by Ted Nace

Posted 9 months, 1 week ago Last week the coal lobbying group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity held a press conference to announce a study of the employment and other economic benefits of building new coal plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

The plan, developed by Denver-based BBC Research and Consulting, looks at the effects of building 38, 122, or 188 new coal plants, each with 90 percent CCS.

Since “jobs” and “stimulus” are the watchwords these days in Washington, ACCCE decided to emphasize the “6.9 million total job-years of labor” that would be created by building, fueling, and operating these… Read More

Posted 10 months ago "Often when I'm on TV, they'll ask what are the three most important things for people to do [to stop global warming]. I know they want me to say that people should change their light bulbs. I say the number one thing is to organize politically; number two, do some political organizing; number three, get together with your neighbors and organize; and then if you have energy left over from all of that, change the light bulb."

-- writer and activist Bill McKibben Read More

Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago The estimable Arnold & Porter law firm has released a comprehensive online directory of climate change cases. Don't be deceived by the simplicity of the opening page. Just click on "Case Index" at the bottom of the opening page, which opens up a 35-page directory. Fantastic! Read More

Posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago Dear Mr. Branson:

On Feb. 9, 2007, you and Al Gore announced the Virgin Earth Challenge at a London press conference:

The Virgin Earth Challenge is a prize of $25 million for whoever can demonstrate to the judges' satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth's climate.

It was announced that the panel of judges would consist of Richard Branson, Al Gore, Crispin Tickell, James Hansen, James Lovelock, and Tim Flannery.

I'm sure that when you dreamed up the prize, you… Read More

Posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago The press coverage of the Tennessee sludge spill has been nothing short of astonishing. Barely a week has passed since the accident and already a Google search for the phrase Tennessee spill produces 2,280,000 results!

Compare that to 1,740,000 for Three Mile Island and 708,000 for Exxon Valdez. In little more than a week, this has become one of the biggest environmental stories in recent decades.

Obviously, the naked fact of being the biggest coal spill in history (100 times larger than the Valdez spill) is reason itself for the intensity of the coverage. But… Read More

Posted 11 months ago The U.S. coal-fired power plant fleet is filled with geezers. Out of 1,522 existing generating units, 600 were running during the Nixon-Kennedy debates. Nearly 10 percent were built in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

Still, it would be hard to find a coal plant that has seen more history than the Capitol Power Plant in Washington, D.C. It was commissioned by an act of Congress in 1904 and completed in 1910. That year, Teddy Roosevelt was the first U.S. President to ride in an airplane. The plant was eight… Read More

Posted 1 year ago A generation before David Brower started raising hell at the Sierra Club, a similarly militant scientist named Victor Ernest Shelford organized the Ecological Society of America, becoming its first president in 1916. Shelford stepped down from that position when the Ecological Society of America shied away from taking controversial stands. With a small group of other activist scientists, he formed the Committee for the Preservation of Natural Conditions (1917) and later the Ecologists Union (1946) with the objective of taking "direct action" to protect threatened areas.

For Shelford's Ecologists Union, "direct action" meant buying threatened areas. The approach proved wildly… Read More

Posted 1 year ago "Market failure" is one cause of environmental problems, but "democracy failure" is even worse.

Russia and China aren't the only examples. It also happens closer to home, as illustrated by last week's decision by California's Humboldt County to abandon Measure T, a local law banning non-local corporate money from local elections.

For years Humboldt County, like many rural counties in lumber or mining areas, was dominated by a single corporation -- Pacific Lumber, a subsidiary of Texas-based Maxxam, Inc.

For local voters, the last straw came when Maxxam spent several hundred thousand dollars on a recall initiative against District… Read More

Posted 1 year ago No position under the next administration will be more important for the economy, the environment, and national security than energy secretary. And no one fits the position as perfectly as Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Schmidt recently told the New York Times that he's not interested in the role of "chief technology officer" in an Obama administration.

But that's the wrong spot for Schmidt, a big waste of his administrative talents. Give it to some other geek. Schmidt should run energy. That's a job with real power, and it's absolutely vital that under Obama the energy secretary grasp the nature… Read More

Posted 1 year ago The anti-coal movement has a lot to celebrate right now. Of the 151 coal plants on the drawing boards as of the May 2007 report by the Energy Department, 82 have now been abandoned, blocked, or placed on hold. In September, Juliette Jowitt of the UK's Manchester Guardian wrote:

In a few years, the backlash against coal power in America has become the country's biggest-ever environmental campaign, transforming the nation's awareness of climate change and inspiring political leaders to take firmer action after years of doubt and delay. Plants have been defeated in at least 30 of… Read More