Category Archives: sustainability

Chicago is such an energy dog – Tear it down and rebuild

Posted on by
Reply

Forget the skyscrapers, and forget the suburbs, when you tear down buildings and then replace them you waste tons of energy. Not to mention the crap that they put in landfills. This is especially true when you produce negligible results. If you address the economic issues instead of the housing issues, you solve the problem. Case in point.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/chicago-public-housing-0303.html

Chicago hope

Ambitious attempt to help the city’s poor by moving them out of troubled housing projects is having mixed results, MIT study finds.

Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office

In December 2010, the last remaining resident was removed from the last high-rise building standing in Chicago’s notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects, long a national symbol of urban blight. The relocation was part of Chicago’s ambitious Plan for Transformation, a 15-year enterprise aimed at breaking the poverty cycle in which tens of thousands of the city’s poor have lived, by moving them out of the projects and into better, safer living environments.

So far, according to a study by MIT researchers, the Plan for Transformation is faring only moderately well. Leaving the projects has produced positive psychological effects for some of Chicago’s poor, but has not appreciably improved their economic prospects, while relatively few participants in the program are living in drastically different types of housing.

“The results are mixed and nuanced,” says Lawrence Vale, Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning at MIT, who produced the report along with Erin Graves, a former postdoctoral research associate in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. The report, “The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation: What Does the Research Show So Far?” released in October by the MacArthur Foundation, surveys 83 previous studies of the Chicago plan conducted by social scientists.

On the positive side, the report notes that people leaving Chicago public-housing projects display better mental health; one study showed that the percentage of residents suffering anxiety problems in a given year dropped from 30 percent to 21 percent. Relocated residents also said they felt safer.

However, it is not clear that relocation helps residents increase their employment prospects and incomes. One study shows that among working-age public-housing residents, the proportion employed between 1999, when the plan was founded, and 2010, remained between 50 percent and 55 percent, including part-time workers. “The question of whether they’ve made significant economic gains is unresolved,” notes Vale.

Moreover, as Vale and Graves emphasize, only about 2,100 of the 26,000 households relocated as part of the Plan for Transformation have moved from the projects into mixed-income housing: the smaller, safer developments, where middle-income families are mixed in with low-income households.

“The public perception is that Chicago is replacing all of its infamous public housing with low-rise mixed-income communities,” says Vale. But as the report notes, about 9,000 households have moved to senior-only public housing, and 6,000 households have stayed in renovated public buildings that house only low-income residents. Similarly, Vale says, “The academic literature has focused on the least common experience, not on what the city has done with the majority of the housing.”

:}

Read the rest of the article, but it doesn’t get any better. More tomorrow.

:}

Food That Is Genetically Modified – Yuck on a stick

Posted on by
Reply

OK, so I am the first one to admit that humans have tinkered with animal’s and plant’s genetics for a 100,000 years before we even knew what genes were. The most famous was the creation or the domestication of wolfs. If you feed them and they did not bite you they got to stay. If they bit you, you killed it and got another one. Made sense when a friendly wolf bred with another friendly wolf, the puppies would be more friendlier. Same with cattle. Breed a big cow with another bigger cow and you get bigger stronger cows. But this process many times took 100s of years and you had time to figure out whether it was safe or not. This is now happening in a single year’s time. There is no telling what we could be unleashing on ourselves. Worse yet, the big players in this area are some of the worst players on the planet. Monsanto, Dow, BSF. Companies known to be rapists of the planet.

http://www.good.is/post/feast-your-eyes-the-atlas-of-genetically-modified-crops1/

Feast Your Eyes: The Atlas of Genetically Modified Crops


Yesterday, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, a nonprofit organization funded in large part by the biotech industry, issued a new report on the status of genetically modified crops around the world.

The Economist has used ISAAA’s data to make a map showing where in the world GM crops are grown. As you can see, the United States is by far the leader in the field, with 165 million acres (66.8 million hectares) of GM crops under cultivation, an increase of nearly 7 million acres on 2009 levels.

