Blackened Pork: Liquid Coal Subsidies Sneak into Senate Tax Bill

by Target Global Warming

Is regular coal not dirty enough for you? Meet liquid coal fuel! Destructive to mine, water-intensive to manufacture, devastating to our climate at every step of the way – liquid coal is one of the world’s dirtiest fuels. Liquid coal production emits twice as much global warming pollution as gasoline & requires at least four gallons of water per gallon of fuel produced.  

Today the National Wildlife Federation has learned the Senate version of tax legislation includes subsidies for liquid coal fuels.

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Village Green: Retrofitting a DC neighborhood for deep sustainability

by Kaid at NRDC

Having already begun a comprehensive energy and environmental retrofit of a key part of Denver’s Lower Downtown, the nonprofit organization Living City Block is now looking to do the same in a neighborhood in the heart of Washington, DC.  It is a fantastic project that stands to become a model for the greening of mixed-use urban neighborhoods across the country.

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Suntech CEO at MIT

by gmoke

On 12/7/10 Zhengrong Shi, the founder and CEO of Suntech, one of the largest PV manufacturers in the world spoke at MIT, which has about 45 faculty now involved in solar research.  The event was a joint presentation of the MIT China Energy and Environment Research Group, MIT Energy Initiative, and MIT Energy Club.

My telegraphic notes follow.

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Add Solar / Wind to Tax Cut ... a call for action

by A Siegel

You can count me among the millions not happy with the caving to give additional tax subsidies the unneedy rich.  With this deal, however, unless blocked, the true pain is wondering what we could -- or should -- have gotten in return.  

Why isn't there $200 billion (or, better yet, $500 billion) or so for stimulus in the coming 24 months. There won't be anything coming out of the R House that will stimulate job creation. The Administration should have gotten some on the table and in this deal.  
   
Staying within tax cuts and policy, why not include in clean-energy tax credits.  To provide one clear example, why not extend Section 1603 (action item)?  

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Fossil Energy Knows It’s a Full Contact Game – Does Cleantech?

by Scaling Green

Cross posted from Scaling Green

Cancun - When I started working on solar energy issues several years ago, I heard it repeatedly: “Everyone loves solar.” Back then, many people in solar and other cleantech sectors saw long-term meritocracy in the energy business. Public demand, technological advances and an inevitable price on carbon were going to drive cleantech to dominance over time. “Renewable energy,” it was often said, “will soon become just plain ‘energy’.”

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Get Ready For Huge Reversals in Energy and Climate Change Policies

by BWISC

One overlooked election tidbit: GOP gains in state legislatures (and governors’ offices) will throw a major wrench into efforts to slow climate change. What follows is an explanation on why and how.

Basically, it’s all about buildings. The energy used to power commercial and residential buildings is responsible for 38 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions – emissions that worsen climate change.

Rulemaking is not sexy, but in this case, the rules behind how buildings are designed and run have a huge impact on climate change. And this is why, if you care about the environment, there is about to be a very big problem.

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Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Arsenic Life edition)

by Neon Vincent

Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.

This week's featured story comes from NPR.

Scientists Find Bacterium That Survives On Arsenic
by Jon Hamilton

Researchers say they have found a bacterium that defies scientific dogma: It's able to use the deadly poison arsenic in place of an element previously considered essential for life. The finding appears to expand the range of places where life could exist — both on Earth and elsewhere in the universe.

The discovery comes from a young NASA astrobiologist who likes to find exceptions to rules. Felisa Wolfe-Simon says she was fascinated by crustaceans because they don't use iron to carry oxygen around their bodies the way most species do. Instead, they use copper.

Wolfe-Simon thought this sort of chemical substitution might go even further.

More science, space, and environment stories after the jump.

