Quote :

"let's fuck over our entire economy, our entire livelihood in the name of being tree-huggers."

The transition to cleaner technology wouldn't do that.

Quote :

"Or, in your case, in the name of a fucking lunatic who believes that machines will replace us."

I don't simply believe in it. I want to promote and advance the process in any way I can.

Quote :

"And you make fun of Christians for believing in nonsense..."

I was not aware of this. Could you show me an example?

10/6/2008 12:03:25 AM

Quote :

"The transition to cleaner technology wouldn't do that."

ummm, if you force it on us when it is not economically viable, then yes, it WILL destroy our economy.

10/6/2008 12:05:10 AM

economically viable and maximum possible profit are not the same thing

10/6/2008 12:07:13 AM

never said it was. But, would you willingly lose money at the end of the day to make a widget cleaner? I sure as hell wouldn't.

10/6/2008 12:09:12 AM

^ which is why pure capitalism is doomed to failure*.

*I know this is not relevant to the discussion, but I had to throw it in

10/6/2008 12:11:33 AM

how do you figure? I'm not talking about making less profit. I'm talking about literally losing money. As in, it costs more to make than I can sell it for. Would you do that? Would you sell something for less than it cost to make it? Would you go into debt to continue such a practice?

10/6/2008 12:17:00 AM

Quote :

"ummm, if you force it on us when it is not economically viable, then yes, it WILL destroy our economy."

Well, if the government immediately made carbon emissions illegal and arrested violators, yeah. That would be the end of civilization. On the other hand, we should be able to convert our economy over the next few decades while retaining material wealth. If, by some fluke, mainstream science turns out to be correct, we'll even have accomplished more than pleasing hippies with this transition.

10/6/2008 12:19:29 AM

Who is telling companies to sell goods at a loss?

[Edited on October 6, 2008 at 12:20 AM. Reason : .]

10/6/2008 12:19:53 AM

It would not be that harsh. The main companies doing most of the polluting are already making so much that they would only be decreasing their profit.

10/6/2008 12:20:21 AM

^^^^ After reevaluating that post in that light, I retract my previous post.

10/6/2008 12:22:57 AM

^^ haha. no, those companies won't be decreasing their profits, though. They'll just move their operations overseas. And then Americans won't have jobs. And then our economy dies. Pretty simple, actually.

10/6/2008 12:31:17 AM

That's one reason why folks want a global agreement on climate change.

10/6/2008 12:36:19 AM

exactly. kyoto protocol, baby

10/6/2008 12:45:27 AM

I thought environmental stuff was supposed to be good for the economy. Like, it opens up a bunch of new shit for people to invest in and make money. The dot com boom has passed. Why can't we have a green boom or whatever?

10/6/2008 6:23:50 AM

Kyoto Protocol was a bunch of horseshit

10/6/2008 7:49:23 AM

Quote :

"I thought environmental stuff was supposed to be good for the economy. Like, it opens up a bunch of new shit for people to invest in and make money. The dot com boom has passed. Why can't we have a green boom or whatever?"

wut?

The dot com boom was powered by an explosion in the ability create real value added companies. The bubble part, of course, would be that they couldn't create as much value as we all though after all.

What is powering a green boom? Who gets the added value and how do they pay for it? If there's money, sure we can have a boom of whatever, I will always concur on that point. But who is happier because of all these windmills and how willing are they to sacrifice other consumption to pay for it? I can easily identify such a thing for the dot com boom. Some crazy old lady who discovers ZOMG! we can now order pets online. Or the n00b who sees something on ebay that is so OMG OMG OMG want! Or how about the guy who discovers he can type requests to a live porn show for a premium. Many of these people are more than willing to sacrifice other consumption for the product and will be much more [economically] fulfilled afterward.

What on God's green Earth is going to power a green boom? Let's put up a windmill and feel good about it why don't we? Hey, guess what? That's not sustainable economically. I don't give half a flip if it's sustainable in the long term if it can never happen because we can't move our feet to do it in the first place. So then, maybe we'll just force everybody to adopt these things. That will power our revolution.

