Current energy paradigm: Energy providers > Grid > Energy users
How do we scale existing and green technologies UP to satsify this paradigm? We don't.
Alternative energy paradigm: Grid owners/managers > Grid <-> Distributed Energy user/providers
Every property owner (residential, commercial, governmental) can host a SMALL plug-and-play energy generator (solar panel, wind turbine, etc.) whose energy is output through a standard household electrical plug to feed the Grid. This is a proven available technology. Require all property owners (homeowners, landlords, etc.) to install such a device with a minimum Kw output and give them a tax credit for doing it. Now energy provision has been scaled down and distributed out. Each property owner is responsible for maintaining their respective system and the costs for doing this are tax deductible. Energy production is tied to property ownership regardless of whether the property is developed/undeveloped, private, commercial, government-owned,etc.
Grid managers monitor the results. Not enough energy? Up the requirements in equipment or Kw output --- again with tax credits and deductions. Remonitor. Make this an ongoing process to manage energy needs
The stimulus to the distributed plug-and-play technology product/service sector pushes R&D, new products and services, new jobs, and flows throught to the local, regional, and national economies.
Come on, Californians. Are we the Land of the Fruit & the Nuts or what? Are we gonna stand around swooning while Lawmakers & Politicians bicker & squabble, tinker & Twitter & hi-jack the Golden State back to the Stone Age?
Take a look @ this site: www.commonsense4ca.org. Tell them what you think. At least resolve to solve the budget crisis in a fair & sensible manner. Vote early & often.I, 4 1, am kinda tired of CA Apologists Inside the Beltway. CA is not just Hollywood Royalty & 90210, sun & silicone. We gotta lotta assets, resources & infrastructure to work with . . . if decision-makers could get beyond their own personal agenda & parochial bias.
I know what a mess bio-fuel manufacture made in other states. Saw that on my roadtrip last summer. CA's got an abundance of rooftops & sunshine. Put 'em together & whadda ya' got? A statewide solar array ready-made to take 1 state off the grid. No additional encroachment into wildlife habitat. No huge new infrastructure investment. Wind & solar farms are a redundancy we can't afford. Plus manufacture & sale of solar panels = Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. My. That was easy.
CA's gotta lotta car & a lotta outta work auto sales personnel. What with dealerships closing & all. They could be employed mining DMV databases, searching for the oldest cars in the fleet which are eons old & powered by old, old school technology. CA has car crush programs. Charities are begging for dontated cars. Those Old Smokers & Gross Polluters can be replaced with newer used cars or new cars from an inventory that must be given away anyway. Gear up fleet turnover. Create green jobs. Presently common wisdom is jobs, jobs, jobs, not location, location & location. If we can force the turnover of the TV fleet from analog to digital, we can facilitate the turnover of the truck & auto fleet.
USC (go Trojans) is developing a bionic eye to make the blind see again. Do you think the bionic eye will give lawmakers & decision makers new insight? Whatever. Maybe research could focus on battery operated residences. They said rock n rock was a fad. They said the PC was for geeks & gearheads. They said Who wants a Tweet from a Twitter? & yet Twitter is facilitating revolution in Iran. Stranger things than battery operated homes have happened if we just focus & concentrate.
Heretofore, I had taken as an article of faith that CA Curbside Recycling is indeed removing reuseable resources & materials from the wastestream. Given the many, many betrayals of public trust lately revealed, perhaps I shouldn't assume . . . If our junk is merely being shipped off to China or some 3rd World Banana Republic, we better reform recycling cause idea is fine. CA better work out reciprocal arrangements with industries in other states that do the heavy lifting in the recycling arena. Then all our resources, plastic & paper, metal & glass can be accounted for & we aren't wasting anything. Not rocket science.
CA has an emissions trading program developed to comply with federal clean air standards. Presently the program only address smog forming emissions. Wouldn't take much to tweak that model into a national Carbon Cap & Trade Program. CA's budget shortfall & crisis of credit are not derivative of environmental sensibilities. Global Climate Change is real. It's now. & it's expensive to fix. CA's got the model. It's not brain surgery.
