U.N. Official Tells Truth About America
The first paragraph of this story United Nations official said the Boston bombings were retaliation for America's militarized presence in oil rich countries. I don't know about Boston but he is right about the U.S.
The second paragraph quotes the american ambassador at the U.N. She is simply telling us what she was told to tell us, that is defend america right or wrong.
The U.N. needs more Richard Falks and fewer Susan Rices
A top U.S. official called on Wednesday for the United Nations to fire a human rights advocate who implied that the Boston Marathon bombings were payback for America’s "geopolitical fantasy of global domination" and its friendship with Israel.
“Outraged by Richard Falk's highly offensive Boston comments. Someone who spews such vitriol has no place at the UN. Past time for him to go,” the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, said on Twitter.
Rice was responding to an essay that Falk, who is U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, wrote in Foreign Policy Journal. In it, Falk warns against "darkly glamorizing" the Boston bombings "with flowers and homage" and seems to say the U.S. brought the attacks on itself."The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world," Falk said. "In some respects the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen, especially if there is no disposition to rethink US relations to others in the world, starting with the Middle East."
"We should be asking ourselves at this moment, 'how many canaries will have to die before we awaken from our geopolitical fantasy of global domination?'" Falk wrote.
The U.N. official also condemned President Barack Obama's March 21 speech in Jerusalem as "a love letter to the Israeli public rather than qualifying as a good faith effort to demonstrate his belief in a just peace.
"The war drums are beating at this moment in relation to both North Korea and Iran, and as long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy," he said.
Falk said he thought he detected "a few hopeful signs of awakening" in Americans asking whether policies like targeted assassination using drones might be turning other peoples against the United States
Oil, money and politics; EPA snags Keystone XL pipeline
updated 5:49 AM EDT, Tue April 23, 2013
CNN) -- The politics of oil and ecology have put President Obama between a rock and hard place, as he faces a decision on whether or not to permit construction of a new pipeline. The squeeze just got tighter with a new, negative environmental assessment.
The Keystone XL pipeline will give America energy independence, thousands of jobs, important industrial infrastructure and won't cost taxpayers a dime, say proponents. Many of them are Republican lawmakers.
It is dangerous, inherently filthy and must be stopped, say opponents, some of whom are Democrats who helped get the president elected.
On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency weighed in on the side of the environmentalists, weeks after the State Department came down on the side of the proponents.
Tycoon T. Boone Pickens picks fight 
Fareed's Take: Case for Keystone
Keystone fight explodes
The EPA sent a letter to high officials at State, blasting the draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) it published in March that had reflected positively on the pipeline project.
The environmental agency rated the DEIS as EO-2. It stands for "Environmental Objections-Insufficient Information." That could be seen as a C- on the EPA's grading scale.
President Obama has promised to decide soon on whether or not to allow the TransCanada oil company to lay the 835 mile long Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, to Steele City, Nebraska.
While he has contemplated the pros and cons, powerful political forces have aligned on both sides of the argument.
Economic pros
The Keystone XL would pump 830,000 barrels of oil sands crude per day through America's heartland, connecting crude producers in Canada with refineries and shipping companies in the United States.
TransCanada would cover all the costs, proponents argue, making it practically a gift to the U.S. oil infrastructure.
On its way to Nebraska, where it would connect with other, already existing pipelines, Keystone XL would pick up additional oil produced in Montana and North Dakota and stream it south, TransCanada said on its website.
It would reduce "American dependence on oil from Venezuela and the Middle East by up to 40 percent," TransCanada extols.
Dirty air
It will produce too many greenhouse gases, the EPA said in its letter, and this needs to be amended, before the project goes forward.
The Canadian crude in its raw form is mixed with sand. Extracting the oil and transporting it requires more energy than pumping crude out of a well. Thrusting it through long pipes increases the energy consumption.
That higher energy use leads to greater greenhouse gas emissions, an increase of "18.7 million metric tons (20 million tons) C02 ... per year when compared to an equal amount of U.S. average crudes," the EPA said.
The state department's assessment concludes that just as much Canadian oil will make it to market, by train if necessary, if no pipeline is built, therefore there would be little additional ecological impact.
The EPA argued that "while informative" that train of thought is out of date.
Nasty spills
The agency is also concerned about oil spills, particularly since sands crude is different from conventional crude.
It cites a 2010 pipe break in Michigan, which spurted out 20,000 barrels of sands crude. Some of it sank to the bottom of the Kalamazoo River and could not be completely cleaned up in three years' time, the EPA said.
"Spills of diluted bitumen may require different response actions or equipment," the letter stated. "These spills can also have different impacts than spills of conventional oil."
The state department assessment did not address these issues and needs to require TransCanada to do more to monitor for oil leaks into ground water, the EPA criticized.
Bitumen is the tar-like oil extracted from the sand. It is thinned with chemicals, so it can be pumped through pipelines.
Nebraska beauty
State's assessment represents its second go-round with the Canadian company.
It rejected a permit from TransCanada, last year, saying the route through Nebraska was too risky for the state's Sand Hills Region, a landscape of natural beauty. And it endangered the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides water to farmers and ranchers to raise livestock and grow crops.
TransCanada came up with a new route, but the EPA said, it misses the mark.
"The alternative route in Nebraska has avoided most of the impacts to the Sand Hills Region, but still crosses the Ogallala Aquifer," the agency assessed.
In its public reaction Monday, State indicated that the EPA's criticism was business as usual. It also anticipated public protest.
"The State Department has always anticipated that in preparing a Final Supplemental EIS it would conduct additional analysis and incorporate public comments received on the Draft SEIS," said press spokesman Patrick Ventrell.
The politics
Keystone XL opponents have aligned themselves principally behind the greenhouse gas (GHG) issue, as the EPA acknowledged in Monday's letter to State:
"It is this difference in GHG intensity - between oil sands and other crudes - that is a major focus of the public debate about the climate impacts of oil sands crude."
Obama's own former deputy press secretary is leading the charge to push the president to stop the pipeline.
Bill Burton quit his job before the 2012 election to head up the super PAC Priorities USA, which worked for the president's reelection. In January, he joined the PR firm Global Strategy Group as an executive vice president.
He is now representing a new coalition, "All Risk, No Reward," which opposes Keystone XL. It goes after the additional greenhouse gases but also showcases the damage causes by spills to Americans in the heartland.
Another group, 350.org, which wants to bring down carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere below 350 parts per million, is soliciting letters of protest to the state department.
Nebraska's Republican governor Dave Heineman has approved the project, and Nebraskan congressman Lee Terry has called for the Keystone XL's construction in a Republican radio address.
The pipeline "is primed to give our economy a shot in the arm and make energy more affordable -- and it won't cost the taxpayers a dime," he argued.
Terry spoke a day after an apparent pipeline rupture in the Arkansas town of Mayflower in late March, about 20 miles north of Little Rock.
Black torrents of diluted bitumen flowed through the community, forcing the evacuation of 22 homes.
Make Yourself usefull " Don Quixote needs you or else we all fail:
PUT A NAIL IN THE COFFINS OF POLLUTION EJACULATING VAMPIRES
I am from the punk rock generation in between the hippies and me"generations, followed by the x generation. Who are we now? I am sure that the people born after me think that myself, and the people who were born before me left you with nothing but a world that is hoplessly messed up in many many ways. so why not party because all is lost anyway?