Make no mistake, the vast majority of the crap 'green' companies and products are value taken away. Not value added.

10/6/2008 3:06:59 PM

Quote :

"What on God's green Earth is going to power a green boom?"

Liberal snottiness. People determine value for themselves. If driving a Prius gives Joe Tofu street cred around Nob Hill, he'll do it.

10/6/2008 5:30:05 PM

^^I dunno. The dotcom thingy was spurred by new technology (the internet). We need some awesome, new technology in the green industries.

And the government created and developed the technology behind the internet. So I think they should devote more money to government research into green stuff. Then we can have a green boom. And everybody can get rich.

10/7/2008 8:06:02 AM

If not a full-fledged green boom, we'll have a green bubble as long as the political landscape dictates that companies pay people to plant trees in South America in order to "offset" their carbon usage and get good publicity.

Solar, wind and geothermal companies will make a lot of money over the next decade, particularly with Obama as President and a democrat-controlled congress. Will it drive the economy? No, but it will be a fast-rising sector at a time when other sectors have a bleak outlook.

10/7/2008 11:12:05 AM

mrfrog, a carbon tax would solve your problem. By driving up the price of carbon intensive production the overall price of electricity would rise and make it profitable to develop green technology at the new higher prices. As a result, that promise of profits would drive investment, a cycle of above-average returns will cause above sanity investments, driving a classic boom, with the usual results: half of the remaining new companies are operating under bankruptcy protection. But, it would dramatically reduce carbon emissions.

10/7/2008 11:29:40 AM

Quote :

"^^I dunno. The dotcom thingy was spurred by new technology (the internet). We need some awesome, new technology in the green industries. And the government created and developed the technology behind the internet. So I think they should devote more money to government research into green stuff. Then we can have a green boom. And everybody can get rich."

I said the dotcom thing was powered by an explosion in the ability to create value added companies. That means technology and equates to what you're saying. We could produce services that we could not produce before then. Technology increased the economic value of the entire economy.

But I'm confused what people expect from the green technology. We already get food, electricity, and fuel. For new value to come online we need

- Those same needs to come at a lower price
- Those needs delivered differently, giving more pleasure to the user

Firstly, the first one just isn't happening. When has renewable energy ever produced electricity, or anything for that matter, cheaper than conventional generating stations (excluding large hydro, naturally)? The second one is the only one that you could hope to get away with... maybe in buildings. Advocates frequently make arguments about natural light and whatnot. Changing living conditions stands maybe a vague possibility of improving standard of living.

I would contend that a movement away from a car culture might have some chance to improve the standard of life here. There's a lot of sort of planning and whatnot that can be done that will allow people to not drive and still enjoy a higher standard of living day-to-day.

But for most of the rest of the stuff... you're not personally any better off having your walls made out of mud than out of Sheetrock. And you're certainly not personally better off with electricity generated differently.

The problem with the green revolution is that it seeks to revolutionize commodities, which are not quality sensitive, unlike say... a service. The Internet had the ability to revolutionize a large part of the service and retail market. Thus value added. If the green movement revolutionizes electricity, there's no value added. It's still the same electrons from your socket, and it's still the same commute you take to work.

[Edited on October 7, 2008 at 12:08 PM. Reason : ]

10/7/2008 12:07:01 PM

Quote :

"Firstly, the first one just isn't happening. When has renewable energy ever produced electricity, or anything for that matter, cheaper than conventional generating stations (excluding large hydro, naturally)?"

Oh, solar probably will be cheaper within a decade or two. Don't assume the current price differences between fossil fuels and renewable will endure forever.

And again, folks spend money for social benefits as much as anything else. I mean, why the hell do people drive H2s? Green would be another style, another way to display your status. It's already become that.

10/7/2008 12:14:02 PM

Quote :

"Firstly, the first one just isn't happening. When has renewable energy ever produced electricity, or anything for that matter, cheaper than conventional generating stations (excluding large hydro, naturally)? "

The first one IS happening, because of carbon taxes and subsidies on renewable energy sources. Does that add value? Well, no, but it does favor one industry over another, which are conditions for a boom in that particular industry.

