Political Climate Articles
Illinois Governor Quinn Signs Solar Ramp-Up Law and Announces One of the Largest Solar Development Projects in the U.S.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony of Wanxiang America Corporation's newly built solar panel manufacturing plant in Rockford, Illinois, Governor Patrick Quinn announced an over $4 million stimulus grant award for an up to 62 Megawatt (MW) Rockford Solar Project, the largest photovoltaic (PV) solar development in the Midwest and one of the largest in the United States.
"The state's investment will help ensure Illinois remains a leader in renewable energy development, while continuing to build on the state's energy independence goals," said Governor Quinn. "With partnerships with companies like Wanxiang and New Generation Power, we're creating hundreds of sustainable, green-collar jobs and providing an economic boost to the entire state."
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Peace Corps Partners with the Department of State to Tackle Energy and Climate Issues at the Grassroots Level.
In support of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA), the Department of State will provide $1 million to fund Peace Corps volunteer efforts that increase rural access to energy, mitigate the effects of climate change, and support the use of renewable energy and energy efficient technologies in Central and South American communities.
"I am pleased that the Peace Corps will play an active role in ECPA," said Peace Corps Director Aaron S. Williams. "Peace Corps volunteers have been innovators at the grassroots level for nearly 50 years. This agreement will provide the support for our volunteers to work with international experts and local organizations, businesses, and community members on the ground to create efficient and green solutions to energy challenges in the Americas."
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What If He's Right?
By James Howard Kunstler
Just when America was celebrating the provisional end of BP's Macondo oil blowout, and getting back to important issues like Kim Kardashian's body-suit collection, along comes Matthew Simmons with a rather strange and alarming outcry on doings in the Gulf of Mexico that contradicts the mood of renewed festivity, as well as just about every shred of reportage from any media outlet, mainstream or otherwise.
Matt Simmons Houston-based company has been the leading investment bank to the US oil industry for a long time, financing exploration and drilling in places like the Gulf of Mexico. Simmons, 68, recently retired from day-to-day management of the company. For much of the decade he has been what may be described as a peak oil activist. His 2005 book, Twilight in the Desert, warned the public that Saudi Arabia's oil production had reached its limits and, more generally, that an oil-dependent world was entering a zone of serious trouble over its primary resource. He took this aggressive stance despite risking the ire of the people he did business with.
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Fight Over Global Warming Bill to Heat Up This Fall
The simmering Washington debate over global warming is set to heat up this fall, fueled by environmentalists' determination to squeeze climate-change legislation from the current Congress and the oil and gas industry's fervent and cash-laden response.
The oil industry spent $75 million lobbying the federal government from January to June, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors lobbying and campaign spending, and the industry next month plans to fund a series of "citizen rallies" against proposed responses to climate change.
The financial onslaught on Capitol Hill came as the Senate was struggling with a package of energy measures that included a reduction of greenhouse gases akin to those in a bill passed by the House last year. Ahead of the August recess, Democratic leaders all but gave up the goal of mustering a filibuster-proof majority for the bill, though they may try to bring it to the floor in the fall.
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German scientist hands Putin frosty climate rebuke
MOSCOW (AFP) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin queried Monday whether man was to blame for climate change on a visit to the remote Russian Arctic, only to find himself bluntly contradicted by a German scientist.
Putin, known for his tough-guy visits to his country's most far-flung areas, went by helicopter to a Russian-German research station on an island at the mouth of the Lena River in the Far Eastern Yakutia region on the Arctic Ocean.
Wearing a black jacket to protect against the wind on the Samoilovsky Island off the settlement of Tiksi, Putin was shown ice said to be up to 3,000 years old and handled bones from a now extinct mammoth.
"Does climate change happen because the earth is breathing, living, giving off gas, methane, or is it due to the influence of human activity?" mused Putin as he sat down to tea with the scientists in their hut.
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Australia's electorate sends climate-change message
Although Australia's national election has failed to produce a clear winner, the result is pushing climate change up the political agenda once more.
Both the incumbent Labor party and the Liberal-National opposition failed to secure an overall majority after this weekend's vote. That means that the Australian Greens, who now have a record 11% of the vote and advocate aggressive action on climate change, could become key players. Along with a handful of conservative rural independents, the Greens are being wooed by both major parties to help them form a government.
