Spokesmen for fossil fuel industry groups expressed a mix of concern and vindication from news of solar spills revealed in an investigative report from a non-partisan think tank, the "A Few Guys Exxon Hired Institute". They held a press conference at a field containing leaking solar panels, and pointed out that despite the touted efficiency of solar collection, "sunlight is spilling over us even as we stand here."
"The small exposure we're experiencing the brief time we're here shouldn't cause much harm," said Institute spokesman Christy Monktown. "Still, look at the light spilling all over as far as we can see, and no one even trying to stop it or clean it up. It falls on us faster than we can rub it off. The solar industry is going to tell you it's harmless, but we've been tracking the people living within several miles of here, and every single year they looked older than before. Yet BP gets criticized for some goop on the bottom of the ocean." He then added, "and henceforth address me as 'Lord'. I am a lord, really."
Congressional Republicans have announced they will be holding hearings into whether money for the solar spill cleanup was diverted to Solyndra.
Photo: solar spill in progress at Occupy MN last Ocotober
Access to safe, fresh water is a fundamental issue, and the challenges grow daily with population growth, environmental degradation, and climate change. There's nothing wrong with looking to increase public awareness of these issues (even though they're exactly the sort of thing that much of the public, in the contemporary United States at least, would just rather not ever be asked to worry about). The unfortunate aspect is that purveyors of corporatism are always looking to take over the discussion, to their own benefit, especially in the matter of proposed "solutions."
Yesterday I walked around the "solution tents" at the 6th World Water Forum, which is more clearly than ever a trade show for the water industry to sell expensive services and products...
Take the factory exhibit. In no place there was the cause of pollution mentioned. There was no suggestion that we should prevent pollution to begin with, or that waterways should not be the dumping ground for human waste or factory waste. In fact, pollution was never mentioned at all. The organizers of this corporate forum see pollution as a profit center to be cleaned by a range of technologies. So, instead of addressing water pollution issues, the exhibit featured an expensive machine that packages water in little plastic bags that are sold to people during disasters. It displayed the Hippo Roller, a nifty technology that is essentially a barrel on wheels that makes it easy for women to transport water. It featured a stand with two buckets, one above the other, that was for hand washing.
There are a lot of people, heavy on greed and light on basic human decency, and with all the idiocies of free-market fundamentalism to provide purported justification, that see water as a profit center. They can't be allowed to have their way.
Righties in the Minnesota Legislature have introduced a catch-all environmental destruction wish list, HF 2164. From an email I got from the Sierra Club North Star Chapter:
Toxic mining in Northeastern Minnesota. Gutting the Wetlands Conservation Act. Rolling back our water quality standards.
The legislature in Saint Paul isn't just proposing all these ideas - they're advancing them all in the same bill! The omnibus bill (HF2164) introduced last week at the capitol is a collection of the most destructive rollbacks of our water and lands protections proposed in decades.
(I recognize that the proposed non-ferrous mining, up north, is a complex issue, and I'm not promoting that plans for it be killed, period. I do think it's a safe bet that if industry enablers had their way, with this bill, any environmental protections would be grossly inadequate.)
A couple more environmental items:
- A new study suggests that Minnesota could, and should, get to a 100% renewables electricity grid, starting now.
- An excellent reality check on energy lobbying in the state.
However, it looks like Keystone is emerging from the grave after only a month, as TransCanada-the company behind the pipeline-moves ahead with plans to build the segment running from Oklahoma to Texas, sections of the pipeline that don't require a federal permit. TransCanada is also in the process of reapplying for the cross-border section of the pipeline-the section for which the administration previously denied a permit.
The project now seems to have the White House's support. "Moving oil from the Midwest to the world-class, state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast will modernize our infrastructure, create jobs, and encourage American energy production," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.
Well, ominous for those of us that care about the environment, and moving toward energy resources with staying power beyond a few decades at best. And who don't like the idea of living in servitude to Big Dirty Fossil Fuels, any more. But Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-NH/MN(?)) is a big pipeline fan, despite this:
But in the case of the Keystone pipeline, it turns out there's a special twist. At the moment, there's an oversupply of tarsands crude in the Midwest, which has depressed gas prices there. If the pipeline gets built so that crude can easily be sent overseas, that excess will immediately disappear and gas prices for 15 states across the middle of the country will suddenly rise. Says who? Says the companies trying to build the thing. Transcanada Pipeline's rationale for investors, and their testimony to Canadian officials, included precisely this point: removing the "oversupply' and the resulting "price discount" would raise their returns by $2 to $4 billion a year.
