Your Questions About Green Living

Energy Crisis? It is a time for a Revolution? Bill Richardson?

It’s time for a revolution.
We have been hearing about this country’s energy crisis for years, yet our dependence on foreign oil has deepened, our fuel efficiency standards have stagnated, and our greenhouse gas emissions have multiplied exponentially. The time for incremental change and conventional thinking is long gone.
Today I’m calling for a New American Revolution – an energy and climate revolution.
I have a real plan to reverse global warming. Click here to endorse my bold new agenda.
There are five crucial elements to my plan:
Cut oil demand: 50% by 2020. Increasing the gas mileage of the average car to more than 50 mpg is just one way to help achieve this goal.
Change to Renewable Sources for Electricity: 50% by 2040. We could save customers $21 billion a year by 2020 by changing to alternative energy sources.
Dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions: 90% by 2050. We must set strict limits on emissions. We’ll do it by instituting a market-based cap and trade syst

Spain’s Green Jobs have FAILED so why is Obama Praising them and Copying them?

Going Green/Alternative Energy has failed in SPAIN and yet the Democrats in the Congress, Senate and even the Democrat President are copying this failed plan.

Spain has over an 18% Un Employment Rate and the Green Jobs didn’t create JOBS they added to the UN EMPLOYMENT RATE.

WHY?

Why can’t the Democrats in our Government use our Natural Resourse and stop going with a FAILED PLAN?

Below is the LINK:

_____________________________________________________

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/editorials/stories/2009/06/24/will24.ART_ART_06-24-09_A11_MLE94UP.html?sid=101

Let’s not envy Spain’s green jobs

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 3:00 AM

By George F. Will

Why, Gabriel Calzada wonders, is the U.S. president recommending that America emulate the Spanish model for creating “green jobs” in “alternative energy” even though Spain’s unemployment rate is 18.1 percent — more than double the European Union average — partly because of spending on such jobs?

Calzada, 36, an economics professor at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, has produced a report that, if true, is inconvenient for the Obama administration’s green agenda.

Calzada says Spain’s torrential spending — no other nation has so aggressively supported production of electricity from renewable sources — on wind farms and other forms of alternative energy has indeed created jobs. But Calzada’s report concludes that they often are temporary and have received $752,000 to $800,000 each in subsidies — wind industry jobs cost even more, $1.4 million each. And each new job entails the loss of 2.2 other jobs that are either lost or not created in other industries because of the political allocation of capital. Calzada says the creation of jobs in alternative energy has subtracted about 110,000 jobs from elsewhere in Spain’s economy.

The president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was asked about the report’s contention that the political diversion of capital into green jobs has cost Spain jobs. The White House transcript contained this exchange:

Gibbs: “It seems weird that we’re importing wind turbine parts from Spain in order to build — to meet renewable energy demand here if that were even remotely the case.”

Questioner: “Is that a suggestion that his study is simply flat wrong?”

Gibbs: “I haven’t read the study, but I think, yes.”

Questioner: “Well, then. (Laughter.)”

Actually, what is weird is this idea: A sobering report about Spain’s experience must be false because otherwise the behavior of some American importers, seeking to cash in on the U.S. government’s promotion of wind power, might be participating in an economically unproductive project.

It is true Calzada has come to conclusions that he, as a libertarian, finds congenial. And his study was supported by a like-minded think tank (the Institute for Energy Research, for which this columnist has given a paid speech). Still, it is notable that, rather than refute his report, many Spanish critics have impugned his patriotism for faulting something for which Spain was praised by Obama and others.

You can find similar conclusions in “Yellow Light on Green Jobs,” a report by Republican Sen. Kit Bond, ranking member of the Subcommittee on Green Jobs and the New Economy.

What matters most is not that reports such as Calzada’s and the Republicans’ are right in every particular. It is, however, hardly counterintuitive that politically driven investments are economically counterproductive. Indeed, environmentalists with the courage of their convictions should argue that the point of such investments is to subordinate market rationality to the higher agenda of planetary salvation.

Still, one can be agnostic about both reports while being dismayed by the frequency with which such findings are ignored simply because they question policies that are so invested with righteousness that methodical economic reasoning about their costs and benefits seems unimportant.

For fervent believers in governments’ abilities to control the climate and in the urgent need for them to do so, believing is seeing: They see, through their ideological lenses, governments’ green spending as always paying for itself. This is a free-lunch faith comparable to that of those conservatives who believe tax cuts always pay for themselves by stimulating compensating revenues from economic growth.

Windmills are iconic in the land of Don Quixote, whose tilting at them became emblematic of comic futility. Spain’s new windmills are neither amusing nor emblematic of policies America should emulate.

Which candidate has this stance with regards to the environment?

The federal government has proven itself untrustworthy with environmental policy by facilitating polluters, subsidizing logging in the National Forests, and instituting one-size-fits-all approaches that too often discriminate against those they are intended to help.

The key to sound environmental policy is respect for private property rights. The strict enforcement of property rights corrects environmental wrongs while increasing the cost of polluting.

