A giant mechanical digger gouges out a chunk of topsoil, grass and
tree stumps, extending a neat furrow that stretches into the distance.
Dozens of similar furrows run parallel with the regularity of a
ploughed field.
Yet no crop could grow in the pitch-black surface exposed by the
machine working 1,000ft below our helicopter. This is the edge of a
fast-expanding open-cast mine in the Canadian tar sands, one of the
world's most polluting sources of oil.
We can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard.
Bowing to pressure from the pro-nuclear lobby, Senators Boxer and
Kerry have included nuclear power into their bill to address climate
change. In their proposed legislation, the Senators claim that "nuclear
energy is the largest provider of clean, low-carbon, electricity...."
Funny we've heard that before. In fact, the bill's nuclear section
reads like it was lifted off the Nuclear Energy Institute's (NEI)
website, despite its lack of veracity.
Why is Afghanistan so important?
A glance at a map and a little knowledge of the region suggest that the real reasons for Western military involvement may be largely hidden.
Afghanistan is adjacent to Middle Eastern countries that are rich in oil and natural gas. And though Afghanistan may have little petroleum itself, it borders both Iran and Turkmenistan, countries with the second and third largest natural gas reserves in the world. (Russia is first.)
A long-term decline in the demand for oil
could undermine the huge investments in Canadian tar sands, which have
been heavily opposed by environmentalists, according to a report
published today.
The report, by Greenpeace,
will make uncomfortable reading for the companies that are investing
tens of billions of pounds to exploit the hard-to-extract oil in the
belief that demand and the price would climb inexorably as countries
such as China and India industrialise.
Inside hulking white tanks near the Oakland foot of the Bay Bridge, some of your pizza crusts, kung pao chicken and orange peels are cleaning the wastewater from 650,000 households in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.
Sort of.
When the jets come, they start out like the shrill distant whine of a
child, or with the deep rumbling sound of thunder in the mountains.
Each jet crescendos into an elephantine wail that fills the sky and
all the spaces below it: kitchens, patios, bathrooms, bedrooms—there’s
no escape. The wail turns to a sudden roar above the house, rattling
the Victorian redwood timbers of mom’s home.
Finally, as the planes pass, their roar fades into a distant rumble….
Thirty years ago, on July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter went on national television to give a jolting speech. Billed as an address about the "energy crisis" -- the recent cutoff of Iranian fuel that generated long and angry gas lines at home -- it wound up lashing out at the American way of life. Carter decried Americans' "self-indulgence and consumption" as well as their "fragmentation and self-interest." This was a "crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will," he asserted.
An Eagle-based company wants to build a 1,600-megawatt nuclear power plant in Elmore County.
The U.S. Congress is considering a bill that proposes the nation build 100 new nuclear power reactors over the next 20 years.
Idaho Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson has embraced nuclear power, and like others, promotes it as cheap and clean. They argue also that nuclear energy emits no greenhouse gases. But it is unclear which part of the nuclear energy cycle they're referring to. Nuclear power is neither cheap nor clean.