I know . . . I'm just a dog. Oughta shut up & mind my own bidness. Oughta quit digging in Mymi's garden too. As long as there's a squirrel or a cat out there, that ain't gonna happen. Besides what's good for humans is good for dogs & other critters. What's good for GM is good for CA is good for the USA. OpalK9 OTJ
Yap yap yap - the talking heads.
Meanwhile, we NEED health care solutions. We are not taking proper care of ourselves. We HAVE TO educate all of our children so much better than this. Our children, for goodness sake! And WE CAN invent and use new energy solutions. We could actually live to see things greener and cleaner.
There is no chance that Washington will do what we need them to do. We knew that. That is why we elected this new President -- he wants to speak for us. He wants to hear our voices.
President Obama has presented his 10 year budget that plans to invest in Health Care, Education and Energy now, on the road to Economic Recovery and to a future that we all want to live in.
We KNOW that is the right thing to do right now in this country. Whatever Congress people and media heads have to say, there is no FUTURE without planning for and investing in it. This is our chance to create the future we want to see.
"We know this fight won't be easy. But important battles never are. Together, we have the opportunity to shape our country's future. We believed in the power of people to win an improbable election victory. And we believe in the power of people to drown out the cynics and entrenched interests in Washington to bring lasting, meaningful change we can all be proud we played a role in." -- David Plouffe
So let's get busy. (1) Sign the Pledge online. http://my.barackobama.com/pledgeproject (2) Get all of your friends and contacts to Sigh the Pledge online. (3) Host a Canvass Party on Saturday, 3/21. Engage your friends & neighbors. http://my.barackobama.com/pledgecanvass (4) Go out & Canvass on Saturday 3/21. Find an event and Show up.
Make our voices heard.
Yes We Can!
Stephen Views the News March 5, 2009
http://stephenviewsthenews.blogspot.com/
* Sitting Shiva – This is not a reference to one of the supreme Hindu gods, often depicted meditating in the lotus position. The term is used in the context of Jewish tradition. It denotes a one week period of grief and mourning following the burial of a deceased, when family members gather in one place and receive visitors. I thought of this tradition as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held its annual coven in Washington D.C. last week. What is now the heart, core and soul of the Republican Party gathered to… well, I am not sure. Some of the leading speakers included Ann Coulter, Joe the Plumber and the whining star of the gathering, Rush Limbaugh, spokes model for the Republican/Conservative movement in America. The CPAC attendees desperately cling to an ideology launched in the Ronald Regan years that ultimately imploded during the George W. Bush years. The most recent incarnation of conservatism has been abandoned by the vast majority of the American people. The abandonment was not capricious. It earned its demise by yielding utter and complete failure. Let me count the ways:
Anti-unionism, unregulated free markets, deficit spending stapled to tax cuts for the wealthy, denial of science, ignorance of the needs of a deteriorating infrastructure, unconstitutional merging of church and state, abandonment of the needy and less fortunate in our society, policies that encourage greed and corruption, encouragement of a neocon philosophy that preaches preemptive war and imperialism and the promulgation that health care is a privilege, not a right. This is by far a complete list. I am confident that history will write a more comprehensive account of this movement that we now mourn and which has left us with considerable grief and bereavement.
How wide is the disconnect between CPAC ideologues and Main Street America? The Republican response to President Obama’s address to congress is telling. The person chosen to present the “other side” was Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Frank Rich, writing for the NY Times, made the following observation: “But like all zealots, Jindal is oblivious to how non-zealots see him. Pleading “principle,” he has actually turned down some $100 million in stimulus money for Louisiana. And, as he proudly explained on “Meet the Press”, he can’t wait to be judged on “the results” of his heroic frugality. The state of Louisiana ranks fourth in children living below the poverty line and 46th in high school graduation rates. The well-being of the majority of Americans was never a consideration of Reagan or Bush or Bush. The well-being of the “royalty” of society was the premise and the policy. The ultimate widespread failure of the policies is apparent to almost anyone not part of the CPAC clique. Governor Jindal, you are far from being a hero AND you do not walk among heroes.
