caucus a “death-bed conversion designed to obscure his horrible record on environmental issues.”
Here’s Roskam’s version of why he’s signing up: “It is incumbent upon each and every one of us to understand the impacts and challenges that come from a changing climate. The Climate Solutions Caucus is a bipartisan venue to enact common sense solutions.”
When a reporter asked Paulsen in 2008 if he believed humans were contributing to global warming, he said, “I’m not smart enough to know if that’s true or not.”
Maybe he’s gotten smarter since then. A bunch of Winter Olympians, including Minnesota’s cross-country gold medalist Jessie Diggins, met with Paulsen last month to express concerns about climate change’s threat to winter sports and urge him to join the Climate Solutions Caucus. Paulsen is an avid skier who only voted in the environment’s favor 14 percent of the time last year.
“I’m proud to team up with both Republicans and Democrats on ways to protect our country’s economy, security, water supply, and environment,” he said in a statement about joining the caucus.
That statement suspiciously lacks any mention of climate change, but you know. Baby steps.
Continued –
These Republicans say they’re ready for climate action. Can we believe them?
Shares
In a groundbreaking decision, the California Energy Commission voted today to require the installation of solar panels on most newly built single-family homes and multifamily buildings of three stories or fewer. The decision, which does not require the approval of the Legislature, will go into effect in 2020.
California becomes the first state to mandate solar panels, an approach in keeping with California’s efforts to slash carbon emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. The Energy Commission expects the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.4 million metric tons over three years. It is also likely to give a tremendous boost to the solar installation industry. Reflecting on the requirement, Kelly Knutsen of the trade group California Solar and Storage Association said, “This is going to be a significant increase in the solar market in California. We are also sending a national message that … we are a leader in the clean energy economy.”
The decision has its detractors among some business associations that have focused on the estimated $9,500 cost per building the requirement will add, in part to cover the Trump administration’s tariff on solar panels. But the California Building Industry Association, which supports the initiative, acknowledged that while the installation costs will be passed on to consumers as part of a home purchase, the cost will be offset by lowered energy costs over the term of a mortgage. They estimate that for every $40 in monthly payments the energy standards increase, consumers will save $80 in energy costs.
Solar panels are popular with California consumers for their effect on energy costs and already found on about 5 percent of homes.
Solar energy development has skyrocketed in recent years, but many …Sarah LozanovaApril 10, 2018
Within a few weeks, imported solar cells and modules to …Sarah LozanovaJanuary 31, 2018
Solar energy production has skyrocketed in recent years in the …Sarah LozanovaJanuary 1, 2018
Within 20 years, there will be 2 billion more people …Vic BondiMay 10, 2018
Making smart sustainable choices requires practice. Earth911’s twice-weekly sustainability quiz …Earth911May 10, 2018
In a groundbreaking decision, the California Energy Commission voted today …Vic BondiMay 9, 2018
earth911
Link:
The EPA administrator has racked up more than 40 scandals and 10 federal investigations since he took office last February. Nonetheless, Scott Pruitt was smiling when he walked in to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Thursday.
Prior to the hearing, the New York Times reported that Pruitt had a plan to deal with tough questions: Blame his staff instead.
He stuck to it. When New York Democratic Representative Paul Tonko confronted him about raises given to two aides without White House approval, Pruitt said, “I was not aware of the amount, nor was I aware of the bypassing, or the PPO process not being respected.”
And Pruitt’s $43,000 soundproof phone booth? Again, not his fault. As Pruitt told California Democratic Representative Antonio Cárdenas: “I was not involved in the approval of the $43,000, and if I had known about it, Congressman, I would have refused it.”
“That seems a bit odd,” Cárdenas commented. “If something happened in my office, especially to the degree of $43,000, I know about it before, during, and after.”
Democratic Representative from New Mexico Ben Ray Luján pointed out that Pruitt was repeatedly blaming others during the hearing. “Yes or no: Are you responsible for the many, many scandals plaguing the EPA?” he asked.
Pruitt dodged the question: “I’ve responded to many of those questions here today with facts and information.” When Luján pressed him futher, Pruitt replied, “That’s not a yes or no answer, congressman.”
Well … it wasn’t a “no.”
Read original article:
Who asks Paul Ryan the tough climate question? The 7-year-old.
Libros
