TheGreenMiles Posts

A new study backed by NASA warns that, much like the Romans and Mayans before us, our elite power brokers may be driving us towards a cliff as the 1% vacuums up wealth and natural resources. Although the study is largely theoretical, the new report is just one of many warning that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a "perfect storm" within 15 years.

The Cato Institute, a former big tobacco front group that now shills for big polluters, is putting out a phony report designed to fool reporters into thinking it's related to an actual U.S. government climate science report.
It's not the first time a polluter f...

The Republican war on science faces a new counterattack - a libel lawsuit filed by climate scientist Michael Mann against the National Review and Competitive Enterprise Institute. From Mann's Facebook page:

Over at Coal Tattoo, Ken Ward Jr. flags some real talk from a coal industry ana...

It's not that Mitt Romney doesn't have his facts straight about the Environmental Protection Agency. It's not that reasonable people can disagree with the Environmental Protection Agency about the best approach to solving a set of problems. Mitt Romney is choosing to lie about the Environmental Protection Agenc...

So which will it be, Reps. Cantor, Forbes, Goodlatte, Griffith, Hurt, Rigell, Wittman, and Wolf? Will they take a stand for Virginia clean energy jobs? Or get in line behind their Koch overlords? My guess is they collapse by the end of the week. After all, resistance is futile.

Americans would like to have more public transit options and don't know just how skewed our transportation spending is towards new roads, according to a new Natural Resources Defense Council poll:

• 55 percent prefer to drive less, but 74 percent say they have no choice 
• 63 percent (more than three in five Americans) would rather address traffic by improving public transportation (42 percent) or developing communities where people do not have to drive as much (21 percent) - as opposed to building new roads, an approach preferred by only one in five Americans (20 percent) 
• Americans over-estimate what their state spends on public transportation, estimating that it is an average of 16 percent of their state's transportation budget - and still they would like that amount nearly doubled, calling for their state to spend an average of 28 percent on public transportation (note: The average percentage of transportation money - state plus federal - spent on transit over the past three years was 6.55 percent per state) 

Opponents of smart growth like to claim America is sprawling & car-dependent because people have sat down, carefully considered the options, and decided to move to a place far from work & friends so they can waste tons of money & countless hours stuck in traffic. But there are two realities here: People don't have all day to crunch the numbers on this stuff; and the amount of transit and by extension the amount of housing near transit is limited (and in some cases it's deliberately limited). So people often just figure out where they'd LIKE to live, then keep looking further & further away from that spot until they can find someplace that's affordable.

This poll suggests many Americans would like to live somewhere that's affordable AND has transit options, and they don't realize just how much of their tax money is going instead to subsidize The Next Phenomenally Expensive Paving Project That Will Surely Solve All Our Transportation Problems.

Quick reaction to Mitt Romney's now-infamous remarks that the 47 percent of Americans too old, sick or poor to pay income taxes are lazy mooches who want the government to steal more money from rich people so they can get more free goodies.

The war on climate scientists funded by billionaires like the Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife and Philip Anschutz makes much more sense when you look at it through this prism. If you already look out the window and see literally half of your fellow Americans as thieves trying to steal from you, well OF COURSE climate scientists are greedy cheaters manipulating the data to back their phony lying hoax so they can get their grubby little stealing hands on more research grants.

It's a cynical, destructive way to view the world (and life), but I understand it. What I don't understand is why anyone would take them and the organizations they fund seriously as a source for climate science, as the PBS NewsHour apparently did last night.

The American Wind Energy Association made a bold move late last week, dropping the electric utility Exelon over its opposition to extending key federal incentives for wind energy. Within The Hill reporter Zack Colman's article is this odd complaint:

[Exelon Senior Vice President David] Brown said the PTC is helping wind cut into its nuclear power business. Though the utility has 900 megawatts of installed wind electricity generation capacity, he said wind is "distorting competitive markets that we operate in" by lowering the wholesale price of electricity.

Wait, what? Wind energy is lowering electricity costs ... and that's a PROBLEM to big electric utilities like Exelon?

Federal incentives for wind energy are a drop in the bucket compared to the billions in long-term taxpayer support on which the nuclear power industry has depended. When President Obama and members of Congress talk about expanding nuclear power, they're really talking about shoveling more tax dollars at nuclear and raising your electricity rates.

I understand the reasons why the nuclear industry is afraid of extending wind energy incentives, but they're the exact same reasons Virginians should be asking their members of Congress to extend them.