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Have a Facebook? Want to Take Revenge?

by joelado

Revenge for the Gulf oil spill and the Exxon Valdez, our involvement in middle eastern wars and all the other crap that comes with petroleum oil can only be gotten one way.  That way is to stop using oil. So if you have a Facebook account and you want to take revenge, one way you can do it, which will only take a few clicks on a mouse, is to help promote the movie “Revenge of the Electric Car” the new documentary from Chris Paine director of “Who Killed the Electric Car? To do this you have to click on this link http://www.facebook.com/... .  Once at the “Revenge of the Electric Car” Facebook page go to the top of the page and click the thumbs up like button. Once 10,000 people say they like the Facebook page we will all be able to see the trailer, and the promotion for the movie begins in earnest. If you really want to take revenge you will tell all your Facebook friends about the movie by clicking the “Suggest to Friends” button on the left of the Revenge page. There are other things you can do as well such as register and purchase an electric car or a Volt and say goodbye to your contribution to all that mess caused by oil.

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DAILYCANCUN: Why I’m Voting TROTSKY/ASSANGE in 2012

by todbrilliant

One met death by ice pick seventy years ago, and the other is a furtive, fugitive Australian, but I’m giving my votes (thanks to my hacker buddies) to the TROTSKY/ASSANGE ticket in 2012.

WTF am I talking about and how does this apply to the ongoing UNFCC "negotiations" in Cancun? You'll see...

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Will we face "our Sputnik moment"?

by A Siegel

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu just finished a speech at the National Press Club entitled: Is the Energy Race our new "Sputnik" moment?

Chu outlined ways in which the United States either has already ceded or is ceding leadership when it comes to clean energy -- in technology, manufacturing, and deployment.

Secretary Chu seeks to lay out a call to arms, as it may be, for Americans (and, more importantly, the political elite) to recognize that we either decide to invest for the long term in clean energy innovation or we risk abandoning future prosperity to others.

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DAILYCANCUN #1: What if They Threw a Climate Conference & Nobody Cared?

by todbrilliant

It's an exciting day for the global band of climate legislation watchers. We're few in number, and our quarry is rarer than an Ivory-billed woodpecker, but we press on through the thickets and brambles in the hopes that we get to witness, once in our lifetime, meaningful and binding climate legislation. Hats off to Boatsie aka Deborah Phelan for making her way all the way to Cancun for a premier viewing angle.

After going to Copenhagen last year and experiencing the lows and lows of being in the midst of an ill-organized clusterfuck, I realized that I'd been swept up in the ferver. That is, I thought EVERYONE knew about Copenhagen. When I got home and talked to friends in 'progressive' Sonoma County, I realized the only footage relayed of Denmark was of some minor rioting I'd witnessed. Alas. Alack. So this year I decided to proactively assess how many of my local citizens are tuned in to the great and heroic mission that our man in Cancun, Todd Stern (huzzah!), is leading up. And so...

A Man, A PhoneCam & An Hour Productions Presents: What if They Threw a Climate Conference and Nobody Cared?

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Calling all bloggers! Climate Conference in Cancun.

by rb137

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico, will be held from November 29 to 10 December 2010, and it includes the sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 16) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 6), among other regular climate meetings (see link).

This 12-day conference kicks off tomorrow, when delegates the world over will talk about climate financial aid, energy, deforestation, and attempt to forge a path to a comprehensive, international climate deal. Among the key objectives is focusing on the climate impact on developing countries, and pointedly launching a "Green Fund" as a primary source for aid to poor countries that suffer the brunt of climate change, as promised at Copenhagen. The need is expected to reach $100 billion by 2020.

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Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Thanksgiving weekend edition)

by Neon Vincent

Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.

No featured story tonight, just this Thanksgiving greeting from the OND volunteer editors.

Science, space, and environment stories after the jump.

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DIY Climate Change: Ain't Nobody Else

by gmoke

Last week, I heard presentations from the chief climate person at the World Bank on the outlook for international agreement in Cancun, a Harvard economist on the national outlook under the new Congress, and an MIT systems dynamicist on an online model of climate change anybody can play, C-LEARN http://forio.com/...

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The BEST investment

by A Siegel

Very simply, across the economy, energy efficiency is almost certainly the top investment option -- as individuals, businesses, communities, government ... The rate of return possibilities are tremendous and unlike gambles to grow business or play the stock market, this is 'guaranteed' cash in the bank.

And, it is 'cash in the bank' in terms of cost savings. It is 'cash in the bank' in terms of job creation. It is 'cash in the bank' due to improved resiliency in the face of (manmade or natural) disaster. It is 'cash in the bank' due to reduced pollution impacts and reduced GHG emissions. It is 'cash in the bank' many times over in many different ways.