10/7/2008 12:44:45 PM

But that means that all you can have is a local boom, not some huge infusion into the global economy.

If, for instance, energy became cheaper, we would use more energy, the economy would have a large gross value. If energy becomes more expensive, the economy will have a smaller gross value. Taxing would be like pumping labor unions full of money, it grows one sector at the expense of the whole.

10/7/2008 1:27:24 PM

Green technology has a global market. If the US were to become the leader in green tech products and services, you could expect a large-scale boom in the US economy.

Quote :

"Taxing would be like pumping labor unions full of money, it grows one sector at the expense of the whole."

This isn't a good analogy. Labor unions aren't really a "sector" per se. Taxing one industry and investing into another is a form of resource reallocation. When considering the externalities of fossil fuels, a carbon tax would put the marginal costs more in line with the social costs, creating a more efficient market.

[Edited on October 7, 2008 at 1:53 PM. Reason : 2]

10/7/2008 1:50:18 PM

Why is there a debate about global warming?

first lets explore capitalism

Quote :

"A. The Goal of Corporate Capitalism: --to maximize short-term private financial profits * To maximize means to make as large as possible. * Short-term usually means over the next financial quarter, the next fiscal year, or at most the next few years. Rarely is a time horizon of decades considered. (Compare the Native American's traditional appraisal of their effects "seven generations hence"-- to think 150 years ahead sounds ludicrous to the modern American.) * Private means personal, and often secret (as opposed to public, social, and open). * Financial means measured in units of money, in terms of commercial value. * Profits refers to the results or outcome sought. Economic profits are what remain of revenues (or gross income) after all expenses are paid. Hence, it is easily seen that profits can only be increased by expanding revenues or by decreasing expenses (or both). "

now that we know capitlisms goals it is easy to see how the environment has no place in capitlism. Not that is is disliked, jus that it virtually doesn't exist.

So what happens?

Quote :

"The carbon fuel industries are spending vast sums of money to muddy the water on this issue. They just buy scientists like you might buy a KitKat. And their influence extends to the White House, inhabited by a man who made his fortune from oil and who instructs his understrappers to ignore or falsify the scientific evidence."

how can this go on. why don't people just see right through it?

Quote :

"It's because, whatever the US Constitution says, the people is not sovereign. Big business is sovereign. They take the decisions. The political process in the States is dominated by business lobbies. The most important of these covers road building, the auto industry, road haulage and Big Oil."

but wouldn't cutting back just hurt growth?

Quote :

"Growth is not the problem. Capitalism is the problem. Why? Capitalists take decisions which are the only possible ones for them in order to maximise their profits short term. The wider long-term interest simply does not exist for them. Let's say they produce widgets. In producing widgets they also produce smoke. They get paid for the widgets because they're useful to someone. Smoke is no use to anyone. They don't have to pay for the costs of the smoke. But someone has to pay. We pay. Everyone pays. Capitalism is an unplanned system. That means that nobody looks at the environment and what we're doing to it. Nobody knows how fast we're using up resources, and whether there are alternatives. Here's an early "green" critic of capitalism - Frederick Engels - "…the animal merely uses is environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serves its ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is labour that brings about this distinction. "

Its time we start acting less like animals and more like rational human beings.

10/7/2008 8:16:29 PM

Quote :

"This isn't a good analogy."

meh, it wasn't a great one.

Quote :

"Taxing one industry and investing into another is a form of resource reallocation. When considering the externalities of fossil fuels, a carbon tax would put the marginal costs more in line with the social costs, creating a more efficient market."

Yes, I'm in fairly strong agreement with this.

But there's a flip side to this, we are currently emitting a large amount of carbon, and thus destroying value of some kind. Where does that come from? Many would say it comes from future generations, and that our fossil fuel industrial complex is borrowing from future human civilization for near-term returns.

