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. ...
In a story, fittingly, featured in the Charleston Gazette, in West Virginia's coal country, about people are puzzling over how John McCain and Barack Obama really feel about coal.
They both say they support "clean coal" -- a code word for yet-to-be-developed technology that would either turn coal to gas before burning, or else bury the carbon emissions deep underground after burning. It's a way for politicians to embrace an abundant domestic fuel source that employs blue-collar workers, without embracing the pollution that comes along with it.
About 50 % of U.S. electricity comes from burning coal, and it's a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as pollution of toxic mercury, acid rain gases, smog and soot. In a word: dirty.
Coal is, along with oil, the central figure in our energy picture. Yet, the candidates focus energy talking about it. ...
The meltdown in the financial markets, prompted by the bankruptcy of Wall Street powerhouse Lehman Brothers and the weakness of insurance giant AIG, could have a far-reaching effect, not only for the U.S. economy, but for the world environment.
Even before the latest meltdown, which has even more talking about a deepening recession, New York Gov. David Paterson had cast doubt on New York's fortitude on a groundbreaking global warming regulation.
Under former Gov. George Pataki, a Republican, New York developed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and got nine other Northeastern states, from Maryland to Maine, to agree to join it in capping carbon emissions from power plants, setting up a regional market for carbon credits and ultimately driving down pollution that causes global warming from a major source.
The regulation doesn't go as far as other regional proposals in other parts of the country, like in the West, which is working on an economy-wide carbon cap. And it has been criticized for being too lenient -- allotting so many pollution credits, for instance, that a two-year decline in carbon emissions could be reversed without exceeding the cap, and aiming only for a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants below 2009 levels by 2020.
But its importance as a pioneer in the field of government regulation of carbon emissions can't be overstated: It was the first on the books, it will control emissions in a part of the country that produces a huge percentage of the nation's pollution, and it is to be the first to market, when it begins next week.
Did I say when it starts next week? If may be the operative term. ...
"I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."
Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, to Newsmax, August 2008.
"I believe that man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change."
Sarah Palin, vice presidential candidate, to ABC's Charlie Gibson, September 2008.
Congress can spend less money than it did on the last economic stimulus package, create more jobs and help stave off catastrophe via climate change.
That's the gist of an authoritative new report from U-Mass Amherst and the Center for American Progress. Green Recovery outlines how to spend $100 billion over two years to create nearly 2 million new jobs.
Invest the same money in the oil industry, and you get just 542,00 jobs (and a commitment to more fossil fuel pollution). Invest the same money in tax rebates and you get 1.7 million jobs (and a whole lot more consumption).
"Why does this program create more jobs? One, this program is more labor-intensive. For every dollar spent, we spend more on jobs and less on machines, less on supplies," said Robert Pollin, director of the U-Mass Political Economy Research Institute. Second, he said, more of the money is spent domestically.
And, recall that the last economic stimulus package cost 68% more -- $168 billion. And by all accounts, that stimulus has now exhausted itself, as people paid off debts or bought gas or did whatever they did with the rebate checks that arrived earlier this year.
Unlike that one-off stimulus, this program would continue to generate or save money for years. ...
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