Comments mwildfire has made

I have done both (call Congresspeople and change buying patterns) but I recognize that neither is effective. I'm not sure it's fair to say that Congress is unresponsive because the public is apathetic and uninformed--more like the other way around, or realistically both spring from the same cause, the taking over of our society by corporations. A key element of this control is the use of mass madia to keep the public distracted, misinformed and confused. I believe the cure is simpler than what Dave suggests. What we need to do is ban corporations, making economic aggregations larger than a certain siz illegal. This may seem drastic, but if you read the history of corporate control put out by POCLAD, you discover that sensible rules to keep corporations in check were in force in the this country from its founding to about the time of the Civil War, when corporations were able to use their increasing size and power to remove controls one by one--the biggie was the 1886 Supreme Court ruling that give personhood status and human rights to corporations. What this proves is that reasonable rules constricting corporate power only last so long--abolishing them is the only way humans can retake control of this world and have any hope of preserving it. And the organs of public conversation, the mass media, cannot be privately owned--nor too closely controlled by governments.

Good review. But I do want to question this "bright green" optimism: “To be bright green is to know that a sane respect for planetary limits imposes no meaningful limits on humanity’s potential, at all.” It is possible to flourish sustainably.

What is meant by "humanity's potential," and by "flourish"? I believe this statement is true, as long as you don't think we can keep increasing, or maintain, humanity's population, or economic growth. Heinberg is right: we need to quickly reduce our population and relocalize our economies, and we need to get off the conumption mania. We also need to correct millennia of injustices, and embrace the poor and darker-skinned, which necessitates even more drastic cuts in resource use in the rich countries. I would argue that we could do all this, and flourish as never before, at last living up to our potential.

But--sigh--we won't. There is no evidence of movement in the right direction at anything remotely like what's necessary. So, instead, we will have a sudden (probably) die-off, after doing great damage to the Earth's natural systems...and then, if we're lucky, the survivors will eventually knit together a new civilization with the wisdom and sanity of the earlier inhabitants of the western hemisphere.

Unfortunately, I think the reference to the long delay in new and improved legislation on health care or clean water and air is all too apt--because the reality is that although they are talking about health care reform again, it has been made abundantly clear that no legislation which would impact the profits of insurance or drug or hospital companies can be considered, Which means no reform is possible. As you say, we have been fighting to defend, not improve, the Clean Water and Air Acts. In other words, the reality is that Congress has been so completely captured by corporate interests that NO EFFECTIVE LEGISLATION IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST IS POSSIBLE any more, whether it be in the realm of health care, the environment, or warfare (which will continue taking an increasing share of the budget until the country collapses). The big corporations which control virtually all media also have holding in "defense" industries and drug companies, etc, so they use the media wings to protect the profits of the others by seeing to it that the public is excessively alarmed about imaginary threats from foreign terrorists or countries, and inadequately alarmed about the real threats to the environment--and confused about health care policy.

Unfortunately I think the solution to the climate crisis can only come about via policy change; personal actions alone won't do it, especially with the public still subject to a barrage of messages hinting that climate change is not even real. How can we get the policy change we need when Congress and the White House are owned by corporations which include coal and oil companies? I don't know. Apparently Romm has decided that there can be no more delay, there is zero chance of getting adequate legislation through Congress and so something that is a little better than nothing must be embraced (although I don't see how you come up with B-. Can I be a student in your class?) The obvious answer is revolution, but you can't have a revolution when most people are still entranced by the circuses cooked up by the media wing to disguise the reduction in bread. By the time it gets so bad that no amount of circuses help--by the time we live like Venezuelans, who vote for Chaves overwhelmingly despite 90% of the media being owned by his opposition--it will be far too late for the climate.

I'd quibble on one bit there, Randy--don't tax the renewables, they're struggling as it is, trying to compete with dirty power sources that get away with externalizing most of their costs. Instead use a carbon tax to fund the "just transition."

Also gotta point out that while the jobs of current miners are the excuse to keep it going, the real power is in the corporations; making the miners whole wouldn't ease the transition because they aren't the block against progress, corporate lobbyists are. And for all their hand-wringing and songs of lamentation about the poor miners, they don't hesitate to slash jobs when it serves their own purposes. Indeed the whole point of mountaintop removal mining is to cut costs by replacing most of the workers with enormous machines.

I keep sending cynical comments about Waxman Markey...so, if there's no genuine hope of adequate policy to address the climate crisis at the national level (and absent serious movement in the US, no hope of international policy action that's adequate)--what do we do? I feel these protesters are on the right track. You can go testify at hearings all you want, but when you're seasoned enough to know hearings are meaningless, direct action has the potential to start real movement. Along with more and more people shining a local spotlight on their efforts to keep shrinking their personal carbon footprints, and organizing in their communities for local reduction actions, and working to transform the debate, to educate the public. That's why I participated in an earlier action for Coal River Mountain, and will again.

I gotta say--women in a rowboat on a lake of toxic sludge, being cited for littering, is so rich I certainly hope it gets national play.

Okay, you atomic proponents: show me the beef. There are a lot of irrelevancies here; the real questions are:

1. Do you have any way of disposing of the waste that's safe as long as it takes, even in the likely event that our descendents are illiterate? To compare the volume with that of coal waste is absurdly misleading--coal ash is only mildly toxic (and I am primarily an anti-coal activist) whereas some of that 60,000 tons is the most intensely toxic substance on Earth--and in any event, the question is NOT whether we want to go forward with coal or with nuclear, but whether there is any reason to invest billions in nukes (or carbon sequestration) rather than in the truly renewable and clean technologies that currently are expensive and intermittent--problems likely solvable if solar in particular were given the kind of government investment nukes have enjoyed.

2. Do the fourth generation reactors produce material that terrorists could fashion bombs out of, or could they use the plants themselves in an act of terrorism?

3. Does the technology get around the problem of limited supplies of uranium?

4. Even if you have positive answers to these three concerns--which is to say, even if the so-called "fourth generation" is distinctly different from nukes as we've known them--there is still the question of whether they can be brought online quickly and at a cost that makes them preferrable to solar and wind and other renewable schemes.

I suppose it's possible that they really are different--I know Hansen is pushing this option, and I have a lot of respect for him for reasons similar to what Sorenson says. But show me the evidence.

I want to discuss the ideas of the first two posters here. Salmony's diatribe was long, but I believe the picture he paints is accurate, and although he doesn't suggest a solution there is one implicit in his words. What he points out is that we have the advantage of numbers in this case. Goliath has the money, but we actually have an enormous advantage when it comes to potential troops. Unfortunately, there is that word "potential"--when you look at people's interests rather than their current beliefs, we have more than a lopsided advantage--we have 100% of the people on our side! The human people, that is. The corporate "persons" are a formidable enemy because they can use their monopoly control of the airwaves to persuade the public that Goliath should win.

