Commission Recommends Raising U.S. Gas Tax
A failing economy may accomplish what environmental and geopolitical necessity could not– which is, cause the government to increase the national gas tax. A congressionally sponsored commission is set to recommend that the national gas tax should be raised by 10 cents per gallon in order to cover the massive shortfall the national Highway Trust Fund is facing.
The current lack of funds, which are used to reduce congestion, improve roads, and expand transit, is a result of two problems. First, the high gas prices in the beginning of 2008 and the failing economy in the end of the year, caused drivers to substantially cut-back on their driving habits. As a result, between October 2007 and September 2008, the Highway Trust Fund took in $3 billion less than it did the prior year. Second, even when Americans were driving a lot, the revenues raised by the gas tax were insufficient to properly maintain and upgrade our transportation infrastructure. READ MORE
CA Public Utilities Commission to vote on Sunrise Powerlink
The future of the contentious Sunrise Powerlink project could be decided today (Thursday) by the California Public Utilities Commission. The proposal by utility company, SDG&E would run a 100 mile $1.9 billion high-voltage transmission line to San Diego from the eastern deserts of neighboring Imperial County.
Proponents, which include Gov. Schwarzenegger and the PUC president, argue that this is exactly the type of project that is necessary to grow our nation’s renewable energy production. Since most large-scale renewable resources lie away from urban centers, the electricity generated in these locations must use a new generation of transmission lines to bring the power to cities. This is the purpose of the Sunrise Powerlink project, according to SDG&E and other supporters. READ MORE
New ‘Very High Speed’ Train Goes 220 mph and Has No Centralized Engine
This month, the French company Alstom Transport is testing its brand new “very high speed” train, the AGV (or Automotrice à Grande Vitesse), on live tracks in Eastern France. Unlike most trains, which have a single engine car in the front or back, the AGV has a series of distributed motors underneath the passenger carriages, which saves space and allows the train to carry 20% more passengers. (Notice in the photo below how little space there is from the nose of the train to the first passenger seats.)
The AGV is being tested over 12 nights this month on the Eastern high-speed line, between the Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine stations, at its ideal speed of 224 mph. In comparison, the American high speed Acela train travels at a top speed of 150 mph.
The test train is outfitted with 4,000 sensors that will look at both the train’s overall mechanical capabilities, as well as the interior passenger compartment. Although significant testing has already been done with computer models and on closed course test tracks, it is impossible to perfectly replicate the environment a train will face on live tracks. READ MORE
Pickens ‘anxious’ about wind farm project
Pickens held a briefing with reporters on Monday where he discussed the status of his massive Texas Panhandle wind farm project, as well as the state of energy, in general.
Regarding the Panhandle project, Pickens said that he is “anxious” since the economic and credit crises threaten to choke off financing for the project. “Where’s the money is the question. I don’t know how we’ll do it. I’m anxious to see what Obama comes up with. There is no money to finance a wind project now,” Pickens stated.
Pickens reiterated his warning that when the economy rebounds, prices will spike again, potentially even to $100 by next year. He also said that Obama’s policies will play a key role in determining whether efforts to effect an energy transformation will occur. Specifically, extending tax credits for alternative energy and promoting natural gas usage for heavy duty vehicles will be essential.
Earlier this year, Pickens’ company Mesa Power began the first phase of the Panhandle wind farm by purchasing over 600 wind turbines. While the future of that project is somewhat up in the air, as Pickens noted, “We don’t receive turbines until late 2010, so you’ve got some time for a recovery and we’ll see where we go from there.”
Friedman to Obama: efficiency incentives and mandates are not enough– we need a carbon tax
President-elect Obama, in an interview conducted earlier this week and aired Sunday on Meet the Press, indicated that while he supports a transformation in our energy and environmental policies, he wants to accomplish this through incentives, rather than a carbon tax.
Tom Friedman, in effect, responds to that position in his op-ed in Sunday’s NYT.
