Subsidies // Current TV

URS wins $2.5 billion contract for Yucca Mountain

“If we are to meet growing energy demand and slow the growth of greenhouse gas... more

covelogibbs
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3 years ago
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What you NEED to know if you eat food!!!!!

"In a open letter to the next president, author Michael Pollan writes about the... more

Delta_Wave
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3 years ago
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John McCain: The Nuclear Option

Building 45 new nuclear plants in this country is insanity and will doom the waterways of this country and put our national security at risk. For a candidate who also talks about fighting the 'war on terror' as well, how could this thought even be entertained in the world we live in? Nuclear energy is not safe, it is not CO2 free, and I am truly getting tired of John McCain talking about what he really knows nothing about. He was on a nuclear submarine that didn't get blown up so that is how he assessed nuclear power is safe? Does he even understand the process of how the uranium is extracted and the toxic pollution it causes to our waterways and land? Does he understand how the toxic waste causes cancer? Does he understand the radioactivity of the waste? The immense amount of water nuclear uses? (Not good in a country now experiencing droughts, especially in the US Southwest) The cost in dollars and in potential lives?

My one message to him and yes, Obama as well who has now flip flopped to say he too engages nuclear is: STOP LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. The strides being made in solar, wind, and geothermal are here and now. We could take the money their congressional subsidies give out for their nuclear pipedreams and repower this country! I will make a pledge that should John McCain be corronated I will call the White House every day regarding this issue and 'clean coal.' And I will do the same if it is Obama.

It is unconscienable to me that they could ever want to foist this antiquated unsafe energy source on us just to appease backers and the lobbyists who get the subisidies from Washington Dc. The nuclear option must be out of the question. It is antiquated. It is unsafe. It is toxic. It wastes water. It is expensive. It puts our national security at risk, and will take too much time in light of the reports coming from peer reviewed scientists regarding the current state of our world. Why don't these candidates ever pick up a report instead of a poll to craft their policies? Building 45 new nuclear plants in this country is insanity and will doom the waterways... more

JanforGore
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3 years ago
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Senate passes $600 billion spending bill

The Senate overwhelmingly passed a spending bill Saturday that allows a 26-year ban on... more

TravG73
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3 years ago
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Genetically modified seeds pose more problems than natural varieties

The processes of hybridization involving repeated combinations of genetic material were limited for a long time by the fact that natural reproduction only takes place between plants of the same species. But Genetic Engineering took off with the unravelling of the full structure of the DNA 20 years ago. It became possible to insert a gene of one species into the DNA of another, thus offering immense agricultural possibilities.

Some examples include the modification of plants that fix the nitrogen of the air without belonging to the Leguminous family, plants resistant to certain diseases or to dry environments; the possibility of producing drugs and vaccines by genetically modifying bacteria, and many others.

Farmers were thus promised higher incomes; traders were promised lower costs of production and better quality of produce; and the companies producing such foods saw huge profits appearing on the horizon through monopolies and patents of such modified foods. Naturally, their research showed that there was no difference between the natural and engineered foods, that these were safe, and that they would solve the problem of famine in the world.

But if GM foods were all that their producers claimed them to be, why was the process conducted by stealth and sprung on the public without notice? This policy of the fait accompli began with the US government, which neither informed nor consulted its citizens about GM crops nor, worse still, did it require GM foods to be labelled, so as to give the public the democratic choice of whether to buy or not. After this GM foods were imposed on one country after another, in the same utterly undemocratic atmosphere of secrecy.

For a full understanding of the import of GM foods, two sets of results need to be considered: social results on the countries that have adopted them and biological results of the genetically modified foods. Further, GM foods must be analysed as part and parcel of the much touted globalization,to which we now turn.

Dr Vandana Shiva is an India physicist, founder and president of the Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology, and one of India's leading activists. She describes in one of her papers how the transformation of peasant agriculture in India to a globally industrialized model, which has GM foods as a supporting pillar, has reduced food security, threatened local businesses and biodiversity, driven farmers off their lands, and opened the door for global corporations to take over the nation's food processing.

The common claim by globalization enthusiasts is that it is natural, inevitable, and evolutionary. Dr Shiva sees it otherwise. Globalization is not a natural process of inclusion. It is a planned project of exclusion that has siphoned the resources and knowledge of the poor of India onto the global marketplace, stripping people of their life-support systems, livelihoods, and lifestyles.