$100,000 a year salaried Washington D.C. politicians who have an additional $100,000,000 in personal wealth made from insider trading on Wall Street by cheating and not by being a true capitolist. The corporations involved in these transactions pollute the earth, are exempted from EPA regulations, as with Natural Gas Drilling on U.S. soil, an industry exempted from the Clean Water Act by Dick Cheney who profits from the Haliburton company which is an International Military, Oil and Natural Gas contractor. The U.S. governement pays out cash in oil subsidies to highly profitable oil companies and politicians profit from the "success" of these companies. A Green Energy Economy is is not actively subsidized by our government nor is it encouraged by Wall Street Corporations.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/25/indonesian-mud-volcano-erupt-quarter-century/#ixzz1F39kAkdP
http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/aug08/article.html?id=nn_indonesia.html
http://englishrussia.com/2008/03/25/darvaz-the-door-to-hell/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/14/chevron-contaminate-ecuador
http://badgasgoodwind.blogspot.com/2011/06/bps-deepwater-horizon-disaster-is-not.html
Corporations sold mortgages and then profitted by betting against them. They shipped jobs over seas. Discuss this with your friends, and the list goes on. Corporations buy TV commercials and use them to tell you only what they want you to know. They even spin newsmedia into a commercial for their demigogary, which is within their right to opinion when reporting news, as the owners of the news corporations. This is a good example of why corporations should not have "personhood." The personal financial aspirations of a few are missrepresented as popular opinion by commercial media.
Whatever happened to the love of which our human intellect bestowed
upon all of us to fight for justice in these and so many more battles:
An end to slavery, a woman's right to vote, the beginnings of equal rights America, an end to the genocide during WWII, an end to the Vietnam War and an end to so many other human inequities: Cambodia, Rowanda, Mogadishu and The Balkans, the confusion in Israel and Palestine, the isolation rof Cuba and North Korea .. workers rights, fail labor, coal mine safety. Are any of these things really won if they are forgotten, or are they just a part of the walk of shame. A walk of shame because our leaders have instigated and bullied their way into these conflicts, and a walk of shame because we allowed them to do it.
This is how America's leaders party to the end, they keep on doing what they are doing until it is all over. They are trying to convince us to let them get away with it, through lies, distraction and with impunity by order of the laws that they have written for themselves.
SINCE DECEMBER OF 2010 youth have been rising up in: Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Morrocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Lebonon, not to forget China's Tienamen Square in 1989 and the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999. The Occupy Movement has made widespread dissention in America known.
It is time for all those in America to step up and drive the final nail into the coffin of the pollution ejaculating zombies in world business and government which have exploited the world's resources to the brink of the very extinction of human kind and all that will perish with us.
Your family, your neighbors, and the rest of the world needs all Americans to join the struggle for a new Green Energy Economy Industrial Revolution with which to take planet earth and WE ALL whom are all custodians of it into the future. We must restore democracy in our own country as the voice of the people, in the spirit of the very foundings of democratic civilization upon the soil of our own country, and all of likewise peoples and founders of civilization world wide.
We must restore capitolism to the definition of Fair Trade, the very same principal that capitolism was founded upon. A civilized balance between personal wealth and acceptable minimumm quality of life standards. A balance created by a mix of "for profit" and "social programs". Forward thinkers who profit at the raising of quality of life in their community by providing jobs and tax dollars, and forward thinkers who use those tax dollars to build and maintain schools, fire stations, and hospitals, fight for clean air and clean water, and enough food to ensure that these civilized minimum quality of life standards are not only met for every man, woman, and child, but also increased as societies wealth increases.
The presence of every individual on earth today is a participant in the dawning of a new age. Terms like Fair Trade, minimum quality of life standards, food, housing, clean water, clean air and clean dirt no longer just apply to your neighborhood school, fire station, hospital, hardware store, Wal-Mart, gas station, and rhetoric from your local Mayor, they have gone global. We are one civilization. We all want the same things. Our hearts tell us what is civilized and what is not.
Don Quixote was an old man who thought he was a knight and a windmill his enemy. The townspeople thought he was dillusional.
xoxoxoxox I love you. Pass it on.
I am from the punk rock generation in between the hippies and me"generations, followed by the x generation. Who are we now? I am sure that the people born after me think that myself, and the people who were born before me left you with nothing but a world that is hoplessly messed up in many many ways. so why not party because all is lost anyway?
$100,000 a year salaried Washington D.C. politicians who have an additional $100,000,000 in personal wealth made from insider trading on Wall Street by cheating and not by being a true capitolist. The corporations involved in these transactions pollute the earth, are exempted from EPA regulations, as with Natural Gas Drilling on U.S. soil, an industry exempted from the Clean Water Act by Dick Cheney who profits from the Haliburton company which is an International Military, Oil and Natural Gas contractor. The U.S. governement pays out cash in oil subsidies to highly profitable oil companies and politicians profit from the "success" of these companies. A Green Energy Economy is is not actively subsidized by our government nor is it encouraged by Wall Street Corporations.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/02/25/indonesian-mud-volcano-erupt-quarter-century/#ixzz1F39kAkdP
http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/aug08/article.html?id=nn_indonesia.html
http://englishrussia.com/2008/03/25/darvaz-the-door-to-hell/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/feb/14/chevron-contaminate-ecuador
http://badgasgoodwind.blogspot.com/2011/06/bps-deepwater-horizon-disaster-is-not.html
Corporations sold mortgages and then profitted by betting against them. They shipped jobs over seas. Discuss this with your friends, and the list goes on. Corporations buy TV commercials and use them to tell you only what they want you to know. They even spin newsmedia into a commercial for their demigogary, which is within their right to opinion when reporting news, as the owners of the news corporations. This is a good example of why corporations should not have "personhood." The personal financial aspirations of a few are missrepresented as popular opinion by commercial media.
Whatever happened to the love of which our human intellect bestowed
upon all of us to fight for justice in these and so many more battles:
An end to slavery, a woman's right to vote, the beginnings of equal rights America, an end to the genocide during WWII, an end to the Vietnam War and an end to so many other human inequities: Cambodia, Rowanda, Mogadishu and The Balkans, the confusion in Israel and Palestine, the isolation rof Cuba and North Korea .. workers rights, fail labor, coal mine safety. Are any of these things really won if they are forgotten, or are they just a part of the walk of shame. A walk of shame because our leaders have instigated and bullied their way into these conflicts, and a walk of shame because we allowed them to do it.
This is how America's leaders party to the end, they keep on doing what they are doing until it is all over. They are trying to convince us to let them get away with it, through lies, distraction and with impunity by order of the laws that they have written for themselves.
SINCE DECEMBER OF 2010 youth have been rising up in: Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Morrocco, Jordan, Kuwait, and Lebonon, not to forget China's Tienamen Square in 1989 and the WTO riots in Seattle in 1999. The Occupy Movement has made widespread dissention in America known.
It is time for all those in America to step up and drive the final nail into the coffin of the pollution ejaculating zombies in world business and government which have exploited the world's resources to the brink of the very extinction of human kind and all that will perish with us.
Your family, your neighbors, and the rest of the world needs all Americans to join the struggle for a new Green Energy Economy Industrial Revolution with which to take planet earth and WE ALL whom are all custodians of it into the future. We must restore democracy in our own country as the voice of the people, in the spirit of the very foundings of democratic civilization upon the soil of our own country, and all of likewise peoples and founders of civilization world wide.