Royal Enfield alludes to this and then suggests fearmongering as the best tactic, with the important--indeed crucial--point that we need to PAINT PICTURES, not use abstract language, if we want to influence people. Some say that the fearmongering is counterproductive, that it suggests it's already too late and there's nothing we can do, thus disempowering people and encouraging them to cling to denial. My opinion is that we need to do both; paint his ugly picture of where we'll end up if we keep going down the path we're on, if we allow Goliath--really a machine we made and lost control of--to keep power over us. But even more importantly, we must draw and present an increasingly detailed picture of where we'll end up if we choose the other path. Another World IS Possible, but we're not going to get there unless we make it so real to the billions that they can see it, smell it, taste it, and thus be motivated to grab for it, and finally to fight for it. Can you imagine a world in which most everyone gets the power they need from their own individual or community windmill or solar array, in which large corporations have been banned and humanity has figured out how to implement genuine democracy? In which small communities make most of their own rules, and vary greatly from one another? In which people work fewer hours than today, consume much less, but enjoy what they use much more, and have much more time? In which the endless information stream that leaves us all so fractured and frazzled today has slowed to a reasonable speed? In which advertising is so heavily taxed it's become rare? In which religion has become a quiet, private matter as it's no longer effective in driving cynical agendas? These are some of my dreams, and I am looking for a way to vividly depict them.

Thanks to Billy Parish for starting this conversation; I also read the piece he talks about and saw its applicability, but hadn't done anything with it.

But meanwhile, many of the serious environmental groups are now opposing this heavily watered bill. I kinda wonder if some of the ones quoted in this piece--which looks rather more like a PR piece than what I expect to see on Grist--put out the quoted remarks before it was reduced to its current state. I'm curious what it's like behind the scenes in Grist's office right now--it seems this bill is being heavily pushed, and I wonder if there aren't staffers who aren't happy about that, but get no say?

What a relief it is that we have Obama and not McCain in charge of our government! We really needed all this change. Well, okay, no change on the wars--Congress just voted another $100 billion for the endless Middle Eastern wars we can expect to pass on to our grandchildren. And yeah, no change in economic policy--that's still a matter of handing the treasury over to Wall Street, no strings attached. Well, and I guess the assaults on the Constitution are going to be maintained. And health care, well, it would be asking too much for him to stand up to the insurance lobby--so we'll get a yet more complicated and expensive system with yet another patch to cover another segment of the population (until they get sick). But at least in the realm of the environment, Obama means to stand firm for real change. He GETS climate change! Yeah, he can't be expected to stand up to Big Coal, so the mountains have to come down, damn shame and all. But at least he'll insist on some kind of climate legislation. I mean, it has to pass through a Congress owned lock stock and barrel by corporate interests, so we have to be realistic and not expect a perfect bill. It'll be about cap-and-trade, so that there are profits to be made in it--otherwise Congress wouldn't sign on, don't you see? So the permits will be given away, not auctioned, and the public will get nothing back, and--but maybe it will reduce greenhouse emissions a little bit. Eventually. Or at least slow the rise. Oh, okay, okay--what has changed is that Bush now is taller, more articulate and has better manners.

This is just depressing. He's going to trade opening up California's coast to offshore drilling--which he indicated during the election he understood would not do anything for gas prices in the short term, if ever--for votes on the Waxman-Markey thing? I know Romm likes cap-and-trade but I think it has proven itself to be more useful for creating big profits for industries that play their cards right than doing anything useful for the environment. We need to ABANDON this turkey and sign on behind one of the carbon tax measures that have been introduced instead. There is no time left to pursue obvious failures and then come around and get it right in several years. Especially since this dubious legislation doesn't even take effect till 2013--so how long till it's recognized that we need to use an approach that works? 2016? By then the reality of climate change will probably be much more obvious, thus making a more serious bill more politically possible--but it will also be TOO FREAKING LATE. Obama needs to use his bully pulpit for education of the public, to get them behind him so he can demand legislation that's adequate.

details

yeah, but what are the details, X? How would it work?On The president's budget hints at a coming battle over one kind of ag subsidy posted 9 months ago 5 Responses

lots of good points

and it doesn't have to be either/or. We could do both, or even all three. I drive a '95 Ford Aspire, which now has 222,000 miles on it. I'm not going to replace it till it dies, and then it will be with a used vehicle. So your feebate will never affect me--and though the Aspire gets 43 MPG which is respectable, it is appropriate to discourage excessive driving as well as inefficient vehicles. Right now gas has gotten cheap again, and may reverse the trend, so overdue, to driving less. It's discouraging that humanity, or at least modern Americans, will not change their habits to save the planet their children depend on, but only to reduce immediate cash outlay--but there you have it. We've been turned into the "rational consumers" the economists invented most of a century ago.On A price signal in the vehicle market is best applied to the vehicle posted 9 months, 1 week ago 14 Responses

CAFO problems

I don't think you can "fix CAFO's" just by setting up digesters to deal with the wastes, although that would certainly be a sensible step forward. Monocultures inevitably create disease problems, which in capitalistic enterprise "necessitates" the intensive use of antibiotics, which leave residues in the food products and usually the local water supply. It seems to be a healthier solution to mix a few animals with intensive gardening, and use the manure to provide the fertilizer. We won't be synthesizing it from natural gas much longer.On An interview with Mia MacDonald on China's growing appetite for U.S.-style meat production posted 9 months, 1 week ago 6 Responses

nomination

The two members of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned a ruling that would have made mountaintop removal mining much more difficult if not outlawing it entirely--this was the fourth time this court has overturned rulings of this sort. King Coal really hearts this court. But Grist should award them a finger.On Our weekly look at the heroes and villains of the climate fight posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 3 Responses

nice fantasy, Dr X

Wouldn't it be nice, if we did just what you said, and thus eliminated the problem of climate change before it got completely out of hand, and cut other pollution too, with a brave new world of distributed and varied renewable energy. But it can't happen, because it would reduce the flow of money toward those who already have the most--and therefore, they also have the power to dicate to "our" politicians. Without a revolution, we can't have the policy changes that mere human persons need--the corporate "persons'" needs trump ours every time.On Biggest California utility contracts for world's biggest solar power deal posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 12 Responses

gonzo don

is right. An unsustainably high human population, still growing, is a key part of every environmental problem. So is the notion of perpetual economic growth, and the consumer mentality. We need to stop arguing which of these is the problem and work on both--reducing population and reducing per capita consumption and pollution. We need to acknowledge that there are significant numbers of people who actually need to consume more--but when it comes to population, we need to impose a rule that every woman is entitled to one child, no exceptions, nobody is deprived of this right and nobody is entitled to a second child. Of course, religions and ethnic rivalries will make adoption of such a rule highly unlikely--so we'll go with the alternative, which is to breed ourselves up to a crash point like insects, probably reducing the long-term carrying capacity of the Earth in the process so that after the crash, our total numbers will be lower than if people accepted the need to control our numbers.On Sierra Club leader discusses plans for his new role as chairman posted 10 months ago 7 Responses

hear, hear!