* The Guiding Light of hypocrisy ~ I was against it before I did it even though I am against it – Few can forget the homophobic Colorado mega-church pastor Ted Haggart resigning in disgrace when it was revealed that he was having a homosexual affair. It is even easier to remember vocally anti-gay Idaho Senator Larry Craig attempting to drop his Fruit of the Looms in a public restroom. It should come as no surprise that a recent study found that conservative states in the union, the Red states that want to ban the sale of vibrators, dildos and sexually explicit material, have a higher incidence of visiting pornography sites on the internet than the citizens of the heathen Blue states. “Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds… Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election.” I have often wondered how the holy rollers know what I should not be doing in the privacy of my own home. They certainly cannot be accused of not doing their homework. Now, just shut up and take a cold shower!
* Cynics of Green Energy ~ naysayers say no more – If anyone still believes that green energy solutions are impractical, unaffordable or unrealistic the prophets of profitability, also known as the Mafia, have spoken. “Italian police… arrested mobsters, businessmen and local politicians who allegedly used corrupt practices and bribes to gain control of a project to build wind farms in Sicily… Police in Trapani said the local Mafia bribed city officials in nearby Mazara del Vallo so the town would invest in wind farms to produce energy.” When the Mafia assumes the roll of lobbyist it is pretty certain that the business venture makes cents (sic). We are not talking about pie-in-the-sky idealists. Where is America’s own Al Capone when we need him?
* Drug efficacy ~ serious side effects – Last week, and on many previous occasions, I have noted evidence of congressman selling their vote to special interests. This week we learn about another hooker in pinstripes and silk cravat posing as a U.S. Senator. “The pharmaceutical industry that long has benefited from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch´s (R-UT) legislative efforts has directed large sums of money to a charity he helped found - and still raises money for - while also hiring the Republican lawmaker's son as a lobbyist.” This week our government begins exploring ways to reduce the outrageous cost of health care in America. Unless the decision makers such as Hatch are publicly and broadly exposed for their financially symbiotic relationship with the special interests that play a significant role in the high cost of health care, the American healthcare system and the economy will remain on life support. Ostensibly, Hatch represents the citizens of Utah. Among his extra-state constituents are pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Schering-Plough Corp., Eli Lilly and Co., Barr Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca Pharm LP, and Sepracor. Other Hatch “constituents” include medical equipment suppliers and health care providers. I suggest that the next time you want to write a letter to your congressman, drop it off at your pharmacy. It will get there faster.
* Taxpayers ambushed ~ the cavalry is coming – It was announced this week that the Obama administration will overhaul how government contracts are awarded that would save about $40 billion dollars a year. The new rules “would make it more difficult for contractors to bilk taxpayers and make some half-trillion dollars in federal contracts each year more accessible to independent contractors.” This would be a refreshing change to no bid, no oversight contracts. Such policy reached its nadir in Iraq where billions of U.S. dollars were funneled through insider private no-bid contractors – much of it unaccounted for, much of it wasted on projects never completed or completed projects that are unsafe and in disrepair. To complete the picture, many of these same private contractors are U.S. companies that set up off-shore corporations to avoid paying U.S. taxes. If Obama can have an impact on what we now know has been a pervasive breakdown in our federal government, my November vote will have been well cast.