We must restore capitolism to the definition of Fair Trade, the very same principal that capitolism was founded upon. A civilized balance between personal wealth and acceptable minimumm quality of life standards. A balance created by a mix of "for profit" and "social programs". Forward thinkers who profit at the raising of quality of life in their community by providing jobs and tax dollars, and forward thinkers who use those tax dollars to build and maintain schools, fire stations, and hospitals, fight for clean air and clean water, and enough food to ensure that these civilized minimum quality of life standards are not only met for every man, woman, and child, but also increased as societies wealth increases.
The presence of every individual on earth today is a participant in the dawning of a new age. Terms like Fair Trade, minimum quality of life standards, food, housing, clean water, clean air and clean dirt no longer just apply to your neighborhood school, fire station, hospital, hardware store, Wal-Mart, gas station, and rhetoric from your local Mayor, they have gone global. We are one civilization. We all want the same things. Our hearts tell us what is civilized and what is not.
Don Quixote was an old man who thought he was a knight and a windmill his enemy. The townspeople thought he was dillusional.
xoxoxoxox I love you. Pass it on.
Politicians Hold The World Hostage To Tar Sands and Actively Block Green Energy Development
The tar sands of Northern Alberta, Canada – also called oil sands – are one of the largest remaining deposits of oil in the world. Developing the tar sands has created the biggest industrial development project, the biggest capital investment project, and the biggest energy project in the world. It has also created a literal hell on earth.
Areas of wilderness the size of small countries are chewed up and replaced by a landscape of toxic lakes, open pit mines, refineries, and pipe lines. The tar sands are what unrestrained fossil fuel use and unchecked greenhouse gas emissions look like. They are pushing us towards runaway climate change.
In September and October 2009 Greenpeace activists took action in the tar sands - see complete live streamed footage on the Ustream channel & more video here.
Get the latest on the campaign to Stop the Tar Sands from:
Greenpeace Canada - English & Français
Greenpeace UK
Greenpeace Norway
Greenpeace France
Areas of wilderness the size of small countries are chewed up and replaced by a landscape of toxic lakes, open pit mines, refineries, and pipe lines. The tar sands are what unrestrained fossil fuel use and unchecked greenhouse gas emissions look like. They are pushing us towards runaway climate change.
In September and October 2009 Greenpeace activists took action in the tar sands - see complete live streamed footage on the Ustream channel & more video here.
Get the latest on the campaign to Stop the Tar Sands from:
Greenpeace Canada - English & Français
Greenpeace UK
Greenpeace Norway
Greenpeace France
Images from the Tar Sands:
More info:
Related blogs:
Seven of us climbed up that drillship to stop Arctic drilling, but 133... Blog entryAs we sat anxiously in the office last Friday waiting for the 'we .. Read more >- 10 reasons why Arctic drilling is a really stupid idea Blog entry1. It’s extremely dangerous. The Arctic environment is one of the.. Read more >
- Why Shell’s spill response plan is a dog's breakfast Blog entryWhile we’re tweeting from the rooftop at London's National Gallery (the.. Read more >
- Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Mixed Bag Blog entryWith this year’s United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development.. Read more >
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U.S. Politicians subsidize fossil fuel corporations
and block green energy development
even though we have green energy technology
ready and available today.
Politicians coast to coast in america, elected officials in Washington D.C. , in every State of the Union are holding the american people hostage to a failing, polluting, and increasingly more and more expensive fossil fuel economy, while at the same time going out of their way to actively block any and all alternative energy systems that will compete against and eventually replace these increasingly destructive and archaic fossil energy systems.
Why are they all doing this? Why do they control fossil fuels and insist that fossil fuels are the only thing we use? Because they each as individuals make money from them. They are protecting their own personal investements and continuing to grow their own personal financial portfolios, increasing their own private wealth.
They are doing these things for themselves while under oath of elected office to represent the people, but that is not really what is happening. They just want you to keep believing that they represent you. They take campaign contributions and Super Pac cash from fossil fuel corprations, they trade on Wall Street using insider information with fossil fuel companies, some may even be taking bribes from them. They make decisions and they write laws that are in favor of fossil fuel companies to make sure that thier investments make them a profit. Law makers are recruited from fossil fuel executive positions by other law makers such as Secretary of State and Middle East policy Condaleeza Rice from Chevron, Vice President Dick Cheney from Haliburton, and Philip Cooney White House Chief Of Staff on The Counsel of Environmental Quality and Former American Petroleum Institute Lobyist. After resigning, Cooney again took a job in the oil industry working for Exxon Mobil.
Government financial involvement of the promotion of fossil fuels while blockading alternative energy sources is not just an american government activity, it involves other governments all around the world as well.
Here are the Facts:
Fossil-fuel consumers worldwide received about six times more government subsidies than were given to the renewable-energy industry: State spending, paid for with your taxes to cut retail prices of gasoline, coal and natural gas rose 36 percent to $409 billion. Aid for biofuels, wind power and solar energy, rose a mere 10 percent to $66 billion, and this included bio-fuels which like fossil fuels also burn and pollute. In effect, very little money was invested in wind and solar at all. Dirty fossil fuels subsidized and paid for with your taxes was $343 Billion more for gas, oil, and coal than was subsidized to wind and solar.
Bloomburg News Report: Fossil Fuel Subsidized By U.S. Government Six times More Than Renewable Energy
General economic theory holds that companies will produce more of a good if its price is higher, or if it receives subsidies. Funny that these rules didn’t seem to apply to Big Oil in 2011, when the highest oil price since 1864 and $2 billion in subsidies to the five largest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell—yielded lower oil production than in 2010. But these five oil companies combined made a record-high $137 billion in profits in 2011—up 75 percent from 2010—and have made more than $1 trillion in profits from 2001 through 2011.[1] This exceeds the previous record of $136 billion in profits in 2008.
Here are some more highlights from the big five’s activities in 2011:
"This is a gravy train. The American people are suffering here, and oil companies are getting a tax break. The public is not even getting clean energy. This is not a way to make laws. This is not even a way to make sausage."
A recent report by the Air Force put the cost of building a coal gasification plant at $6 billion or more each.
The coal investment credit will cost $389 million in tax payer dollars next year.
The bailout package includes a 50% tax write-off on refinery construction, which would assist the oil shale and tar sands industries.
The next refinery expected to come on line is the Hyperion Resources Inc. plant in Elk Point, S.D., The facility, which will cost $10 billion or more is intended to refine crude oil extracted from tar sands pits in Canada's Alberta province.
The tax breaks for refineries that are in turn replaced in the budget with your tax dollars are expected to cost $72 million.
Energy from fossil fuel gets 12 times more in government subsidies worldwide than sustainable energy, says a new report from the USC Marshall School of Business.
LA Times Article : Bailout Tax Breaks Aid Dirty Fuels
LA Times Article : Clean energy gets fewer subsidies, less investment than fossil fuels, report says
RELATED:
U.S. clean-tech investment falls 45% in fourth quarter
China takes lead in clean-power investment
Saudi Arabia’s outlay of $44 billion.
James Hansen, the Head of Nasa's Goddard Space Institute and one of the world's leading researchers on Climate Change said that the Bush administration restricted who he can talk to and editing what he says. All Climate related reports go to the Whitehouse first before going top congress and then the american people. Politicians he said, are re-writing the science.
