Rarely do we meet those who have made careers selling us lies. Consider the oddball doctors who took tobacco money to deny a link between cigarette smoking and cancer, or the handful of scientists who take oil and coal money to discredit global warming science, or the people who have done both.
Last week, students in Wisconsin and Michigan stepped up to such an opportunity when CFACT Campus, the student arm of a well-known cabal of fossil fuel apologists, hosted climate change denier Willie Soon at several campus events around the country.
A report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Office of Energy Projects says that, in 2012, the capacity for renewable energy electrical generation accounted for almost 50% of all new installations for energy projects in the United States. This includes solar, biomass, geothermal, and water-based generation capacity.
On top of making up nearly half of all new installation, renewable energy generation capacity also increased by 51% over the previous year.
However, generation capacity and actual electrical generation are two very different things, and total renewable generation for the year 2012 only amounted to about 13% of total energy production last year in the U.S.
The amount of renewable energy produced in the U.S. last year was slightly less than the global average of 15%, meaning that America is not too far off the mark compared to the rest of the world. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has set a worldwide goal of 30% renewable energy by the year 2030, but they currently remain pessimistic about the ability of countries to achieve that goal, and believe that there could be at least a nine-percentage point deficit between reality and their goal.
So why the pessimism in the face of good news from the U.S.? The answer is shale gas.
The U.S. government has managed to postpone financial calamity for a few months with the passage of a so-called “fiscal cliff” deal. While the deal is hardly anything to celebrate in the larger scheme of things, it did provide a one-year extension for a critical clean energy mechanism – the wind energy production tax credit.
The credit has been in jeopardy since it was first introduced, with Republicans in Washington threatening to kill the tax credit, citing its estimated cost of $12.1 billion over the next decade as too costly. However, the credit breaks down to a mere 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour of wind energy produced in America, making it one of the cheapest subsidies approved for energy projects.
The extension of the credit comes at the perfect time, as the United Nations recently released a report detailing the ways in which climate change could cause financial disasters across the globe.
Among the more dire warnings in the U.N. report is the threat of water scarcity, which could devastate commodity markets, as agriculture would take a massive hit and crops would be decimated. So while the United States might have postponed the drop over the fiscal cliff, the threat of the environmental and climate change cliff is very real, and very much in need of addressing.
The wind production credit extension will keep the tax credit alive for the year 2013, which wil help wind energy companies to resume growing and to hire back workers laid off in the past year. Its fate after that remains unclear.
This week, a new layer of corruption was revealed by Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group, this one involving insider trading of TransCanada's stocks by four members of Congress, as well as by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice.
"Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, reported in his 2010 financial disclosure form--the most recent available, filed on May 15, 2011--that he owned Transcanada stock worth between $115,002 and $300,000 (financial disclosure forms ask members to report their assets within broad ranges)."
"Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., reported owning between $15,001 and $51,000 in TransCanada stock in his 2010 financial disclosure; according to his office, the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee sold his stock on January 5, 2011."
"Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., has held Trans Canada stock since 2004; her most recent disclsosure shows she owns a stake in the company worth between $1,001 and $15,000."
"Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y....reported a $798 interest in Trans Canada."
"U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan E. Rice filed that she owned between $250,001 and $500,000 of TransCanada stock."
If the jury was still out on President Barack Obama's climate policy accolades (a huge "if"), consider the verdict now in, and from a surprising character at that: Marc Morano.
Morano jubilantly referred to the President as "George W. Obama" in an interview with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman at COP17, stating:
They [the Obama administration] have kept the exact same principles and negotiating stance as President George Bush did for eight years. Obama has carried on Bush’s legacy. So as skeptics, we tip our hat to President Obama in helping to crush and continuing to defeat the United Nations process. Obama has been a great friend of global warming skeptics at these conferences.
Among other items on his resume, Morano worked as a producer for the Rush Limbaugh Television Show from 1992 to 1996 and is a regular speaker at the Heartland Institute’s annual International Conference on Climate Change. He is also listed on Heartland’s website as a “global warming expert.”
When a fossil fuel industry funded, science denying shill is ringing the praises of the President's climate negotiating stances and happily referring to him as "George W. Obama," we are in a world of trouble. Things are not looking bright at the Durban proceedings, to say the least.
Canada is off to an impressive start at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, if what you're measuring is climate inaction and environmental embarrassment.
Today, at the first set of the Fossil of the Day awards, Canada took home not one, or two, but all three of the awards. The dubious 'honour' is voted on by an international coalition of than 400 leading international environmental organizations, including Greenpeace, who vote on the countries that performed the worst during the past day’s negotiations. Turns out if you are really committed to climate inaction, fail to have any plan to meet already weak targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, defeat a climate change bill that was already passed in your House of Commons by holding a snap vote by an unelected Senate after no debate, and are complicit in trying to weaken climate policy outside of your own national borders, you can win all three of the humiliating prizes.
The gentleman accepting the shameful awards on behalf of Canada hopped from podium step to podium step, barely able to juggle his armful of awards. Looks like Canada can clean up humiliating awards, but can't clean up its act.
In the next two weeks, we'll see if Canada will take home the Fossil of the Year for the forth year in a row. From the look of things now, we might as well preemptively cue the Jurassic Park theme music.
Watch this hilarious video to see Canada's flagrant lack of commitment to climate change policy given its due recognition. We can only hope that history does not repeat itself once more. Prove us wrong, will you Mr. Baird?
Atmospheric greenhouse gases are a bit of an abstraction. We can’t see them, we can’t smell them, and we can’t immediately tell when there is a change in concentration.
The site CO2Now is trying to change that by showing current data for atmospheric CO2 and helping people understand the relationship between current trends of rising CO2 levels and the effects of climate change. “The site puts atmospheric CO2 out in front where it needs to be,” says website founder Michael McGee. “It’s a simple thing that no other website is doing. I started posting atmospheric CO2 data in December 2007 when I realized it was a way I could add value to the climate conversation.”
The site also helps explain the factors that effect climate, the relationship between climate and weather and the effects of climate change like ocean acidification and reductions in global land ice. “Atmospheric CO2 is a big picture metric that hardly gets talked about outside of scientific circles,” adds McGee. “CO2Now.org was created so anyone on the internet can see the changes in the atmosphere as they happen. It presents the trend information so people can see whether or not we are doing enough to end global warming.”
Is it possible that amidst all the bogus claims, political controversy and foul cries about looming economic destruction, there’s actually a simple solution to the ravages of climate change?
A prominent Canadian engineer and scientist believes the solution – not just any solution but the only solution – rests within a tiny cell we ingest every day. And it can eliminate both carbon emissions and world conflict over oil supplies while saving the planet from global warming.
A climate conference in Brazil’s Amazon basin has drawn indigenous groups from 11 Latin American countries, Indonesia and Congo. In the largest gathering of its kind, they came to forge a plan whereby wealthier nations would compensate developing countries for saving tropical forests.
Scientists reckon tropical deforestation causes 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. An international carbon-trading plan was a central topic last December at a climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.
It’s tempting, but most certainly optimistic, to view President Bush’s 2008 State of the Union as his last gasp at blocking progress on global warming. He will, after all, be gone from office before the year is out and it’s tempting to think he hasn’t sufficient time to further damage efforts to reign in climate change.
But there’s no time to lose. And continued obstructionism by the Bush Administration doesn’t just highlight its continuing failure to grasp the urgency of the problem, it also ensures far greater difficulties for its successors, who will have to arrest the problem at home while pressing other major polluters like China and India to act.
Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.
There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.
