Why is Big Oil still receiving tax breaks? I'm fine with giving tax incentives to help create green energy (except not for ethanol) but for the life of me, I can't figure out why the oil industry is still receiving welfare from Americans. As the industry sets historical profits, there should be no reason whatsoever to give them a penny. When oil was $10/barrel and Congress was too stupid to think about the future, perhaps. But today? Are you kidding me? The same GOP Congress that never believed in helping individual Americans during times of need and the same people who now want rebate checks for wealthy Americans can surely appreciate this issue, right? While it may make sense to help an industry during troubled times, oil is now setting new records quarter after quarter and can surely function on their own. If they can't, they may need to get out of that business and shut the doors.
Moving forward, Congress and our next President should look closer at how we can help businesses that are building the energy for the future. If we can afford to give Big Oil handouts, we surely can find money for green energy. Besides helping the country move away from oil, this will be a fast growing sector that will add jobs. The GOP should put aside the silly argument over the reality of global warming and just understand that this is an emerging market. Growing this industry means new jobs, new business and new money for everyone. All of this is dependent on the US getting started now, not in 10 years when the market is already set. Is that such a hard thing to understand?
The Bush sponsored event finished pretty much the same as any other event. It required the crowd booing the US in order to get the Bush administration to move forward with 190 other countries. None of this should come as a surprise from the oil-friendly administration. It's not even a surprise to hear the US team talk about how enthusiastic about global warming they have been since 2001. The truth and facts never get in the way of their ridiculous statements.
Climate change doesn't exist. ExxonMobil tells me so, so it must be true. Two weeks ago I noticed crocuses popping up and my hydrangea's are now starting to bud. I moved my camellia pots to a slightly more shady position on the terrace and they are about ready to bloom, a few weeks ahead of 2007. Horticulturalists in the UK are noticing similar, odd behavior.
Since the 1980s, plant blooming times have come forward at a steady pace, but according to Ms Bell, such a leap forward from year to year is "completely unprecedented".
"During the first five years of the 1980s [daffodils] would have opened on or around 12 February, but by the 2000s the average date they were opening was 27 January. In these 25 years the average date that they open has come forward 16 days, which is just amazing," Ms Bell said.
So much for another Bush theory. He continues to say business should lead though there's no sign at all from business that there will be any movement on climate change until the government leads the charge. Business rarely takes action on issues such as this without prodding. If they do and no other companies follow, it could be a financial loss that could lead to hostile actions by the board or even a takeover if money is lost. We all know Bush was a terrible business leader and lost everyone else's money so his miscalculation should come as no surprise. Will anyone call him out this week during the climate change meetings in Hawaii?
Nearly nine in 10 of them do not rate it as a priority, says the study, which canvassed more than 500 big businesses in Britain, the US, Germany, Japan, India and China. Nearly twice as many see climate change as imposing costs on their business as those who believe it presents an opportunity to make money. And the report's publishers believe that big business will concentrate even less on climate change as the world economy deteriorates.
The survey demolishes George Bush's insistence that global warming is best addressed through voluntary measures undertaken by business – and does so at the most embarrassing juncture for the embattled President. For this week he is convening a meeting of the world's largest economies to try to persuade them to agree with him.
Meanwhile Bush still thinks it's a marvelous idea. At least, that's what the corporate farmers all tell him. I believe in competition but deciding between food or car fuel is downright ridiculous.
The cost-benefit study looks at whether using biofuels reduces greenhouse gas emissions, improves security of supply and creates jobs and delivers an unenthusiastic opinion on all three counts.
"What the cost-benefit analysis shows is that there are better ways to achieve greenhouse gas savings and security of supply enhancements than to produce biofuels," says the report.
"The costs of EU biofuels outweigh the benefits," the researchers state.
Maybe they're not the answer, or at least not the only answer. Deciding between fuel or food is ridiculous.
Supporters argue that biofuels can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, because the plants they are made from absorb carbon dioxide from the air. But a number of studies have raised doubts about the green credentials of many of the leading candidates, such as palm oil and ethanol made from corn. Critics say biofuels compete for land with staple food crops, and vast areas of rainforest are cleared to grow them.
Dimas told the BBC: "We have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were." He said the EU would "move carefully" on the issue. "We have to have criteria for sustainability, including social and environmental issues, because there are some benefits from biofuels."
At least Detroit is finally moving in the direction of what Americans want to buy instead of telling them what they ought to buy. Detroit may have been wrong as often as Dick Cheney and that's not easy to do. Prius sales shot up 69% in 2007.
Americans bought more Toyota Prius hybrid gas-electric hatchbacks last year than Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicles, the top-selling SUV for more than a decade.
Meanwhile, Bush and the GOP want to keep pushing this off indefinitely and the Democrats let them get away with it. Democrats are going to need to take a stand one of these days on something. More on what this means, after the jump.
The ability of forests to soak up man-made carbon dioxide is weakening, according to an analysis of two decades of data from more than 30 sites in the frozen north.