Hansen says that Climate Change is accelerating and it is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The White House is blocking that message. Ralph Scicerone the President of the National Academy of Sciences agrees with Hansen and adds, that Hansen is one of the best scientists in this field.
Rick Piltz also said that his reports written for The Federal Climate Change Science Program and submitted to the White House were edited heavily by Philip Cooney, a lawyer, former petroleum lobbyist and White House Chief of Staff on The Counsel of Environmental Quality .
Cooney changed the sentence, "earth is under going a period of rapid change" to "maybe undergoing a period of rapid change. Cooney changed "certainty" to significantly reamaining uncertainty." Cooney entirely crossed out the sentence, "energy production is contributing to global warming." he also crossed out references to human health.
These are science reports that the citizens of the United States see, after they are changed in the white house by a lawyer who is deeply involved in the fossil fuel industry!
Nasa scientist James Hansen interviewed on the television news broadcast 60 Minutes
about science reports being edited by the White House Chief of Staff on The Counsel
of Environmental Quality Philip Cooney, a former American Petroleum Institute Lobbyist. (video)
There is even evidence that the U.S. Natuaral Gas Industry censored the Wall Street Journal in a Wall Street Journal report on the gas industry's losing campaign to discredit the film, Gas Land by Josh Fox after the film was nominated for an Motion Picture Academy Oscar Award An article, called "Oscar's Attention Irks Gas Industry," by Ben Casselman.
The article surveys the unsuccessful attempts of the Natural Gas Industry to persuade the Academy of Arts and Sciences to pull the documentary, which depicts nationwide instances of home water contamination near gas drilling sites that have been fracked. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a novel gas drilling process that introduced the use of large quantities of toxic chemicals. by deleting the comment, "We have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror," Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for gas producer Range Resources Corp., was quoted as saying in WSJ.
" You can see the deleted comment in a screen shot of the original document here:
When the article was published on Friday night, it was the first time an industry spokesperson deployed a shift in strategy from the industry's standard denials and repeated assertions that fracking is safe, despite the numerous reports of problems, such as flammable water, contamination of drinking water, trucks leaking toxic and radioactive waste-water on public highways, the pollution of streams, as well as fires, and explosions in which people have been injured.
This next video was filmed in 2009 before HR2454 American Clean Energy and Security Act failed. It was a bill to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.
The video directly addressed the fact that politicians loyal to fossil fuel companies were trying to kill the bill, which they did.
The bill was also known as the Waxman-Markey Bill, after its authors, Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats. Waxman is the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Markey is the chairman of that committee's Energy and Power Subcommittee.
Highlights of the Bill Were:
A study in June 2009 by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicated that the bill would be roughly deficit-neutral for the government over the next decade:[7]
The Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP), a national grassroots organization, issued a press release after the vote stating "House passage today of the American Clean Energy and Security Act is a step in the right direction in the fight against dangerous climate change and for developing cleaner, more secure energy resources."[21] David Jenkins, REP vice president for government and political affairs, noted that "Doing nothing is not an option. The costs and risks of failing to limit greenhouse gas emissions are too high. We owe it to our country and to our country's future citizens to take action. Today, the House looked to the future and did the right thing for our economy, security, and environment."[21]
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated the discussion draft version of the bill to cost average households $98–$140 per year. A preliminary update of this study says that the changes "would likely result in lower allowance prices, a smaller impact on energy bills, and a smaller impact on household consumption."[22]
These "Issues around equity arguments are totally laughable. Everything they argued would happen to low income families, a Chinese Trade war and $4.00 per gallon gas prices has already happened by 2012, while they give us nothing in regards to clean energy and fossil fuel companies continue to reap record profits for themselves.
This too is a rediculous argument. To say that we won't do something that benefits ourselves because another country might not also do it is just plain stupid. It is no excuse not to address our own energy security, provide our own jobs, and to be good stewards of our own land.
Impact on Copenhagen Climate Change Conference:
It was reported that the passage of ACES in Congress would increase the likelihood that a successor to the Kyoto Protocol would be adopted at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen. The Guardian US environment correspondent noted that ACES passing the US House of Representatives "delivers an important boost to the prospects of reaching an agreement for international action on climate change at Copenhagen this year."[47] The NYTimes noted that "the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was in Washington on Friday to meet with Mr. Obama, strongly endorsed the bill even though it fell short of European goals for reducing the emissions of heat-trapping gases."[2]
On May 21, 2009, the bill passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee by a vote of 33-25, largely falling along political party lines.[citation needed]
Solyndra was given $ 535 million dollars in government subsidies in the form of loans and still allowed to fail, our politicians are blaming the failure on China's exports and as they are so fond of, accusing China of being our enemy when the truth is China and the U.S. have one very important thing in common, we both use alot of energy and we will both need alot more than we have in the future.
China's wind energy generation already equals the power of 13 "Three Gorges Dams." The Chinese Three Gorges Dam electricity generation capacity equals more than twenty 1,000MW coal powered electricity generating plants. It is the fault of U.S. politicians for not investing in Green Energy that has allowed China to be better than us at producing it for export as wellas for their own uses.
Even though the world market for solar panels doubled from 2009 to 2010 and expanded another 44% in 2011, Solyndra and five other U.S. solar panel makers went bankrupt and at least six other American solar manufacturing companies suffered layoffs and plant shutdowns over the past two years.
During the same time, China's photovoltaic (PV) solar manufacturing companies, led by Suntech, the world's largest solar panel maker, have captured more than 55% of the world market. How? It's not what you think. The Chinese in this case do not have an edge in labor or material costs. Chinese solar panels are in fact heavily and directly subsidized by the Chinese Government.
Beacon Power is the latest Solyndra type casualty from lack of government funding while fossil fuels continue to get Billions of dollars. Beacon Power was/is developing Advanced Flywheel Technology that can store electricity like a battery and deliver it when needed. This technology also provides load leveling otherwise known as voltage regulation to balance the varying power input from wind and solar sources.
Beacon Power
Beacon Power recieved a miniscule $6 million in government subsidies and was allowed to fail by the U.S. Government while China subsidizes their own counterparts. Beacon Power assets where sold to Rockland capitol with the "promise" to re-hire employees and continue developement but you will never guess what fills out the rest of Rockland Capitol's entire portfolio, Natural Gas, Coal, and oil. In fact they get their oil supply from none other then BP, British Petroleum.
It is doubtful that Rockland will actually utilize Beacon Power technology and it is more likely to shelve it in a dark corner somewhere never to be used. The $36 million paid by Rockwell for Beacon Power is a tiny drop in the bucket financially in comparison to the profits they reap from Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.
It is more likely that Rockwell, a fossil fuel company will bury Beacon Power technology in the same way that General Motors buried their electric car in 1996 , re-possesing each and every one of them from their owners and destroying them. At this same time Chevron bought the battery technology patent which made the electric car possible from the scientist who designed it, only to lock it in a vault never to be used.
This is not the first nor the last time the fossil fuel industry destroyed a competing industry. 100 years ago, nearly every trolley and city bus in america was electric, and even with 100 year old battery technology they worked fine, but the U.S. Government and the fossil fuel industry made sure that the next technological revolution would end before it matured, a century ago.
Electric truck advertisement
circa 1911.