Laying out the enormous importance of how the billions from bailouts and stimulus packages are spent, Friedman quotes Andy Karsner, a former assistant secretary of energy: “Remember, this money will not be neutral. We are talking about directing an unprecedented volume of cash at our housing, energy, transportation and infrastructure industries. This cash will either fortify the incumbent players and calcify the energy status quo, or it will facilitate the economic transformation we seek. The stimulus will either be white blood cells that will heal us or malignant cells that will continue to sap our strength.” [emphasis added]
Similar to our mantra on this site, Karsner (and Friedman) are basically saying that our country has been operating under an unsustainable status quo for a long time, and the billions and billions of dollars that we are about to spend will either act to cement that untenable situation, or transform it into something healthy and viable. READ MORE
Burps, farts, and other crazy emissions from livestock a major source of greenhouse gases
NYT’s Elisabeth Rosenthal has a good article about greenhouse gas emissions from global agriculture. As we’ve noted, the debate over livestock emissions is heating up in the US as the EPA considers a regulation scheme. But even as US farmers gear up for a fight, there are indications from around the world that this is a major problem that must be addressed.
Because of increasing worldwide affluence, millions of people who have lived mostly on less expensive grains are now able to add meat to their diets. And those in the developing world are, of course, continuing to consume large amounts of meat.
This is an environmental nightmare, since according to the UN, activities relating to the production of livestock account for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is more than that released by cars, buses, and airplanes. READ MORE
Iowa senators and ethanol industry want piece of auto bailout: Is Iowa the new Detroit?
With the automakers on the ropes, and the government getting ready to write a big check, and possibly attach some strings to it, the ethanol industry wants to make sure that they are at the end of those strings.
Of course, merely trying to attach efficiency requirements to any bailout of Detroit is not inherently wrong. In fact, if we do bailout the automakers, there should absolutely be a strict commitment that they must make their cars significantly more fuel efficient going forward.
However, with that said, what the ethanol industry and their local senators are trying to do is just more of the same behavior that got the auto industry into the situation they face today. That is, government policy being influenced by self-interested commercial industry groups that are supported by hometown politicians. READ MORE
The AP misses the point with carbon footprint analysis of Schwarzenegger’s Global Climate Summit
Last week the Associated Press ran a story about how the air travel to California Gov. Schwarzenegger’s Global Climate Summit, which is being held this week in LA, would “discharge more than 2,554 metric tons of carbon dioxide-a so-called carbon footprint equivalent to that produced from 424 cars driven for a year” [link may expire].
Now, if the point of the AP article had been to illustrate the surprising amount of pollution that is generated from air travel, that would be one thing. But the point of the article was instead to illustrate that Schwarzenegger’s “conference, announced six weeks ago, itself will be a sizable source of the gases blamed for contributing to global climate change.” READ MORE
Obama on 60 Minutes: Now, more than ever, is the time to fix our broken energy policy
Obama’s interview on 60 Minutes covered some essential topics, including his opinion on the proposed Detroit bailout, as well as energy independence. With respect to the latter, Obama noted that now, of all times, is when it is most important to do something about our energy problems.
Obama has indicated previously that he thinks a transformative change in our energy policy could not only help the environment and reduce our dependency on foreign oil, but it could also create an economic burst that would help us get out of our economic crisis.
As Obama indicated in the interview, the big test will be whether these necessary changes can be implemented when oil is under $60 a barrel, instead of over $150. Normally we would just fall right back into the same sick cycle we have followed the last 40 years of focusing on the problem when there is acute pain, only to quickly forget all about it when the pain temporarily subsides. READ MORE
Obama on 60 Minutes: Under normal times, bankruptcy for Detroit automakers would be appropriate, but these are not normal times
There’s been an interesting debate going on about whether the Detroit automakers should be bailed out by the federal government. On the one hand is Tom Friedman who on Meet the Press, argued that if he thought giving the industry $25 billion would get them back on track, he would be supportive. However, due to their past and pervasive failures, he has no faith that this would actually happen. As a result, we should only give them the money if it is in conjunction with a concrete plan that would fundamentally change the way they do business. Otherwise, just handing the old management a blank check would just guarantee that they burn through the money, only to return in a few months to ask for another $25
As an op-ed in the WSJ notes, “Like AIG, [GM] will be back for more, and at the same time it will be telling us that it’s doing a great job under difficult circumstances.”