No, it wasn't particularly environmental, but what a refreshing reversal of policy and attitude! Not just the decision, but the wording. Openness in government is sort of a meta-policy anyway--it affects everything.On Obama's early actions bode well for the environment posted 10 months, 1 week ago 5 Responses

fruitcakes everywhere

A veritable conspiracy of fruitcakes, suffusing the international agencies dealing with the question of climate change, the science advisories of every nation, universities--they're everywhere, these crazy coots who think the earth revolves around the sun, is five billion years old, and is threatened by human activities.On Grist pulled no punches in covering all of George Bush's dirt posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 4 Responses

davechgo1 asks

[new] CCS

Taking cost and every other consideration aside, if a coal gasification project has emissions comparable to a natural gas fired plant including carbon, can it be considered clean?
Certainly. Well, AS clean as gas, which is cleaner than oil or coal but still a fossil fuel-powered polluter.
The problem is, you can't really take ALL environmental considerations (mining, transport, washing of the coal and resultant sludge ponds, disposal of the toxins separated from the burnable fuel, transportation of the collected CO2 to storage sites, and CO2 emissions from burning the resultant fuel) into account AND cost at the same time. To actually mitigate ALL the environmental damage would be so expensive that it simply wouldn't make sense to invest in the very expensive plants. It would be cheaper to build solar plants and much cheaper to build wind plants.
On No to phony clean coal credits, yes to refundable, renewable tax credits posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses

Dr X is wrong

Gar is right and it's an excellent piece, although Komanoff's quibbles are good (little) points. But the usually amazing Dr X is off base in saying we mustn't have a new tax during a recession (depression) and can only use positive incentives. By all means, divert subsidies now going to big polluters, but the point of the carbon tax is not primarily revenue, it's to influence behavior. When everyone gets the same return but we each control how much carbon dioxide we emit (up to a point), everyone has an incentive to cut emissions, and thus taxes, so they'll come out ahead.
I would love to see Dr Hansen respond to this piece.On An open reply to James Hansen's open letter posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 32 Responses

ALL the costs of coal

First, someone mentioned the taxpayers paying to remediate old mining damage--but the Acid Mine Lands money is actually paid by coal companies on a tonnage basis. The problems are that current companies are paying for past damage, and so current state representatives from the states where most mining is now occurring--Wyoming in particular--insist on getting "their share" of the money, although the great bulk of the damage was from long ago mining in Pennsylvania and also WV, where there is a huge backlog of sites needing remediation. The other problem is that Congress is sitting on a pile of this money, not releasing it to be used for its intended purpose, because it makes the deficit look less bad. Hundreds of sites have been leaking toxic acids into streams for decades, and will no doubt continue to do so for centuries. They'll never clean all this up. It's expensive and difficult. But it could provide jobs.
The main point I want to make, however, is that if we're going to talk about externalities let's talk about ALL of them. The province of Ontario in Canada made the decision a few years ago to phase out coal power even though its plants were already operational, because they calculated that the cost of switching to clean power would be less than the health costs from the coal air pollution--and in Canada, of course, the state pays healthcare costs. But the guy who came here to WV to explain this decision emphasized that Ontario does not have an indigenous coal mining industry, or this choice would not have been politically possible. This means they surely did not include the land damage or health and safety costs of coal mining in their analysis, nor the costs to the roads of trucks weighing up to 100 tons careening over them. This piece looks at one of the most overlooked costs, the disposal of the ash from the plants--but there is another kind of toxic coal slurry pond, created by the washing of the coal near where it is mined. Three hundred million gallons of this witch's brew spilled into rivers in Kentucky in 2000. And then of course, there is climate change. I doubt the Ontario government included that (and how can you assign numbers to something that may literally cost us the Earth?) So if you are going to run analyses of the FULL cost of coal, you need to include all these things. When you do that, solar doesn't look so expensive--and wind is downright cheap.On Stiffer regulation of coal ash would cost the industry billions posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses

GMO mythology

Bud Dingler says that anti-biotech people need to grow up and get informed, and then we would see that we need GMOs to "reduce or eliminate the widespread use of farm chems and other weather and practical issues farmers face."
Bud, where is your evidence that GM technology has ever done any of those things? What is your reason to think it will do so in the future? So far what it has done is two thingsL one, allow farmers to save labor by spraying weeds with Roundup without killing their crops--and not incidentally, created a huge financial boost for Monsanto whose patent on Roundup was about to expire. Two, reduce some insect problems by the splicing Bt, a naturally occurring bacterial pathogen,  into the germ plasm of crop seeds. Trouble is, having this bacteria present in every cell of every plant from planting to harvest (and beyond, in residue) naturally and predictably leads to much-speeded up evolution of resistance in the affected bugs, thus taking away an important weapon in the arsenal of organic farmers.
Apparently "life sciences companies" as they call themselves now, are in fact working on strains that would resist drought or excess wetness or heat or salt, etc, which could be very useful, especially in a world in which agriculture is made even more chancy by climate change. But they are not planning to give the fruits of the labors to the farmers of the world--they will patent their discoveries, and insist on big profits for their shareholders before releasing any useful discoveries. Perhaps they'll use the research of some years ago on ways to arrange for these useful traits to be locked up in the plants, to be activated only by spraying with a particular proprietary chemical--which would, of course, be owned and sold by Monsanto.
On An Iowa sustainable-ag legend speaks on her experience with the former governor posted 11 months, 1 week ago 5 Responses

questions

I want to make two points. First of all, I got issues with the map--California and ARIZONA are at less than 100%, with all that solar potential? Why? While Vermont is at 100%...And why are all coastal states not assumed to put up offshore windmills?
I would also point out that this is a pipe dream. The reality is that wind and solar are considerably more expensive than dirty fuels like coal. This is only because coal is able to successfully externalize 90% or more of its costs, but that's the current system. To change it, you would have to go up against a very powerful industry. Likewise with an end to burning oil and gas. And then there's the challenge to the big electric companies if you change policy to reward decentralized production instead of big central plants. All of this makes perfect sense of course, and I'm sure Obama plans to inform the electric companies, the coal companies and the oil companies that the good of the country requires them to drastically shrink or disappear. Next, he'll inform the insurance companies that they have to get out of the health insurance business so we can have cheaper and more effective health care like Europeans, and he'll tell the drug companies they will be regulated to drastically reduce their profits for the sake of making sick people healthier and less broke, and he'll tell the military suppliers that a more peaceful and just world requires them to disappear. And after that---after that we wake up.On Memo to President-elect Barack Obama on democratizing the energy system posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 16 Responses