The Labor government, under Gillard's predecessor Kevin Rudd, had come to power in 2007 promising to introduce a carbon-emissions trading scheme. But Rudd later decided to delay such a scheme, a move widely seen as one of the factors driving the national swing against Labor.
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New Yorker exposes Koch brothers along with their greenwashing and whitewashing Smithsonian exhibit
The New Yorker published a devastating investigative piece by Jane Mayer that exposes the Koch family's efforts to put together the Tea Party movement and much of the modern right-wing infrastructure. It builds off the original reporting conducted by ThinkProgress, some of which I've reposted here (see "From promoting acid rain to climate denial - over 20 years of David Koch's polluter front groups").
It also builds off a joint effort by TP and Climate Progress to investigate David Koch's funding of a dreadful Smithsonian Institute exhibit (see "Must-see video:
Polluter-funded Smithsonian exhibit whitewashes danger of human-caused climate change: Koch money and dubious displays put credibility of entire museum and science staff on the line").
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Climate change a security issue, veterans coalition says
Robin Eckstein deployed to Iraq as an Army truck driver shortly after the U.S. invasion in 2003. Her job: hauling supplies to U.S. bases from the Baghdad airport.
"Every day it was a roll of the dice as far as what we were going to encounter," she said. "Was it going to be IEDs? Sniper fire? Was anybody going to be shot or killed? This was my life while I was there.
"I really thought: Why are we doing things the way we're doing?"
One of the primary cargoes for those convoys was petroleum - fuel for the massive machinery of war.
Eckstein began wondering: Why couldn't the vehicles be more fuel-efficient? Why not use solar generators? Why not insulate the troops' tents?
A more energy-efficient war effort would have meant "that's one extra trip outside the gate I don't have to make," she said. "That's one time I don't have to get shot at."
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Penn State/Navy Yard energy project wins $129 million federal grant
In a highly competitive grant process, a research consortium led by Penn State won up to $129 million in federal funding to develop a "energy innovation hub" at the Philadelphia Navy Yard aimed at saving energy and cutting pollution.
"This will have a huge impact on Philadelphia and the region, just in the amount of job creation that should come from this alone," said Henry C. Foley, vice president for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Penn State.
Foley, who will lead the Penn State research team also including researchers from Princeton, Rutgers, the University of Pennsylvania, Drexel and other institutions, said the project will focus on creating more energy efficient buildings and training workers to both retrofit and do new construction in the efficient ways.
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New Mexico GOP candidates deny global warming reality
We've seen that every GOP Senate candidate in NH is a global warming denier. We've seen that Republicans across the country are embracing pro-pollution, anti-science candidates. And so it is with New Mexico, as Brad Johnson explains.
Even though New Mexico is facing a future of perpetual drought, killer heat waves, water scarcity, and wildfires, the crop of Republican candidates for major office in the state are in denial about the threat of global warming pollution.
Gubernatorial nominee Susana Martinez denies the science of manmade climate change. All three congressional candidates - Steve Pearce, oil engineer Tom Mullins, and corporate lobbyist Jon Barela - similarly believe scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to destroy our economy. Barela and Pearce are signatories of the "No Climate Tax" pledge organized by Americans for Prosperity, the front group supported by the Koch Industries brothers that fights limits on global warming pollution:
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NYT: Vitter's dire prediction that drilling moratorium would be worse than BP oil spill "failed to materialize"
As part of its response to BP's disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration in June issued a 6-month moratorium on deepwater offshore drilling in order to survey drilling safety measures and prevent a similar spill.
As TP explains, while the oil and gas industry went to court to prevent the moratorium from taking effect, Republicans responded by issuing fear-mongering rhetoric. The moratorium "could kill thousands of Louisiana jobs," Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) said, while Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) called it "a second assault on the Gulf." Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the oil and gas industry, called on Obama to lift the temporary ban and claimed the moratorium would be worse for the Gulf region, economically, than the oil spill itself:
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Big California solar energy push moves forward
California's long-awaited boom in solar power plant construction took a major step forward Wednesday when state regulators approved the first in a string of projects that will soon blanket thousands of acres of desert with mirrors harnessing the energy of the sun.