In a free market, no one is allowed to pollute his neighbor’s land, air, or water. If your property is being damaged, you have every right to sue the polluter, and government should protect that right. After paying damages, the polluter’s production and sale costs rise, making it unprofitable to continue doing business the same way. Currently, preemptive regulations and pay-to-pollute schemes favor those wealthy enough to perform the regulatory tap dance, while those who own the polluted land rarely receive a quick or just resolution to their problems.

In Congress, I have followed a constitutional approach to environmental action:

I consistently vote against using tax dollars to subsidize logging in National Forests.
I am a co-sponsor of legislation designed to encourage the development of alternative and sustainable energy. H.R. 550 extends the investment tax credit to solar energy property and qualified fuel cell property, and H.R. 1772 provides tax credits for the installation of wind energy property.
Taxpayers for Common Sense named me a “Treasury Guardian” for my work against environmentally-harmful government spending and corporate welfare.
I am a member of the Congressional Green Scissors Coalition, a bipartisan caucus devoted to ending taxpayer subsidies of projects that harm the environment for the benefit of special interests.

Individuals, businesses, localities, and states must be free to negotiate environmental standards. Those who depend on the land for their health and livelihood have the greatest incentive to be responsible stewards.

Since Bush could instantly overfund the military, aren’t his funding cuts worse than downsizing the military?

Clinton’s downsizing had nothing on the Bush administration’s cuts in funds from almost everything you could think of:
Funding has been cut for hospitals, Veterans’ Affairs (VA) programs, pharmaceutical companies, Occupational Safety and Health Association (OSHA), National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH), education K-12, education-education after high school, Federal Application for Student Aid (FAFSA), libraries, alternative energy projects, worker safety and health grants, cancer and AIDS research, public health advocacy groups, fire prevention programs, flood prevention programs, airports, etc…
The list goes on. He has used this to fund his “War on Terrorism”. Therefore, the extra funds have been wasted because he has only increased the terrorists’ recruitment drive and viciousness.
C B, this is why he has cut funds. He doesn’t cut taxes, but he does cut funds so that the debt won’t grow too huge and have congressment yelling at him for it.
Nice try C B, but you failed to contradict me.
2nd Answerer, I think if YOU check, we have only had this democrat majority for a measly 1.5 months. I am covering the entire 6.15 years our administration has been in power.
Mahal, you gave me an unsubstantiated reason against 1 thing that I said, out of the dozens of things I said. You are really full of it. You cannot contradict me. Do your homework and find out.
Maybe not Bush, but congress did overfund it instantly because most people were staunchly for the war. You know this.

how would you summarize this article?

China claims success in test of fusion reactor
Posted 9/28/2006 7:50 AM

By Alexa Olesen, The Associated Press
BEIJING — Scientists on Thursday carried out China’s first successful test of an experimental fusion reactor, powered by the process that fuels the sun, a research institute spokeswoman said.
China, the United States and other governments are pursuing fusion research in hopes that it could become a clean, potentially limitless energy source. Fusion produces little radioactive waste, unlike fission, which powers conventional nuclear reactors.

Beijing is eager for advances, both for national prestige and to reduce its soaring consumption of imported oil and dirty coal.

The test by the government’s Institute of Plasma Physics was carried out on a Tokamak fusion device in the eastern city of Hefei, said Cheng Yan, a spokeswoman at the institute.

Cheng said the test was considered a success because the reactor produced plasma, a hot cloud of supercharged particles. She wouldn’t give other details.

“This represents a step for humankind in the study of nuclear reaction,” she said.

U.S. and other scientists have been experimenting with fusion for decades but it has yet to be developed into a viable energy alternative.

“I think it is a considerable step ahead for China,” said Karl Heinz Finken, a senior scientist at the Institute for Plasma Physics in Juelich, Germany, who had no role in the Chinese research.

“China is speeding up with the development of nuclear fusion and I think at the moment they are making considerable progress,” he said.

The Chinese facility is similar to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER, being built by a seven-nation consortium in Cadarache in southern France, according to state media. That reactor is due to be completed in 2015.

China is a partner in the ITER reactor, along with the European Union, the United States, Japan, Russia, India and South Korea.

A Tokamak reactor uses a doughnut-shaped magnetic field to contain the hot gas.

Several countries have produced plasma using a Tokamak or similar device, said Gabriel Marbach, deputy head of fusion research at the ITER facility. He said producing plasma was only one step toward the fusion that ITER aims to perform, and that the project could be helped by the Chinese experiments.

“It was important for China to show that it is part of the club, and that adds value to its participation in ITER,” Marbach said.

“That is not to say that it is at the level of the Europeans or Americans,” he said. However, he added, “We are rather admiring of the Chinese for conducting this test. It was conducted well, and they constructed (the machine) rather quickly.”

China is the world’s No. 2 oil consumer and its No. 3 importer, consuming at least 3.5 million barrels of foreign oil per day last year.

China plans to build dozens of nuclear power plants and is trying to promote use of cleaner alternative energy sources such as natural gas, wind power and methanol made from corn.

AP correspondent Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.