no prob

it's a lot of money but if we just cut off the Pentagon, we'll have plenty for constructive pirposes, and get double bang for our buck because every dollar the Pentagon doesn't get is less orphans, widows, destroyed buildings, etc.On Greens, labor leaders, and economists call for $900 billion recovery plan posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 3 Responses

clean coal, dehydrated water, violence-free war

Here in WV the industry is working overtime on its propaganda campaign, which includes billboards in Charleston and elsewhere proclaiming "Clean, carbon-neutral coal". A friend called the guy at Walker Machinery, which paid for the billboards (WM lives mainly off selling heavy equipment for mountaintop removal coal mining). My friend asked how coal could be "carbon neutral" when coal is, um, pure carbon (not quite pure--there is a certain amount of mercury etc). The response was similar to Lucas'--that he "just wanted to get people thinking about coal technology."
 The other game here is the word "sequestration". It is actually a magic word, and here I gave it to you for free. All you have to do is wave that magic wand, or word, around and the carbon dioxide emitted by coal goes away! Or so the industry hopes. There is little evidence of anyone actually TRYING sequestration, because it's obviously impractical and too expensive to do on the scale needed. But the hope is that enough steer manure spread all over the media, together with enough payoffs to politicians, will enable them to get a bunch of plants built before they are stopped, and then these plants will be grandfathered like most of the 1700 coal-fired plants still spewing the OTHER pollutants Lucas talked about. I notice they bankrolled both conventions, and election coverage--wonder if they're contributing to the inaugural festivies. So far it looks like Obama's appointments signal no change to a foreign policy based on killing and bombing somebody somewhere every day of every year, and his economic advisor appointments signal economic policy based on privileging the "needs" of the privileged. But his appointments in the environmental realm look much more promising--and that's bad news for King Coal.On Clean coal salesman Joe Lucas shucks and jives for NPR posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 6 Responses

chestnuts

We have several Chinese chestnut trees, and what we do is quarter them to make it easier to remove the shell, and then freeze them. If you let them sit around on the ground, worms get them. If you let them sit too long in the fridge, mold grows on them. I have used them in stir-fries and bread but am eager to try your recipes too. And if they really do have a blight resistant American this time (I've heard that before) I will certainly want to plant a few. By the way, if you think they're hard to deal with, you should try the hickory nuts I've got such a massive collection of...On Long forgotten, chestnuts are coming back with a vengeance, and make a delicious holiday pudding posted 12 months ago 5 Responses

retro Proxy

Yes, and also let's not have any more talk from biologists about evolutionary effects because the Earth was snapped into being over a week's time six thousand and twenty or so years ago. Also, females of all species are inferior, especially humans, and need not be taken seriously. And some of you have your astronomy incorrect as well, as you seem to have the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. Actually the Earth is the center of the universe, which consists of the sun and moon and a few planets--those stars are not flaming balls of gas like the sun, but angels.
Hope that clears everything up.On The New York Times blows the bark beetle story posted 1 year ago 14 Responses

McGinty

I don't know enough about most of the candidates to vote--from what little I know, I'd support Bill Richardson and Kathleen Sibelius. But maybe if i were from NM or KS, I wouldn't. Based on your interview, Kathleen McGinty, PA DEP head, sounds wonderful. But, although I've never lived in PA, I worked there for a small green group and I can tell you that McGinty was seen in a very cynical light. She liked to run around waving a green scarf, depicting herself as an environmentalist while cutting deals with companies. And I'm sure she's more politically ambitious than she admits. The much-touted RPS, often proposed as a model for other coal states like my own WV, went through when I was there. It sets tha standard for renewable percentages high because it sets the definition so low. Most importantly it includes COAL. See, it's not a RENEWABLE energy standard, it's an ALTERNATIVE energy standard. That way they got the coal industry on board, by allowing coal to qualify, via burning the "gob" piles of old waste coal. These continue to slowly leak toxins and sometimes catch fire, so people are thrilled to get rid of them--but don't realize the low-BTU piles will be returned to the tune of 2/3 of the original volume as ash--perhaps less toxic than the original gob, but meanwhile, there are the air emissions, including CO2. I do give her and Rendell credit for attracting Gamesa--Gamesa is begging for wind sites in WV and being given the cold shoulder by state officials, coal whores to a man. But surely we can set the bar higher than better-than-WV.On The green scoop on Obama's Cabinet and administration picks and prospects posted 1 year ago 9 Responses

vakibs:

I like your "open defacation" comparison.
I think the real risk is that Big Coal will get away with the sleight-of-hand it is attempting to pull off: to crow about how cheap coal is, and how clean it can be IF they use IGCC and CCS, and hope nobody sees that if they do use those things, then it's not cheap anymore. In fact, it's probably more expensive than solar or wind--which have no ongoing fuel costs, an enormous advantage. What the industry hopes to pull off, I think, is to hook in big government subsidies for coal liquefaction plants and relatively modern, relatively clean power plants, and then "discover" that sequestration is not practical after all--but shucks, the plants are already built, and they're too expensive to abandon now...On Coal's position in the energy market is more precarious than is generally acknowledged posted 1 year, 1 month ago 3 Responses

nukes have only hurt people who don't count

like the guys who were speared by a fuel rod in one of the first pre-commercial reactors, and had to have their hands and heads buried separately as radioactive waste---or thousands of people downwind of Chernobyl. Then there are the native American uranium miners who died of cancers, and likely quite a few others who've gotten cancers from carious exposures but could never prove (or never even suspected) the cause.
Then there's the terrorism issue, and the expense issue, and the latter is a critical safety issue because we have to get moving on real solutions to climate change NOW--we've screwed around doing nothing for so long we can't waste any more time on dead ends like ethanol, liquefied coal or nukes. We need to be spending our precious cash and the last of our oil producing the solutions that have a future--various solar and wind applications, perhaps tidal plants and geothermal applications.On Safety is for extremists posted 1 year, 1 month ago 10 Responses

thanks, Ingrid

I cheered when I heard your question, too. Neither candidate answered it adequately, but that's not your fault. Just like neither answered the one about "Should health care be a commodity?" because they aren't ALLOWED by the powerful inbsurance industry, to answer that one honestly.
Elsewhere just now on Grist I saw something stating that a poll shows West Virginians actually want alternatives, not so-called "clean coal." But the dirty secret is, where WV politics is concerned, it isn't the opinions of the PEOPLE that matter, it's the interest of the big money, and in WV that's the coal industry. I'm sure it's the same elsewhere, although less so in places not so dependent on a single industry.On Ingrid Jackson's question about climate change put candidates on the spot posted 1 year, 1 month ago 8 Responses

