After years of procrastination and false claims (i.e. lies) that they were going to help make the U.S. energy independent; after flat-out denial of clear scientific facts; after proposing a market-based system for dealing with environmental pollution (cap and trade) and then demonizing it when Democrats picked it up and try to implement it, leading Republicans in the Senate seemed to have turned a major corner.
China has just completed its first ever study of environmental pollution. Not surprisingly, the news is terrible. But the optimistic and frank tone is encouraging. And strangely reminiscent… “Although the news is bad, we should not lose confidence in our ability to bring pollution under control” says Ma Jun, the … [continued]
Recovery Act stimulus funding for a technology that will make geothermal power available in every state is being invested in Senator Inhofe’s Oklahoma by the Department of Energy’s Geothermal Technologies Program, in a $3 million R&D program to increase the volume of hot rock from which heat can be extracted. … [continued]
The recently much touted alternative “energy only” bill would not cost fossil industries, but instead would cost taxpayers $13.9 billion a year, according to this scoring by the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office – that has been gathering dust since September. This failing grade from the CBO has received no publicity … [continued]
Auction revenues from cap and trade would be deposited into 10 new funds established by the legislation. Spending from those funds would not require any further appropriation action (read: filibuster!) CBO’s estimate of direct spending by these ten funds during the first ten years includes:
One of the hardest parts of checking foreign news sources – to find out what others think of the emissions reductions targets their countries are bringing to Copenhagen – is deciphering the meaning of all those political parties’ names. Who knows which side each of these is on, when it comes to climate change.
In a bold move; well timed to coincide with the US Climate Summit decision at Copenhagen, this week the EPA will declare carbon dioxide a “Public Danger” – – triggering the certainty of regulation for big greenhouse gas emitters such as power stations, cement kilns, crude-oil refineries and chemical plants, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The move essentially guarantees that fossil industries feel either the very sharp stick of this EPA ruling…or they allow some of the Senators they control to cross the aisle for the first time on energy legislation and ratify what President Obama has said he is taking to Copenhagen as the US offer: a carbon cut of 17% below 2005 by 2020.