“What Would Jefferson Do?” “He would do what our country has always done — support emerging technologies -– to drive innovation, create jobs, protect our environment, enhance our national security in a time of rapid change and to further a distinctly American way of life in which resources once thought to be endless are replaced by ones that actually are.” But as the report demonstrates, the country also makes a habit of supporting technologies that emerged long ago.
Russell Beard of Earthrise goes on a tour of Gemasolar, near Seville, Spain -
the first Concentrated Solar Thermal Power with molten salt storage (CSP+)
plant to produce energy 24 hours per day.
This power tower plant produces 20MW, enough to power 25,000 homes but much bigger CSP+ plants are now being in the Middle East and the US that will produce 100MW and 150MW. Even larger CSP+ plants are possible.
Research by Beyond Zero Emissions (www.beyondzeroemissions.org) and the Energy Research Institute at Melbourne University shows that a combination of energy efficiency and a mix of 40% wind and 60% CSP+ Solar can provide all of Australia's energy needs including a fuel-switch by transport from oil to electricity.
Here is a video of the Gemasolar installation in Seville, Spain in a story for an Australian news organization that toured Gemasolar because Australians are also building one in their country. It kinda looks like american politicians were lying about other countries not doing anything to reduce fossil fuel consumption when they use it as an excuse not to invest in Green Energy Technologies.
Nevada's Molten Salt Solar Power Plant is the same type as Australia's Molten Salt Solar Power Plant but it won't be operational until about 2014. Nevada's plant will produce 1,100MW, the same as a coal fired electricity generation plant, and this solar power plant can provide electricity 24 hours a day.
SolarReserve, a U.S. developer of large-scale solar power projects, today announced completion of the 540-foot solar power tower for its 110 megawatt (MW) Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant located near Tonopah, Nev. Utilizing the most advanced solar thermal technology worldwide, the Crescent Dunes Plant will be the nation's first commercial-scale solar power facility with fully integrated energy storage and the largest power plant of its kind in the world.
To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/54637-solarreserve-world-s-largest-molten-salt-solar-tower-plant-zero-emission
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120209/MM49517 )
"Completion of the solar power tower is a significant milestone not only for SolarReserve and our plant, but also for the solar energy industry as a whole. This project is on track to bring American innovation to fruition and is already creating jobs," said Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve.
"Our U.S.-developed technology has the ability to store energy for 10-15 hours and solves the issue of intermittent power generation to the grid, the number one limitation to other solar and wind renewable energy technologies.
We can deliver electricity 'on demand' the same way a coal, natural gas or nuclear fueled plant does – but without emitting any harmful pollution or hazardous materials – providing a genuine alternative to conventional power generation."
Construction of the facility began in September of 2011 and currently has over 100 workers on site. Construction is expected to peak at more than 600 jobs on site during the 30-month construction period and is estimated to create more than 4,300 direct, indirect and induced jobs at companies throughout the U.S. that provide engineering, equipment supply and manufacturing, transportation and other value-added services. To date, orders for the project have been placed for equipment and services in more than 20 states.
The Crescent Dunes project has secured a 25-year power purchase agreement with NV Energy and will provide clean power to approximately 75,000 homes when complete. The project closed financing in September of 2011 utilizing private equity investment from SolarReserve, ACS Cobra and Santander along with support from the US Department of Energy's loan guarantee program.
Once operational, the project will expend more than $10 million per year in salaries and operating costs, and is forecasted to generate $47 million in total tax revenues through the first 10 years of operation - contributing to workers' paychecks, service businesses, local school systems and police and fire departments. The plant is expected to be operational by the end of 2013.
SolarReserve, LLC – headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif. has assembled a concentrated solar power development portfolio of more than 25 projects with potential output of more than 3,000 megawatts and 1,100 MW of photovoltaic projects, equal to the output of four coal or Natural Gas Powered burning power plants.
SolarReserve's molten salt, concentrating solar power tower technology was successfully demonstrated in California under a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored pilot project in the late 1990s. The 10 MW pilot facility utilized a molten salt receiver designed, engineered and assembled by Rocketdyne, now a part of United Technologies Corporation.
For more information on SolarReserve, please visit www.SolarReserve.com
Media Contact: Andi Plocek
1.310.315.2233
Andi.Plocek@SolarReserve.com
Wind Energy in West Texas CBS Sunday Morning television broadcast. (video)
There are already 1,000's of wind turbines in Texas and each one can power 500 homes. West Texas is the fifth largest "nation" in wind energy today after Germany, Spain, India, and China.
Ranchers earn money from leasing land from electric companies to have wind turbines on their property, the same way Natural Gas companies lease land to drill fracking wells on private property. The difference is that fracking wells use millions of gallons of water mixed with toxic chemicals, and in effect cause earthquakes with this water/chemical mixture underground to fracture rock and release gas which can aslo contaminate peoples well water seperately from the contaminated water used to fracture the rock in the first place. Then there are the leaks, explosion hazards, fires, heavy truck traffic, and fumes. Wind turbines have none of these additional hazards.
West Texas needs more housing built to accomadate wind energy workers, the local community colleges have added classes in wind energy technology because the pay is 2 to 3 times the local average. Wind energy tax revenues are improving the regions schools and public services.
Texas has put up withand even welcomed oil wells for more than a century, why not replace them with wind turbines. They aren't any uglier than an oil rig, and they don't smell like oil.
CGI of MAGLEV 2GW (Giga Watt) Wind turbine. It produces the power of 1,000 blade style wind turbines and can be constructed on less than 200 acres.
2,500 Watt Wind Turbine, small enough to install millions of them in millions of homes, parking lots and interstate highways, and light poles accross the entire country.
One more very important thing to consider is that a massive Green Energy Initiative will not only provide jobs and energy independence, along with a cleaner, more sustainable environment, it will make rationing the oil reserves that are already tapped last for 1,000 years instead of just 100 more years when it is not burned and instead used more wisely and reserved only for things like as a manufacturing ingredient and ultra heavy equipment that does not have a ready replacement for oil yet.
Why are they all doing this? Why do they control fossil fuels and insist that fossil fuels are the only thing we use? Because they each as individuals make money from them. They are protecting their own personal investements and continuing to grow their own personal financial portfolios, increasing their own private wealth.
They are doing these things for themselves while under oath of elected office to represent the people, but that is not really what is happening. They just want you to keep believing that they represent you. They take campaign contributions and Super Pac cash from fossil fuel corprations, they trade on Wall Street using insider information with fossil fuel companies, some may even be taking bribes from them. They make decisions and they write laws that are in favor of fossil fuel companies to make sure that thier investments make them a profit. Law makers are recruited from fossil fuel executive positions by other law makers such as Secretary of State and Middle East policy Condaleeza Rice from Chevron, Vice President Dick Cheney from Haliburton, and Philip Cooney White House Chief Of Staff on The Counsel of Environmental Quality and Former American Petroleum Institute Lobyist. After resigning, Cooney again took a job in the oil industry working for Exxon Mobil.
Government financial involvement of the promotion of fossil fuels while blockading alternative energy sources is not just an american government activity, it involves other governments all around the world as well.