Clive James, ISAAA’s director and founder, told the BBC that more than 15 million farmers grow GM crops, and that, “during 2010, the accumulated commercial biotech plantation exceeded one billion hectares [2.47 billion acres]— that’s an area larger than the U.S. or China,” and equivalent to 10 percent of the world’s arable land.

Meanwhile, The Economist pointed out an interesting trend:

Developing countries are planting GM crops at a more rapid rate than rich countries. Brazil has added some 10m hectares [24.7 million acres] since 2008 and overtook Argentina as the second-biggest grower in 2010. India, too, increased its area by over 10 percent last year. The most popular crop is soya, while the most common modification is tolerance to herbicides.

With the European Union having just voted to allow animal feed imports containing up to 0.1 percent GM seeds (previously shipments found to contain any trace of non-approved biotech crops were turned away upon arrival at port), it does indeed seem—for better or for worse—as though GM crops are here to stay.

Chart via The Economist.

:}

We Should Attack Gaddafi Now – He is screwing with the whole world

Posted on by
Reply

I do not normally advise the US to attack third world countries. Especially over oil. But in this case the mad man is attacking his own people. The chaos is shutting down the oil fields in Libya and rippling through the oil world. He is threatening to set the oil fields on fire. He ordered naval vessels to bombard Tripoli. Where is the 5th Fleet when you need them.

http://chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2011/02/u-s-gas-prices-spike-6-cents-overnight.html

U.S., Chicago gas prices spike 6 cents overnight

By CNN
Posted today at 10:37 a.m.

A customer purchases gasoline at a Chicago Shell station on Feb. 7, 2011. (Scott Olson/Getty Images) 

U.S. gas prices jumped 6 cents overnight, as the recent spike in oil prices begins to hit filling stations across America. That marks the third day in a row that prices have risen, and brings the national average to the highest level since October 2008.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gas rose 5.9 cents to $3.287, motorist group AAA said Friday. Gasoline also jumped 6 cents overnight in Chicago, where prices averaged $3.497.

So far this week, gas prices have increased nearly 12 cents a gallon. And analysts expect prices to continue higher in the next few days following a sharp rise in the price of crude oil.

Gas prices were highest in Hawaii, where drivers paid $3.757 a gallon, on average. Wyoming had the lowest gas prices at roughly, $3.014 a gallon.

The jump in pump prices follows a surge in prices for crude oil, the main ingredient in gasoline. Oil prices were holding near $98 a barrel early Friday morning, one day after prices hit a high of $103 a barrel — the highest since October 2008.

Economists warn that an energy price shock could hurt the economic recovery in the United States. In general, every $1 increase in the price of oil costs consumers $1 billion over the course of a year.

That’s concerning because consumer spending makes up the bulk of U.S. gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic growth.

Oil prices have been driven higher by political unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, where much of the world’s oil comes from. Despite the surge in prices this week, the amount of oil that has been taken off the world market has been relatively minimal.

Read more about the topics in this post: ,

:}

More next week.

:}

Maumar Gaddafi – Mercenaries strike protesters and oil goes over 100 $$$

Posted on by
Reply

I hope the lunatic rots in hell.

http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2011/02/libya-oil-updates.html

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Libyan Oil Grinding to a Halt

Here’s the latest:

At least 300kbd-400kbd of oil production are shut-in already, and likely more, but the situation is still confusing.

As much as a quarter of Libyan oil output has been shut down, Reuters calculations showed on Wednesday, as unrest prompted oil companies to warn of production cuts in Africa’s third-largest producer.

Austria’s OMV said on Wednesday it might be heading for a full production shutdown in Libya. Total, Repsol, Eni and BASF have also said they are either slowing or stopping output.

The latest comments point to a growing impact on oil output from Libya, which produces 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) of high-quality oil, or almost 2 percent of world output. About 1.3 million bpd is exported, mainly to Europe.

According to Time Magazine’s Robert Baer, anonymous sources close to Gaddafi say he is now giving orders to sabotage Libya’s oil industry:

There’s been virtually no reliable information coming out of Tripoli, but a source close to the Gaddafi regime I did manage to get hold of told me the already terrible situation in Libya will get much worse. Among other things, Gaddafi has ordered security services to start sabotaging oil facilities. They will start by blowing up several oil pipelines, cutting off flow to Mediterranean ports. The sabotage, according to the insider, is meant to serve as a message to Libya’s rebellious tribes: It’s either me or chaos.

