House Passes Bill to Address Threat of Climate Change

[Mustardeggs]

Well it depends on your definition of slavery.

Taxation in itself doesnt equal slavery, i never said that.

Serious about taxes beeing low in germany because theyre very high imo.

What is sad that to see all the time is this conspiracy bashing.

Everybody who even considers shady doings by the government and extremely powerfull people. Doings which are sometimes admitted, documented or have strong indications for. Are beeing treated like they just told that a green man from mars in an elvis outfit is secretly ruling the world and adolf hitlers ufos are controlling the USA.

Its sad to see that most discussion about this topic are going into this direction.

Iam not telling everyone either that theyre brainwashed slaves who like beeing raped and enjoy beeing lied to because they even dismiss the possibilty of shady things going on. And then totally dismissing anything they say for the heck of it.

And the elites trying to put their foot into your face was by the way common practice all throughout history. But now everything doesnt exist and all is good because we have TV, all we need to worry about is not to breath out too much so we dont produce too much carbon.

Iam not saying anything outrageously over the top to be seriously called a " conspircay nut " and I also dont claim that my opinion or claims I make are always right. So I hope we can finish with this discussion soon.

I do apologize for my starting in this thread, it was admitetly the wrong way and basiclly exactly what iam critizing now.

[primetime]

Still waiting for the Chinese to pony up the big bucks to clean up the environment. If they make their mfg plants as clean and others countrys' mfg plants clean they will just have a smaller comparative advantage, but an advatage none the less due to their low wage advantage.

[Mustardeggs]

China refuses to cut carbon emissions

[zeusbheld]

Still waiting for the Chinese to pony up the big bucks to clean up the environment. If they make their mfg plants as clean and others countrys' mfg plants clean they will just have a smaller comparative advantage, but an advatage none the less due to their low wage advantage.

i suspect they're too busy trying to make the biggest deliberate environmental trainwreck in the history of deliberate environmental trainwrecks (sort of) work... that would be the Three Gorges Dam, which among other things basically obliterated the Chinese equivalent of Yosemite National park just as a warmup.

other than that, they're off building lots of filthy coal plants (as in coal may not be the worst thing ever, but some kinds of coal plants are worse than others, and last i heard they've ordered a bunch of the worst kind).

[Bruce551]

MONDAY, JULY 06, 2009

Climate Change Legislation and the Midwest

by Richard T. Stuebi

http://www.cleantechblog.com/2009/07/climate-change-legislation-and-midwest.html

As virtually every reader of this blog probably knows, Congress has recently made more progress on climate change legislation than it had ever before achieved. The House has now passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), more commonly known as the Waxman-Markey bill.

The path forward for this bill is likely to be torturous. In the Senate, conventional wisdom is that passage is within reach if all Democratic Senators vote for a bill (augmented perhaps by a few Republican votes). But there's a significant swath of Democratic Senators who are, at best, "on the fence" about supporting climate legislation.

Many of these swing votes reside in the Midwest, where a group of Senators loosely called the "Gang of 16" have publicly raised concerns about the prospect of climate legislation. As you might expect, their concerns largely stem from the potential economic harm that might be borne by Midwestern interests -- through higher electricity prices and reduced global competitiveness in industrial markets -- as a result of policies adopted by the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions.

Against this backdrop, over the past year, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs convened a Task Force, comprised of regional thought-leaders in the private, academic and non-profit sectors, to consider the challenges facing the Midwest in moving to a carbon-constrained world. The goal: to make a public statement to elected officials from the Midwest on appropriate directions for climate policy.

In June, the Task Force released its report "Embracing the Future: The Midwest and a New National Energy Policy", which represented a synthesis of the perspectives of the Task Force members (of which I was privileged to be one).

The report is based on the presumption that human-induced climate change is occurring, and a national policy to mitigate emissions contributing to climate change is appropriate to put in place.

The report offers no safe haven to those who believe climate change is bunk -- or even if real, is not worth doing anything about.

Rather, the question that the report wrestles with is what kind of climate policy should be put in place that will maximize opportunities for Midwestern economic revitalization while minimizing the downsides to the Midwest, given the region's inherited assets and liabilities.

The summary findings of the report contain little that is groundbreaking:

1. "The Midwest can and must turn the challenge of changing energy and climate policy to its economic advantage."

2. "Prompt enactment of national climate change legislation is essential to the Midwest's future prosperity and competitiveness."

3. "Regional and local action [in the Midwest] is likewise essential."

4. "Addressing carbon emissions will not be cheap."

To the last point, the report emphasizes the urgency of capturing the full range of economically-attractive energy efficiency opportunities -- many of which are available at negative cost to society -- or else the costs of climate policy are likely to be much higher.

Ditto, the report advocates that emissions offsets be allowed in climate policy so as to enable economic sectors (e.g., agriculture) offering low-cost emission reduction possibilities to contribute to the overall solution at reduced societal cost.