Here are the Facts:
Fossil-fuel consumers worldwide received about six times more government subsidies than were given to the renewable-energy industry: State spending, paid for with your taxes to cut retail prices of gasoline, coal and natural gas rose 36 percent to $409 billion. Aid for biofuels, wind power and solar energy, rose a mere 10 percent to $66 billion, and this included bio-fuels which like fossil fuels also burn and pollute. In effect, very little money was invested in wind and solar at all. Dirty fossil fuels subsidized and paid for with your taxes was $343 Billion more for gas, oil, and coal than was subsidized to wind and solar.
Bloomburg News Report: Fossil Fuel Subsidized By U.S. Government Six times More Than Renewable Energy
The renewable-energy tax incentives tucked into the 2008 financial bailout package passed by the House include billions of dollars in breaks for old-fashioned fossil-fuel processes such as liquefying coal and squeezing petroleum out of sand and rock.
Larry Winter, vice president of Oil Shale Producing Exploration Co., which operates an experimental project in Utah's Uintah Basin. says, "As we expand our projects we require a very large capital investment, without government support, they are a nonstarter."
A substantial portion of the tax breaks go to energy
companies already flush with record oil profits.
General economic theory holds that companies will produce more of a good if its price is higher, or if it receives subsidies. Funny that these rules didn’t seem to apply to Big Oil in 2011, when the highest oil price since 1864 and $2 billion in subsidies to the five largest oil companies—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell—yielded lower oil production than in 2010. But these five oil companies combined made a record-high $137 billion in profits in 2011—up 75 percent from 2010—and have made more than $1 trillion in profits from 2001 through 2011.[1] This exceeds the previous record of $136 billion in profits in 2008.
Here are some more highlights from the big five’s activities in 2011:
- They produced 4 percent less oil and “oil equivalent” in 2011 compared to 2010.
- They spent a total of $38 billion, or 28 percent, of their profits to repurchase their own stock.
- They are sitting on more than $58 billion in cash reserves as of the end of 2011.
- They spent $1.6 million on campaign contributions and $65.7 million on lobbying efforts.
- For every $1 spent on lobbying in Washington, the big five received $30 worth of tax breaks.
"This is a gravy train. The American people are suffering here, and oil companies are getting a tax break. The public is not even getting clean energy. This is not a way to make laws. This is not even a way to make sausage."
A recent report by the Air Force put the cost of building a coal gasification plant at $6 billion or more each.
The coal investment credit will cost $389 million in tax payer dollars next year.
The bailout package includes a 50% tax write-off on refinery construction, which would assist the oil shale and tar sands industries.
The next refinery expected to come on line is the Hyperion Resources Inc. plant in Elk Point, S.D., The facility, which will cost $10 billion or more is intended to refine crude oil extracted from tar sands pits in Canada's Alberta province.
The tax breaks for refineries that are in turn replaced in the budget with your tax dollars are expected to cost $72 million.
Energy from fossil fuel gets 12 times more in government subsidies worldwide than sustainable energy, says a new report from the USC Marshall School of Business.
LA Times Article : Bailout Tax Breaks Aid Dirty Fuels
LA Times Article : Clean energy gets fewer subsidies, less investment than fossil fuels, report says
RELATED:
U.S. clean-tech investment falls 45% in fourth quarter
China takes lead in clean-power investment
G-20 nations spent $160 billion supporting the production
and consumption of fossil fuels last year:
Saudi Arabia’s outlay of $44 billion.
Iran $81 billion to support fuel sales.
James Hansen, the Head of Nasa's Goddard Space Institute and one of the world's leading researchers on Climate Change said that the Bush administration restricted who he can talk to and editing what he says. All Climate related reports go to the Whitehouse first before going top congress and then the american people. Politicians he said, are re-writing the science.
Hansen says that Climate Change is accelerating and it is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The White House is blocking that message. Ralph Scicerone the President of the National Academy of Sciences agrees with Hansen and adds, that Hansen is one of the best scientists in this field.
Rick Piltz also said that his reports written for The Federal Climate Change Science Program and submitted to the White House were edited heavily by Philip Cooney, a lawyer, former petroleum lobbyist and White House Chief of Staff on The Counsel of Environmental Quality .
Cooney changed the sentence, "earth is under going a period of rapid change" to "maybe undergoing a period of rapid change. Cooney changed "certainty" to significantly reamaining uncertainty." Cooney entirely crossed out the sentence, "energy production is contributing to global warming." he also crossed out references to human health.
These are science reports that the citizens of the United States see, after they are changed in the white house by a lawyer who is deeply involved in the fossil fuel industry!
Nasa scientist James Hansen interviewed on the television news broadcast 60 Minutes
about science reports being edited by the White House Chief of Staff on The Counsel
of Environmental Quality Philip Cooney, a former American Petroleum Institute Lobbyist. (video)
There is even evidence that the U.S. Natuaral Gas Industry censored the Wall Street Journal in a Wall Street Journal report on the gas industry's losing campaign to discredit the film, Gas Land by Josh Fox after the film was nominated for an Motion Picture Academy Oscar Award An article, called "Oscar's Attention Irks Gas Industry," by Ben Casselman.
The article surveys the unsuccessful attempts of the Natural Gas Industry to persuade the Academy of Arts and Sciences to pull the documentary, which depicts nationwide instances of home water contamination near gas drilling sites that have been fracked. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a novel gas drilling process that introduced the use of large quantities of toxic chemicals. by deleting the comment, "We have to stop blaming documentaries and take a look in the mirror," Matt Pitzarella, a spokesman for gas producer Range Resources Corp., was quoted as saying in WSJ.
" You can see the deleted comment in a screen shot of the original document here:
When the article was published on Friday night, it was the first time an industry spokesperson deployed a shift in strategy from the industry's standard denials and repeated assertions that fracking is safe, despite the numerous reports of problems, such as flammable water, contamination of drinking water, trucks leaking toxic and radioactive waste-water on public highways, the pollution of streams, as well as fires, and explosions in which people have been injured.
This next video was filmed in 2009 before HR2454 American Clean Energy and Security Act failed. It was a bill to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy.
The video directly addressed the fact that politicians loyal to fossil fuel companies were trying to kill the bill, which they did.
The bill was also known as the Waxman-Markey Bill, after its authors, Representatives Henry A. Waxman of California and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, both Democrats. Waxman is the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Markey is the chairman of that committee's Energy and Power Subcommittee.
Highlights of the Bill Were:
- Requires electric utilities to meet 20% of their electricity demand through renewable energy sources and energy efficiency by 2020.
- Subsidizes new clean energy technologies and energy efficiency, including renewable energy ($90 billion in new subsidies by 2025), carbon capture and sequestration ($60 billion), electric and other advanced technology vehicles ($20 billion), and basic scientific research and development ($20 billion).
- Protects consumers from energy price increases. According to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, the reductions in carbon pollution required by the legislation will cost American families less than a postage stamp per day (about $13.20 a month, and $160.60 a year ).
- It sets a slightly higher target for reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases than that proposed by President Barack Obama. The bill requires a 17-percent emissions reduction from 2005 levels by 2020; Obama has proposed a 14 percent reduction by 2020. Both plans would reduce United States' emissions by about 83 percent by 2050. Complementary measures in the legislation, such as efforts to prevent tropical deforestation, will achieve significant additional reductions in carbon emissions.
- It includes a renewable electricity standard (almost identical to a renewable portfolio standard, but narrowly tailored to electrical energy) requiring each electricity provider who supplies over 4 million MWh to produce 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources (such as wind, solar, and geothermal) by 2020.
