From Change.org

The Clean Energy Economy Is Already Booming

Without much attention from policymakers, or funding from the public trough, a low-carbon economy has already taken off in the United States.  The jobs being created nationwide in clean energy are helping to bolster the nation’s environmental sustainability and cut greenhouse gas emissions — and expanding at a faster rate than the U.S. economy overall.

Research by The Pew Charitable Trusts, published in a new report titled “The Clean Energy Economy,” found that:

• Between 1998 and 2007, jobs in clean energy grew at a faster rate than overall jobs.
• By 2007, more than 68,200 businesses across all 50 states and the District of Columbia accounted for about 770,000 jobs.
• Jobs in clean energy, both white-collar and blue-collar, grew at a rate of 9.1 percent, while total jobs grew at a rate of 3.7 percent.
• Clean tech has not been immune to the economic meltdown, but it’s proving to be an especially resilient sector: Although venture capital investment in clean tech dropped by 48 percent in the first three months of 2009 (compared to the same period in 2008), investment across the board was down 61 percent during the same period.
• Employment in clean energy covers a broad swath of blue-collar and white-collar jobs, including plumbers, machinists, scientists, engineers, bankers and marketing consultants.  Annual incomes ranging from around $21,000 to $111,000.

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The jist of his message? Even if you don’t “believe” in anthropogenic climate change, there are many good reasons to get off our addiction to fossil fuels, and do it fast.

 

He is perfectly OK with authorizing drilling for oil off the pristine coast of Alaska, but he has just put a freeze on solar farms in the desert because he is worried about their potential impact on the desert’s environment.

This is the same guy who said America needs to fix its addiction to oil.

The idiocy (or is it dishonesty?) is just absolutely staggering!

 

The biggest obstacle is the cost: 420 billion dollars over 40 years.  But then again it is not that much when you consider that the war in Iraq has already cost more than that in less than 5 years, and the subsidies to the oil industry, depending on whose figures you use, are somewhere between $10B and $35B a year.

Things get even better if you start counting the savings from reduced energy prices (oil prices will keep climbing), the savings from not needing to build expensive nuclear plants and “clean” coal plants with CO2 sequestration, the savings from using much more efficient electrical motors (90% vs 20-25% for internal combustion engines), the reduction in the need to refine and distribute petroleum-based fuels, the savings from returning crop lands to food production, and the lower cost of health care and clean-up activities from reduced pollution.

They also talk of the creation of 3 million jobs to create and support these new industries.

Sounds like a winning solution to me!

 

I have already seen the effects of these food crops being used for fuels, and the increase in food prices in places like Panama.

Read Monbiot’s editorial here.

 

I have seen experts say that peak oil happened as early as 2004, and others who say it won’t happen for another 50 years. This latest study says it happend in 2006, and we are already seeing some of the effects of it.

Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says new study

 

This is a rather hypocritical stance, and a very unfortunate one. Global warming may very well destroy the island they are on, which will render protecting the view a rather moot point.  Not to speak of the millions of people in poor countries who’s livelihoods, if not their very lives, are at stake.

And the fossil fuel lobyists are spreading misinformation like “wind will never make a significant contribution”. Sure, wind is not the whole solution, but it is certainly a significant part of it. Some countries already produce 20% of their power through wind technology!

Personally I find those giant eolian generators very pretty. They are graceful and quiet machines that give me a warm fuzzy feeling thaty there is still hope for humanity and our planet. You can put one in my backyard any time!

 

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – The premiers of Canada’s provinces and territories agreed on Thursday to promote an energy strategy that promotes conservation, cuts regulatory delays and boosts the use of cleaner and renewable energy sources.

The Council of the Federation, which bands together the leaders of Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories, released the strategy during its annual meeting, held this year in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Along with promoting conservation and clean energy, the premiers also called for improvements to electricity transmission grids and freer trade in electricity throughout the country.

They also demanded a role with the federal government when international discussions on energy, primarily regulated by the provinces in Canada, are held.

 

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeAnSxr9-nE]

 

By David Biello , Scientific American

Read the story here.

 

Indonesia is destroying its forests faster than any other country in the world, at a rate of 51 square kilometers per day. The main reason for this? So they can plant oil palms to produce “green” biofuels for the west.

 

Because of this inherent lack of efficiency in producing biofuels, the only way they can be profitably produced is through heavy government subsidies to farmers and energy companies. The danger of these subsidies is that they encourage farmers to displace food crops and this drives-up the price of food; an alarming fact considering that millions of people already don’t have enough to eat on this planet, and it will only get worse. An even bigger danger is that this sudden interest in biofuels is pushing many countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brazil, to slash-and burn valuable rainforest and replace them with oil palms or sugar cane. This slashing and burning of the carbon-rich rain forests and peat is releasing 10 times as much CO2 as the fuels produced will save. This is also destroying precious rain forests, destroying wildlife habitat, and causing severe disruption to the whole ecosystem. I have seen first-hand in southern Costa Rica the effects of destroying rain forests to plant oil palms as well as the effects of replacing man-power intensive banana crops with low-labour oil palms, putting thousands of people out of work in the process.

And now western governments are signing treaties with third-world countries, encouraging them to continue the destruction of their most precious resource (the rain forests) in exchange for biofuels production. So once again, western governments are exploiting third-world countries, and transporting first-world problems to the third world. George Monbiot has just published an article entitled A Lethal Solution that discusses these very dangers and denounces the governments hiding behind these so called “green fuels”.

 

An 18-member panel led by MIT prepared the 400-plus page study, titled “The Future of Geothermal Energy” (PDF, 14.1 MB). Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, it is the first study in some 30 years to take a new look at geothermal, an energy resource that has been largely ignored.

The goal of the study was to assess the feasibility, potential environmental impacts and economic viability of using enhanced geothermal system (EGS) technology to greatly increase the fraction of the U.S. geothermal resource that could be recovered commercially.

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