peak political will

The problem is not that nobody has or could write a good bill. And it's not that nobody is willing to work to get it passed. The problem is that everyone who has spent years or decades working for environmental defense has learned the hard way that NO bill can possibly get passed, no matter how perfectly it's written or how much effort you put into it, if it will cost the wealthy and corporations significant money. They have a magic wand they can use to make such bills go away: they own the presses. All the major TV stations, from which most Americans get their information, go along with the Program, which is to further empower the powerful and further enrich the rich. Any bill, proposal, or campaign that directly challenges their prerogatives will be made to seem ridiculous, or will simply disappear from sight, while lawmakers are quietly bribed into scotching it.
And then there is another big problem for the prospects of climate change legislation: the fact that this year has been a cool one, at least in the US. The only way significant numbers of people will put pressure on lawmakers to take even inadequate action is if they are personally and continuously impacted by the problem. Mother Nature screwed up big time with this one.
 As for  "finding a way that people can make money on" cleaner energy or conservation, there ARE plenty of ways for them to do that, and there are campaigns like the Apollo Project pushing for green jobs--but unfortunately you can't get anywhere near the political pressure out of PROSPECTIVE money streams that you can get from a threat to an existing one--people who are attached to an existing money spigot will fight to protect it, while people who think they might make a connection to a potential future one will get around to doing it later when they're not busy.On In either an Obama or McCain adminstration, climate legislation will be back-burnered posted 1 year, 3 months ago 33 Responses

Wolverine has it right

Each of us must work to ratchet down our consumption of fossil fuels to ever lower levels. It's true that we can't get to where we need to go on personal choice alone--we need policy change. But personal policy is something each of us can change at will, whereas changing national policy looks like it's going to require the destruction of Washington DC during a State of the Union address.On Cheney: 'Drill, drill, drill' posted 1 year, 5 months ago 12 Responses

cost containment

I checked out Shellenberger's link above--he says the CSA is so anxious to avoid an industry backlash that it achieves nothing, while Markey's bill goes to the opposite extreme  "with no cost containment provisions whatsoever." But the idea that we have to put in loopholes for industry "in case the cost gets too high," mistakes the relative importance of protecting "the economy" versus the ecosystems of which our human economy is a small part. If we don't do something very serious, very soon, about climate change our economy will collapse anyway because it is not independent of the natural world. I am not bothering to call my senators to support the CSA--I hope it does fail, as in current form it wastes yet more billions on non-solutions. We can't afford that. Maybe after the November election we will have a Congress and a President ready to do what must be done. Unlikely, but at least there's a chance. Bush will veto this one anyway, if there are ANY provisions industry doesn't like.On Rep. Ed Markey unveils ambitious new climate legislation posted 1 year, 6 months ago 4 Responses

the third question

My problem with CBA is that they always ignore the third question. They quantify what the costs will most likely be, and what the benefits will most likely be, and then they assert that if the benefits are greater than the costs, we should do it. But there's a third question, namely whether those who receive the benefits and those who pay the costs are the same people. If not, the action is unjust.On The climate crisis cannot be solved without cost-benefit analysis posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

pandering

Seems to me that what is left out of all this is that places like Kentucky and WV are deeply divided on coal. Yes, there are those clinging to coal mining jobs--but there are just as many clinging to the mountains threatened with mining. The candidates COULD propose a radically different approach to energy production, a Green Jobs initiative. For Obama especially, this might seem a smart move since he has little chance here anyway due to racism and ignorance. I expect the real reason for all this pandering is a calculation about the risk of alienating the big money in these states; getting them against you would be risky.On Obama airs new coal-themed TV ad; Clinton talks up coal too posted 1 year, 6 months ago 3 Responses

OCA suing Horizon and Aurora over this

I know because I agreed to be a plaintiff, since I bought Horizon "organic" milk at the local Wal-Mart, my only local source of organic anything. I think soy has its virtues, and you can avoid GM soy by choosing organic. GM is forbidden by the organic label. I use soymilk in everything except coffee--for which I buy whole organic milk, the Wal-Mart is now stocking Stonyfield brand--and yogurt, for which I buy the fatfree milk and make the yogurt myself. I am highly suspicious of those studies that supposedly showed environmental harms from organic dairy production and increased efficiency from the artificially pumped-up cows. It's good they're going to replicate the study--IF the scientists doing the new studies are free of conflicting interest!On Why that organic label on your milk doesn't tell the whole story posted 1 year, 6 months ago 25 Responses

arguing with everybody

First, GRLCowan says
"I think I am like everyone who hasn't received many thousands of natgas-derived dollars in wanting at least two wedges' worth of nukes built, and not minding in the least if each one has its own on-site miniature Yucca Mountain, as they all do today. Proliferation, uranium scarcity -- that's just gas-shill talk."
Nonsense. Most environmentalists are firmly opposed to the use of nukes. I don't believe Amory Lovins is a "gas-industry shill," and he opposes it on multiple grounds.
Then there biofuels--so far the evidence is that these are a net negative when it comes to dealing with climate change. In a world without oil and gas-based fertilizers, growing enough food for the world's population will be a big challenge. Diverting one seventh of the world's croplands to fuel production must be accompanied by deciding which seventh of the world's population will be eliminated along with their food supply. Even algae, from what I heard, is much less efficient than PV systems in the same area.
I also want to agree with those who object to trying to come up with a plan based entirely on technology, with an assumption that our lifestyles must remain untouched. Not only do other countries use much less power than we do--so did everybody a mere two centuries ago. Now the attitude is that we must continue to use huge quantities of electricity and travel thousands of miles at will, even if it means our descendents will be struggling for survival on a ruined world...which almost certainly will be the case, given the short time left to make drastic changes and the resistance on the part of the overwhelming majority to those changes. I'd like to note that I lived for 25 years without electricity, and did not consider myself deprived. Most of those years we had free gas from a well on our property, which made it easier--but the first couple years we made do with kerosene lamps, dipped water from the creek, kept food in a cooler...in other words, lived like all of our ancestors. But it isn't necessary that we return to those days if we rapidly convert our economy to electric transport, rail freight, solar and wind power on both a centralized and decentralized basis, and institute policies to reduce population slowly. Will we do this? In a word, no. A couple of people objected to the mention of "lack of political will" as though it weren't real--I can only assume they've never been involved in political activism. To think lack of political will isn't a real problem, you have to be pretty much a newborn baby when it comes to trying to effect change in policy.On The 14 wedges needed to stabilize emissions posted 1 year, 7 months ago 28 Responses