When Tom Brokaw asked Friedman, “Can Barack Obama, the newly elected Democrat, as president of the United States look Detroit in the eye and say, ‘Drop dead,’” Friedman replied, “I think he can. He may have to.”
However, on the other (and notably bigger) hand, on 60 Minutes on Sunday night, President-elect Obama was asked by Steve Kroft what he thought needed to be done, and Obama had a very interesting take on the situation. He noted that under normal circumstances, restructuring the company under bankruptcy protection might be the right path. But given the current credit crisis “you could see the [finance] spigot [being] completely shut off so that it would not potentially permit GM to get back on its feet. And I think that what we have to do is to recognize that these are extraordinary circumstances. Banks aren’t lending as it is. They’re not even lending to businesses that are doing well, much less businesses that are doing poorly. And in that circumstance, the usual options may not be available.” READ MORE
Walmart removes the BPA but leaves the contaminants
While Walmart was one of many companies that removed bottles containing BPA from their shelves, they forgot to look at what was inside those bottles. In a report released last month by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Sam’s Choice bottled water, produced by Wal-Mart was found to have high levels of contamination including toxic byproducts of chlorination. After testing 10 different bottled water companies in North Carolina, California, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland, EWG discovered that both Sam’s Choice and Acadia of Giant Food supermarkets had higher levels of cancer-causing contaminates than the water industry’s voluntary standards, as well as exceeding legal-limits in California. READ MORE
Climate change deniers find themselves in bad company
Even though scientists have been warning about greenhouse gas emissions since the 1950’s, some very prominent and potentially powerful people still deny that human activity is causing climate change.
We can understand someone being skeptical of this position back in the 1950’s when the idea was still new and the climate effects were mostly theoretical. But given the overwhelming scientific research and consensus on the topic, not believing that humans are influencing the climate is pretty unbelievable. So unbelievable, in fact, we’ve put together a short list of other scientific discoveries throughout human history that have similarly faced widespread denial, only to be eventually accepted as scientific fact.
1. The Earth Orbits Around the Sun
The astronomer Galileo, in 1633, was convicted of heresy by the Inquisition for advocating the Copernican theory that the Earth orbits around the Sun. While there were a few people who had put forth this idea before Copernicus, it wasn’t until the early 1500’s when he postulated the scientifically formulated theory of heliocentrism that a real shift in thinking began. It still took almost two-hundred years before this scientifically verifiable fact was widely accepted, and support of which could no longer land a commoner in the torture chamber. But that, of course, doesn’t stop some people from still denying it. READ MORE
Canary in the climate
A study released on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the ecology of Walden Pond (of Henry David Thoreau fame) is on the decline as a result of climate change.
Walden Pond, located near Concord, Mass., was observed by Thoreau in 1854 and captured in great detail in his writings. The study finds that many of the species of flowers Thoreau saw are no longer present in the area. Since 1854, the average temperature at Walden Pond has increased 4.3 degrees. The hardest hit species includes buttercups, dogwoods, lilies, orchids, roses and violets, since they are most sensitive to heat. Apparently, the study looks at other possible contributing factors and concludes that climate is the sole cause of the ecological changes. Most of the surrounding area is protected from development. READ MORE
Frontline ‘Heat’ a good primer on causes of climate change and potential solutions
The Frontline special Heat, on PBS, takes an in-depth look at the causes of climate change, the shameful attempts to avoid action and an introduction to some of the possible solutions. The program can be replayed on PBS’s website anytime.
While Heat didn’t seem to be breaking any revolutionary ground (given the already widely reported nature of the problem), it does provide a very useful survey of the overall issue. Many of the topics covered will be familiar to ForceChange readers, including things like the old 1950’s video on global warming, the lobbying of Patrick Moore, and the $25 billion bailout loan to Detroit automakers. READ MORE
Pickens on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money
T. Boone Pickens appeared on Jim Cramer’s Mad Money last night. Cramer, an avid supporter of the Pickens Plan, discussed with Boone his plan as well as the current failure of leadership in Washington. Here are some of the highlights:
Cramer introduced the Pickens Plan as a “Marshall plan for power.” READ MORE
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