The conclusion still agrees with my contention that standard of living and correspondingly, net economic value of the world would be decreased, not increased by this reallocation. Long term we should (a logical 'probable') be better off, but the greatest damage of global warming is supposed to come at about the time that we (in our 20s) are dying. World GDP may or may not reflect an economic detriment of a low-carbon strategy, but by some mechanism, we will have a lower standard of living due to such actions.

The economic argument for low-carbon still holds, but it's difficult to see how the 'trade' would effectively happen. It is difficult to sell something that has returns on a time scale comparable to a human life span. Still not impossible, one may hold the asset under the pretense that they will sell it before it reaches maturity because by the time it reaches maturity he/she is dead. Practically, one can envision that a new generation may be more inclined to (or have greater means to) care for the elderly if the previous generation saved sufficiently, but that breaks the limits of what the market handles. Social Security is a political issue only intertwined with economics. Given our current corporate environment, the idea of inter-generational returns are almost laughable, and the inefficacy of our political leaders to solve the task is brazenly apparent.

While I reserve great criticism for this group as well, there seems to be a rising tide believing that even with everything considered our stance should be to put the problem off until later. The name that comes to mind, for me, is Bjorn Lomborg

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Dtbn9zBfJSs

This is a strange convoluted argument, but one may contend that no doing anything about global warming now increases our chances of actually fixing global warming. Why? Because drastic measures (which, by all means, is what's called for) would cause economic destruction, halting our rate of advancement, decreasing our ultimate ability to deal with Earth's problems. What if the solutions have much greater returns if implemented later versus now? What if cheap fossil fuels for the next 20 years would power advancement to make solar genuinely viable later, versus forcing the adoption now which will never produce solar cheaper than coal?

This is so far about half devils-advocate. Personally, of course I think we should do things. Why? Because there are several things we can do for low-cost and get high carbon reduction. But leaving it to the government (and many of the 'green' idiots) result in nailing in the nail with a sledge hammer. The funny thing about emissions reduction is that it doesn't lead to an ultimate and final solution, which is what we need. We need to allow use of the same amount of energy and still reduce CO2 emissions by not 2 fold but 10 fold. If our global plan doesn't entail that we should scrap it. End of story.

[Edited on October 7, 2008 at 11:30 PM. Reason : ]

10/7/2008 11:27:58 PM

^ Why do need to maintain energy consumption at current levels? Plenty of technologies produce the same results for fewer Joules. We could reduce usage without reducing quality of life.

10/7/2008 11:31:35 PM

We need to keep current energy production and then increase it further. For every Joule you save here, another 2 will come online as the developing world successfully... develops.

And plus, efficiency gives you more of a consumption item, it does not often reduces energy consumption. More efficient fridges mean you keep more fridges in your house.

We need to plan on living better, not worse. And we need to plan on the 4 billion people not currently living very well to explode in their consumption habits. Any other plan is folly.

10/7/2008 11:36:05 PM

^ I agree with you about the developing world, but I think we could do with less consumption here. Honestly, do you want a second fridge? I'm not opposed to ever-increasing power, but I see the counter argument more clearly now. That slope leads to complete transformation of human life. Someday, we, as a species, will have to decide if we want to become a class II civilization. With advanced technology, the alternative won't be anything like poverty, but abundance and comfort beyond anything we know today. That may satisfy us.

10/7/2008 11:47:38 PM

Energy usage per capita in America is lower now than it was in the 70's. There's something to be said for energy efficiency.

10/7/2008 11:48:54 PM

Energy efficiency is great, obviously.

Our energy use per capita now is less than at points in the 70s, this is mostly due to the oil crisis's as far as I understand. It still generally slowly increases as other variables are constant. This also doesn't take into account the outsourcing of manufacturing by which we effectively consume more energy, but it goes on China's balance sheet.

Political problems with taxing energy are still surmountable, and almost impossible to any effective consumption reduction extent, a small drop on a graph translates to a lot of complaining in real life.

10/8/2008 12:10:04 AM

Quote :

"A. The Goal of Corporate Capitalism: --to maximize short-term private financial profits"

If this were the case, then no one would ever buy stock in any company that was not paying substantial dividends. It should not need saying, but capitalists routinely make investments that will not pay off for decades, such as spending billions to build a power plant or buying a cruise ship. Afterall, Amazon.com lost money for years, and yet is the perfect example of capitalism at work.