happens all the time

Remember the story of the ecoprotesters trying to defend redwoods in California who had pepper spray methodically applied to their eyes with Q-tips, while handcuffed, by police, who filmed this operation themselves?
Cops tasing already-cuffed victims is an old story. They can get away with this little surge of sadism, that's all. And perhaps it was also spurred by the uncomfortable truth of what the quoted protester was saying--this isn't just another thing people disagree about, this project is a threat to the younger generation's survival. Those who don't want to face up to the implications--i.e., we're going to have to drastically change our way of life and soon--get very angry with this message.On Protesters arrested outside N.C. coal plant posted 1 year, 8 months ago 7 Responses

the real question here

is whether it's fair to say "we" as a nation made this awful choice? Did we elect Bush in 2000 or 2004? No, but we did vote for him in numbers close enough to allow a moderate amount of fraud to push him over the line. Did we support the war in opinion polls? Until the war started, more Americans opposed than supported it, though only by a slight margin and once the war started support grew by 10% overnight. At this point opinion polls in the US and Iraq are quite heavily in favor of US withdrawal--yet that is taken as irrelevant. As Dick Cheney sneered the other night, "So?" It doesn't matter what the American people want--it's not as though the democracy we're trying to install in Iraq has spread here yet.
It's very late in the day. The problems of peak oil, overpopulation and global warming are at the red-light-flashing and siren-screaming stage now. But what we as a nation will do about them, apparently, is continue to do all we can to make them worse as rapidly as possible, because we have allowed this criminal gang to take over our government.
Soon we will have an election. Will the outcome affect any of this? Hard to say. We all want to believe Obama would be different,but he has made no strong promises. Every candidate with a really good energy plan--that is, every candidate who challenged the fossil fools--has already been eliminated by a mass media that is a part of the cabal.
What to do?
On The money we've spent on the five-year Iraq War could have shifted the world to renewables posted 1 year, 8 months ago 13 Responses

skewed science

The fact that Monsanto, the source of the overwhelming majority of the GMO in the world, runs a website that includes proponents is hardly evidence that GMOs are safe.  The issue is not really that we know they're dangerous for human or animal consumption; it's that they've never been adequately tested so there's no guarantee they're safe. There have in fact been a number of incidents showing evidence of risks. Monsanto has so thoroughly infested the FDA and USDA that we can't look to regulatory agencies to ensure safety. One reason Monsanto has fought so hard and so successfully against labelling is to protect against the possibility of enormous lawsuits if it's found, for example, that rBGH causes cancer 20 years later in kids who drank the milk. How could such a thing even be found, let alone proven, when we have no way of knowing who was exposed and who was not?
One thing rarely discussed is the most extreme example of the negligence of the GM industry--biopharming. Several years ago, there were 300 secret locations throughout the US in which GMO crops were being raised to produce valuable chemicals, primarily drugs, in the oils of crops. The true madness is that they were allowed to use food crops--corn and tobacco are the most familiar and convenient plants to use for this modification, so they are growing corn laced with powerful drugs, in places like Nebraska. Corn and other grains are grasses; they're wind-pollinated. the germ-plasm will mix with non-GMO strains miles away. There have been at least a couple of cases in which these plants contaminated food supplies via second-generation volunteers coming up in the fields the following year. In California, the rice growers association pushed to be allowed to uce rice for biopharming, despite the fact that it would render any rice grown in California unsellable outside the US. But what did they care? Rice for food is nowhere near as profitable per acre as rice used as a vehicle for drug production. But such decisions, made in the infinite wisdom of capitalist "rationality," threaten the US and world food supply. It's possible that there is a valid use for biopharming as a much cheaper way to produce valuable drugs. But this shocking lack of basic regulation shows the problem with genetic engineering today: we have a technology in which the basic science is still in its infancy yet the application is far advanced. It's easy to grab quick profits and use the nation as your guinea pigs, as long as the political system  enables you via a lack of responsible legislation and the corporate media enable you by keeping the public in the dark.On Farmers and processors organize against genetic contamination posted 1 year, 8 months ago 5 Responses

the heart of the problem

is the media. That is, corporate control of the mainstream media. Heart of which problem? Essentially ALL the serious problems facing the human race: not only the environmental problems we discuss here but also the fact that the US is no longer a democracy, is engaged in an outrageously unjust war on innocent Iraqis and perhaps about to engage in another, suicidal war on Iran; that US citizens are now generally referred to as "consumers" and getting steadily more ignorant of world or national affairs; the fact that the US, and its citizens, are deeply in debt and going deeper daily...
Why can't we solve any of these problems? because we can't even talk about them, as a nation, as long as this HOSTILE ENTITY, the corporation, has control of the nervous system of our body politic, our means of communication, which is the airwaves and pages of newspapers and magazines. We can't point the finger at actual culprits because they are ADVERTISERS. Universities each have a protected corporation or industry that the professors are not allowed to criticise--whichever one is the key local polluter. They give a lot of money to the local college to insure silence.
At a time when human survival is at stake, we are unable to make rational decisions because we have handed over control to the mechanical "persons" we created. Corporations can't think except via the brains of their managers, can't feel at all, and will not care if they cease to exist when the human race does--because they were never alive and able to care at all. People make the mistake of equating them with human persons, eg referring to "good" and "bad" corporations--but they are in no way similar to human beings. They are machines, designed to make profits, and they will keep on doing that until the planet and all its creatures die if we don't assert control over them. Some of these corporations are media corporations, and they are the means of blocking us from discussing and adopting effective solutions.On Mainstream journalism on green issues tends to bash do-gooders and give the PTB a pass posted 1 year, 8 months ago 6 Responses

trolls are like insect pests

And the thing is, they can't win the argument on the merits, but winning the argument is not the objective. They've got us arguing with them instead of advancing the discussion about the most critical problem of our time. We need to stop falling for this. I'm not in favor of banning people or posts, but will take to scrolling quickly past jabailo's posts without wasting my time reading them, likewise with his aliases as I discover them.On Do Big Oil and Big Tobacco share a similar smokescreen? posted 1 year, 8 months ago 26 Responses

expansion of research, please

I was excited to see this question, because I was thinking about asking Umbra this very question--only my interest is not which "green" detergent is best at getting stains out, but which is acceptable to use with a recycled-greywater system. I plan to collect rainwater for washing at the house we are about to build, and run all the greywater through a filter, then on to a mini pond for clarification, and then use it in my garden. Which laundry and dish detergents (and shampoos and hand soaps) are okay for that?
I decided it was time to start experimenting and I tried Ecover Ultra. I used half the recommended amount--as is my usual practice--and it got the clothes clean enough but the scent is horrible, worse than conventional brands. It's supposed to be lavender, which should be pleasant, but citrus is also listed in the ingredients--I suspect the combination is unfortunate. I will cut the dose even more to try to reduce the offensive smell, thus it will take a while to use up, but then I will try the brand Umbra recommends.On A review of six green laundry detergents posted 1 year, 8 months ago 21 Responses