Libyan ports are shutting down:

Libyan cargo port operations have shut down due to increasing violence sweeping the country, Reuters has reported.

Operations at Tripoli, Benggazi and Misurata Mediterranean ports, which handle general cargo and container shipping, have closed.

In particular, oil exports appear to be halting completely:

Operations at Libyan oil ports were disrupted by a lack of communications, trade sources said, and flows from marine oil terminals in Libya were halted on Tuesday, an Italian government source said.

“The situation is worrying. This morning the oil terminals were blocked in Libya,” the government source said.

It was not possible to get through by phone to Libyan oil ports or shipping agents on Tuesday.

“Everything is out,” said a source with a major oil company. “We can’t get through to anyone. Our operations people say contact is impossible with the shipping agents, port officials, anyone. The lines are all down.”

The country appears to be descending into civil war:

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya kept his grip on the capital on Wednesday, but large areas of the east of the country remained out of his control amid indications that the fighting had reached the northwest of the country around Tripoli.

Libyans fleeing across the country’s western border to Tunisia reported fighting over the past two nights in the town of Sabratha, home of an important Roman archeological site 50 miles west of Tripoli. Reuters reported that thousands of Libyan forces loyal to Col. Qaddafi had deployed there.

“The revolutionary committees are trying to kill everyone who is against Qaddafi,” said a doctor from Sabratha who had just left the country, but who declined to give his name because he wanted to return.

Of course, as for the oil production losses, the Saudi’s say they stand ready to make up the difference:

:}

Go there and read the rest. More tomorrow I am afraid.

:}

“There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources,”

Posted on by
Reply

Key word here is nothing.

http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1055509_rearchers-100-percent-green-energy-possible-by-2050

Researchers: 100 Percent Green Energy Possible By 2050

John Voelcker February 16th, 2011 John Voelcker By John Voelcker Senior Editor February 16th, 2011

wind farmwind farm 

Enlarge Photo

We approach energy policy with care here, since GreenCarReports is largely about … well, cars.

But a recent article claims it could take just 40 years to convert the bulk of the world’s global energy usage from fossil fuels to renewable energy, primarily wind and solar power.

That’s not only vehicle fuel, but also electric-power generation, home heating, and the many other global activities that rely on the remarkably high energy density of the hydrocarbon molecules in coal, oil, and natural gas.

Beijing smogBeijing smog 

Enlarge Photo

Researchers from Stanford University and the University of California-Davis published their analysis in the journal Energy Policy.

Measuring costs vs benefits

The main challenges, say the authors, will be summoning the global will to make the conversion. “There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources,” said author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor, saying it is only a question of “whether we have the societal and political will.”

Another challenge: accurately accounting for both the costs (which are comparatively easy to tally and project) and the benefits (which are tougher).

Power lines by Flickr user achouroPower lines by Flickr user achouro 

Enlarge Photo

When looking at the cost of junking half a century’s worth of existing power plants, for example, how can electric utilities benefit from the tens of billions of dollars in public health costs that will be avoided in the future once those emissions are no longer being generated?

Those public-health benefits might include saving 2.5 to 3 million lives each year.

And then there’s the benefit of halting climate change, not to mention reductions in water pollution, and increased energy security as more of each nation’s energy is generated from within its own borders.

Step One: New generation from renewables

The authors assessed the costs, benefits, and materials requirements necessary to convert the bulk of the world’s energy usage to renewable sources.

Nissan lithium-ion battery pack plant under construction, Smyrna, Tennessee, Jan 2011Nissan lithium-ion battery pack plant under construction, Smyrna, Tennessee, Jan 2011 

Enlarge Photo

Just as it will do over the next few decades for cars, electricity will play an increasingly large role, with 90 percent from wind turbines and various forms of solar generation.

Hydroelectric and geothermal sources would each provide about 4 percent of the total, with another 2 percent from wave and tidal power.

