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By Carla Kaplan
$ 13.57
By Charlotte Mosley
$26.37
$23
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The impresario behind this newfangled clean-energy box sees one of his mini power plants in every home, but it’s not clear if the little miracles even work.
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By Amy Goodman — President Obama’s publicly financed resuscitation of the nuclear power industry in the U.S. is bound to fail, another taxpayer bailout waiting to happen.
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Flickr / AmyZZZ1
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Nuclear power was a big issue back during the 2008 primaries. Then-candidate Barack Obama always said he favored nuclear power, and now he’s about to put our money where his mouth was. The president is expected to announce $8.3 billion in loan guarantees, with more on the way, to build two new reactors—the first in decades.
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Flickr / azrainman
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A new government report has found that the United States will import almost as much foreign oil 25 years from now as it does today. Pitiful policy initiatives simply haven’t done enough to fulfill the stated ambition of just about every administration since Richard Nixon’s—to liberate the homeland from a dangerous dependency on energy imports. (Continued)
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Flickr / SmackNHawaii
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The Chinese have leapt past Western competitors in the race for alternative energy, becoming the world’s largest makers of wind turbines and solar panels. And they’re not done yet.
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Wikimedia Commons / Ansgar Walk
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The U.S. government is finally jumping on the green bandwagon, announcing it will make efforts to cut energy use and reduce emissions by 28 percent by 2020, a move that could save $8 billion to $11 billion. The reduction figure is based on 2008 levels.
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Statkraft
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A Norwegian company thinks it can squeeze enough electricity out of the natural phenomenon of osmosis to power China. Right now the company’s plant can barely heat a tea kettle, but officials hope to power a village in a few years, and a lot more after that.
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Flickr / langalex
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Renewable energy projects are sprouting up across the country, much to the delight of environmentalists. Or is it? Green power, it turns out, is very thirsty. Developers are requesting billions of gallons of water annually to cool, cleanse and maintain their solar farms and other projects—billions more than we may have.
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Flickr / Nick Perla
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It takes a lot of someone else’s water to keep L.A.’s palm trees growing and its Jacuzzis bubbling, but Angelenos are defying their moochy reputation and conserving like nobody’s business. The city’s mayor thanked his citizens for their double-digit cuts in water and power consumption last month—in the thick of summer no less. Update
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Flickr / Wayne National Forest
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Spain accounted for almost half of the world’s solar power market in 2008, thanks to a Spanish subsidy that is now ending. The subsidy change, combined with an increased supply of solar equipment from China and Taiwan, has crashed international demand. Now solar modules are selling for half what they used to, according to a report on Global Post.
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AP / Timothy Jacobsen
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By T.L. Caswell — With biomass pioneers advancing their technology, the smelly stuff that you throw away today may be providing electricity for your home tomorrow.
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Flickr / DieselDemon
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The Russians are coming ... to Cuba. Moscow has inked a deal with Havana to hunt down and suck out what could be as much as 20 billion barrels of oil from Cuba’s share of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s just like old times.
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Flickr / SmackNHawaii
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Billionaire T. Boone Pickens has dropped his plan to build a huge wind farm in Texas, citing financing problems and challenges posed by the economic recession. The collapse of the project adds weight to the notion that we won’t have practical alternative energy generation until the governments of the world, and the populations they represent, make lasting commitments of money and attention.
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By Eugene Robinson — Obama should be applauded for taking climate change seriously, but one of his administration’s centerpiece initiatives may be digging a very expensive dry hole—literally.
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By William Pfaff — The basic question is whether the United States wishes to treat Russia as a permanent enemy, even if it is not. The result of treating states as enemies is that sooner or later they become them.
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White House / Pete Souza
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President Obama outlined a plan on Earth Day to lease federal waters on the Outer Continental Shelf for wind and tidal power projects. Speaking at a turbine factory, Obama said wind could generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — By comparison with her recent predecessors, she’s a strong speaker of the House. She has far more control than the previous Democratic speaker had, despite having to contend with a more conservative GOP and an ideologically diverse pack of Democrats.
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Rep. Michele Bachmann is sounding the alarm to radio-show host/wingnut Sue Jeffers about the scary government-controlled future that will surely result if Barack Obama has his way with us—starting with “mandatory” re-education camps for American children. And don’t even get her started on SCHIP.
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Flickr / cursedthing
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Not a single House Republican voted for Barack Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget, but that didn’t stop the Democrats from passing it 233-196. The Senate is on its way to passing its own version, but the real clamor is over whether the final product will end up with reconciliation provisions that would filibuster-proof the president’s health care and energy proposals.
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AP photo / Elizabeth Dalziel
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By Scott Ritter — Forget about terrorism for a moment. The potential catastrophe that climate change could unleash on America makes every other national security crisis pale in comparison. President Obama cannot secure the homeland without addressing this global emergency.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Critics who argue that he is asking Congress to do too much are finding it far easier to talk about an overloaded system than to tell those without health insurance that they will have to wait a few more years.
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Flickr / geerlingguy
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Sarah Palin is turning down about half of her state’s stimulus money, complaining that Washington is trying to engineer a bigger Alaskan government with funding for health care, energy programs and schools. Schools? How dare you, Washington?
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By Ellen Goodman — Amid the talk of generational conflict in these depressed times, there’s a chance for the boomer generation to make a virtue—or a revolution—out of the necessity of working longer.
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By Eugene Robinson — Advice to solve the financial crisis before even thinking about health care, energy or education is either misguided or disingenuous. Fortunately, Obama seems to be ignoring all the chatter.
