The environment thread

[Balta1701]

I think Kap ought to be celebrating this act of civil disobedience..

Ken Feinberg said today he hasn't been able to start writing claims checks because BP PLC has not yet deposited any money into the $20 billion escrow fund it promised to create.

 

Feinberg, who was appointed last month to administer individual and business claims stemming from the oil spill,

[mr_genius]

I think Kap ought to be celebrating this act of civil disobedience..

 

haha. did you really think they were going to put 20 billion in there? a few million in bribes to congress will get them off the hook. much more cost effective.

[Balta1701]

haha. did you really think they were going to put 20 billion in there? a few million in bribes to congress will get them off the hook. much more cost effective.

But Kap told me Obama was going to kill them all and was evil, and BP was going to be happy to make restitution and could be totally trusted.

[mr_genius]

But Kap told me Obama was going to kill them all and was evil, and BP was going to be happy to make restitution and could be totally trusted.

 

and i told you BP owns Obama.

 

Obama is basically a BP employee. He has accepted the most bribe money by far.

[Balta1701]

and i told you BP owns Obama.

 

Obama is basically a BP employee. He has accepted the most bribe money by far.

So, will you therefore pledge to stop voting for people who have accepted huge sums of money from dirty energy companies?

[mr_genius]

So, will you therefore pledge to stop voting for people who have accepted huge sums of money from dirty energy companies?

 

depends. if it means i have to vote for some douche that accepted huge amounts of bribe money from another industry, then no.

[Balta1701]

depends. if it means i have to vote for some douche that accepted huge amounts of bribe money from another industry, then no.

So you're going to pledge to turn in an empty ballot.

[mr_genius]

So you're going to pledge to turn in an empty ballot.

 

are you?

[Balta1701]

are you?

I'm not the one alleging that Obama sold out to BP for a pittance in campaign contributions.

[mr_genius]

I'm not the one alleging that Obama sold out to BP for a pittance in campaign contributions.

 

it's not an allegation, it's a fact. you are very selective with your outrage over corporate bribes.

 

but you're one of those peculiar Democrat worshipers.

[Balta1701]

it's not an allegation, it's a fact. you are very selective with your outrage over corporate bribes.

So is anyone who votes Republican.

[mr_genius]

So is anyone who votes Republican.

 

don't you hold yourself to a higher standard? time to admit your heroes are nothing but corrupt shills

[Balta1701]

don't you hold yourself to a higher standard? time to admit your heroes are nothing but corrupt shills

Charlie Rangel says hi.

 

This is politics. At this point in this country, everything is so corrupt that I'll take something of an improvement over the last 8 years we just went through of "Get tough, it's just a little e-coli on your food, it'd be crazy to require inspections".

 

Yeah, there's plenty of corrupt shills out there. For example...we can't even get 50 votes for a legitimate energy policy, and the President didn't seem too angry about that.

[StrangeSox]

Speaking of huge storms and flooding...

[Balta1701]

Friedman nailed this one today.

I could blame Republicans for the fact that not one G.O.P. senator indicated a willingness to vote for a bill that would put the slightest price on carbon. I could blame the Democratic senators who were also waffling. I could blame President Obama for his disappearing act on energy and spending more time reading the polls than changing the polls. I could blame the Chamber of Commerce and the fossil-fuel lobby for spending bags of money to subvert this bill. But the truth is, the public, confused and stressed by the last two years, never got mobilized to press for this legislation. We will regret it.

 

We’ve basically decided to keep pumping greenhouse gases into Mother Nature’s operating system and take our chances that the results will be benign — even though a vast majority of scientists warn that this will not be so. Fasten your seat belts. As the environmentalist Rob Watson likes to say: “Mother Nature is just chemistry, biology and physics. That’s all she is.” You cannot sweet-talk her. You cannot spin her. You cannot tell her that the oil companies say climate change is a hoax. No, Mother Nature is going to do whatever chemistry, biology and physics dictate, and “Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1.000,” says Watson. Do not mess with Mother Nature. But that is just what we’re doing.

 

Since I don’t have anything else to say, I will just fill out this column with a few news stories and e-mails that came across my desk in the past few days:

 

•

 

Just as the U.S. Senate was abandoning plans for a U.S. cap-and-trade system, this article ran in The China Daily: “BEIJING — The country is set to begin domestic carbon trading programs during its 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015) to help it meet its 2020 carbon intensity target. The decision was made at a closed-door meeting chaired by Xie Zhenhua, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission ... Putting a price on carbon is a crucial step for the country to employ the market to reduce its carbon emissions and genuinely shift to a low-carbon economy, industry analysts said.”

 

•

 

As we East Coasters know, it’s been extremely hot here this summer, with records broken. But, hey, you could be living in Russia, where ABC News recently reported that a “heat wave, which has lasted for weeks, has Russia suffering its worst drought in 130 years. In some parts of the country, temperatures have reached 105 degrees.” Moscow’s high the other day was 93 degrees. The average temperature in July for the city is 76 degrees. The BBC reported that to keep cool “at lakes and rivers around Moscow, groups of revelers can be seen knocking back vodka and then plunging into the water. The result is predictable — 233 people have drowned in the last week alone.”

 

•

 

A day before the climate bill went down, Lew Hay, the C.E.O. of NextEra Energy, which owns Florida Power & Light, one of the nation’s biggest utilities, e-mailed to say that if the Senate would set a price on carbon and requirements for renewal energy, utilities like his would have the price certainty they need to make the big next-generation investments, including nuclear. “If we invest an additional $3 billion a year or so on clean energy, that’s roughly 50,000 jobs over the next five years,” said Hay. (Say goodbye to that.)