I don't think that it's a bad idea, to do what we can, to remind voters in MN CD-8, that the same people that bought a congressional seat for a lazy, incompetent ideologue like Cravaack, feel that we're not paying enough for gasoline.
Unfortunately, the U.S. has been a dam-building nation since the beginning. Perhaps a thousand have been removed. That may seem like a healthy number, but:
As dams age and downstream development increases, the number of deficient dams has risen to more than 4,000, including 1,819 high hazard potential dams. Over the past six years, for every deficient, high hazard potential dam repaired, nearly two more were declared deficient. There are more than 85,000 dams in the U.S., and the average age is just over 51 years old.
More than a third of those dams were built during a twenty-year bender spanning 1950-70. The projected useful life of most of them was 25-50 years. The linked page includes data on maintenance costs, and the projected shortfall thereof.
The advocacy organization American Rivers has an interactive map that is a good starting point for this issue. One might think that 85,000 dams would be regarded as plenty, but apparently there are those that beg to differ. There's money to be made, after all.
There are interesting results from a satellite study of global ice melt. No doubt the deniers will seize on a couple of points, and twist them beyond recognition for the sake of their own ignorant and craven ends, but that won't help deal with the problem, here in the real world.
The total global ice mass lost from Greenland, Antarctica and Earth's glaciers and ice caps during the study period was about 4.3 trillion tons (1,000 cubic miles), adding about 0.5 inches (12 millimeters) to global sea level. That's enough ice to cover the United States 1.5 feet (0.5 meters) deep.
"Earth is losing a huge amount of ice to the ocean annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet's cold regions are responding to global change," said University of Colorado Boulder physics professor John Wahr, who helped lead the study. "The strength of GRACE is it sees all the mass in the system, even though its resolution is not high enough to allow us to determine separate contributions from each individual glacier."
General economic theory holds that companies will produce more of a good if its price is higher, or if it receives subsidies. Funny that these rules didn't seem to apply to Big Oil in 2011, when the highest oil price since 1864 and $2 billion in subsidies to the five largest oil companies-BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch Shell-yielded lower oil production than in 2010. But these five oil companies combined made a record-high $137 billion in profits in 2011-up 75 percent from 2010-and have made more than $1 trillion in profits from 2001 through 2011.[1] This exceeds the previous record of $136 billion in profits in 2008.
That article is essential, as it demonstrates on all fronts why we must do whatever it takes to undermine the political power of Big Dirty Energy.
The League of Conservation Voters has a legislative scorecard, covering the first session of the 112th Congress (2011). Here are the scores of Minnesota's delegation, from first to worst - from the standpoint of progressive environmentalism, that is.
Keith Ellison 91%
Al Franken 91%
Tim Walz 83%
Amy Klobuchar 82%
Betty McCollum 74%
Erik Paulsen 29%
Collin Peterson 20%
Chip Cravaack 14%
John Kline 9%
Michele Bachmann 6%
I have no additional comment; the numbers speak for themselves, or, rather, those that produced them. You can check everything out here.
I just witnessed an act of partisan venality and political cowardice. This was science denial not even masquerading, but entirely skulking out of sight as best it could manage.
The State Senate just voted --- along party lines, as if that wasn't predictable --- to remove Ellen Anderson as commissioner of the Public Utilities Commission. If you're wondering what she must have done with her office to get Republicans so upset, the answer is nothing. They cited literally nothing in removing her. She has only just taken office and hasn't yet built a record to be judged.