Arguably, more important than what the report says is who the Task Force represents. The Task Force was co-chaired by John Rowe, Chairman and CEO of Exelon (NYSE: EXC), and included active participation by senior executives from such industrial stalwarts as Arcelor Mittal (NYSE: MT), Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), Ford (NYSE: F), and Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI).

Opponents of Waxman-Markey, or of any climate change legislation, will have difficulty claiming that these Midwestern industrial employers don't accurately reflect the interests of old-line manufacturing concerns.

If these companies are saying we can cost-effectively -- and therefore should -- do something to address climate change, it adds a lot of credibility to the position of taking definitive action.

Would it were that more Midwestern companies had the type of visible and proactive leadership exhibited by Mr. Rowe. At an event publicizing the release of the report on June 8 in Chicago,

Mr. Rowe stated his strong support of Waxman-Markey (notwithstanding its imperfections), and urged those with close friends in D.C. to enlist more support. In the Senate, this means solidifying the positions of the Midwestern Gang of 16.

It will be an interesting summer here in the Midwest -- the key battleground for the fate of climate change legislation.

Richard T. Stuebi is the Fellow for Energy and Environmental Advancement at The Cleveland Foundation, and is also the Founder and President of NextWave Energy, Inc. Later in 2009, he will also become Managing Director of Early Stage Partners.

I hear that the "Gang of 16" wants alot more U.S. Gov. loan guarantees for Nukes, avg. cost of 4 GW Nuke, 5 Billion

:roll:

[GoodKarma]

Hydrogen car gets 1,336 mpg. is this the hydrogen car wev'e been looking for?

http://gas2.org/2009/07/13/students-build-hydrogen-vehicle-that-gets-1336-mpg/

[eagle]

Hydrogen car gets 1,336 mpg. is this the hydrogen car wev'e been looking for?

http://gas2.org/2009/07/13/students-build-hydrogen-vehicle-that-gets-1336-mpg/

at 170,000$ per car it will have to wait to the next bailout in US :wink:

[LakeGeneve]

I do have one pont that I need to clarify, because I don't quite understand, based on the graphs we saw posted by Bruce (I think), why Lake Geneve says that Australians are selfish...lets see...yes USA and China are way up there hovering around the 6000 mega-tons of Carbon in 2006, then other industrialised nations such as Russia, Japan, India, sitting about 1/3rd of the US output each, then UK at one tenth...Australia is not even on the map... The UK has a population of about 66 million, whereas Oz is less than a third of that in a land mass the size of the USA.

Admittedly, I believe that on a per capita basis, the Aussies do have a fairly large carbon footprint, and that shocks me, but I also do believe that they are at least trying to do something about it...albeit slowly.

I am not trying to protect or stand up for Australia particularly, but I think the statement was not reasonable given the context, in that it almost implied that Australia was in the same league as the USA when it comes to actual Carbon output...which of course it doesn't by a long long way.

Greer

Greer, to add to my earlier reply, there is an interesting BBC Hard Talk segment which I saw today - arising out of an informal meeting of environment Ministers in Denmark - which makes it quite clear that Australia is the worst, or next worst after the US, in terms of GHGs per capita. The data given is 25 tonnes per capita V India 2 tonnes per capita.

Quite an interesting interview of the Australia and Indian ministers as a representation of the gulf between developed and developing countries policy stances pre Copenhagen.

Worth a watch if anyone has 30 mins, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lw61c

[LakeGeneve]

Just to prove that Australians are dirty bastards it now seems that we have overtaken the US as the most polluting per capita on the CO2 front!

The world's worst polluters ADAM MORTON September 11, 2009 .

AUSTRALIA has the world's highest per capita carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, according to a British analysis.

The CO2 Energy Emissions Index, released by risk assessment company Maplecroft, found Australia's overwhelmingly coal-based electricity supply meant the average person emitted 20.58 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

Australia overtook the US - responsible for 19.78 tonnes per head - as the worst per capita emitter. Canada was third, followed by the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia.

China, now the biggest overall annual emitter of greenhouse gas, was 44th out of the 185 countries listed, emitting 4.6 tonnes per person. The average person in India emits just 1.2 tonnes a year.

The gap between Australia and the US and big emerging economies illustrates why wealthier countries are expected to make the first, and deepest, emissions cuts under a climate treaty due to be signed in Copenhagen in December.

China and other emerging countries are demanding rich nations make cuts of 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020. It would give poorer countries time to expand their economies and reduce poverty before deepening their carbon footprints. Australia has bipartisan support for a 2020 emissions reduction target equivalent to a 4 per cent to 24 per cent cut below 1990 levels.

Maplecroft also released a list of countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. It was topped by Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan. Twenty-two of the 28 most-at-risk countries were in Africa. At least risk were Norway, Finland, Japan, Canada and New Zealand.

A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said Australia's ''very high'' per capita emissions demonstrated why it was important to introduce an emissions trading scheme. ''As one of the hottest and driest continents on earth, Australia will be among the hardest and fastest-hit by climate change if we don't act now,'' she said.

With BLOOMBERG

http://www.theage.com.au/environment/the-worlds-worst-polluters-20090910-fjdt.html