The finding published today is crucial, because it means that more of the CO2 we release will end up affecting the climate in the atmosphere rather than being safely locked away in trees or soil.
The results may partly explain recent studies suggesting that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing faster than expected. If higher temperatures mean less carbon is soaked up by plants and microbes, global warming will accelerate.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore, has concluded that humanity has eight years left to prevent the worst effects of global warming.
Carbon uptake by land and sea is crucial to predictions about future warming. "We are currently getting a 50% discount on the climatic impact of our fossil fuel emissions," the climate scientist John Miller of the University of Colorado wrote in a commentary on the research in the journal Nature - meaning that half of what we put out is sucked up by the oceans and ecosystems on land.
"Unfortunately, we have no guarantee that the 50% discount will continue, and if it disappears we will feel the full climatic brunt of our unrelenting emission of CO2 from fossil fuels."
The way people like Dingell and his fellow Detroit Big Auto enablers act, you would think it's still 1950 when GM and Ford hired people and stood at the top of the pile. In the real world, those companies have blown massive their leadership positions thanks to decades of incompetent management. The same people who ran their respective companies into the ground want to run our country into the ground by ruining the environment.
If GM and Ford were still sitting at the top, as much as I might not like it, I could see them as a force in Washington. The difference here is their track record is clear and it is not good. Why do we allow these clowns to control the destiny of our country like this? Big Auto ought to be spending more time on competing with the rest of the world instead of mucking about with our environment. The enablers all allow this to happen.
Biofuels can perhaps play a limited role, they are not the answer. Just imagine what new ideas and new starts we could have had if we dropped $1.5 trillion into new energy instead of invading Iraq. Of course, the special interests who put the GOP in power wouldn't like it, but the rest of us would have. When Bush tried jumping on the sugar cane biofuel bandwagon in Brazil, that should have provided enough warning that this was not the long term answer. We need to be looking at the complete picture and not just one benefit, such as reduced emissions. More on biofuels, after the jump.
Efforts to work out which crops are most environmentally friendly have, until now, focused only on the amount of greenhouse gases a fuel emits when it is burned. Scharlemann and Laurance highlighted a more comprehensive method, developed by Rainer Zah of the Empa Research Institute in Switzerland, that can take total environmental impacts - such as loss of forests and farmland and effects on biodiversity - into account.
In a study of 26 biofuels the Swiss method showed that 21 fuels reduced greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 30% compared with gasoline when burned. But almost half of the biofuels, a total of 12, had greater total environmental impacts than fossil fuels. These included economically-significant fuels such as US corn ethanol, Brazilian sugar cane ethanol and soy diesel, and Malaysian palm-oil diesel. Biofuels that fared best were those produced from waste products such as recycled cooking oil, as well as ethanol from grass or wood.
Scharlemann and Laurance also pointed to "perverse" government initiatives that had resulted in unintended environmental impacts. In the US, for example, farmers have been offered incentives to shift from growing soy to growing corn for biofuels. "This is helping to drive up global soy prices, which in turn amplifies economic incentives to destroy Amazonian forests and Brazilian tropical savannas for soy production."
The better news is that up to 15 other states will be joining. Only a kooky Republican administration could manage to turn the EPA into an extension of the pro-pollution lobby. You can't even make this stuff up any more. Well, not unless another kooky Republican administration wins next year.
What would the second largest insurance company know anyway? They're only a business that pays out (in theory, at least) after natural disasters.
There were 950 natural catastrophes in 2007 compared with 850 in 2006, the highest number since the group started compiling its closely watched annual report in 1974.
The total cost of disasters in 2007 was 75 billion dollars (51.5 billion euros), while the bill for 2006 was 50 billion dollars.
Just when my stomach was recovering from the last Bush "legacy" article (note the theme) the Post churns out their own legacy story. This time, we are to believe that Bush really cares about global warming. Moreover, he "bristles" when he hears that people like us think he doesn't care. Riiiigggghhhtttt. Because he has been such a leader in this area, I suppose. He likes to talk so much about action, how about a bit of serious action on climate change?
The only people enthusiastic about Bush's "new" position on global warming has been the media and possibly his mother. Maybe Laura. He has made no serious changes at all and continues to only give lip service to the issue. So what if he said in Bali he would start to negotiate on a plan? Big deal since he will be gone before the deal is even close to being finished. Bush still refuses to accept any firm numbers and did what he does with everything difficult, which is to push it out to the next president. Only fools like the Washington Post could eat this up. And to think that they are losing money and readers. Gosh, go figure. After the jump, more talk of legacy and the WaPo eats it up with a spoon.
Bush's attention comes at a time when he and top advisers feel better about his presidency, confident they have turned a corner after two years of political setbacks and can now focus on reformulating his legacy. Heading into his final year, Bush has turned to big, bracing challenges abroad, most notably finding Middle East peace and forging a consensus on climate change. If global warming turns out to be a defining issue of this generation, advisers said, Bush does not want to be remembered as a roadblock.