 

•

 

Making our country more energy efficient is not some green feel-good thing. Retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson, who was Gen. David Petraeus’s senior logistician in Iraq, e-mailed to say that “over 1,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan hauling fuel to air-condition tents and buildings. If our military would simply insulate their structures, it would save billions of dollars and, more importantly, save lives of truck drivers and escorts. ... And will take lots of big fuel trucks (a k a Taliban Targets) off the road, expediting the end of the conflict.”

 

•

 

The last word goes to the contrarian hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, who in his July letter to investors, noted: “Conspiracy theorists claim to believe that global warming is a carefully constructed hoax driven by scientists desperate for ... what? Being needled by nonscientific newspaper reports, by blogs and by right-wing politicians and think tanks? I have a much simpler but plausible ‘conspiracy theory’: the fossil energy companies, driven by the need to protect hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, encourage obfuscation of the inconvenient scientific results. I, for one, admire them for their P.R. skills, while wondering, as always: “Have they no grandchildren?”

[southsider2k5]

And yet the government has no interest in hundreds of billions of dollars, lol.

[Balta1701]

And yet the government has no interest in hundreds of billions of dollars, lol.

Clearly not, they dump a hundred billion or so in subsidies on dirty energy companies every decade, and they're more than willing to pay the few billion dollars every time there's a disastrous flood or storm event or monster drought.

[kapkomet]

 

You defend everything the government does and hate everything the private sector does. I've seen hate ons before, but not like you.

 

[Balta1701]

 

You defend everything the government does and hate everything the private sector does. I've seen hate ons before, but not like you.

Did I just defend the government energy subsidies or complain about them?

 

Or does it only count that I don't defend stuff you like.

[NorthSideSox72]

It sounds like they're hinting at DU rounds but not explicitly stating it.

There's another possibility that might be underneath this. I doubt it, but, worth considering... maybe it wasn't the US rounds that did it. Maybe it was something those rounds hit.

 

[Balta1701]

One economic issue here worth pointing out now that the bill has died and the EPA will wind up issuing rules...the death of the bill is itself an economic drag, because the utility and energy companies aren't stupid. Most of them know that a CO2 rule is eventually going to come, but they are loathe to invest until they have some idea of what the basic outline of the rules are, so they're sitting on cash that could be invested right now.

Utility companies anticipate Congress will eventually pass legislation that mandates reductions in greenhouse gases and favors renewable sources of energy, rather than letting the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decide how best to regulate.

 

Still, not knowing when Congress will step in makes planning investment difficult.

 

“There’s a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines just waiting for more regulatory clarity,” said Lewis Hay, CEO of Juno-Beach, Florida-based NextEra Energy Inc.

[NorthSideSox72]

One economic issue here worth pointing out now that the bill has died and the EPA will wind up issuing rules...the death of the bill is itself an economic drag, because the utility and energy companies aren't stupid. Most of them know that a CO2 rule is eventually going to come, but they are loathe to invest until they have some idea of what the basic outline of the rules are, so they're sitting on cash that could be invested right now.

I can't really blame them for that. They have no idea where things will end up.

 

[Balta1701]

I can't really blame them for that. They have no idea where things will end up.

I wasn't trying to blame them, I was trying to suggest it's a logical consequence of the bill hanging out there for a year and then falling apart. Did that not come through correctly? That's entirely the right move on their part.

[kapkomet]

One economic issue here worth pointing out now that the bill has died and the EPA will wind up issuing rules...the death of the bill is itself an economic drag, because the utility and energy companies aren't stupid. Most of them know that a CO2 rule is eventually going to come, but they are loathe to invest until they have some idea of what the basic outline of the rules are, so they're sitting on cash that could be invested right now.

 

 

I wasn't trying to blame them, I was trying to suggest it's a logical consequence of the bill hanging out there for a year and then falling apart. Did that not come through correctly? That's entirely the right move on their part.

 

Do you not understand that is a huge problem with this administration, and it's on damn near every policy this guy has? NO ONE knows where ANYTHING is going... and it's a product of his incompetence. Meanwhile, people like you go around screaming LA LA LA LA LA LA... corporations suck, government must regulate more, hope and change, etc. In case you hadn't noticed, it doesn't work.

[Balta1701]

Do you not understand that is a huge problem with this administration, and it's on damn near every policy this guy has? NO ONE knows where ANYTHING is going... and it's a product of his incompetence. Meanwhile, people like you go around screaming LA LA LA LA LA LA... corporations suck, government must regulate more, hope and change, etc. In case you hadn't noticed, it doesn't work.

So, you agree with me that the Republicans should drop the filibuster and we should get working rules in here for these things as quick as possible?

 

You can't on one hand tell me how bad it is that no one knows where anything is going and then on the other hand support the multi-month delays in writing these bills that are coming about from the filibusters. Everyone, and I mean everyone, knows that eventually carbon emissions regulations are coming. The Chinese know that. The Europeans already have them. Businesses have known that for years. The EPA has been legally required to come up with those rules since 2007. The only ones who don't believe that they are coming are the Inhofe crew.

 

Even if the EPA doesn't release rules (which will continue to get it challenged and beaten in court), eventually there's going to be another Katrina level catastrophe that will finally push things forwards, whether it's Lebron's party getting flooded or an ice-free north pole causing parents to tell their kids that Santa drowned, it's going to happen, everyone knows it, so let's put together a good enough rule covering it.