Readers must be wondering what reason the Republicans gave. Keep wondering. The only Republican to speak to the subject was Julie Rosen, who got stuck with reading the motion, which someone had to do, and it was clear from her demeanor she did this with dread. She read her speech, not daring to lift her face lest she catch her colleagues in the eye. She wouldn't cite anything specific Anderson had done to be removed from office, but merely indicated that Anderson had failed to be strongly enough for fossil fuels. At a time when global warming is our worst environmental threat, maybe the worst issue we face overall, and while serving as a state senator for a state with no fossil fuels, Anderson dared to support other forms of energy. For this, the heretic must be punished. Rosen feebly tried to make Anderson the hypocrite, by citing votes Anderson had made against prior commissioners. Was there good reason to remove those commissioners? Apparently that was immaterial, which suggests it would also be inconvenient to the Republican case, absent as it was.
What did other Republicans say? Nothing to the substance. When Sandy Pappas cited Rosen and new majority leader David Senjem for their hypocrisy based on their past actions and statements, Senjem objected to senators being mentioned by name. When Terri Bonhoff connected the impending action to the cutting of DFL staff while Republicans went untouched, one Republican objected this was off-topic. Senjem raised the objection to using names when John Marty tried to ask a question of Julie Ortman, who Marty wanted to ask about her quote calling Anderson controversial without explaining why. Marty asked if he should ask his question of, this is close to a quote but not exact, "that lady sitting next to that guy over there?" When Ortman, now unable to avoid answering, made an answer, did she say what she meant? No. Did she cite something Anderson had done? No. She said she was concerned utility rates might go up. Did she say how Anderson would be the cause of this? Of course not.
George Will probably saw this story or something like it --- but paid attention to only the part that fitted his science-denier beliefs:
Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990. It will also be the first year in more than 60 that America has been a net exporter of these fuels.
...
Still, the U.S. is nowhere close to energy independence. America is still the world's largest importer of crude oil. From January to October, the country imported 2.7 billion barrels of oil worth roughly $280 billion.
There was not only more than one right answer, there was only one wrong answer, that we don't export refined petroleum products. We do. If you picked that one, you got it wrong. Anything else, and you're at least partly right. Pretend you got them all. No one will know.
Then why are conservatives wrong to make of this what they do?
Great news! Energy scarcity is gone! We're energy independent! At least, that's the rightward spin on the US' new status as an exported of refined petroleum products. The end of scarcity also means global warming is false. Just ask George Will:
In 2011, for the first time in 62 years, America was a net exporter of petroleum products. For the foreseeable future, a specter is haunting progressivism, the specter of abundance.
...
An all-purpose rationale for rationing in its many permutations has been the progressives' preferred apocalypse, the fear of climate change. But environmentalism as the thin end of an enormous wedge of regulation and redistribution is a spent force. How many Americans noticed that the latest United Nations climate-change confabulation occurred in December in Durban, South Africa?
What's wrong with this story?
For new readers, this is a quiz. There's a poll after the jump with answers, some of which are correct. Take your best guess, explain your reasoning in the comments if you want.
Call it a holiday miracle. For decades, conservative critics have assailed federal ethanol subsidies of 45 cents per gallon as corporate welfare that came to cost taxpayers as much as $6 billion per year. Liberal critics joined the chorus as they noticed that the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit drove up corn and feed prices. Also, studies had begun to show that, contrary to expectations, the corn ethanol industry increased net carbon emissions...
Last month, the unthinkable happened - during the lead-up to the Iowa caucus no less. The do-nothing Congress did nothing in a good way.
It adjourned without extending the 45-cent-per-gallon ethanol subsidy, as well as a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol.
Anything related to biofuels is complex, economically and politically, and I'm certainly not pretending to do anything comprehensive in one brief post; I'm just marking the occasion. Most of the subsidies were actually paid to oil companies, not farmers, but they did indirectly expand the markets, and therefore help boost the prices, for the latter's product. If you search something like "Minnesota farmers ethanol subsidies," as I did, you can find some articles insisting that the end of the subsidies will be disastrous for corn farmers, and others to the effect that it will be meaningless in the short term and ultimately beneficial for them in the long one. So, this is probably about right.
...(Fed economic analyst Joe) Mahon cautioned that the issue of removing ethanol subsidies is complicated, saying it would be "kind of hard to predict how large the impact or the direction of the impact" on the ag economy.
With a growing world population, and that with an increasing appetite for corn-fed meat products, it seems highly unlikely that the demand for Minnesota corn will fall off a cliff. Moreover, continued high oil prices should mean that ethanol will be competitive without the subsidies. We're presumably going to find out.