Robert Griffin III didn't wait long to justify the excitement of Washington Redskins fans, throwing an 88-yard touchdown pass to Pierre Garcon in the first quarter, then watching it from the ground. The Redskins are leading 30-17 late in the 3rd quarter. Will they be able to hold on to upset the Saints?

The Koch brothers-backed nonprofit Americans for Prosperity and pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future combined to spend about $23.4 million against President Barack Obama during the second half of August. That's nearly 10 times the $2.44 million that Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC supporting Obama, spent against Romney, federal records show.

Some Virginia communities like Danville bought into Peabody Energy's promise of cheap coal-fired power - and now as the project's pricetag balloons to $5 billion they're paying for it big time:

Coal giant Peabody Energy promoted the controversial Prairie State Energy Campus to public officials in Virginia and seven other states as a cheap, long-term source of "clean coal" power.

But a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) charges that the troubled coal-fired power plant and coal mine operation will end up costing cities and towns in Virginia up to 100 percent more for that power than what was promised.

The Prairie State Energy Campus is a 1,600-megawatt, coal-fired electrical power station and coal mine under construction near Marissa, Illinois, less than 50 miles from St. Louis. About 95 percent of the project is being financed by more than 200 local government units in eight states: Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri and West Virginia.

"Clean coal" was always a myth and its death sealed the coal industry's fate. But just as it was with tobacco, Virginia remains filled with apologists who know it's easier to say what people want to hear and cash industry checks than to speak the truth. And Democrats like Tim Kaine and Mark Warner are just as much a part of the problem as Republicans - they may vote the right way sometimes, but their pro-industry rhetoric supports the bipartisan smokescreen that hides the truth that cigarettes cause cancer coal-fired power plants are deadly, expensive, and outdated.

With reality denial dominating the Republican Party platform, how will Republican National Convention delegates reconcile that the start of their 2012 gathering in Tampa was delayed by climate-fueled extreme weather?

First, let's be clear: It's Big Oil-funded GOP leadership that's the problem, not rank-and-file Republicans. While virtually every Republican member of Congress and national party leader rejects climate science, 43% of rank-and-file Republicans see "solid evidence of global warming" according to the Pew Research Center.

Dig a little deeper and those numbers should be even more eye-catching for GOP leadership.  
Among moderate Republicans, 63% see evidence our climate is changing. And what about Republicans who say they still haven't made up their minds in the presidential race? Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project polling shows they're only half as likely to deny the scientific reality of global warming as Republicans on the whole. Polls show Republican voters support solutions, from a revenue-neutral carbon tax to giving Americans more low-carbon transit options.

But Mitt Romney's website doesn't even mention climate change. While Romney himself once advocated for clean energy & carbon pollution cuts, he now rejects climate science. Romney's energy plan unveiled last week contains mostly giveaways to the oil industry and polls show it hasn't helped him with voters - no surprise considering Big Oil remains the most hated industry in America by a wide margin.

At a time when global warming & extreme weather are dominating the headlines, Republican Party leadership is increasingly step with the American mainstream:

1. Isaac bears down on the Gulf Coast. The Republican Party was forced to cancel the convention's first day in Tampa as Isaac sent tropical storm warnings up along the Gulf Coast. Isaac is now forecast to make landfall as a hurricane near New Orleans late Tuesday. Global warming is making storms more intense by adding the fuel of warmer air & water to their fire, while rising sea levels raise the launching pad for storm surges. 
2. Bracing for a storm surge at the pump. The threat of Isaac is already shutting down oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to raise gas prices. It's one of many ways that global warming threatens America's energy infrastructure, and a problem that won't be solved by relying more on offshore oil drilling.
3. Arctic Sea ice melt scorches previous record. This summer's Arctic Sea ice has already receded past the previous record - and there are still weeks of melting time to go. That's bad news for the polar bears and other wildlife who depend on sea ice for survival. There's also increasing evidence that a warming Arctic means more weird weather here in America.
4. America's sweltering summer. This year has been the hottest on record in the United States, with July 2012 going into the record books as America's hottest month ever. Globally, 2012 has been the 10th-hottest on record, nearly 1 degree F above the 20th-century average. That it's only 10th speaks to how much & how quickly our climate is changing - up until 1998, 2012 would've been the hottest year on record.

From a strictly political perspective, here's the real problem for Republicans: Advocating inaction isn't just stupid, it makes Republicans look weak. Reasonable people can disagree on the best way to respond to climate change, but who gets excited about a candidate who denies we have a problem and bad mouths America's ability to solve it? Mitt Romney's clean energy opposition is already costing him votes in farm states that have seen the economic windfall that harvesting clean energy can bring.