* We can have a lead role in oversight ~ the audition is now – “For every foreclosure in a neighborhood, home values drop by an estimated 1%. Credit Suisse says that if judges have the ability to write down mortgages, it will stem the tide of foreclosures by 20% and it won't cost the taxpayers a single dime… President Obama says that allowing bankruptcy judges to write down mortgages is an important part of his plan to arrest the downward spiral of the foreclosure crisis.” HOWEVER, corporation-favoring Republican and Democratic members of Congress and bank lobbyists are trying to stop that. The banks want to unload their bad loans on taxpayers. We should not let this happen. The website Firedoglake.com is providing a petition to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanding that bankruptcy judges be allowed to write down mortgages. Pelosi and congress gave in to the banks and their lobbyists in 2007 when this idea was first proposed. If more and more citizens voice their opposition to “Congress for Sale” there is some chance that our democratic process will avoid total bankruptcy. If we do nothing, then nothing is what will be accomplished. Below is the comment I made on the petition that I signed:
It is beyond time that citizens take back our government - a government that our elected representatives sold to the highest bidders. If you refuse to represent the interests of the American people then we will work to ensure that you experience the unemployment line. Yes - that long line that your sellout to special interests helped create. Congress is draped in disgrace and the American people are suffering the consequences. Perhaps it is poetic justice since we elected you. Shame on all of us!
* Being our own lobbyists - President Barack Obama said: "the special interests and lobbyists ... I know they're gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I." One of the tasks and great challenges that Obama is taking on is health care reform. The special interests and lobbyists present major opposition and will attempt to influence the Obama administration and congress. One of the ways that the American people’s interests and voices can be heard on health care reform is through petition. Congress must know that we are paying attention and have expectations. MoveOn.org is providing a petition that will be sent to your representative and senators. Over 200,000 concerned citizens have already signed the petition. If you are concerned about the state of your own health care, the future health care of your children as well as the tremendous drain that the current system has on our economy, you may want to add your name. Consumers Union provides a similar petition.
* It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.” David Brin
“Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today” Mahatma Gandhi
The infrastructure investment piece of the economic plan should result in a 21st century transportation system and not just a repaired and refurbished 1950s system. Yes, evaluate the safety of our bridges and levies, repair the unsafe ones nationwide, but for domestic transportation, develop a two-part solution that will consist of (1) a new MAGLEV train system along the high use corridors of the nation, and (2) highway repairs in states that will not be included in the first phases of the train system.
One might suggest phase one routes down the eastern corridor (Boston – Mobile), one down the western corridor (Seattle – Phoenix), and one down the central corridor (Minneapolis – Houston). Phase two routes might link the original routes with east – west routes (NYC - Chicago, Dallas - Phoenix).
At present, there are mature high-speed MAGLEV systems running in Germany, Japan, China, and Korea. Systems are planned or have already been proposed for the U.K., India, Venezuela, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and the Netherlands. Furthermore, Japan, China, and Germany have plans to expand their existing systems.
High-speed MAGLEVs are expensive to build, but they are less expensive to operate and maintain than traditional high-speed trains, planes or even intercity buses! Additionally, MAGLEV systems provide ultra-high levels of operational reliability and introduce little noise and zero air pollution in urban settings. Furthermore, as maglev systems are deployed, experts expect construction costs to drop as new construction methods are innovated along with economies of scale, allowing the national system to become and remain profitable within several years.
In our country, this technology will be basically a new industry with new careers and new high paying employment opportunities. This solution will provide nationwide employment opportunities immediately through research, design, engineering, and construction. Building train cars, the construction of vehicle guide ways, and master control systems to operate a Maglev railway will create thousands of jobs. New employment opportunities will emerge in high-tech, manufacturing and construction. Some of the new industries that will grow to support required new technologies include electromagnetic or electrodynamic suspension technologies, stabilized permanent magnet suspension, propulsion, guidance, evacuated tube applications, development of new alloys. New manufacturing techniques will be required, and the option for a new future in power generation will be upon us.
Envision new contracts awarded for building passenger cars, GM contracted to supply train car interiors, and lots of demand for American steel. There would obviously be a large increase in local employment in corridors as construction begins, providing opportunities through the spawning of new supportive industries, like construction of Park-and-Ride lots, shops and businesses at train stations, etc.