- It provides for modernization of the electrical grid
- It provides for expanded production of electric vehicles and other advanced automobile technology.
- It mandates significant increases in energy efficiency in buildings, home appliances, and electricity generation.
A study in June 2009 by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) indicated that the bill would be roughly deficit-neutral for the government over the next decade:[7]
The study also indicated that the tax burden on individual households would be limited:[8]"...enacting the legislation would increase revenues by $873 billion over the 2010-2019 period and would increase direct spending by $864 billion over that 10-year period. In total, CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the legislation would reduce future budget deficits by about $4 billion over the 2010-2014 period and by about $9 billion over the 2010-2019 period..."
There Was No Public Debate."...the net annual economy-wide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion—or about $175 per household...households in the lowest income quintile would see an average net benefit of about $40 in 2020, while households in the highest income quintile would see a net cost of $245. Added costs for households in the second lowest quintile would be about $40 that year; in the middle quintile, about $235; and in the fourth quintile, about $340. Overall net costs would average 0.2 percent of households’ after-tax income."
Supporters of and arguments for the bill:
The bill is supported by a number of environmental organizations including, the Defenders of Wildlife,[9] the Alliance for Climate Protection,[10] the Environmental Defense Fund,[11][12][13] the National Wildlife Federation,[14] The Nature Conservancy,[15][16] the Audubon Society,[17] the Natural Resources Defense Council[18] and the Sierra Club.[19] The League of Conservation Voters has threatened to withhold endorsements from any Representative who votes against the bill.[20] In addition to environmental organizations the Energy and Commerce Committee received letters of support from a broad range of organizations, including the United Auto Workers, Exelon, General Electric, Dow Chemical Company, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and DuPont[12] The New York Times noted that "industry officials were split, with the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers opposing the bill and some of the nation’s biggest corporations, including Dow Chemical and Ford, backing it."[2]The Republicans for Environmental Protection (REP), a national grassroots organization, issued a press release after the vote stating "House passage today of the American Clean Energy and Security Act is a step in the right direction in the fight against dangerous climate change and for developing cleaner, more secure energy resources."[21] David Jenkins, REP vice president for government and political affairs, noted that "Doing nothing is not an option. The costs and risks of failing to limit greenhouse gas emissions are too high. We owe it to our country and to our country's future citizens to take action. Today, the House looked to the future and did the right thing for our economy, security, and environment."[21]
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated the discussion draft version of the bill to cost average households $98–$140 per year. A preliminary update of this study says that the changes "would likely result in lower allowance prices, a smaller impact on energy bills, and a smaller impact on household consumption."[22]
Arguments against the bill
Criticism has focused on ultimate costs and benefits of the plan. A report written for the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation on the discussion draft of the bill claims that the economy would react to this cap-and-trade system like it would to an energy crisis.[25] This same report also claimed that the impact on global temperature by the end of the 21st century would amount to a reduction of no more than 0.2° Celsius.Issues around equity
Economist Arnold Kling said the bill "maximizes rent-seeking (favoritism toward particular businesses) and minimizes carbon reduction".[26] Other economists have argued that the bill will create significant financial costs. The Wall Street Journal accused the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) of significantly underestimating the bill's ultimate costs, pointing out supposed flaws in its calculations. The Wall Street Journal also suggested that the bill's costs would disproportionately affect lower-income households, for which the CBO estimates did not account.[27] The New York Times reported that the bill's provisions to levy tariffs on Chinese imports due to carbon emissions could provoke a trade war.[28] The Competitive Enterprise Institute argued that the bill was essentially the "largest tax hike in world history".[29] The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the petroleum and natural gas industry, said the bill would place "disproportionate burden on all consumers of gasoline, diesel fuel, heating oil, jet fuel, propane and other petroleum products", and by 2035, it would cause gasoline prices in excess of $4.00 per gallon by today's standards.[30]These "Issues around equity arguments are totally laughable. Everything they argued would happen to low income families, a Chinese Trade war and $4.00 per gallon gas prices has already happened by 2012, while they give us nothing in regards to clean energy and fossil fuel companies continue to reap record profits for themselves.
Other high emitting nations
There is criticism that unless China and India adopt similar emissions standards, the impact on global climate will be insubstantial. This is largely an argument based on the leading role these two countries have obtained in carbon dioxide emissions which could reach 34% of the global total by 2030.[32]This too is a rediculous argument. To say that we won't do something that benefits ourselves because another country might not also do it is just plain stupid. It is no excuse not to address our own energy security, provide our own jobs, and to be good stewards of our own land.
Debate among environmental organizations and scientists
While the Environmental Defense Fund[13] and many other environmental organizations strongly support the bill, other environmentalists have sharply criticized the legislation in its present form as too weak and have called urgently for it to be amended so as to include additional and more vigorous measures to protect climate and natural resources.Impact on Copenhagen Climate Change Conference:
It was reported that the passage of ACES in Congress would increase the likelihood that a successor to the Kyoto Protocol would be adopted at the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen. The Guardian US environment correspondent noted that ACES passing the US House of Representatives "delivers an important boost to the prospects of reaching an agreement for international action on climate change at Copenhagen this year."[47] The NYTimes noted that "the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was in Washington on Friday to meet with Mr. Obama, strongly endorsed the bill even though it fell short of European goals for reducing the emissions of heat-trapping gases."[2]
Legislative history
It was offered as a "discussion draft" in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on March 31, 2009.[51] A final version of the legislation was introduced on May 15, 2009 by the same title, assigned bill number H.R. 2454.[52]On May 21, 2009, the bill passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee by a vote of 33-25, largely falling along political party lines.[citation needed]
Republicans proposed over 400 amendments to the bill, the majority of which many think were proposed to delay passage.[53]
The Bill was voted down for two reasons, first by those loyal to fossil fuels that opposed the Bill two, the opposition watered it down so much as to be inafective so those who supported the bill in it's original form also rejected it. The fossil fuel companies won the battle, polkiticians were their puppets, and the american people are the ones who lost.
Wikepedia HR2454 American Clean Energy and Security Act LinkSolyndra was given $ 535 million dollars in government subsidies in the form of loans and still allowed to fail, our politicians are blaming the failure on China's exports and as they are so fond of, accusing China of being our enemy when the truth is China and the U.S. have one very important thing in common, we both use alot of energy and we will both need alot more than we have in the future.
China's wind energy generation already equals the power of 13 "Three Gorges Dams." The Chinese Three Gorges Dam electricity generation capacity equals more than twenty 1,000MW coal powered electricity generating plants. It is the fault of U.S. politicians for not investing in Green Energy that has allowed China to be better than us at producing it for export as wellas for their own uses.
Even though the world market for solar panels doubled from 2009 to 2010 and expanded another 44% in 2011, Solyndra and five other U.S. solar panel makers went bankrupt and at least six other American solar manufacturing companies suffered layoffs and plant shutdowns over the past two years.
During the same time, China's photovoltaic (PV) solar manufacturing companies, led by Suntech, the world's largest solar panel maker, have captured more than 55% of the world market. How? It's not what you think. The Chinese in this case do not have an edge in labor or material costs. Chinese solar panels are in fact heavily and directly subsidized by the Chinese Government.
Beacon Power is the latest Solyndra type casualty from lack of government funding while fossil fuels continue to get Billions of dollars. Beacon Power was/is developing Advanced Flywheel Technology that can store electricity like a battery and deliver it when needed. This technology also provides load leveling otherwise known as voltage regulation to balance the varying power input from wind and solar sources.