Vehicles would run either on electricity provided by the power grid, or hydrogen stored under high pressure and converted to electricity in a fuel cell. Airplanes would be fueled with liquid hydrogen. But, crucially, the hydrogen would all be produced electrically, with the electricity coming from those same renewable sources: wind, sun, and water.

Geothermal Power Plant in IcelandGeothermal Power Plant in Iceland 

Enlarge Photo

The analysis shows that the land and raw materials needed won’t pose a problem. What will be needed is a much more robust electrical grid.

;}

Have a great weekend. More next week.

:}

True High Speed Rail – Could make the trip from Chicago to St. Louis in 2 hours

Posted on by
Reply

OK, so we spent the last 30 posts showing what the rightwing and the leftwing talking heads have been talking about. Now onto real news. This was forwarded to me by Andy Martin of Phat Andy’s Barbecue fame. Thanks for that man.

http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/amtraks-high-speed-rail-vision-for-2040-new-york-to-washington-in-96-minutes/11144/

Amtrak’s high-speed rail vision for 2040: New York to Washington in 96 minutes

By Andrew Nusca | Sep 30, 2010 | 37 Comments

Amtrak on Tuesday unveiled its vision for high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor by 2040, and it’s a doozy.

According to the train operator’s “A Vision for High-Speed Rail in the Northeast Corridor” report (.pdf), progress in the next 30 years could bring trips from New York City to Washington, D.C. in 96 minutes and trips from Boston to New York in just 84 minutes.

Amtrak is thinking “world class” rail, and the plan involves speeds of up to 220 miles per hour (about 354 kilometers per hour) that, all said and done, would slash existing commute times between the aforementioned cities in half.

But no plan is without a price tag, and Amtrak hangs that vision on a peg of $117.5 billion.

Here’s a statistical rundown of how that adds up on the ground:

  • Deadline: 2040.
  • Ridership by 2040: 18 million.
  • Capacity to expand beyond that: up to 80 million annually.
  • Frequency: one to four trains per hour in each direction, with additional trains for peak demand. Today: 42 per day. Tomorrow: 148.
  • Plan would generate an annual operating surplus (yes, you read that correctly) of about $900 million.
  • More than 40,000 full-time construction jobs each year for 25 years’ worth of building track, tunnels, bridges and stations.
  • More than 120,000 permanent jobs benefit from “improved economic productivity” along the corridor
  • $4.7 billion investment each year over 25 years, or $117.5 billion in total.

:}

Next up, cheaper more efficient solar pane. More tomorrow.

:}

Paul Krugman And Energy Policy – California and what can be accomplished

Posted on by
Reply

It is so basic – save money on energy and there is more to spend on other things.

:}

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/02/paul_krugman_co.html

Friday, February 23, 2007

Paul Krugman: Colorless Green Ideas

Now that the scientific debate over global warming is all but over, Paul Krugman looks at what we can do limit greenhouse gas emissions:

Colorless Green Ideas, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: The factual debate about whether global warming is real is, or at least should be, over. The question now is what to do about it.

Aside from a few dead-enders on the political right, climate change skeptics seem to be making a seamless transition from denial to fatalism. In the past, they rejected the science. Now, with the scientific evidence pretty much irrefutable, they insist that it doesn’t matter because any serious attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions is politically and economically impossible.

Behind this claim lies the assumption, … that any substantial cut in energy use would require a drastic change in the way we live. To be fair, some people in the conservation movement seem to share that assumption.

But the assumption is false. Let me tell you about … an advanced economy that has managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle centered on automobiles and single-family houses.

The name of the economy? California.

There’s nothing heroic about California’s energy policy… [T]he state has adopted … conservation measures that are … the kind of drab, colorless stuff that excites only real policy wonks. Yet the cumulative effect has been impressive…

The energy divergence between California and the rest of the United States dates from the 1970s. Both the nation and the state initially engaged in significant energy conservation after that decade’s energy crisis. But conservation in most of America soon stalled…

In California, by contrast, the state continued to push policies designed to encourage conservation, especially of electricity. And these policies worked.