The American MAGLEV system should be powered by a three-tier power structure consisting of a front line of regional hydrogen fuel cell power stations, complimented by solar array power grids (both of these energy technologies have already been successfully implemented in our nation). The national electricity grid would provide backup for these new power sources. Imagine the employment opportunities that will be generated through the expansion and implementation of the two new clean energy initiatives.
We should use our collective imagination and American ingenuity to leap frog into a 21st century national transportation infrastructure. An interstate magnetic levitation (MAGLEV) rail system might be the answer.
Taking a risk here... posting a quick update to my previous post. I added what I hope are some more convincing reasons. However, the post can now be found here:
One Colorado Commuter's Experience
Most people have never heard of an electric motorcycle, but you’ll find one in the parking lot of the Gaiam Real Goods offices in Broomfield, Colorado. Following a dream, Real Goods Renewable Energy Technician Jeff Blamey joined Gaiam in December 2006 and began to convert a gasoline-powered motorcycle to run on electric wall current for his commute to work.
He found the perfect motorcycle on eBay (a 1984 Honda VF 500), devoured a book on electric motorcycles, and spent four months designing the conversion on his computer.
Once the parts were assembled, it took Blamey a month to convert the bike. He removed the engine, transmission, radiator and fan; cut and welded metal trays for the first, second and third batteries; made saddlebag mounts for the fourth and fifth batteries; and mounted the PMG 132 motor and Alltrax controller he bought from Electric Motor Sports in Oakland, California.
According to Blamey’s calculations, his motorcycle commute costs him less than $.10 per day for eight miles, as opposed to $.75 by car or $.53 by gas-powered motorcycle. He estimates the cost of conversion, including the motorcycle, at around $3,000 and figures the batteries could last as long as five years, with replacement packs of six batteries costing around $450.
I'm happy to report that Granny Gobama has decided to stay in Ohio through the election. She already sent her request to California for her absentee ballot and has changed her flight home. The project that we launched together - 85andchange.com - has been more popular than we could have imagined and after all our effort, we could not imagine being apart on Election Day. So my grandmother will be moving over to my house to stay for a few weeks.
Together we will focus more energy on her blog, and try to get her out to even more events. This will also allow her to have further face-to-face conversations with some of her older friends here in Ohio and tell them again why she is supporting Barack Obama. Maybe... just maybe... she'll be able to convince another voter, as she was able to convince her Florida voting Son!
Go Obama!!
Why is John McCain so focused on Nuclear energy? Sure Barack has also stated that he is interested in it, but the Rocky Mountain Institute has a 50 page pdf explaining it isn't economically viable. (Long lead time, expensive overruns, cost to consumer ) They also contribute to nuclear proliferation as we are seeing in Iran.
By doing so many promo's / ads with McCain in a nuclear plant, McCain is saying that he supports an industry that isn't economically viable outside of big government and is bad for homeland security.
Its a good example of McCain being in the pocket of lobbyists.
Sources: Thomas Friedman, Rocky Mountain Institute
John McCain is just talk when it comes to the environment and climate change. The Democrats have tried 8 times to get tax credit extensions for wind and solar project investments; McCain has not showed up once. One of the larger projects in Phoenix AZ, so his own state would benefit. If you are interested go to interview on NPR's Fresh AIr and check it out. Personally I would like to see Barack go after McCain as lots of talk and no action on this. http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=4&islist=true&id=13&d=09-08-2008
I am a bit disappointed at the moment. Just recently i was updated that Obama had changed stances on fossil fuel and offshore drilling. It's not surprising but still not a move i was jumping for joy about....
A friend passed this article to me recently and thought it was worth adding to the conversation about green energy. Plasma Furnace Waste Disposal.
This is the kind of thinking that the Obama campaign is about.