Cross-posted from TheGreenMiles.com

An analysis of the Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan "energy" plan from the League of Conservation Voters:

• Number of Pages: 21 
• Number of Words: 10,272
• Mentions of Oil: 154
• Mentions of Wind: 10 (5 of them Negatively) 
• Mentions of Solar: 14 (4 of them Negatively) 
• Mentions of Wind Energy Production Tax Credit: 0
• Mentions of Climate Change: 0 
• Mentions of Romney's Plan to Continue Oil Subsidies:  0 
• Mentions of Oil & Gas Interests Donating More Than $2,600,000 to His Campaigns: 0
• Mentions of Koch Brothers Pledging to Spend $200,000,000+ to Elect Him: 0

Check out a more detailed analysis of the Romney-Ryan oil-above-all plan from the Center for American Progress.

Mitt Romney is beholden to Big Oil but knows oil drilling is much less popular than clean energy, so he uses the deceptive "energy development" and "energy production" when he really just means drilling for oil & gas and digging up coal.

Romney knows voters want a level playing field for energy sources, but he also knows his energy plan plays favorites with his oil, hydrocarbon gas & coal donors while dismissing clean energy as a "failure." That's why Romney uses the deceptive terms "comprehensive energy plan" and "all of the above" when he really just means favors for his oil, gas & coal benefactors.

I understand why Romney uses those deceptive terms - they're politically advantageous, while describing his actual energy plan would cost him support. What I don't understand is why reporters then parrot his deceptive terms. Why don't reporters translate RomneySpeak into actual reality?

As journalism professor & media analyst Jay Rosen writes, many of the political journalists covering Romney aren't interested in what's true - they're only interested in what "works" politically.

City and county leaders, already burdened with typical tasks of local governance, are also weighing multi-million-dollar flood control projects to keep the ocean at a livable distance.

While they struggle to pull together know-how and funding, those with the broader view and resources - state agencies - are absent from the discussions. In a study released earlier this year, the Natural Resources Defense Council ranked Virginia as one of 29 states that were "largely unprepared and lagging behind" on planning for climate change at the state level.

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) is one of Congress' craziest members, a birther who's led the GOP's witch hunt on clean energy investments and called for women who have abortions to be thrown in prison. But after last night's primary, it looks like he'll be going from crazy Congressman to crazy private citizen - he's narrowly losing his Republican primary to a local veterinarian named Ted Yoho. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) has stood by Stearns through all of his nuttiness. Heckuva job, Eric.

This is usually where I'd copy & paste some trenchant news analysis, but ... no one seems to know quite why Stearns is down by 800 votes. Even the local Gainesville Sun seems to have no idea what happened, other than to speculate Yoho's attacks on Stearns as a corrupt career politician may have worked. But while politicos like to espouse Unified Theories that prove they're Savvy Insiders, it could simply be that in a multiple-candidate, low-turnout primary in the dog days of August, anything can happen.

Yoho is being called a Tea Party candidate, but it's hard to imagine he could get much further right than Stearns, rated more conservative than GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan by the National Journal & called one of Congress' conservative leaders by the American Conservative Union. If you're a sitting Republican member of Congress, you could look at Stearns' likely loss one of two ways: How crazy do you have to be for Tea Party if Stearns may not have been crazy enough? Or, if even Stearns' craziness didn't satisfy the Tea Party, maybe Republicans are better off just doing what they think is right & playing to the middle?

After an encounter on the Jackson River in western Virginia where he's fished his whole life, Marc Smith is ready to revolt:

A couple of years ago I went back down to this area while fishing for browns on a section of the Jackson River (just below the dam at Lake Moomaw) with my buddy Dan Wrinn. We did okay - couple nice 10 inch browns. But what really caught our attention was us literally wading up to a sign posted on an oak tree on the bank that puzzled us.  It read: "Kings Grant Land. No fishing. No Trespassing."

Huh? is right. After all my years spending time in this area, and on the Jackson, I have never seen this sign. After some digging, now I know. This land along the Jackson was granted by King George III of England way back in the day. I am talking 17th century before there was even a thought of Virginia, much less the United States. Guess this even trumps state law. [...]

The Virginia Supreme Court have upheld this and many other Kings Grant claims in Virginia and in other eastern states. Crazy I know. Read the latest on a lawsuit involving Kings Grant land & anglers. This is huge. All anglers are watching this. This could set tremendous precedent.

"This isn't merry ol England where the peasants and commoners have no say or right to hunt or fish on the Kings Land. This is America - and 2012 America," Marc concludes. "No, we have waters and wildlife held in trust for all to enjoy." Learn more from the Virginia Rivers Defense Fund.