10/8/2008 12:29:46 AM

yes but every capitalist would make the same choice if given the opportunity to make money today or make the equivalent money ten years down the road.

THE GOAL IS STILL TO MAKE AS MUCH MONEY AS FAST AS POSSIBLE

[Edited on October 8, 2008 at 2:21 AM. Reason : stop steering me off the road]

10/8/2008 2:08:08 AM

investing is gambling .. if you play it safe and smart, odds are you will come out on top over time .. if you play it risky and get lucky, you will either end up having to climb out of the gutter, or your life changes overnight

10/8/2008 2:17:48 AM

ha, everyone playing it safe just got their asses handed to them. In the recent market it was the investors taking the highest risks selling short and buying put options that came out like kings.

The greatest mistake people make is thinking that there is such thing as a secure investment. There isn't. If you can't ride the wave you'll just get sucked under.

10/8/2008 10:36:12 AM

NC state being a school that trains many engineers I'm sure many of you are aware that the government sets environmental standards for many things that are produced and increases these standards slowly over time, diesel engines for example. The companies all grumble about it because it costs them money since they have to hire more engineers and scientists than if these standards were not in place and it ends up being a mad dash to meet standards before they are updated, falling behind means not being able to sell your product until you catch up. If too many of the companies fail to meet the new standards they are slackened, deciding how quickly to increase them is a game of balance. My point is that it fuels advancement which keeps us competitive with other countries and creates a lot of jobs, in the short run companies hate it because of the cost and the pressure, but in the long run if they were allowed to fall behind other countries the entire US branch of their industry would loose ground. It's good for the working man, the environment and the economy. And standards in other areas can do the same if they are carefully set and progress over time.

10/8/2008 2:04:41 PM

Obama to Declare Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Pollutant

Quote :

"Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama will classify carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant that can be regulated should he win the presidential election on Nov. 4, opening the way for new rules on greenhouse gas emissions. The Democratic senator from Illinois will tell the Environmental Protection Agency that it may use the 1990 Clean Air Act to set emissions limits on power plants and manufacturers, his energy adviser, Jason Grumet, said in an interview. President George W. Bush declined to curb CO2 emissions under the law even after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that the government may do so. If elected, Obama would be the first president to group emissions blamed for global warming into a category of pollutants that includes lead and carbon monoxide. Obama's rival in the presidential race, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, has not said how he would treat CO2 under the act. Obama 'would initiate those rulemakings,' Grumet said in an Oct. 6 interview in Boston. 'He's not going to insert political judgments to interrupt the recommendations of the scientific efforts.' Placing heat-trapping pollutants in the same category as ozone may lead to caps on power-plant emissions and force utilities to use the most expensive systems to curb pollution. The move may halt construction plans on as many as half of the 130 proposed new U.S. coal plants. The president may take action on new rules immediately upon taking office, said David Bookbinder, chief climate counsel for the Sierra Club. Environment groups including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council will issue a regulatory agenda for the next president that calls for limits on CO2 from industry. 'Hit Ground Running' 'This is what they should do to hit the ground running,' Bookbinder said in an Oct. 10 telephone interview. Separately, Congress is debating legislation to create an emissions market to address global warming, a solution endorsed by both candidates and utilities such as American Electric Power Co., the biggest U.S. producer of electricity from coal. Congress failed to pass a global-warming bill in June and how long it may take lawmakers to agree on a plan isn't known. 'We need federal legislation to deal with greenhouse-gas emissions,' said Vicki Arroyo, general counsel for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia. 'In the meantime, there is this vacuum. People are eager to get started on this.' An Obama victory would help clear the deadlock in talks on an international agreement to slow global warming, Rajendra Pachauri, head of a United Nation panel of climate-change scientists, said today in Berlin. Negotiators from almost 200 countries will meet in December in Poznan, Poland, to discuss ways to limit CO2. 'Back in the Game' 'The U.S. has to move quickly domestically so we can get back in the game internationally,' Grumet said. 'We cannot have a meaningful impact in the international discussion until we develop a meaningful domestic consensus. So he'll move quickly.' Burning coal to generate electricity produces more than a third of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions and half the U.S. power supply, according to the Energy Department. Every hour, fossil-fuel combustion generates 3.5 million tons of emissions worldwide, helping create a warming effect that 'already threatens our climate,' the Paris-based International Energy Agency said. The EPA under Bush fought the notion that the Clean Air Act applies to CO2 all the way to the Supreme Court. The law has been used successfully to regulate six pollutants, including sulfur dioxide and ozone. Regulation under the act 'could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority,' EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in July. The law 'is the wrong tool for the job.' Proponents of regulation are hoping for better results under a new president. Obama adviser Grumet, executive director of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said if Congress hasn't acted in 18 months, about the time it would take to draft rules, the president should. EPA Authority 'The EPA is obligated to move forward in the absence of Congressional action,' Grumet said. 'If there's no action by Congress in those 18 months, I think any responsible president would want to have the regulatory approach.' States where coal-fired plants may be affected include Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Texas, Montana, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Georgia and Florida."