As the next Congressional fight over payroll tax extensions and unemployment benefits and pipelines gets set up in the next few weeks for either its final chapter or to be kicked down the road a bit farther, one or the other, you're going to hear a lot from our Republican friends about how much they value work and workers; most especially, they'll tell you, they value American jobs for American workers.
After all, they'll say, creating American jobs is the most important thing of all.
But if we were to look back over just the last few months, some would tell us, we could quickly find examples of how Republicans promote ideas that don't seem to value work or workers at all, much less American jobs.
Well as it turns out, "some" seem to be right; to illustrate one of those examples we'll look back a month or two or three to a time some Republicans might wish was long, long, ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Susan Thornton is out as the director of the Legislative-Citizens Commission on Minnesota Resources, according to Nancy Gibson, the co-chair of the commission.
Gibson said she was informed that Thornton had been fired. Gibson says the citizen members of the LCCMR are in shock. Thornton is regarded as a good director, but was told the group is going in a new direction, Gibson said...
The unexpected firing on Monday doesn't match the LCCMR's typical way of operating. Meetings and decision-making were open to the public, Gibson said.
"We've always prided ourselves on a transparent process. It's always vigorous, we deliberate vote by consensus, it's all in front of the public, and this is a new trend that's very, very uncomfortable," Gibson said.
What's this really all about? Join me, below the fold.
Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN/NH) is a big fan of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project. From his website:
The Keystone project is just the latest and most glaring example of where the federal government stands in the way of job creation. There is overwhelming recognition that the Keystone Pipeline project is the largest and most shovel-ready project in the country. Completion of the project carries with it the promise of immediate jobs for 20,000 workers, the potential for hundreds of thousands of additional ancillary jobs by 2035, and enhanced energy security for the United States.
Those who create right-wing talking points are not, in fact, entirely stupid. Note the use of "the promise of" and "the potential for" in the above, so the claims can't actually be proven false. But, short of that, they are, without question, a very big load of you-know-what.
The pipeline, known as Keystone XL, would be built by a Canadian company to carry heavy crude oil 1,700 miles from the tar sands in northern Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast. It is opposed by environmentalists because extracting the oil from Canada's boreal forests would generate more greenhouse gases than conventional oil drilling. It is opposed by politicians and voters from both parties in Great Plains states that the pipeline would cross.
Mr. Boehner calls Mr. Obama's delay "theatrics" and described the project as a "no brainer" that will create "tens of thousands" of jobs immediately. This is a fairy tale, implying not only short-term but permanent benefits. The pipeline company, TransCanada, says the project could create 6,500 construction jobs annually, most of them temporary.
The State Department, the lead federal agency on the project, also estimates 6,500 temporary jobs. And the only independent study, conducted by Cornell University's Global Labor Institute, concludes that it may generate no more than 50 permanent jobs when the work is done.
To conservatives, jobs on projects that create a high risk of environmental devastation - like those being discussed here, or those involving oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico - are sacrosanct, while huge job losses in fields like education and health care are dismissed with a figurative shrug as necessary because "we need to shrink government." The issues of cognitive dissonance, not to mention gross irresponsibility, involved here, are mind-blowing.
Yeah, I kind of got "faced" on Saturday, when I blogged as if the Durban climate talks were likely to be a complete bust. An accord was subsequently reached. Here is some learned analysis.
So we generally grade ourselves on the basis of what we think was plausibly achievable, not what is theoretically possible.
On that basis, the Durban Agreement or Durban Platform...was a pretty big success, committing the entire world - not just rich countries - to develop a roadmap for reductions, along with a serious Green Climate Fund. It's worth noting that the alternative was not a binding agreement to stabilize at 2°C ( 3.6°F) warming, but a complete collapse of the international negotiating process.
On the other hand, from the perspective of what is needed to avert catastrophic climate change, the agreement was, sadly, lacking.
Today is 
Ominously, the 
There are 
I just witnessed an act of partisan venality and political cowardice. This was science denial not even masquerading, but entirely skulking out of sight as best it could manage.
It 
Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN/NH) is a big fan of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project. 