McCain's Nuclear Waste: How the Arizona senator doomed his own global warming legislation with billions in nuclear subsidies
On January 9, 2003—five years before he would become the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee—Senator John McCain strode to the Senate floor and began a speech by citing the National Academy of Sciences: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." He then pointed to a host of scientific studies that had outlined the negative consequences of global warming. "The United States must do something," he proclaimed, announcing that he and Senator Joseph Lieberman were introducing legislation that day to establish mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and set up a system for the trading of emissions credits.
Environmental groups endorsed the McCain-Lieberman bill, which compelled major industries to reduce greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The League of Conservation Voters called it "a relatively modest reduction" but an "important first step" that would "send an important signal to the global community." It was indeed the first serious attempt in the Senate to impose a cap on global warming emissions.
Ten months later, the bill was defeated by a relatively close margin, 55 to 43. (Then-Senator John Edwards, who missed the vote, had indicated he supported the bill.) Environmental advocates in Washington considered this a decent start considering that six years earlier the Senate had voted unanimously for a nonbinding resolution that signaled opposition to the Kyoto global warming treaty. With this bill, McCain established himself as the undisputed Republican leader on climate change. Convinced that global warming had already led to more droughts and wildfires in his home state of Arizona, McCain vowed to keep fighting for the measure. But within a year and a half, McCain would lose ground and set back the effort to reduce emissions because of a profound political miscalculation, his own stubbornness, and, most of all, his deep attachment to nuclear power.
About a year after their bill was defeated, McCain and Lieberman began drafting a new version. It was close to the original, but with one significant addition: billions of dollars in tax subsidies for the nuclear energy industry.
McCain had long been an advocate of nuclear power. "He feels strongly that nuclear power will be one of the keys to reducing emissions," says Heather Wicke, who was his environmental legislative aide at the time. But environmentalists who had worked with McCain and Lieberman on the first bill were stunned. In one meeting, lobbyists for environmental groups attempted to persuade McCain not to attach nuclear subsidies to the legislation, arguing that doing so would weaken support for the bill. "He shook his finger at us and scolded us," says one participant at the meeting, who recalls McCain saying, "You're wrong and I'm right." Wicke, now the director of policy for the Piedmont Environmental Council, notes that McCain had already made up his mind and that the session was "testy."
In meetings with McCain's staff, environmental lobbyists argued the obvious points, according to Karen Wayland, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council: what to do with nuclear waste, the need to prevent nuclear proliferation, the problem with security at nuclear facilities. They noted that legislation restricting greenhouse emissions in and of itself would create a competitive advantage for nuclear energy companies. They made no headway, so the enviros appealed to Lieberman and his staff. "Lieberman didn't seem to care for this provision," one of the green lobbyists remembers, "but he needed McCain, and McCain was pushing hard" for the nuclear subsidies.
Part of McCain's motivation was political. According to Wicke, he and his aides figured that these subsidies could attract several pro-nuclear Republicans, and they had their eyes on Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Senator Liddy Dole of North Carolina. Wicke was concerned at the time that the nuclear subsidies would cost the measure support and that a bill loaded with money for the nuclear energy industry would contradict McCain's high-profile opposition to subsidies—which was partly responsible for his reputation as a fiscal conservative and a maverick. In June 2003, McCain had joined 47 other senators to vote for an amendment stripping an energy bill of up to $16 billion in subsidies for the nuclear power industry. (The amendment lost by a two-vote margin.)
Wicke heard from staffers for several senators who had supported McCain and Lieberman's original bill that these senators might oppose the measure if the new version contained nuclear subsidies. "It made me nervous," she recalls. But McCain remained firm in his belief that the billions for nuclear power would draw in more Republicans.
In May 2005, McCain and Lieberman reintroduced their climate change bill—with the subsidies. McCain acknowledged that "friends" in the environmental movement were opposed to the nuclear provision. He spoke at length in the Senate to defend this part of the bill: "The idea that nuclear power should play no role in our energy mix is an unsustainable position.... I, for one, believe it can and should play an even greater role, not because I have some inordinate love affair with splitting the atom, but for the very simple reason that we must support sustainable, zero-emission alternatives such as nuclear if we are serious about addressing the problem of global warming.... I am a green, and I entreat my friends in the movement to drop their wrongheaded objection to nuclear energy."
