This grinds my gears. The EPA should be driving climate policy decisions. The Senate may have some knowledgeable members when it comes to climate change, but certainly damn few experts. For Harry Reid and the rest to start blocking critical regulation of greenhouse gases is wrong. Simply wrong.
The Senate is playing politics with the environment, and it’s wrong.
“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will allow a vote on legislation to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases for two years, he told reporters in the Capitol today.
Following his weekly press briefing, Reid (D-Nev.) was asked if the Senate wold vote on EPA preemption.
“Not before we leave here,” said Reid, referring to the three-week congressional schedule ahead. “This year.”
Reid’s commitment to give preemption a vote this year means that it is headed to the Senate floor during a lame-duck session, meaning that lawmakers will be less accountable for their votes — and those who aren’t returning in January won’t be accountable at all.
The commitment to give preemption a vote is related to an earlier fight over legislation from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would have blocked EPA action. In order to defeat Murkowski’s proposal, Democratic aides said, Reid promised holdout senators a vote on a two-year freeze — a measure sponsored by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) — later in the year.
“Senator Rockefeller’s EPA Delay bill is gaining momentum every day in Congress. Rockefeller is fighting for legislation to suspend — for two years — harmful EPA regulations to regulate greenhouse gases because he believes that Congress — and not the unelected EPA — must be responsible for determining our nation’s energy policy,” a Rockefeller aide wrote in an email. “Rockefeller expects a vote on this important legislation this year and he is aggressively pursuing this in Congress.”
In the absence of Senate action to address climate change, while scientists warn that the carbon concentration in the atmosphere is reaching a hazardous point, EPA regulation is the last resort.”
Are you an environmentalist? You should watch this film. Are you a minority? Watch this film. Are you concerned about our economy and joblessness? This film is for you. Does your family enjoy parks and hiking trails around the nation? Don’t miss this film. Do you think government interference is no damn good? This film might change your mind.
The parallels between the 1930’s - outlined as a foundation of the CCC story - and now are striking to say the least. The fathers and grandfathers of today’s anti-tax, anti-government crowd - laying awake nights worrying about a certain descent into Socialism - hated Roosevelt for creating the CCC.
This film- and several other things I’ve read and watched lately - have convinced me that Roosevelt saved the country in more ways than one. Had it not been for FDR, we would have very likely had another revolution, and real socialism would have been the result. Roosevelt - through the New Deal, Social Security, the WPA, CCC amd more - saved America’s wealthy from the fate they feared the most by giving people a safety net, dignity and a hand up.
This film is available on Netflix - we watched it as an instant download - or from PBS.
My pre-ordered copy of the DVD ‘Food Inc’ - Eric Shlosser and Michael Pollan’s powerful indictment of the factory farmed, laboratory concocted horror generally regarded as ‘food’ in America came today. Natacha hadn’t seen it and is still sitting out there watching in disgust.
Like so much else in America, our food has been hijacked by mega corporations and the cost in health, human dignity, animal health, and our environment is horrifying.
I urge your to order your copy and invite your neighbors, relatives and co-workers to watch. It’s a tough films to watch, but it just might change enough minds to change the way we eat, farm, and treat our workers, our animals, our health and our environment.
I’ve fallen in love with a new channel - Discovery Channels Planet Green. There’s everything you want from cool, nerdy people like Bill Nye, the “Science Guy” to Ed Begley, Jr., “Living With Ed” ( a real hoot ), to Emeril Green.
Who woulda guessed that Emeril Lagasse would go green. This channel is green gone fun and sexy, with topics from fashion and beauty to design ( think TLC or HGTV ) to “Hollywood Green”, with the latest dish about who on the ‘A List’ has gone green.
Really, this channel has replaced Food Network for my treadmill sessions.
Heat waves. Melting glaciers. Rising sea levels. Catastrophic storms. Migrating viruses. Population displacement. Over the past 100 years, the mass consumption of fossil fuels, especially in America, has contributed to a dangerous warming of the earth that has adversely impacted the way we live. The cautionary documentary TOO HOT NOT TO HANDLE offers a guide to the effects of global warming in the United States.
This is without a doubt, the best, clearest explanation we’ve seen yet to define the problems and offer solutions.
Mr. Maven and I just watched this, and it really helps clarify the so-called climate and global warming ‘debate’ - which was ingenously engineered courtesy of the fossil fuel lobby, aided and abetted by the Bush administration.
Had I not read Thomas Friedmans’ book ‘Hot, Flat and Crowded’, a lot of this would have been real news, but even with that I still didn’t realize that the scientific discussion about global warming and climate change began to hit the media as far back as 1987!
Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how — if we see it in time — we can prevent it.
