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Dems' Offshore Drilling Plan Comes With Catch

Marilyn Shannon, of Brooks , Or., wears a t-shirt in support of oil drilling during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Washington -  Just three years ago Richard Pombo, the cowboy boot-wearing Tracy Republican lawmaker, faced an outcry from Democrats for pushing a bill to lift the 27-year-old ban on drilling off the East and West coasts and let states choose whether to allow oil rigs off their shores.

In a sign of how much the energy debate has shifted in an era of nearly $4-a-gallon gasoline, virtually the same proposal that Pombo floated will be introduced on the House floor this month - by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Posted in Energy, Environment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 8, 2008
3:46 PM

CONTACT: Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR)
Brooke Gullikson 612-379-3815
bgullikson@ilsr.org

New Report Argues for a Renewable Energy Policy That Puts Rural Communities First

MINNEAPOLIS - September 8 - The next 20 years could generate as much as $1 trillion in new investment in renewable energy in rural America. But as a new Ford Foundation-sponsored study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) argues, current federal policies minimize the benefit of that investment to rural economies.

Existing federal policies encourage large-scale, absentee owned wind farms and biofuel plants, notes the report, Rural Power: Community-Scaled Renewable Energy and Rural Economic Development.

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About ILSR and the New Rules Project: Since 1974, ILSR has worked with citizen groups, governments and private businesses in developing practices that extract the maximum value from local resources. A program of ILSR, the New Rules Project focuses on local, state and national policies that enable that goal.
Posted in Energy

UN Says Eat Less Meat To Curb Global Warming

A joint of beef. (Photograph/Alamy)

People should have one meat-free day a week if they want to make a personal and effective sacrifice that would help tackle climate change, the world's leading authority on global warming has told The Observer

Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which last year earned a joint share of the Nobel Peace Prize, said that people should then go on to reduce their meat consumption even further.

His comments are the most controversial advice yet provided by the panel on how individuals can help tackle global warning.

Posted in Energy, Environment

Stunt or Not, GOP Presses For Vote on Lifting Offshore Drilling Ban

The congressional drilling moratorium, first enacted by a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-ruled Senate under President Reagan, must be renewed each year by Sept. 30 in order to stay in effect. (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

WASHINGTON - When Congress returns this week from its summer break, the calendar likely will force Democratic leaders to do what Republican lawmakers have so far failed to make them do:

Vote on lifting the 1982 ban on expanded offshore oil and natural gas drilling.

The congressional drilling moratorium, first enacted by a Democratic-controlled House and a Republican-ruled Senate under President Reagan, must be renewed each year by Sept. 30 in order to stay in effect.

Posted in Energy, Environment

Let's Use Wind to Power Cars

Legendary Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens is half right. We do need to harness this country's wind resources for a homegrown source of electricity, as he has been urging this summer in expensive television ads. And we do need to reduce the $700 billion we may soon be paying annually for imported oil.

But part two of Pickens's plan -- to move natural gas out of electricity production and use it to fuel cars instead -- just doesn't make sense.

Posted in Economy/Trade, Energy, Environment

Chasing Nuclear Energy Windmills

The Republican convention was a barren desert of diversity, with the lowest percentage of black delegates in 40 years. Yet this 93 percent white gathering blithely stole from the race riots of the '60s to lustily chant "Drill, baby, drill." Compounding the irony, the first speaker hurling the verbal Molotov cocktail to the crowd was the only African-American the party could dredge up for prime-time, former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele.

Posted in Energy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 5, 2008
3:10 PM

CONTACT: Center for Biological Diversity
Amy Atwood, Center for Biological Diversity, (541) 914-8372,
atwood@biologicaldiversity.org

Center for Biological Diversity Statement

On the Bureau of Land Management's Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Oil Shale and Tar Sands Commercial Leasing Program

Bush Administration Forces Through Final EIS; Will Do Nothing to Lower Gas Prices

TUCSON - September 5 - Today the Bush Administration took another step toward finalizing a commercial leasing program for oil shale on some of the nation's most pristine public lands and released a final programmatic environmental impact statement for commercial oil shale production on more than 2 million acres of public lands in Wyoming, Colorado and Utah.

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Posted in Energy, Environment, Politics, Oil, Water

Archer Daniels Midland: A Giant Agribusiness Finds Itself Back In The Dock

More and more maize is being grown for ethanol in the US, where it is generously subsidised. (Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

When Matt Damon, star of the Bourne trilogy, sat down for lunch a few months ago at the Hog Trough Too, a restaurant in the village of Moweaqua in central Illinois, it may have sent a shiver down the spine of executives at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the giant US agribusiness.

Posted in Energy, Environment, GM Food

Solar Plant Yields Water and Crops From The Desert

The Sahara forest project will use seawater and solar power to grow food in greenhouses across the desert. (Photograph: Exploration Architecture)

Vast greenhouses that use sea water for crop cultivation could be combined with solar power plants to provide food, fresh water and clean energy in deserts, under an ambitious proposal from a team of architects and engineers.

The Sahara Forest Project, which is already running demonstration plants in Tenerife, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, envisages huge greenhouses with concentrated solar power (CSP), a technology that uses mirrors to focus the sun's rays, creating steam to drive turbines to generate electricity.

Posted in Energy, Environment

Putin's Ruthless Gambit

Many Western analysts have chosen to interpret the recent fighting in the Caucasus as the onset of a new Cold War, with a small pro-Western democracy bravely resisting a brutal reincarnation of Stalin's jack-booted Soviet Union. Others have viewed it a throwback to the age-old ethnic politics of southeastern Europe, with assorted minorities using contemporary border disputes to settle ancient scores.

Posted in Energy, Politics, War/Empire, Oil
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