Earlier today, Taylor Shelton, our resident expert on the politics of coal reported on the devastating coal slurry impoundment disaster in Tennessee. Well, apparently the story isn’t getting much play in the mainstream media. This video should help:
Hat tip to Chloe White of the News Sentinel and to moutainjustice on YouTube
Unnatural disasters have become a fact of life dependent upon fossil fuels. The latest of these disasters came early Monday morning when a coal slurry impoundment at the TVA Kingston Power Plant near Harriman, TN burst, allowing approximately 500 million gallons of toxic coal ash to rush into the surrounding community. Read the rest of this entry »
In the time of recession we must try to use our resources efficiently, save as much as possible and reuse and recycle whatever we can. British households are trying to do exactly that, segregating wastes into as many as five different groups so as to help the city councils recycle the waste easily. Instead the councils are dumping anywhere between 10 to 30 percent of recyclable waste to landfills and incinerators. That’s wasting some very useful waste.
The National Space Society has submitted a policy paper (pdf) to the Obama-Biden transition team concluding that Space-Based Solar Power is more technically executable than ever before and urging federal investment that would be necessary to capture large amounts of electricity from space
This wouldn’t be the first time the federal government has delved into Space-Based Solar Power (SBSP or SSP). NASA and DOE have collectively spent eighty million dollars over the last three decades in sporadic efforts studying the viability of collecting solar energy in space—where the solar resource is far more intense—and beaming it to Earth.
For me three questions immediately arise: 1. How could something like this actually work? 2. Where will the money come from? And where will the political will come from? Let’s look at those briefly. Read the rest of this entry »
It seems that after using oil & gas as tool to punish the East European nations for their closeness to United States and showing Europe how dependent it is on its supplies, Russia is further trying to wield power by what seems is an intent to control a major share of the carbon credits market.
Russia has declared that it will not sell surplus carbon emission permits to other countries and will stockpile about $58 billion worth of the Kyoto carbon credits. It plans to use these surplus emission permits under the next climate treaty.
The week that was had no shortage of big stories in the world of environmental politics…
Is anyone here a marine biologist? Towards the end of the week Barack Obama rounded out his cabinet picks by selecting Oregon State marine biologist Jane Lubchenko to head up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA oversees much of the climate change related research in the U.S. (Red, Green, and Blue)
As part of an economic stimulus package, Congress began considering expanding tax benefits for clean energy. “The [cleantech] sector was like a confirmed bachelor who after all these years was finally walking down the aisle with a smile on his face. Now, he’s been stopped five feet short of the altar because of the credit crisis,” said Fred Copeman, the national director of Ernst & Young’s tax credit advisory services. (CNN Money)
The first offshore wind farm in the U.S. hit another regulatory snag as Minnesota Rep. Jim Oberstar wrote a letter to the Coast Guard demanding they open their marine radar impacts study up to public comment. (Red, Green, and Blue)
Australian environmentalists were outraged by the relatively weak position the Rudd government took on reducing carbon emissions. After campaigning for a 25 percent reduction by 2020, Aussie enviros were disappointed that the government’s plan was only calling for a 15 percent reduction by 2020. (Envirowonk)
Barack Obama’s selection of U.S. Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) as Interior Secretary kicked off a firestorm of reactions from the environmental community regarding Salazar’s fitness to lead the department charged with overseeing millions of acres in public lands and the mineral and grazing leasing programs involved in their use. Although immediately characterized as a choice environmentalists were fuming over, it soon became clear that many enviros and conservationists were pleased with the Salazar pick. (Red, Green, and Blue)
The luck o’ the Irish with renewable energy is about to change as government officials announced they would increase their target for renewable energy generation to 40 percent by 2020. This is 20 percent above the already aggressive EU renewables target. (forceChange)
Just when you thought the bloodletting was over, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson wrote a memo to all federal agencies ordering that they ignore carbon dioxide emissions in any permitting process. The memo flies in direct opposition to a Supreme Court decision that said CO2 must be regulated as a pollutant. According to one estimate, the memo could clear the way for some 8,000MW in new coal-fired power plants. (Red, Green, and Blue)
First the US auto-makers went cap in hand (by private plane no less) to Washington to ask for a bailout. Now we hear talk of support being requested for British car-makers too - initially for the luxury Land Rover/Jaguar group now owned by India’s Tata Motors.
Car sales are down dramatically - in the UK, November sales were around 35% down on the same time last year - and it is hardly surprising. Big purchases like cars are not on most people’s shopping lists at the moment. This leaves the industry in big trouble.
As readers will be aware, the auto industry is a major employer on both sides of the Atlantic, both with an enormous chain of suppliers employing a vast workforce, all of whom will be affected by the failure of the industry.
>>More about the auto industry bailout at Green Options
So what is to be done? There are obviously those on the Right whose view is that the industry (and other industries) should stand or fall in a free market - one presumes they were the people who formed the US Senate opposition to bail-out plans. Equally, there are plenty of environmentalists on the Left who are not conceptually very concerned about a reduction in production capacity for the quintessential fossil-fuel-guzzling consumable that is the automobile. Read the rest of this entry »
Instead of decommissioning America’s fleet of coal-fired power plants and making concerted efforts to prevent the construction of any new ones, the United States Government is finding ways to make sure plenty more can be built. In a memo issued by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Thursday, the Bush administration has “clarified” a rule prohibiting any federal agency from denying an operating permit to new or significantly remodeled power plants based on their carbon dioxide emissions.
Thursday’s ruling stems back to a 2007 case in Utah when the Sierra Club sued EPA because they granted an operating permit to a new coal-fired power plant without taking the new plant’s carbon dioxide emissions into account. Read the rest of this entry »
On Wednesday, the oil behemoth ExxonMobil agreed to pay for failing to cut down pollution in refineries scattered across the country.
ExxonMobil, which has been hit before with environmental charges, will pay a $6.1 million penalty for failing to comply with pollution regulations in refineries in California, Louisiana and Texas. The company had agreed to reduce pollution in four refineries in those states, but came up short. Read the rest of this entry »
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