People in California have always used a bit less energy … because of the mild climate. But the difference has grown much larger since the 1970s. Today, the average Californian uses about a third less total energy than the average American, uses less than 60 percent as much electricity, and … emit[s] only about 55 percent as much carbon dioxide.

How did the state do it? In some cases conservation was mandated directly, through energy efficiency standards for appliances and rules governing new construction. Also, regulated power companies were given new incentives to promote conservation…

:}

More tomorrow.

:}

Cynthia Tucker And Energy Policy – Nukes are too expensive

Posted on by
1

This was supposed to be a post about Rick Sanchez. I have been using a list of “leftie” journalists and Sanchez’s was the next name on the list. But he poses an interesting problem, he spent most of his time on television so I could find nothing about him in print. He does have a book out but I do not have a copy of it and could find no one who actually quoted extensively from it on any subject. I even tried Youtube and Bing hoping to get video of him talking about the environment. After an hour and 1/2 I gave up. So here is Cynthia Tucker whom I like alot.

http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2010/02/23/why-do-savannah-nuke-plants-deserve-taxpayer-money/

Why do Augusta nuke plants deserve taxpayer money?

12:44 pm February 23, 2010, by ctucker

UPDATE: As some of you have pointed out, the nuke plants are near Augusta. Thanks for the correction.

Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss were happy to claim credit for the Obama administration’s announcement that it was guaranteeing loans that would help build nuclear reactors on Georgia’s coast. But it’s an odd thing for the two Republicans, who usually argue that the government ought to stay out of private industry.

In fact, economists might argue that the huge government subsidies are little different from the bank bail-outs and bail-outs for the automotive industry.Liberals and conservatives have argued against the federal guarantees. From the WaPo:

Nuclear power plants “are simply not economically competitive now, and therefore they can’t be privately financed,” said Peter Bradford, an adjunct professor at Vermont Law School and a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “There are many cheaper ways to displace carbon, and there are many cheaper ways to provide for electric power supply.”

Jack Spencer, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a supporter of nuclear power, warned: “Loan guarantees do not a nuclear renaissance make.” He said the guarantees would “perpetuate the problems that have plagued nuclear energy for 30 years: the regulatory structure and nuclear waste [disposal] and too much government dependence.”

William O’Keefe, who heads a science-related think tank in Washington, doesn’t think the loans are such a good idea. From the WaPo:

If private companies are unwilling to risk their capital on new nuclear plants, why should the taxpayer take on part of that risk? The answer is: We shouldn’t.

The U.S. taxpayer has been subsidizing nuclear power since its inception, and it has yet to achieve its potential. Some of this is the fault of government policy, but some of it is just plain economics. The cost of a new nuclear plant has been estimated to be on the order of $4 billion, with some estimates being over $10 billion when cost overruns are taken into account. That makes the cost of nuclear-produced electricity very high.

The Obama administration is promoting nuclear power because it does not involve CO2 emissions. But that is only one criterion, and it should be judged on a cost-benefit basis. How much would new plants coming online over the next two decades reduce the climate change risk? And are there more-cost-effective alternatives for reducing that risk? There is growing evidence that the risk of climate change has been exaggerated, and that certainly weakens the case of the administration.

:}

More tomorrow

:}

Howard Fineman And Energy Policy – The right wing loves coal

Posted on by
Reply

The Left wing hates coal.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36132029/ns/politics-howard_fineman/

Obama’s energy challenge is coal, not oil

45 percent of the nation’s electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants

By Howard Fineman

msnbc.com msnbc.com
updated 4/14/2010 10:09:22 AM ET 2010-04-14T14:09:22
ANALYSIS

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama touched off a new environmental skirmish with his decision to open vast new areas of the American coastline to offshore oil drilling. But as loud as that battle is going to get, it is nothing compared with the real energy war to come.

I speak, of course, of the Coal War.

Forget whatever else you hear about energy policy, the real fight — and the real political problem — this year in Congress will be how to deal with our nagging reliance on the most abundant component of our carbon-based patrimony.

We can talk until we’re blue in the face about offshore drilling, wind power, natural gas, and energy conservation … but the short-term drift of history still dictates a heavy reliance on the dirtiest and deadliest of all fuels: coal.

