Hobbled by opposition from the carbon incumbents and their
short-sighted allies on Capitol Hill the Obama administration
acknowledged this week that it would not return from Copenhagen with
any groundbreaking commitment to control green house gases. Meanwhile,
Congress is backsliding on the administration's wise commitment to
impose a rational price on carbon. Behind the logjam, a treacherous
U.S.
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama
on Tuesday will announce $3.4 billion in government grants to help
build a "smart" electric grid that will save consumers money on their
utility bills, reduce blackouts and carry power supplies generated by
solar and wind energy, the White House said.
France's atomic power industry is a failed radioactive flame. Its 58
reactors are unpopular, unsafe, uneconomical, dirty, direct agents of
global warming, weapons proliferators and major generators of atomic
waste for which there is no management solution.
LAS VEGAS, Nevada - Hosting his second
annual all-star gathering of clean energy proponents at University of
Nevada, Las Vegas on Monday, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of
Nevada called for "a new revolution ... a clean energy revolution" to
restore American prosperity and global leadership.
Comparing the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 to the original
American Revolution, Reid told participants why the date of the
meeting, August 10, is important to him.
The battle over intellectual property
rights is likely to be one of the most important of this century. It
has enormous economic, social and political implications in a wide
range of areas, from medicine to the arts and culture - anything where
the public interest in the widespread dissemination of knowledge runs
up against those whose income derives from monopolising it.
After years of opposing or ridiculing renewable energy, the giant oil
companies are using a new approach. A recent ExxonMobil advertising
campaign puts it this way:
In the Arctic, sea ice is melting. In the United States, houses are foreclosing.
And in Washington, the Senate is becoming a real-life Bermuda Triangle for progressive agendas.
Proposals for major limits on carbon emissions aren't getting far in the Senate, where the corporate war on the environment has an abundance of powerful allies.
As for class war, it continues to rage from the top down. Last week, a dozen Democratic senators teamed up with Republicans to defeat a bill that would have allowed judges to reduce mortgages in bankruptcy courts.
Don't be too "Canadian" about the backlash - this is no time for Mr. Nice Guy
Watching
the backlash against clean energy projects build in Canada has moved me
to think about what Americans have learned from facing this same
problem. I have been thinking and writing for several years about
overcoming conflict-avoidance and the importance of standing up for
"Big Truths" even at the price of criticizing fellow environmentalists.
Whenever you hear the word miracle, you know there's trouble just
around the corner. But however many times they lead to disappointment
or disaster, the newspapers never tire of promoting miracle cures,
miracle crops, miracle fuels and miracle financial instruments. We have
a bottomless ability to disregard the laws of economics, biology and
thermodynamics when we encounter a simple solution to complex problems.
So welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the new miracle. It's a low-carbon
regime for the planet which makes the Atkins Diet look healthy:
woodchips with everything.