The California Energy Commission unanimously approved the Beacon Solar Energy Project, which a Florida company plans to build on the Mojave Desert's western edge. The plant will use troughs of curved mirrors to concentrate sunlight, heat fluid-filled tubes, generate steam, turn a turbine and produce electricity.
California hasn't issued a license for this kind of big "solar thermal" power plant in about 20 years. But in the coming months, the energy commission will vote on eight other, large-scale solar projects that the state needs to meet its renewable energy goals.
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Obama Admin Urges Supreme Court to Vacate Greenhouse Gas 'Nuisance' Ruling
The Obama administration has urged the Supreme Court to toss out an appeals court decision that would allow lawsuits against major emitters for their contributions to global warming, stunning environmentalists who see the case as a powerful prod on climate change.
In the case, AEP v. Connecticut, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a coalition of states, environmental groups and New York City. The decision, handed down last year, said they could proceed with a lawsuit that seeks to force several of the nation's largest coal-fired utilities to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The defendants -- American Electric Power Co. Inc., Duke Energy Corp., Southern Co. and Xcel Energy Inc. -- filed a petition for review with the Supreme Court earlier this month, asking the court to reject the argument that greenhouse gas emissions can be addressed through "public nuisance" lawsuits (Greenwire, Aug. 4).
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On China's Beleaguered Yangtze, A Push to Save Surviving Species
In the early 20th century, fishers on the Yangtze River regularly snared what may have been the biggest freshwater creature of modern times: the Chinese paddlefish. The behemoth once reached 23 feet in length, a third of that being a paddle-like snout that it used presumably to stir up the river bottom to flush out food. A single paddlefish could feed a village and was especially prized for its caviar. But decades of industrialization in China's heartland have sounded a death knell for the king of the Yangtze. The last time one was caught was in 2003, and it hasn't been seen since.
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An Analysis of France's Climate Bill: Green Deal or Great Disillusion?
France has passed a major new bill that will deeply transform the country's environmental laws, including its approach to climate change. But while the outcomes of the measure are promising, a variety of criticisms remain.
After an exhausting legislative process, the "Grenelle de l'Environnement," named after the so-called "negotiations of Grenelle" on wages that took place in 1968, ended with the adoption of the "Grenelle 2" bill this May. Enacted on July 13, three years after the process was launched by then-newly elected president Nicolas Sarkozy, the new legislation covers environmental topics such as climate and energy, biodiversity protection, public health, sustainable agriculture, waste management, and the governance of sustainable development. In addition to being a comprehensive environmental bill, Grenelle 2 implicitly defines the French sustainable development strategy for years to come.
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Leading GOP Senate candidate Joe Miller says "We haven't heard there's man-made global warming."
The leading Republican candidate for Senate from the state that's Ground Zero for climate change is a flat-out denier of human-caused global warming. He apparently thinks the term "greenhouse gases" is just a figure of speech (see "10 indicators of a human fingerprint on climate change"). Hard to believe that anti-EPA Lisa "dirty air" Murkowski is too liberal, too "green" for Alaska. No worries though - if they keep electing people who oppose action on climate, there won't be much greenery left between the bark beetles and forest fires.
Think Progress has the story of yet another right-wing flat-Earther, fiery Joe Miller:
Following last night's GOP Senate primary in Alaska, the race is "too close to call" between incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) and challenger Joe Miller. As of this writing, with "98 percent of precincts counted, Murkowski trailed political newcomer Joe Miller by 1,960 votes out of more than 91,000 counted."
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Obama administration sides with utilities in Supreme Court case about climate change
The Obama administration sided with major utility companies in a Supreme Court case about climate change on Thursday, angering environmentalists who say that the administration's broad argument could hurt their ability to force reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or even to bring other lawsuits.
Administration officials said the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory moves to restrain carbon dioxide emissions made the lawsuit unnecessary, and the acting solicitor general asked the Supreme Court to return the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
But environmentalists said that the administration had talked about - but not imposed - limits on emissions from existing power plants.
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Appalachian Dems Seek Distance From Obama on Coal, Climate
Democrats in Appalachia are running away from the Obama administration's coal record like their political lives depend on it.
They may be right.
After decades in Democrats' hands, much of the mountain corridor -- a string of districts running through West Virginia and along the edges of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee -- has drifted toward Republicans in national elections. Energy issues have driven the switch, particularly since 2000, when Al Gore came to West Virginia touting a carbon-free future and became the fourth Democratic presidential candidate to lose the state since the start of the Great Depression. A Democrat has not won West Virginia since, and in 2008, Republican White House nominee John McCain won every House district in the region, including the eight currently held by Democrats.