other than Cavendish

I spent the summer of 2003 in Ecuador, and pigged out the whole time on fruit and juice, which were abundant, varied and cheap. A tall glass of frshly squeezed juice, from "pina"--pineapples--or mora--blackberries, my favorite--or other fruits, was fifty cents. I bought fruit in the farmers' markets--I could usually get pineapples two for a buck, and there were two kinds--the ones we know, and another kind which were the same only small at one end. There were two kinds of papaya, the ones we see and some shaped like footballs and a big bigger. There were three or four kinds of banana--the ones we know, big green ones, some medium-size red ones, and some small yellow ones. After trying them all, I stuck to the little yellow ones the rest of the time I was there. There were also lots of fruits we never see--I especially remember the tree tomatoes, looking like red eggs and tasting like a cross between tomatoes and fruit--they weren't too good without sugar but made a healthful drink apparently.On Umbra on organic bananas posted 1 year, 9 months ago 22 Responses

what about LED's?

I keep hearing that LED lightbulbs are to CFL's what CFL's are to incandescents, in terms of longevity and energy efficiency, plus they contain no mercury, and I hear that they'll be available soon (I see them now in flashlights). Shouldn't we be trying to get people to switch directly to them rather than CFL's then?
I think what was meant about renewables not shutting down coal plants is that without a major change in policy, renewables are going to increase at a slow pace, and without an education campaign people are likely to just use more power, sucking up what the renewables add without reducing use from dirty power. I think No New Coal is a simple and sensible provision, and later we can work to shut down the oldest and dirtiest coal plants.
As for Easterbunny's points, it seems to me it may well be true that in his/her case, the incandescents are better--but it's a rare case, at least in the US. Perhaps in Canada this issue is worth looking at, but for 99.5% of us in the US, we don't get our power from renewables, or we cool our houses as much as we heat them, or both.On Have you been naughty with your light bulbs? You need some good old command and control. posted 1 year, 9 months ago 33 Responses

but once it's settled...

Once US carbon policy seems clearer, I hope we won't have a resurgence in loans for coal plants. The above mentions the question of whether carbon allowances will be auctioned or handed out free. Well, excuse me but take a look at our current Congress. Do you think they'll refuse their extremely good friends in the power companies who want free permits? Nah. Their extremely good friends will make it well worth their while to vote in favor of continued cheap pollution.
But maybe further evidence of the dire seriousness of climate change will change the equation by then, and further demonstration of the safer alternatives. I hope so.On More bad news for coal as big banks reconsider financing posted 1 year, 9 months ago 3 Responses

rakes and snakes

I think Steve missed the point. It's not that scientists are risking their careers by speaking out without necessarily having the political savvy to do it right; it's that the same extreme urgency that impels them to speak out makes it necessary that they not misstep and have their efforts backfire. There are definitely still well-funded interest groups, with all manner of expertise at their disposal, ready to distort their words or discredit them. It helps to have training, to learn how to make statements that can't be misrepresented.On Here's hoping newly politically active scientists don't step on rakes posted 1 year, 10 months ago 7 Responses

flying pigs and Santa Claus

This is in response to sfj4976, who asks whether this has to be a bad thing. After all (s)he asks, would it be so bad if everyone burns more coal, perhaps in liquid form, as long as all of it's sequestered, and it isn't mined by mountaintop removal, and the miners are union, and somehow the extra CO2 in the resultant fuel is also captured, and the water below the mines and plants is kept from pollution, and 120,000 pound coal trucks are not killing people on narrow roads...while we're assuming all that, why don't we just assume a magical energy source to replace coal? Are you an economist, by any chance? Nobody wields the big assumptions like an economist...
I live in WV too, and the coal pushers are trying to tell us they'll sequester all the CO2 somehow someday. But they are not telling us they'll get the coal from deep mines. They're telling us they'll up mountaintop removal by at least 20% and maybe up to double. If you don't know what MTR is, check out www.ohvec.org to look at the pretty pictures.On Cheap coal and $100 oil posted 1 year, 10 months ago 13 Responses

wild speculation and grammatical correction

Well, you shot down all the explanations for Bushco intransigence that immediately occur. So here are two wild ones:
It's already too late to prevent cataclysmic change and the well-informed at the apex of the world's most powerful government know it. The overwhelming majority will die. These guys have plans for a domed enclave, or a city in orbit, in which they and their chosen will survive. They need more money to build it.
I know, pretty far-fetched. Here's another, suggested by the part about how the US delegate actually opposed efforts to reduce emissions on the part of other countries: the US government has been taken over by lizard-like aliens and they want to anti-terraform the Earth to better resemble their hotter, stormier homeworld. In addition to the fact that all the actions of the Bush administartion are consonant with efforts to increase the greenhouse effect as fast as possible, my other evidence for this theory is Dick Cheney. Do you believe that guy is human? I want a DNA test.
All right, now for the grammar issue. It isn't correct to say "corporations who..." It should be "corporations which". But this issue goes way beyond grammar. The author's (typically) erroneous worldview is revealed elsewhere in the piece: "the US" is said to want or say things; and then the word "we" is used to talk about what the criminal representing the Bush administration has done. None of us was consulted, or ever will be--we are not responsible for what these people do. We are responsible for trying to put a stop to it, but many of us have worked for years to get them impeached, to get investigations of their many crimes, to contact "our" representatives in Washington to get responsible policy--all to no avail. Governments are not people, and we need not identify with what is done by representatives of the US government.
Similar muddy language and thinking surround corporations. Corporations are not people, and they are not LIKE people--they are like machines. There are no "good" or "bad" corporations, and they cannot be reformed. They are machines for making money, and if we tolerate their continued existence at all we must get them under human control, not attempt to use moral suasion on them. That would be about as effective as trying to reason with your car. True, statements are made "by corporations"--what does that mean? If a corporation states that it loves forests, for example, it means two things: that the people in the PR department decided it would help the corporate image best if they said this in these words---and ususally, it means that the corporation is currently raping forests.
Perhaps the greatest problem hampering human attempts to deal with our mounting crises is our inability to make collective decisions well. It would help to at least think about this more clearly.On Professor Andrew Light laments the unnecessary line in the sand the U.S. has drawn in Bali posted 1 year, 11 months ago 13 Responses

"the coal industry is under seige"