It’s true that the consumer choices that we make each and every day sends a message of approval - or not - to the business world. Their actions can make a big difference in the battle to stop global warming. Fortunately, there is a website for consumers to refer to - even on the fly via your cell phone - and choose accordingly.
In this energizing talk, Amory Lovins lays out his simple plan for weaning the US off oil and revitalizing the economy.
Of course, when you think about the fact that this talk was given in 2005 and that none of this information is exactly news to anybody who has been paying attention, you have to wonder who slipped the Ambien into the Detroit water supply.
I realize they need a ‘bailout’ since I don’t want to see tens of thousands of workers in the unemployment line either, but remember this - we’ve been there before with Chrysler. Did they change their ways? No.
Nobody in this country has had the courage to hold their feet to the fire and insist on change. Thus you see the results of lassez-faire capitalism on the front pages daily. If you don’t think that government can do this, you have no further to look than Japan - those people who whipped Detroit at their own game.
The Japanese government set price floors, below which the price of energy ( always limited and expensive in Japan ) would not go. Therefore industry had to become energy effecient to survive and thrive. This worked so darn well that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is selling their giant dynamos - which are far more energy effecient than ours - to us here in the U.S.
Industry in Japan - as in Europe - also knew that their substantial investment in innovation would not be wasted when, as will happen, wild fluctuations in the price of energy happen. For verification, look no further than current headlines here in the U.S. when the price of gasoline went below $3.00 a gallon. Happy days were certainly here again. Right?
Price floors/price signals prevent that type of amnesia.
There most certainly is a role for government policy making in directing the innovation that will - or will not - characterize our profitability through the rest of this century. But with Americans inherent distrust of all things attached to the word ‘government’, they’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I contend that the automotive industry - left totheir own devices - has done an absolutely abysmal job at developing innovative solutions to a looming energy crisis, but did a great job at pandering to the limited sight lines of the woefully single minded American energy consumer/driver. If we left innovation to Detroits’ timetable cars would still have buggy springs, no seat belts, windshield wipersor airbags. In fact, they fought each one of those specific innovations.
Indeed, Detroit provides the best argument yet in favor of government intervention in an industry.
So the question remains: under what conditions do we - the taxpayers - bail them out?
In so far as Lovins’ assertions: I don’t believe biofuels are the end answer ( and he’s not talking about ethanol but rather switchgrass and others) rather plug-in hybrids if and when we ever get a smart energy grid instead of the archaic 19th century grid we have now - cobbled together across the country.
Please click on one of the gray bars above. These videos present a bit differently than those from Youtube.
I can just see the eyeballs beginning to roll when I mention price signals/floors on energy, imposed by goverment.
You should read the following position held by Duke Energy, then.
( from their website)
Duke Energy’s Position
Most scientists believe that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are influencing the earth’s climate. Although there’s much to learn about the cause and effect of climate change, consensus is building that steps should be taken now to reduce these emissions. Duke Energy shares that view.
We have a responsibility to our customers, our investors and our communities to play a lead role in shaping a national policy that addresses this challenge responsibly and fairly. We must be good stewards of the environment. We must do our part to meet the nation’s growing energy needs and to keep our energy prices affordable. We need predictability to make sound plans for electric generation and natural gas infrastructure.
We are concerned about patchwork policies focused on a single industrial sector or particular region of the country. We are concerned about approaches that could have grave and unintended impacts on the U.S. economy or that could result in rapid or extreme rate increases for electricity and natural gas customers.
We favor a U.S. policy on climate change that:
Is economy-wide in its reach, rather than targeting a single industry for emissions reductions
Is national in scope, yet considers varying impacts across regions and economic sectors
Is market-based, with price signals leading to technological innovation and investment, energy efficiency and conservation
Begins to reduce greenhouse gas emissions now, and does so gradually over time
Is simple to administer and provides price certainty.
Such a policy could be achievedthrough a “cap and trade” approach. The important thing is that we get to work now. Duke Energy believes that voluntary programs are not enough. Congress needs to establish a national, economy-wide greenhouse gas mandatory program as soon as possible. A sustainable path to reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions should become part of a worldwide response to this global issue.
Amory Lovins is cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and the instigator of ingenious ideas to transform the energy and automobile industries.
We’re at a tipping point, or you might call it a point of no return, with global climate change. It’s more critical than ever before that citizens at least understand the basic science, if not all the nuances and ramifications. Our national security, individual and collective standards of living, and global health depend on it.
I’m currently reading Thomas Friedman’s amazing work, “Hot, flat and crowded: Why we need a green revolution”
This is essential reading. This is right now. This is important.
If you’ve never quite understood the broader ramifications of climate change, and as Friedman calls it - global weirding, then this book is for you.
In chapters that engage as well as inform, the author both makes his case and explains it in such an easily digestible manner that everybody can finally ‘get it’ - if they want to.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 17:37 