"As you draw toward the end of an eight-year term, it's human nature to try to look forward and then backward -- look into the future and then back at the past and think about how it looks," said a former Bush adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "You could conclude, as this administration has, that you want to be seen ultimately as having evolved and opened some doors and maybe started a glide path to the next administration."
Ahhh, the good old legacy. A legacy of trashing the environment for years and then talk of change at the end, but without any real change. Only the new Washington Post could fall for such silly nonsense. Bush wants to have it both ways and the friendly scribes from the Post comply. Would a junior high reporter even fall for this?
When the management team at the Post scratch their heads and wonder why their numbers are collapsing, they ought to be looking at boot-licking articles like this. If Bush wants to work on his legacy, fine, that's his business. There's no need to confuse a real story with an image makeover by political consultants. That's what this article is all about.
Schwarzenegger is right to be furious about the failures of Bush and his backwards EPA. I wish Democrats could show as much emotion on this subject instead of cowering to to the Inhofe-Dingell crowd.
"It's another example of the administration's failure to treat global warming with the seriousness that it actually demands," the governor said at a news conference Thursday. More on both Bush's "plan" and Schwarzenegger's fury after the jump.
Bush on Thursday defended the decision of his EPA administrator.
"Is it more effective to let each state make a decision as to how to proceed in curbing greenhouse gases? Or is it more effective to have a national strategy?" he said.
Citing the new energy law -- which sets a fuel economy standard for the whole country -- Bush said Johnson "made a decision based upon the fact that we passed a piece of legislation that enables us to have a national strategy."
But Schwarzenegger said he would like to set a higher standard for California. "Anything less than aggressive action on the greatest environmental threat of all time is inexcusable," he said.
Who could imagine such good fortune for a dictator in an oil-rich country? I'm sure "Vlad" (that's what his oil buddies call him) is thankful for the gas guzzlers who are building his retirement package. He might even think about friends in Congress who hold back environmental laws and protect Big Oil as they maintain a stranglehold on our energy future.
To help streamline the connection, Putin is now rumored to be joining Gazprom. Aren't we lucky to have so many good friends in the oil industry around the globe?
Leave it to a Bush-led EPA to shoot down efforts to clean up the environment. Only a GOP team could pull off such a ridiculous stunt, using the old "we would really like to have a better system, so let's not take any action until we get there" routine. Please. This administration has no interest whatsoever in doing anything positive about the environment. Big Oil and Detroit might not like it. The Bush plan is to push the issue into the Washington bureaucracy and let it die on the vine, with a little help from dinosaurs such as Rep. Dingell (D - General Motors.)
Maybe our next president will care about an EPA that is focused on the environment and not polluting special interests. If only trees and air could pay lobbyists... If only we had a democracy that was actually about people and not the most powerful lobbyists.
No surprises here except to the rest of the world that actually thought Bush was being sincere when he agreed to nothing and pushed this out for the next president. Same old, same old. Even a signed document with this administration isn't worth the paper it is written on and Congress is too afraid to ever call him out.
Between the Democrats in Congress and the Europeans, I'm not sure who is more gullible. Bush gets a headline, appearing to meet in the middle and no sooner is the ink dry, he's right back to where he was the day before. If anyone out there thinks that Bush will ever stop protecting his wealthy special interests, they're crazy.
(After the jump, the laundry list of excuses why Bali was worthless, according to Perino.)
In a statement, Perino said that aspects the U.S. particularly welcomes include a recognition of the importance of technology in the solution and the role of industry agreements.
But, she said, "the United States does have serious concerns" because the U.N.-sponsored talks have "not yet fully given effect to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities."
Specifically, commitments for emissions cuts cannot be required from developed countries alone, as that would be insufficient to reduce global warming and would be unfair. "Major developing economies must likewise act," Perino said.
Also, requirements of developing countries must be set to reflect factors such as the size of a nation's economy or its emissions level, she said.
There are no shortages of media reports about the US coming around and joining the rest of the world at the Bali conference on climate change. To the degree that the administration recognized the problem and said action needed to be taken, there's not much more here. We have seen Bush the last few years give plenty of lip service but it's a different story when it comes to real actions. Maybe there has been real change and we'll all be shocked at the new Bush. Then again, have we ever once witnessed any movement like this before?
Bush has one more year to go and his entire game plan on everything is to run out the clock. Whether it's the war, the subprime problems or the economy in general it is always about pushing the issue out to the next president. It's nice to see that the US wasn't the class idiot yet again at an international conference, but when I see results over talk, then I will start to believe there is an updated position on climate change.
Since when has Bush ever really reached out to others who do not share his Stone Age views? He hardly has a track record of compromise so ignoring this summit is not such a bad idea. It would be nice to have countries discussing global warming, but unfortunately Bush never wants to take action that might hurt his special interest supporters. Global warming programs are a dead issue with the US until the next government comes to town.
