Why are Conservatives so stupid. Usually right away I get accused of name calling and class warfare. I usually respond that I am not questioning their intelligence so much as I am questioning their larger view of the world. I point out there is a class war going on and most of us are losing it. In much the same way that the VERY Rich slave holders perpetuated the fighting and hatred of the less wealthy poor whites and blacks, the world destroyers and the mega wealthy must have the lower classes fighting and bickering over “tree huggers” and Cap and Trade. This is what the fundamentalists miss. For lofty ideals that do not exist like “personal freedom” they are watching the only world that we have slip away for the enrichment of the very few.
Further more as I have said for 30 years it is not the “little guy” that is to blame for things like destabilizing the climate and acidifying the oceans. It is in this order, The militaries of the world, the Airline Industry, the Big Smoke Stack users (mainly megawatt coal fired electrical plants), and the Shipping industry. That is it. The little guy can ride his stinky garden tractor, fire up his stinky grill and drive his F150 to work everyday if he wants to. THINK about it for a moment. The aforementioned Earth wreckers want the burdened pushed off on the public. It means they get to keep on polluting because we STOP.
The 10 Biggest Carbon Dioxide Polluters
Posted November 14, 2007
Ten large companies generate more than one third of the 2.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted each year by U.S. electric power
generators, according to figures in a first-of-its-kind database unveiled Wednesday.
American Electric Power, based in Columbus, Ohio, and Southern Co. of Atlanta, which run the largest coal power plants in the country, top the list of U.S. companies responsible for greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, according to data compiled by the Center for Global Development, a global economic development think tank in Washington, D.C.
The database, called CARMA or Carbon Monitoring for Action, culls for the first time data both from government regulators around the world and commercial databases to provide an up-to-date look at the state of CO2 from power production—which accounts for one quarter of all carbon emissions. (The database doesn’t look at other large sources, like transportation and manufacturing.) Here are the top sources of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation in the United States:
The 10 Biggest Carbon Dioxide Polluters
| COMPANY | TONS OF CO2 PER YEAR | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. American Electric Power | 174 million | |
| With 5 million customers in 11 states from Ohio to Texas, its biggest carbon emissions come from its Gavin coal plant in Cheshire, Ohio. | ||
| 2. SOUTHERN | 172 million | |
| Has 4.3 million customers in the Southeast and owns the top three carbon-emitting power plants in the country: Scherer, in Juliet, Ga.; Miller in Quinton, Ala.; and Bowen in Cartersville, Ga. | ||
| 3. (tie) AES CORP. | 108 million | |
| Has power plants from New York to California, with the worst emissions from its Petersburg, Ind., plant. | ||
| 3. (tie) DUKE ENERGY | 108 million | |
| Serves 4 million customers in the Carolinas, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Its Gibson plant in Owensville, Ind., is the nation’s fourth-largest carbon emissions source in the power sector. | ||
| 5. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY | 101 million | |
| The nation’s largest public power company serves the 8.7 million residents of the Tennessee Valley. Its Cumberland City, Tenn., plant ranks eighth in the nation in CO2 emissions. | ||
| 6. NRG ENERGY | 82.7 million | |
| A wholesale power producer that operates in deregulated electricity markets throughout the country, its W.A. Parish plant in Thompsons, Texas, is the nation’s No. 5 carbon emissions source. | ||
| 7. XCEL ENERGY | 76.1 million | |
| With 3.3 million customers in the West and Midwest, its largest carbon generator is its Sherburne County plant in Becker, Minn. | ||
| 8. MIDAMERICAN ENERGY HOLDINGS | 70.9 million | |
| A Warren Buffett Berkshire Hathaway company, MidAmerican serves customers in Iowa, Illinois, and South Dakota, with its largest CO2 emissions from the Jim Bridger plant in Point Of Rocks, Wyo. | ||
| 9. PROGRESS ENERGY | 68.1 million | |
| Based in Raleigh, N.C., its plant in Roxoboro, N.C., is its biggest emissions source. | ||
| 10. DOMINION RESOURCES | 66.6 million | |
| Dominion is based in Virginia, with operations stretching into the Northeast and Midwest. Its biggest carbon emissions source is its Mount Storm, W.Va., plant. | ||
……
Strikingly, three Chinese power companies, South Africa’s giant Eskom, and India’s NTPC all generate more CO2 emissions than any single U.S. firm—underscoring the shared challenge posed by global climate change. The largest, Huaneng Power International of China, has emissions 68 percent higher than American Electric Power’s.
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I am quoting extensively from the article because it makes the point rather well. It is well researched and Lavelle is a good writer. In a startling 2 paragraphs she cuts through all the smoke and the fog to the heart of this story.
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One of the most striking findings in the data, says David Wheeler, a Center for Global Development senior fellow who led the research, is how concentrated the problem is among a relatively few large power generators. He said the top 100 companies worldwide produce 57 percent of CO2 emissions coming from the power sector. The top 30 companies produce 30 percent of the total. “On the one hand, it’s sobering,” he says. “But it might be hopeful. You could actually assemble the CEOs of those firms, and there might be many channels through which they can organize and address this as a group themselves. I think that’ll be critical to a solution.”
Wheeler was a former lead economist in the World Bank’s Development Research Group, where his team used public disclosure as a strategy to generate pressure from lenders and communities for pollution reduction in China, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Wheeler says his team similarly hopes the CARMA data will be used not only by environmental groups but by institutional and private investors and insurers, to encourage power companies to use less coal and oil and shift to renewable resources
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If you want to check the data here is the CARMA site:
About CARMA
Frequently Asked Questions
CARMA’s Partners
All About Icons
Plant-Specific Information
Citation Policy
CARMA Version Tracker
At its core, Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA) is a massive database containing information on the carbon emissions of over 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide. Power generation accounts for 40% of all carbon emissions in the United States and about one-quarter of global emissions. CARMA is the first global inventory of a major, emissions-producing sector of the economy.
CARMA is produced and financed by the Confronting Climate Change Initiative at the Center for Global Development, an independent and non-partisan think tank located in Washington, DC.
The objective of CARMA.org is to equip individuals with the information they need to forge a cleaner, low-carbon future. By providing complete information for both clean and dirty power producers, CARMA hopes to influence the opinions and decisions of consumers, investors, shareholders, managers, workers, activists, and policymakers. CARMA builds on experience with public information disclosure techniques that have proven successful in reducing traditional pollutants.
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Yet yet at least one of the social values issues also comes into play and that is abortion. Now I could go on and on about a woman’s right to control her body and how god does not play an active role in the world so birth is not a “miracle”. But the fact is that the main hatred of abortion by the various world’s religions is based on their desire for world domination. The idea being that once the world is “totally” christian for instance then NIRVANA will arrive. But what this ignores is the Over Population that this has caused. The world population stands at 9 billion people. The Earth has a carrying capacity of about a billion people soooooo at some point there is going to be a huge die off. Probably when my niece Taylor is in her 30s or 40s. I just want to say to my mother and others like her…don’t you realize that you are killing Taylor off?
If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature,
brutally and without pity – and will leave a ravaged world.”
Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall
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Robin Bell, Ken Caldera, Bill Easterling, Stephen Schneider