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Murkowski could leave power outage on energy
Senate Republicans looking for committee assignments next year should check out the Energy and Natural Resources panel.
If Sen. Lisa Murkowski fails to make a Lazarus-like comeback against Joe Miller in her Alaska GOP primary, she'll join three other Republicans not coming back to the committee next year - and leave the top spot vacant.
Murkowski's possible departure and a possible influx of new Western Republicans would complete the transition from the old guard of members - former Chairman Pete Domenici (N.M.), the late Craig Thomas (Wyo.) and Larry Craig (Idaho) - who dominated the right side of the panel over the past decade. In their place could come a new generation of Republicans who may favor a harder line against federal environmental protections and would be less inclined to work with Democrats.
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Green goal line in sight: 33 percent renewable electricity bill nearing key votes
As the final days of the 2010 legislative session wind down in Sacramento, a Silicon Valley lawmaker is pushing to give California the most far-reaching mandate for renewable energy in the United States.
But there's more to it than putting up some wind turbines and solar farms. The lofty goal is struggling through a complex tangle of utilities, labor unions, environmental groups and green energy companies -- each concerned about everything from the price of your monthly PG&E bill to the number of jobs the measure might, or might not, create.
"It is an extraordinarily complex task," said State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, "both in respect to the issue itself and the politics surrounding it."
The showdown over Simitian's bill, SB 722, could come to a vote early next week. The bill would require California's utilities to produce 33 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020.
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Probe Seeks Climate-Panel Changes
A group investigating the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will recommend in a report Monday that the scientific organization beef up its capacity to ferret out errors in its scientific assessments, a member of the investigating body said.
But the group, appointed by the InterAcademy Council, a consortium of national scientific academies, won't pass judgment in its report on the state of knowledge about global warming and its causes. It also won't address whether IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri should resign-a step that some critics have called for and that the chairman has said he doesn't intend to take.
The IPCC and the U.N. requested the probe in March, under mounting public pressure following the disclosure of a handful of errors in a roughly 3,000-page scientific report the IPCC published in 2007.
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Greenhouse gas regulation and power plants
ATLANTA -- The members of the Board of Natural Resources say they're not eager to oversee a new type of emissions linked with climate change.
During their monthly meeting Tuesday, they heard a briefing on how the Department of Natural Resources' Environmental Protection Division could regulate greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. The state would be bringing its rules in line with those of the federal government.
The board members, appointed by the governor, were concerned about the potential cost to the agency and to industry.
While emission levels would only be limited for facilities like factories, power plants and even college steam boilers that are built, upgraded or expanded after the start of the year, the 400 large facilities that already have air-emission permits would have to begin keeping records of their greenhouse gas emissions as well as the soot and other pollutants they are already regulated for. And as many as 50-100 businesses and schools that now fall under the less onerous regulations as a minor sources for pollution could then fall under the more rigorous rules as a major source.
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Norway urged to dump shares of other forest-destroying companies
Norway's Climate and Forests Initiative, which has set aside billions of dollars for efforts to reduce deforestation, should work with the country's Ministry of Finance to divest the Government Pension Fund from companies that destroy forests, says the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an environmental group.
EIA is making a push on the issue just four days after the pension fund announced it had sold all of its shares in Malaysian logging conglomerate Samling Global after an investigation found evidence of illegal logging in Sarawak, a Malaysian state of the island of Borneo. While the sale represented less than 1 percent of Samling's outstanding shares, the action sent a strong signal.
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Altergy Fuel Cell Systems to Power Africa.
Altergy Systems (Altergy), of Folsom, California, has announced that Altergy, Anglo Platinum's Platinum Growth Metals Development Fund (PGM) and the government of the Republic of South Africa, through its Department of Science and Technology (DST), have formed Clean Energy Investments, a company headquartered in South Africa whose principal objective is to manufacture and market Altergy fuel cell systems in the Republic of South Africa and other Sub-Saharan countries. PGM and DST each invested undisclosed amounts in Clean Energy Investments, which will be jointly owned by Altergy, PGM and the South African government.
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