Sadly, too many people buy into the concept that we need some great invention to do anything meaningful on climate change.

Sadly, too many people falsely believe that there is some great unaffordable cost to Energy Smart practices.

We need to push those false notions aside to enable transformational opportunities toward a prosperous, climate-friendly future.

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Jobs should be blowing in the wind (and frying in the sun ...)

by A Siegel

Trends that go against 'common wisdom' are often hard for people to absorb and realize.  A journalist's job, however, should be to question (even challenge) common wisdom rather than simply parroting talking points that are, in fact, misleading if not outright false.  When it comes to energy and environmental reporting, sadly, such questioning often seems to fall by the wayside.

Part of the journalistic myth: fossil fuel (fossil foolish) policies are good on the jobs front.  Too many journalists seem to watch petroleum industry advertising rather than read serious reports that highlight how clean-energy investments outperform dirty energy in job creation per dollar of investment and per megawatt hour of electricity production. And, thus, those well-funded talking points get slipped into the mainstream consciousness and accepted as fact -- rather than assertions that might not stand up to scrutiny.

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DailyCancun: Fossil Fuel Factual Fallacies: New York Times Called Out by Renowned Geoscientist

by todbrilliant

Enough is enough. Energy literacy is mandatory in 2010.

If the New York Times wants to continue to willfully position itself in the service of fossil fuel interests, so be it. But we're fighting back. Today's uppercut is thrown by geoscientist and PCI Fellow David Hughes.  

Read on for a detailed 'correction' of NY Times reporter Clifford Krauss' woefully misleading 17. Nov 2010 article, "There Will Be Fuel."

Full release with charts/graphs/data at http://www.postcarbon.org/...

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Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Vice President Joe Biden's birthday edition)

by Neon Vincent

Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment.

This week's featured story comes from MSNBC.

Happy Birthday: Joe Biden Turns 68

In honor of Vice President Joe Biden's birthday, we look back on 68 glorious years of mutton chops, embarrassing gaffes and winning smiles.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Vice President.  What do you have to say for yourself today?

That's the spirit!

This week's science, space, and environment stories after the jump.

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$100 billion/year: tax cuts for 1% or solutions for all?

by A Siegel

"Yes we can!"

Sadly, no we haven't.

Not that the Obama Administration with the support (and urging) of a Democratic House of Representatives and the drag of a Democratic controlled (???) Senate haven't tried to do tremendous things.

Note that, for the most part, President Obama has filled the Administration with competent -- incredibly competent --, dedicate, and ethical people who are interested in working diligently to solve real problems.

Sadly, no we haven't had the true simplicity and clarity of message that "Yes we can" ... "Hope" ... "Change" all represented in 2008.

Clarity, simplicity, stickiness lead to SUCCESs ...

Alan Grayson understands that.

And, looking to Grayson leads to a question: How would you spend $100 billion / year to help create solutions?

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Should the World Bank Go to the Brew Pub?

by gmoke

On the afternoon of November 16, 2010, Andrew Steer, special envoy on climate change for the World Bank, spoke at Harvard about "Why Developing Countries Urgently Need a Global Climate Deal ... and Why They Shouldn't Wait for One.”

There was a small reception afterwards with wine and cheese.  At six, Dr Steer was escorted to dinner.  That happened on Oxford Street, northwest of Harvard Square.

At 7, on the other side of Harvard Yard, at John Harvard's Brew Pub on Dunster Street, an Intercollegiate Energy Social for the local Energy Clubs began.  Invited clubs included the Babson Energy and Environment Club, Boston University Energy Club, Fletcher Energy Consortium, Harvard Business School Energy and Environment Club, Harvard Energy Journal Club, Harvard Kennedy School Energy and Environment Professional Interest Council, MIT Energy Club, MIT Sloan Energy & Environment Club, and Tufts Energy Forum.  The social was organized by the Collegiate Energy Association http://collegeenergy.org

What would have happened if Dr Steer had attended the Energy Social?  Should the World Bank have gone to the brew pub?

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