Amid conflicting reports this morning about whether the Cash for Clunkers program is still operating (there is some indication that the Obama Administration suspended it at midnight, after the $1 billion funding ran dry, while statements out of the White House seem to indicate (they're looking for more funding) it ought to be obvious why its runaway success is a failure.
The government bought a lot of clunkers.
The program was originally conceived to accomplish multiple goals:
Economically, it was supposed to boost he ailing U.S. car industry by helping to jumpstart the market for new car sales.
Politically, it was supposed to please voters who like getting rebates of up to $4,500 for doing nothing.
Environmentally, it was supposed to ...
Sarah Palin seems to be fashioning a new role for her post-gubernatorial life as a pundit and political stumper on energy issues.
Energy has been a consistent theme for Palin, since she emerged on the national stage as Sen. John McCain's vice presidential running-mate. That failed White House bid was marked by discordant tones: on the one hand, McCain had been an early champion of carbon cap-and-trade legislation, and he talked frankly about the threat of global warming; on the other, the ticket's policy was "drill, baby, drill."
Palin, sitting in oil and gas-rich Alaska, has always been a proponent of fossil fuel energy. She just calls it clean and leaves it at that. She doesn't mention global warming or climate change or even carbon emissions, as if not mentioning them makes disappear. (One wishes that we had that power over politicians' hot air.)
It's a round hole-square peg problem, only she doesn't even seem to recognize the problem is a hole. She's got a solution, damn it, and she wants to ram it in there.
She exhibited this tendency first and most firmly in her debut energy policy speech, a 2,585-word exposition that didn't mention once mention global warming. She further showed off her disdain for climate science and environmental concerns in those television interviews.
She's back, today, with
The Sierra Club has launched a great new site for outdoors enthusiasts: a trail wiki simply called Sierra Club Trails. This is an idea I've long thought about, and I'm glad a stellar organization like the Sierra Club jumped on board to make it happen.
If you've ever visited a place -- or found yourself strapped for a good idea for an outing in your own 'hood -- then this is the Website for you. Or, it will be. Right now, it's a great Website if you fancy yourself, as I do, a Chamber of Commerce for the outdoors in your hometown.
The idea is simple: Everyone has the ability to upload information about trails of any kind -- hiking, biking, equestrian, kayaking, etc. -- and everyone else has the ability to edit the information about those trails. I uploaded some information about Black Creek Forest Preserve, one of my favorite hikes in New York's Hudson Valley. I plan on uploading a lot more (all of New York only had 8 hikes, including mine, so there's a lot of room to grow.) The whole process of creating a new hike only takes a few minutes (it may take a little longer if you're not used to posting to blogs). Have a photo handy, as well as basic info about the trail (directions for getting there, approximate length and difficulty, links to maps, etc.).
A central pillar of the economic stimulus being debated in Congress is a plan to pay unemployed workers more -- about $325 instead of $300 a month -- and extend through 2009 the unemployment benefits that would otherwise expire in March.
Here's a better idea. Pay them to volunteer.
Millions of people are out of work and unable to find new jobs, so make volunteerism synonymous with unemployment. A volunteer-for-benefits program for unemployed workers would:
Since Christine Todd Whitman stepped down as head of the Environmental Protection Agency in 2003, there hasn't been much high-level public dissent on environmental policy in the Bush Administration. Career scientists and bureaucrats have gone public with fierce criticisms, but the policymakers have been unified in efforts that most environmentalists roundly condemn.
But now, President Bush's pitch for a positive plot line in his otherwise dismal environmental record is causing a rift at the highest levels.
Bush's plan is to conserve vast swaths of the ocean, prohibiting mining, oil and gas drilling and other development.
It's champion, as the Washington Post reports today, is First Lady Laura Bush. It's foe: none other than Vice President Dick Cheney. ...
Sarah Palin gave a 2,585-word energy policy speech today in Ohio, and didn't breathe the words "climate" or "global warming," according to the prepared remarks available on the McCain campaign Web site.
She mentioned "energy independence," "energy security" and similar phrases dozens of times, and repeatedly promised to increase drilling for oil and natural gas, champion coal mining and "clean coal" technology, build new nuclear power plants ... and, to round out the "all of the above" approach, support renewable energy.
Though she was speaking to workers at the Toledo, OH, solar firm Xunlight Energy, she mentioned renewable energy less than any of the other options.
The most remarkable phrase in the speech may have been this one, because it comes so close to being worthy of praise:
Energy security, she said "tests our ability to confront and solve hard problems in Washington, instead of constantly putting things off. And it brings together so many other issues -- from the value of our pay checks to ..."
In another sign that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is a more effective consumer watchdog than the federal government, the newspaper has turned up evidence that the chemical industry wrote the Food and Drug Administration assessment that deemed Bisphenol-A safe, despite a growing number of independent and government research to the contrary.