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AP photo / Andy Wong
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By Chris Hedges — All efforts to save the planet will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. And yet studies, books and documentaries that deal with various crises fail to discuss the danger of all those billions of hungry people looking for a better life.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — While conservatives cry socialism, the president is trying to steer a moderate course. Moderation, however, may be the wrong recipe. There is something deeply disturbing about the drip, drip, drip of billions into the banking system with no apparent impact.
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By Marie Cocco — It’s “a completely different world,” says the House speaker, delighted by “the fact that we have a Democratic president who ... put forth an agenda for America that contained many of the issues that we have been fighting for over the years.”
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — Just six weeks into his term, Obama has opened his bid to redraw the boundaries of our politics and expand the realm of the possible.
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In his weekly address, President Barack Obama makes the case for his proposed budget scheme, arguing that while it might rankle the likes of Washington lobbyists, it will deliver on the promises he made during his campaign.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Obama’s message was plain: The era of bashing government is over. So, too, is the folklore of a marketplace capable of producing abundance without regulation, oversight or public intervention.
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Flickr / Foraggio Fotographic
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By Joe Conason — We suddenly seem willing to consider sensible ideas that were always deemed unthinkable. Soon we may be mature enough to observe how other developed countries address problems that have baffled us for generations.
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White House
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In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Obama acknowledged the dire state of the economy, but struck a hopeful tone as he expanded on his vision for recovery. Investments in energy, education and health care will be key, he said, as will an expanded bailout of the financial sector. (Summary, video and full text after the jump)
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flickr/jeffrey beall
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It’s finally happening: President Barack Obama is about to sign the stimulus bill. Get ready, people of Denver—he’s going to do the honors at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, of course—where else?
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Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Department of Energy
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Just before he skedaddled out of the White House, President Bush worked out a scheme to make millions of acres of the American coast available for offshore drilling, but on Tuesday, President Obama’s interior secretary, Ken Salazar, brought those plans to a halt, at least for the next six months.
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Wikimedia Commons
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The Senate passed its own version of the stimulus package Tuesday, slashing funding in areas that would most effectively stimulate the economy, such as aid to low-income Americans and states, while expanding tax cuts. The House and Senate bills must now be reconciled with one another.
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SF Chroncile / Lance Iversen
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The key word being had: The new secretary of energy, Nobel Prize-winning Steven Chu, is making waves in the policy community with his daunting comments about climate change. Chu warns that the farms of California, the nation’s leading agricultural producer, could vanish by the end of this century if steps to slow global warming are not taken.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Obama’s visit with House and Senate Republicans this week was useful for setting a new tone and a refreshing break from the Bush administration’s habit of consulting almost no one. But it was a sideshow to the main battle over how to improve the economy, which is among Democrats.
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Flickr/takomabibelot
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President Barack Obama called for tougher regulations on auto emissions on Monday, promising not to let a sour economy stand in the way of progress. “I want to be clear from the beginning of this administration that we have made our choice: America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet,” he said during a meeting with environmentalists in the White House’s East Room.
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Flickr / ppz
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Hundreds of thousands of freezing Europeans are waiting for Russia and Ukraine to resolve a pricing dispute, while EU officials engage in scramblepants diplomacy to get the natural gas flowing again. Russia has accused Ukraine of siphoning off gas, which runs from Mother Russia through Ukraine and into Europe, where some areas are very, very cold.
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letstravelvacations.com
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By David Sirota — A voyage to Sin City in this moment of ecological and economic crisis is a journey to a giant concave mirror reflecting back the magnified—and ugly—truths about this epoch of cataclysmic consumption and hubristic hedonism.
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The president-elect rolled out his major energy appointments Monday, among them Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Chu. That choice, Obama said, “should send a signal to all that my administration will value science. We will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that facts demand bold action.”
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AP photo / Kevin Wolf
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By Rep. Dennis Kucinich — Once they were as gods, but the deities of the American banking system are now in ruins, plunged from their pedestals into the maw of taxpayer largesse. There was a time when their power was real. Come with me to Cleveland 30 years ago today.
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By Marie Cocco — As Congress and the White House lurch toward possible approval of a loan package for the crippled auto industry, we are undoubtedly in store for more union-bashing.
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nytimes.com
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Bearded political renaissance man and current governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson was picked Wednesday morning to be Barack Obama’s secretary of commerce. The unsurprising move makes Richardson the latest politician drafted by Team Obama, who point to Richardson’s experience at the U.N., as governor, and as energy secretary.
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By Amy Goodman — President-elect Barack Obama introduced his principal national security Cabinet selections to the world Monday and left no doubt that he intends to start his administration on a war footing. It is revealing that his choice for national security adviser is a director of Boeing, a weapons manufacturer, and Chevron, an oil giant.
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By William Pfaff — The cynical view of national sovereignty holds that it belongs only to those who can defend it. This was said recently at the Pentagon concerning American manned and unmanned attacks inside Pakistan.
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Flickr / Center for American Progress Action Fund
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House Democrats are serious about going green. To prove it, they just ousted auto hawk John Dingell from his perch as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Rep. Henry Waxman, a California liberal and occasional Dingell foe, supplied the boot.
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AP via YouTube
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How will an Obama administration differ its predecessor in terms of climate change? President-elect Barack Obama made a virtual appearance at a Los Angeles climate conference to drop some hints.
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imdb.com
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Here’s a solution to the energy crisis Americans are sure to love: A company called Geoplasma is building a plant in Florida that will vaporize garbage with a plasma torch, turning 1,500 tons of waste into 60 megawatts of the good stuff. It may not be as clean as solar, but hey, America is the Saudi Arabia of trash.
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AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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By Scott Ritter — Now that the presidential election has liberated Barack Obama from the need to play to the fickle whim of domestic politics, he should put away the saber and take a more enlightened approach to Iran.
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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