Beacon Power
Beacon Power recieved a miniscule $6 million in government subsidies and was allowed to fail by the U.S. Government while China subsidizes their own counterparts. Beacon Power assets where sold to Rockland capitol with the "promise" to re-hire employees and continue developement but you will never guess what fills out the rest of Rockland Capitol's entire portfolio, Natural Gas, Coal, and oil. In fact they get their oil supply from none other then BP, British Petroleum.
It is doubtful that Rockland will actually utilize Beacon Power technology and it is more likely to shelve it in a dark corner somewhere never to be used. The $36 million paid by Rockwell for Beacon Power is a tiny drop in the bucket financially in comparison to the profits they reap from Oil, Natural Gas, and Coal.
It is more likely that Rockwell, a fossil fuel company will bury Beacon Power technology in the same way that General Motors buried their electric car in 1996 , re-possesing each and every one of them from their owners and destroying them. At this same time Chevron bought the battery technology patent which made the electric car possible from the scientist who designed it, only to lock it in a vault never to be used.
View trailer for the Sony Pictures Classics Documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car?
Starring George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condaleeza Rice, and General Motors.
This is not the first nor the last time the fossil fuel industry destroyed a competing industry. 100 years ago, nearly every trolley and city bus in america was electric, and even with 100 year old battery technology they worked fine, but the U.S. Government and the fossil fuel industry made sure that the next technological revolution would end before it matured, a century ago.
Electric truck advertisement
circa 1911.
Russell Beard of Earthrise goes on a tour of Gemasolar, near Seville, Spain -
the first Concentrated Solar Thermal Power with molten salt storage (CSP+)
plant to produce energy 24 hours per day.
This power tower plant produces 20MW, enough to power 25,000 homes but much bigger CSP+ plants are now being in the Middle East and the US that will produce 100MW and 150MW. Even larger CSP+ plants are possible.
Research by Beyond Zero Emissions (www.beyondzeroemissions.org) and the Energy Research Institute at Melbourne University shows that a combination of energy efficiency and a mix of 40% wind and 60% CSP+ Solar can provide all of Australia's energy needs including a fuel-switch by transport from oil to electricity.
Here is a video of the Gemasolar installation in Seville, Spain in a story for an Australian news organization that toured Gemasolar because Australians are also building one in their country. It kinda looks like american politicians were lying about other countries not doing anything to reduce fossil fuel consumption when they use it as an excuse not to invest in Green Energy Technologies.
Nevada's Molten Salt Solar Power Plant is the same type as Australia's Molten Salt Solar Power Plant but it won't be operational until about 2014. Nevada's plant will produce 1,100MW, the same as a coal fired electricity generation plant, and this solar power plant can provide electricity 24 hours a day.
Why not build more of these solar plants instead of more of the coal fired electricity power plants that our government proposes to subsidize and build?
SolarReserve, a U.S. developer of large-scale solar power projects, today announced completion of the 540-foot solar power tower for its 110 megawatt (MW) Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant located near Tonopah, Nev. Utilizing the most advanced solar thermal technology worldwide, the Crescent Dunes Plant will be the nation's first commercial-scale solar power facility with fully integrated energy storage and the largest power plant of its kind in the world.
To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/54637-solarreserve-world-s-largest-molten-salt-solar-tower-plant-zero-emission
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120209/MM49517 )
"Completion of the solar power tower is a significant milestone not only for SolarReserve and our plant, but also for the solar energy industry as a whole. This project is on track to bring American innovation to fruition and is already creating jobs," said Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve.
"Our U.S.-developed technology has the ability to store energy for 10-15 hours and solves the issue of intermittent power generation to the grid, the number one limitation to other solar and wind renewable energy technologies.
We can deliver electricity 'on demand' the same way a coal, natural gas or nuclear fueled plant does – but without emitting any harmful pollution or hazardous materials – providing a genuine alternative to conventional power generation."
Construction of the facility began in September of 2011 and currently has over 100 workers on site. Construction is expected to peak at more than 600 jobs on site during the 30-month construction period and is estimated to create more than 4,300 direct, indirect and induced jobs at companies throughout the U.S. that provide engineering, equipment supply and manufacturing, transportation and other value-added services. To date, orders for the project have been placed for equipment and services in more than 20 states.
The Crescent Dunes project has secured a 25-year power purchase agreement with NV Energy and will provide clean power to approximately 75,000 homes when complete. The project closed financing in September of 2011 utilizing private equity investment from SolarReserve, ACS Cobra and Santander along with support from the US Department of Energy's loan guarantee program.
Once operational, the project will expend more than $10 million per year in salaries and operating costs, and is forecasted to generate $47 million in total tax revenues through the first 10 years of operation - contributing to workers' paychecks, service businesses, local school systems and police and fire departments. The plant is expected to be operational by the end of 2013.
SolarReserve, LLC – headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif. has assembled a concentrated solar power development portfolio of more than 25 projects with potential output of more than 3,000 megawatts and 1,100 MW of photovoltaic projects, equal to the output of four coal or Natural Gas Powered burning power plants.
SolarReserve's molten salt, concentrating solar power tower technology was successfully demonstrated in California under a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored pilot project in the late 1990s. The 10 MW pilot facility utilized a molten salt receiver designed, engineered and assembled by Rocketdyne, now a part of United Technologies Corporation.
For more information on SolarReserve, please visit www.SolarReserve.com
Media Contact: Andi Plocek
1.310.315.2233
Andi.Plocek@SolarReserve.com
Wind Energy in West Texas CBS Sunday Morning television broadcast. (video)
There are already 1,000's of wind turbines in Texas and each one can power 500 homes. West Texas is the fifth largest "nation" in wind energy today after Germany, Spain, India, and China.
Ranchers earn money from leasing land from electric companies to have wind turbines on their property, the same way Natural Gas companies lease land to drill fracking wells on private property. The difference is that fracking wells use millions of gallons of water mixed with toxic chemicals, and in effect cause earthquakes with this water/chemical mixture underground to fracture rock and release gas which can aslo contaminate peoples well water seperately from the contaminated water used to fracture the rock in the first place. Then there are the leaks, explosion hazards, fires, heavy truck traffic, and fumes. Wind turbines have none of these additional hazards.
West Texas needs more housing built to accomadate wind energy workers, the local community colleges have added classes in wind energy technology because the pay is 2 to 3 times the local average. Wind energy tax revenues are improving the regions schools and public services.
Texas has put up withand even welcomed oil wells for more than a century, why not replace them with wind turbines. They aren't any uglier than an oil rig, and they don't smell like oil.
CGI of MAGLEV 2GW (Giga Watt) Wind turbine. It produces the power of 1,000 blade style wind turbines and can be constructed on less than 200 acres.
2,500 Watt Wind Turbine, small enough to install millions of them in millions of homes, parking lots and interstate highways, and light poles accross the entire country.
One more very important thing to consider is that a massive Green Energy Initiative will not only provide jobs and energy independence, along with a cleaner, more sustainable environment, it will make rationing the oil reserves that are already tapped last for 1,000 years instead of just 100 more years when it is not burned and instead used more wisely and reserved only for things like as a manufacturing ingredient and ultra heavy equipment that does not have a ready replacement for oil yet.
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