The Journal-Sentinel should be commended, again, for its role uncovering and publicizing industry influence on chemical risk analysis in various federal agencies. (Pulitzer, anyone?) Lest anyone fail to realize the cost of turmoil in the mainstream media, this is an example of why the health of the nations newspapers matter. The Journal-Sentinel announced plans in July to cut 130 jobs -- 10% of its full-time staff -- and that was before its parent company announced a third-quarter loss of $17.1 million, according to Forbes.
The latest revelation is that the FDA used an American Chemistry Council report as the basis for its own health analysis of Bisphenol-A, an ingredient in plastics and the lining of cans. It mimics the hormone estrogen and has been linked to a wide range of problems in laboratory studies and, increasingly, human health studies.
The chemical industry, which profits handsomely on sales of the chemical, asserts its safe. The FDA, similarly -- and, not surprisingly, as it turns out -- has agreed. ...
USA Today has an interesting front-page piece today about the record amount that will be spent this year on U.S. elections -- $5.3 billion.
That's nearly $1 billion more than the 2004 election, and is fueled in part by Barack Obama's record-breaking fundraising prowess (which came, as has been well noted, at the expense of his early campaign promise to accept public financing).
But after watching Congress doll out $700 billion for a financial rescue, and all the talk of the Iraq war possibly costing as much as $1 trillion before all's said and done ... and on top of the mind-boggling number of zeroes that accompany any billion- or trillion-dollar amount ... it's hard to make rational sense of a number like $5.3 billion.
USA Today helpfully points out that it's less than what Americans will spend on Halloween in 2008, according to estimates by the National Retail Federation. We'll spend $6 billion on costumes, candy, fake cobwebs and scary music ... not to mention those ridiculous blow-up lawn ornaments. (Incidentally, you can look to The Daily Green for homemade Halloween costume ideas and good safe alternatives to candy.
It got me thinking about how election spending measures up against other American milestones. What follows is a look at how much is spent, per capita, by Americans (assuming a population of $305.48 million, with each spending equally). The numbers are from the National Retail Federation. ...
A "new energy economy" is emerging in the United States. Now.
That's the way Lester R. Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute and one of the most influential voices on buidling a sustainable economy, sees it. Here's a look at the bones of his latest argument, which I've organized into seven ways to feel hopeful on a Monday:
Texas
Texas is the richest oil state in the United States, and yet it has become the nation's biggest producer of wind, and has the biggest plans to expand wind energy production. Within years, it will have 45,000 megawatts -- the equivalent of 45 coal-fired power plants -- generating all the electricity consumed by homes in the largest state in the lower 48.
South Dakota
The world's largest wind farm, with the electrical output of about five coal-fired power plants, is being built in South Dakota. Not only will that Clipper Windpower and BP wind farm produce five-times as much energy as the state's homes consume. But the project also includes a transmission line through Iowa into Indiana, where there's industrial hunger for power. Experts have said that improving the electric grid will be key to tapping into vast stores of energy in the relatively sparsely populated Heartland.
Wyoming
Similarly, Colorado billionaire Philip Anschutz has secured the rights to build not only a 2,000-megawatt wind farm in Wyoming, but the rights to build a high-voltage transmission line to California. Another line could run to Colorado, and both Kansas and Oklahoma are looking to export wind energy to the power-hungry Southeast via new transmission lines.
So I managed to avoid all but press accounts of the Couric-Palin interview for far too long, and when I finally sat down to watch it, I was impressed all over again about the Alaskan governor's ideas about global warming.
Just a month or so before being tapped as John McCain's vice presidential running mate, she said she didn't attribute it to being man-made". Then, in her interview with Charles Gibson in mid-September, she unveiled her new talking point, that global warming may be caused, in part, by humans, but that what matters is that we do something about it, specifically: "cut down on pollution".
She more or less repeated that in her interview last week with Katie Couric. Here's what she said:
The Environmental Protection Agency Tuesday published standards for protecting health and the environment at the proposed nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where the nation may bury radioactive waste from its fleet of 100+ nuclear power plants, and from Defense Department nuclear weapons sites.
The details -- how many millirem of radiation can safely leak out -- would be meaningless to most people, who don't often think about their daily dose of radiation.
The bottom line on that, according to EPA as quoted by the Las Vegas Sun, is that the standards are in line with international radioactive waste management guidelines. Nevada's senators and other opponents of the Yucca Mountain storage plan vociferously objected to the rules, calling them dangerous and based on flawed science.
For argument's sake, assume that the millirem limit is safe. What still gives skeptics pause about a central waste storage site, and nuclear power in general, is the time scale it must remain secure.
The EPA set a low leak limit for the first 10,000 years, and then set a standard more than six times higher for the next million years (though still less than one-third the average annual dose of radiation that Americans receive from the sun and other sources today).
A million years.
That's how long radioactive waste from nuclear power plants remains dangerous, how long it must be safely stored, how long people must be wary about coming into contact with too many millirem of radiation.
It may well be, however, that global warming can't be solved without making this bargain with future generations. ...
rss
|
||||||||||
 |
Enter your city or zip code to get your local temperature and air quality and find local green food and recycling resources near you.
|
 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||||
reddit
digg
Del.icio.us
facebook
newsvine
stumble
What is share?