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=alHWVvGnkcd4&refer=canada

Uh-oh.

10/17/2008 6:19:38 AM

Too bad the Supreme Court already beat him to it. . .

Quote :

"WASHINGTON, April 2 2007 — In one of its most important environmental decisions in years, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions. The court further ruled that the agency could not sidestep its authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change unless it could provide a scientific basis for its refusal. The 5-to-4 decision was a strong rebuke to the Bush administration, which has maintained that it does not have the right to regulate carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases under the Clean Air Act, and that even if it did, it would not use the authority. The ruling does not force the environmental agency to regulate auto emissions, but it would almost certainly face further legal action if it failed to do so. Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the only way the agency could “avoid taking further action” now was “if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change” or provides a good explanation why it cannot or will not find out whether they do. Beyond the specific context for this case — so-called “tailpipe emissions” from cars and trucks, which account for about one-fourth of the country’s total emissions of heat-trapping gases — the decision is likely to have a broader impact on the debate over government efforts to address global warming. Court cases around the country had been held up to await the decision in this case. Among them is a challenge to the environmental agency’s refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, now pending in the federal appeals court here. Individual states, led by California, are also moving aggressively into what they have seen as a regulatory vacuum. Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, said that by providing nothing more than a “laundry list of reasons not to regulate,” the environmental agency had defied the Clean Air Act’s “clear statutory command.” He said a refusal to regulate could be based only on science and “reasoned justification,” adding that while the statute left the central determination to the “judgment” of the agency’s administrator, “the use of the word ‘judgment’ is not a roving license to ignore the statutory text.” The court also decided a second Clean Air Act case Monday, adopting a broad reading of the environmental agency’s authority over factories and power plants that add capacity or make renovations that increase emissions of air pollutants. In doing so, the court reopened a federal enforcement effort against the Duke Energy Corporation under the Clean Air Act’s “new source review” provision. The vote in the second case, Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp., No. 05-848, was 9 to 0. The two decisions left environmental advocates exultant. Many said they still harbored doubts about the federal agency and predicted that the decision would help push the Democratic-controlled Congress to address the issue. Even in the nine months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the first case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120, and accelerating since the elections in November, there has been a growing interest among industry groups in working with environmental organizations on proposals for emissions limits. Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the main industry trade group, said in response to the decision that the alliance “looks forward to working constructively with both Congress and the administration” in addressing the issue. “This decision says that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be part of this process,” Mr. McCurdy said. If the decision sowed widespread claims of victory, it left behind a prominent loser: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who argued vigorously in a dissenting opinion that the court never should have reached the merits of the case or addressed the question of the agency’s legal obligations. His dissent, which Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. also signed, focused solely on the issue of legal standing to sue: whether the broad coalition of states, cities and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit against the environmental agency four years ago should have been accepted as plaintiffs in the first place. This was the issue on which the coalition’s lawsuit had appeared most vulnerable, given that in recent years the Supreme Court has steadily raised the barrier to standing, especially in environmental cases. Justice Scalia has long been a leader in that effort, and Chief Justice Roberts made clear that, as his statements and actions in his pre-judicial career indicated, he is fully aboard Justice Scalia’s project."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/washington/03scotus.html

The Bush Regime summarily ignored the ruling by treating it like spam. That, my friend hooksaw, is certainly worthy of your infamous usage of

10/17/2008 7:28:23 AM

This country does not need to do these things. . .