That was the comment of Bill Raney, who represents the WV Coal Assn, at the PEA hearing. I am heartened, actually, by the frantic cheerleading going on right now among those hoping to profit from coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants. For all Herholdt's studied ignorance, these guys can see the long shadow on the wall--they know carbon taxes or trading permits or a ban on any plants not using CCS--maybe any new coal plants, period--is coming. They're hoping to get subsidies pushed through so they can build a couple of these plants quickety-quick, and then get them grandfathered in. Someone from Harris Interactive has been offering $100 to collect opinions from "opinion leaders" on energy issues in WV--I suspect they were hired by a PR outfit planning a campaign and trying to figure out how to neutralize activists. And yes, there are green activists in WV--all too few of us but we're here and we're not shutting up.On The backlash against coal has not made it to the halls of power in WV posted 1 year, 11 months ago 5 Responses

tax is a three letter word

I don't understand the complexities of trade versus tax--I've heard there are big problems with cap-and-trade, though. And I've seen the observation that EU has had cap-and-trade for some time and their emissions have gone up.
So a tax might be better--and it seems to me it needn't be so hard to sell as long as we emphasize that it REPLACES INCOME TAX.On A carbon tax isn't the only solution posted 1 year, 11 months ago 6 Responses

no compromise

Gotta disagree with Tasermons partner. S/he says they put "increased taxes" in to help pay for the bill, and it would be worth sacrificing that to get a bill through. Seems to me that the "tax increase" is really a redirection of tax BREAKS for those struggling, marginal little companies like ExxonMobileTexacoChevronShell, to pay for subsidies for the new, clean energy sources, the ones we desperately need to ramp up production of as fast as we can (wind, solar,tidal--and counterproductively, ethanol). No, we should NOT compromise on the most important provision in the bill--we have to accept the likelihood that even if the bill gets through the Senate, if it isn't a huge giveaway to the oil, coal and nuclear corporations, Bush will veto it. He doesn't need a good reason and he doesn't have to worry about reelection. But many of those Republican senators do. Let them go on record filbustering and blustering to preserve record profits for huge oil companies while their constituents are crying about gas prices. We may have to wait another year or two to get an actual bill passed--but let's get a GOOD bill, one that would actually solve problems, through Congress even if Bush vetoes it, rather than another giveaway that will actually worsen global warming, passed now. The world's governments are beginning negotiations in Bali for climate accords that are the only hope of rescuing this planet short of something that kills off most humans (plague or war). Everyone is looking to the US, to see if we're ready to finally come aboard and work constructively with the rest of the world to cut emissions. They understand that we're saddled with the Bush creature for another year. It's more important to pass a decent bill that he vetoes, than a POS that goes through and shows that the US is still holding out against reality.On Landmark energy bill stalls in the Senate posted 1 year, 11 months ago 14 Responses

investing in electric

I would comment much more often if I didn't have to get geek help to access the actual comment box...likewise, my lack of technical expertise and scientific savvy is a reason for me to read much and comment little on this site.
Nonetheless, I want to make two comments. First, I'm with Greta--not that a sarcastic and overly personal tone will stop me from reading the commentary, but it's a better and more credible post if the poster manages to restrain him/herself from that chaff.
More importantly, I have a question. Given that electric engines are much more efficient than internal combustion ones--I read something today that said by a factor of five--wouldn't it make sense to drop all of this as quickly as possible to invest in a transition to an all-electric transportation system? Yes, we would still have the pollution produced by generating the electricity, but if it's one fifth the total, this has got to still be a major improvement.
It being that I live in West Virginia, my hackles rise at any hint of a suggestion that we should burn more coal--currently half of all electricity in the US is produced by burning coal. But there is a big push right now to subsidize and build coal-to-liquids plants for vehicles--surely the worst of all "solutions." And there are a lot o ways to generate electricity. I envision parking lots at workplaces and shopping centers and hospitals covered with a roof that not only protects the cars from the elements but recharges them all via solar panels.
Why shouldn't we convert as rapidly as possible to electric transportation systems instead of arguing the merits of various liquid fuels?
Thanks,
MaryOn The global nature of global warming posted 1 year, 12 months ago 70 Responses

The cost of coal

Y'all are forgetting a few things. Why did the province of Ontario decide to SHUT DOWN existing coal-fired plants? Because they calculated that the healthcare costs from running those plants were so high that they'd save money without using these already built plants. This is without taking into account the costs of mining, because, unfortunately, if Ontario had a coal mining economy it would have politically impossible to move away from coal no matter what the costs. Yet, as a resident of West Virginia, I can tell you that the costs of mining are very high, if a bit hard to measure. Thousands of acres of some of the most biologically diverse forests in the world are razed so the mountaintops can be thrown into the valleys, the coal removed and a hasty reclamation performed. In essense, thousands of acres per mine are used up for the coal and tossed aside like a used tissue. Then the coal is washed, and the handiest way to do this involves ugly unnatural settling ponds, holding billions of gallons of black or aqua or grey sludge, nestled among the remaining peaks... and sometimes leaking into water supplies.
Then the coal must be transported. The coal industry is powerful, so the problem that overloaded trucks were killing too many people on narrow mountain roads was solved by raising the weight limit for coal only, so the trucks would no longer be "overloaded." It will cost taxpayers billions in extra repairs of roads or bridges.
Ontario did not have to considerany of those costs--only the costs of burning the coal, in terms of asthma and emphysema and perhaps mercury poisoning. I doubt if they considered global climate change, but after all, the worst that will do is render our planet uninhabitable.
Sorry to go on so much, but when people say coal is cheap, they mean they have gotten away with paying a small fraction of the costs, and arranging for others to pay most of the cost.On Don't believe the power company hype about coal's low price posted 2 years, 1 month ago 18 Responses

a different perspective

I don't work in Pennsylvania anymore, so I can be the one to say it: McGinty sure did have a lot to do with pushing the Alternative Energy Portfolio bill through and it took some pushing--since most of the environmentalists in the state were trying to stop it. Why? Because too many dirty technologies were allowed in as "alternative", which was the word they used when they decided to de-emphasize RENEWABLE energy in favor of technologies that would better please the coal industry. A primary beneficiary was coal waste power plants, which burn the "gob," or waste coal left over from years when there were less effective methods of screening coal. Communities are told that these plants will get rid of the huge mountains of dirty gob they've looked at for decades, which leach acids into streams and sometimes catch fire. They are not told that two-thirds of the volume of the gob that goes into these plants come right back as waste ash, since the stuff is poor in BTU's and since they add a lot of lime. They're told that the plants are marvellous new technology that will hardly pollute the air compared to the myriad filthy old plants in the area--and are not told that ANY new plant, by law, must be much cleaner, and that nobody is proposing closing any dirty old plants, only adding new, less-dirty ones. McGinty spends a lot of time dancing around waving green ribbons and singing gay songs. I'm disappointed that Grist is also giving her a platform.  I hope we can prevent the spread of her kind of dishonest "environmentalism" into West Virginia.On An interview with Kathleen McGinty, Pennsylvania's green go-getter posted 3 years, 11 months ago 2 Responses