His friends were not persuaded. While the Environmental Defense Fund and the National Wildlife Federation continued to support McCain, the Natural Resource Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and others mounted a fierce campaign against the new bill. On June 22, 2005, it came up for a vote and was defeated 60 to 38. Several Democratic senators who had backed McCain's original legislation—Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mark Dayton (D-Minn.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)—defected, and McCain picked up no new Republicans. (Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both voted for it.) "The staff didn't fully appreciate how much opposition there would be to the nuclear provision," Wicke says, adding, "I could say it was a bit of miscalculation.... It did stymie this climate change legislation." After collecting 44 supporters for the first bill, McCain had lost ground.
Sometime after the vote, the NRDC's Wayland attended a meeting McCain held with representatives of environmental organizations. McCain was unapologetic about his decision to tie his climate change measure to nuclear power subsidies. "He said that environmentalists had lost power and influence because they did not support nuclear power," Wayland recalls, "and that renewables would never be more than 1 or 2 percent of the active energy supplies. I tried to argue with him and got nowhere. It was hard to a get a word in edgewise." After the meeting an upset Wayland, engaging in retail therapy, headed to a store and bought several pairs of shoes.
In January 2007, McCain and Lieberman again introduced their climate change bill, and the nuclear subsidies remained in the bill. (Public Citizen estimated the subsidies would run to at least $3.7 billion.) But in fall of 2007, the McCain-Lieberman bill was eclipsed by legislation introduced by Lieberman and Republican Senator John Warner. This bill called for deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions—though not as great as many scientists advocated—and it contained no special subsidies for nuclear power. The Lieberman-Warner measure immediately became the major piece of pending climate change legislation in the Senate. McCain and his bill were essentially out of the picture. He was, at the time, busy campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination.
"To his credit, he was a leader in the Republican Party on climate change," Wayland says. But by pushing breaks for nuclear power, McCain damaged a cause he had been passionately advocating for, leaving this particular battlefield with self-inflicted wounds.
http://motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2008/03/john-mccain-nuclear-waste.html
Former Vice-President and 2000 democratic candidate for president, Al Gore, spoke to the democratic party and nation in Detroit today in lead up to his endorsement of Senator Barack Obama for President, and perhaps for the first time since his contested loss in Florida in 2000, he spoke up about the important responsibilities voters have in assuring the future of America - which tragicly alluded us eight years ago and for which we have paid a steep price since.
Al Gore, the President that "never was," delivered the speech of his political career. Gore looked more presidential than he had ever looked over his entire political career. And his statesmanship on behalf of the democratic party, and the nation, dwarfed any speeches delivered by former President Bill Clinton in the years since his impeachment proceedings and his leaving office.
Gore's uplifting and uniting speech also comes at a time following months of Obama trashing and splitting of the party by former first-lady and democratic candidate for President, Hilary Clinton. Gore's emergence and speaking out on behalf of the party is a welcomed breath of fresh air!
Thank you Al Gore.
I am tired of hearing how solar energy is too weak a source of alternative energy because of price, speed and scalabilty. So when I saw this article about making solar power plants on a utility-scale size, I was astounded. It includes a sophisticated heliostat and the knowledge to work on-site to develop precision-engineered equipment on much lass acreage than before. The huge parabolic mirrors that were so unworkable before are now history, and no less than Google is financing the development of this technology.
Check out this link and see if it looks as good to you too: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/10/03431/0012
We should be moving forward and begin using Algae as a Fuel. It is being done and we need to move forward with this as well as other fuel types now.
Here is a link to the video on GreenEnergyTV.com http://greenenergytv.com/Watch.aspx?1472348255
Watch, Learn, Upload and Go GREEN!
Craig