Quote :

"Placing heat-trapping pollutants [Co2] in the same category as ozone may lead to caps on power-plant emissions and force utilities to use the most expensive systems to curb pollution. The move may halt construction plans on as many as half of the 130 proposed new U.S. coal plants."

Quote :

"Burning coal to generate electricity produces. . .half the U.S. power supply, according to the Energy Department."

Quote :

"Regulation under the act 'could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority,' EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said in July. The [Clean Air Act] 'is the wrong tool for the job.'"

. . .while simultaneously saying no more often than not to nuclear power. Our economy and our country need power!

10/17/2008 7:50:08 AM

I do agree that more needs to be put into nuclear energy while at the same time reducing our dependency on fossil fuels (yes, this includes coal). Also, I would advise against siting a Bush appointed lackey to the Environmental Puppet Agency as a credible source.

10/17/2008 10:47:55 AM

^ Well, this. . .

Quote :

"The move may halt construction plans on as many as half of the 130 proposed new U.S. coal plants."

. . .doesn't sound like Obama's for coal power to me. But he claims that he is--though Biden has said different.

And just because I was "siting [sic] a Bush appointed lackey" doesn't make him wrong. The proposed change of policy would "result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority."

10/17/2008 11:13:22 AM

I've become less impressed with fission after reading Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free.

10/17/2008 12:50:26 PM

How would anyone ever begin to think that Obama was for coal power? That makes no bloody sense.

10/17/2008 5:21:55 PM

^because he stresses how we need cleaner coal technology for China, and Biden has said that he is for coal plants, so naturally, like most issues, nobody really knows what the fuck Obama's position is

10/17/2008 5:24:56 PM

Quote :

"The proposed change of policy would "result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority.""

Oh noes! How dare we have better regulations to monitor and control pollution. I know all the supposed "small government" acolytes will rail against this idea and decry me as a socialist. My position on this has been clear and consistent. I am all for reigning in government size and spending with the exception of environmental protection and preservation. So tree-hugger, yes, but socialist, not hardly.

10/17/2008 8:32:58 PM

^^^^^^^^^

That article is mostly FUD.

It is purely speculative, and is even quoting the Sierra club as if they represent Obama's policies. Notice the amount of "may" and "might" they have strewn about. Anyone could make something look dangerous by speculating on how on the ways it could go wrong.

It's nice to see though that you're using your critical thinking skills to discriminate which articles actually have merit from those that don't.

Quote :

"I do agree that more needs to be put into nuclear energy while at the same time reducing our dependency on fossil fuels (yes, this includes coal). Also, I would advise against siting a Bush appointed lackey to the Environmental Puppet Agency as a credible source. "

The US has plenty of coal, we don't have that much oil. If coal can be made to burn cleanly, there's no reason we shouldn't use it.

[Edited on October 17, 2008 at 8:45 PM. Reason : ]

10/17/2008 8:43:58 PM

Once we can properly define what "cleanly" is to a satisfactory standard then I will certainly warm up to the idea. That is, of course, until we can relieve ourselves completely of the burden presented by fossil fuels.

[Edited on October 17, 2008 at 10:15 PM. Reason : .]

10/17/2008 10:12:27 PM

Currently, coal is a complete mess. They say it even puts more radioactive waste into the environment than nuclear power. Cleaner coal would be better, but we need to move away from that power source entirely.

10/18/2008 10:13:16 AM

COAL GASIFICATION is the answer!

10/18/2008 10:42:28 AM