The big question in the energy bill — if there is one — is how and whether Congress will ask the American people to pay for the cost of controlling the environmental consequences of that reliance.

At its core, the president’s energy vision calls for switching our transportation system from oil to plug-in electricity. But 45 percent of all electricity in the country is still generated by coal-fired power plants. In other words, we run the real risk of merely replacing one polluting and increasingly scarce fuel, petroleum, with an abundant but even more environmentally troublesome one, coal.

An energy bill that, among other things, would tax pollution caused by burning fossil fuels was passed by the House last year. It’s gotten nowhere in the Senate. Obama’s drilling announcement was designed to get the Senate’s attention — and garner some Republican support.

But opening up offshore drilling prospects is politically, the easy part. I think the president can get that piece of the puzzle.

The hard part is going to be convincing senators from coal-producing and/or electricity-exporting states to go along with any sort of carbon tax.

States with power plants that generate electricity from coal read like a roster of presidential swing states. Among them: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Missouri and North Carolina. And other states with major coal commitments include: Georgia, Arizona, Kentucky and Wyoming.

Getting 60 votes for some kind of carbon-pollution tax, even if it’s in the most attenuated “cap-and-trade” form, will be next to impossible.

:}

Go read the rest. It is pretty good. Everyone have a great weekend. More next week.

:}

Hendrik Hertzberg And Energy Policy – Seems pretty neutral to me

Posted on by
Reply

What struck me the most about the posts and the material the right wing columnists produced was how consistently it was industry biased and really right wing sentiment. What is striking about the left wingers is how balanced they appear. Of course as far as I am concerned Ted Rall is the biggest lefty around in print and he made NEITHER list that I have been using. Never actually heard of this guy but then I don’t get out much.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/03/22/100322taco_talk_hertzberg

Some Nukes

by Hendrik Hertzberg March 22, 2010

(dot dot dot)

There has always been something intuitively disproportionate about nuclear power plants, which, like coal-fired ones, use steam turbines to generate electricity. Converting mass to energy by atomic fission in order to achieve temperatures normally found only on the surface of stars like the sun and then using that extraterrestrial heat to boil water—well, it smacks of (to borrow a term from the nuclear dark side) overkill. To be fair, boiling water by burning black rocks made of petrified vegetable matter from the age of the dinosaurs is a little strange, too. And nuclear power plants have one great advantage over the fossil-fuel kind: they do not emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is hastening the world toward climatic disruption and disaster.

President Obama, in his State of the Union address, after talking up innovations in battery technology and solar panels, said, “To create more of these clean-energy jobs we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” Last month, he backed that up with a federal loan guarantee of $8.3 billion to build two new reactors near Waynesboro, Georgia. And in his budget request for 2011 he has asked for $46 billion more. The applause

for his State of the Union line was louder on the Republican side of the aisle than on the Democratic, and his words and actions have prompted loud grumbling from environmental organizations. But global warming has punched some holes in the green wall. Such founding fathers of the environmental movement as Stewart Brand, the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, and Patrick Moore, an early stalwart of Greenpeace, now support nukes. James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a climate-change prophet, favors the so-called fourth-generation nuclear systems, which would substantially reduce the amount of nuclear waste. Hans Blix, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector, is another supporter. So, within limits, are liberal senators like John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. And so is President Obama.

“We were hopeful last year—he was saying all the right things,” Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth, said after Obama’s loan-guarantee announcement. “But now he has become a full-blown nuclear-power proponent—a startling change over the past few months.” Actually, Obama has been a nuclear-power proponent ever since he was a state legislator, but in the context of an energy regime that underwrites conservation, promotes renewables like wind and solar, and, crucially, puts a price on carbon. Nuclear power plants are unbelievably expensive to build, but once they are up and running the electricity they generate is cheap to produce. In the United States, coal plants (there are six hundred of them, as against a hundred nuclear ones) get a kind of subsidy, too, and it’s huge: the right to dispose of their most dangerous waste by sending it up the chimney, free of charge.
:}

Please see the rest of article for a great summary of the past and a largely noncommital ending. More tomorrow.

:}