Global trade rules, as enshrined in the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture (AOA) and in the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement, are primarily camouflaged rules of robbery.

The WTO's overall goal: promoting market competition serves two purposes. First, it transforms culture, biodiversity, food, water, livelihoods, needs, and rights into commodities for sale to be conveyed to markets. Second, it justifies the destruction of nature, culture, and livelihoods in terms of rules of competition.

Its officials attack ethical and ecological rules that sustain and promote life, dubbing them as protectionist barriers to trade.

Globalized food and agriculture in effect, means the corporate takeover of the food chain, the erosion of food rights, the destruction of the cultural diversity of food and the biological diversity of crops, and the displacement of millions from land-based, rural livelihoods.

The processes of hybridization involving repeated combinations of genetic material... more

JanforGore
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3 years ago
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Time: When the big hurricane hits Florida, we're f@#!ed

Floridians should learn how to turn pee into drinking water NOW.

Floridians that scare easily should be careful not to leaf through this week's Time Magazine while waiting at the Publix check-out counter. Because apparently- and I think we all knew this, but it's just not nice to talk about it- if Miami gets smacked by one big hurricane our state is seriously financially f@#!ed:

Ike could well be a Gustav-like bust rather than a Katrina-like disaster. But eventually, disaster will visit the peninsula, and it's still not clear who's going to pay the tab. "It's going to be a financial nightmare," says Cecil Pearce of the American Insurance Association. "Florida is the nation's basket case."

An Ike-sized hurricane hitting Miami, says reporter Michael Grunwald, could cost $70 billion in damages. And while big numbers and the government tend to cause our eyes to gloss over- Somebody will take care of it, right?- Time says, in this case, nope.

The blame, as is often the case, can be traced to Governor Charlie Crist- but in fairness, Florida's residents are his enablers.

After Andrew's destruction, most in-state insurance companies were put out of business, and national ones were scared away. With sky-rocketing premiums for Florida residents, Crist provided subsidized insurance to 1.3 million high-risk homeowners, and through his Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, reinsurance to the few remaining Florida insurance companies.

It's very complicated in a sort of so-this-is-why-I-don't-read-Time kind of way, buy the gist is: Crist has put Florida on the hook for some bills we won't be able to pay in the event of The Big One.

What Time doesn't say, is what going belly-up as a state will really mean. Will the rest of the country treat us like that cousin who likes bourbon and blackjack a bit too much, and cut us off? Will Florida turn into a apocalyptic Waterworld, where only those with boats or machines that turn urine into drinking water survive?

Or will we successfully beg for one of the biggest disaster bail-outs the government's ever handed out?

That sounds presidential. Maybe Florida's legislators should start sucking up to Sarah Palin now.

-Gus Garcia-RobertsFloridians should learn how to turn pee into drinking water NOW. Floridians that... more

TheRealEdwin
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3 years ago
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Obama's record on coal support

In May 1998, at the urging of the state's coal industry, the Illinois Legislature passed a bill condemning the Kyoto global warming treaty and forbidding state efforts to regulate greenhouse gases.

Barack Obama voted "aye."

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee now calls climate change "one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation," and proposes cutting carbon emissions 80% by 2050. But as a state senator, from 1997 to 2004, he usually supported bills sought by coal interests, according to legislative records and interviews.

Obama is not the only politician whose public stance has shifted on global warming, which a scientific consensus says has been caused chiefly by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, who now backs limits on carbon emissions, was among 95 U.S. senators who voted in 1997 to oppose the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions reduction scheme that had been negotiated by then-vice president Al Gore.

Still, Obama, who touts his independence from special interests, made a point of embracing the coal industry as part of his quest for statewide office. When he ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was flanked by mine workers to proclaim that "there's always going to be a role for coal" in Illinois.

snip

Obama's other votes on coal in the state Senate included:

• In 1997, he voted to divert sales taxes to a fund for grants to help reopening closed coal mines and "incentives to attract new businesses that use coal."

• In 2001, Obama voted for legislation that offered $3.5 billion in loan guarantees to build coal-fired power plants with no ability to control carbon emissions.

• In 2003, he voted to allow $300 million in taxpayer-backed bonds to build or expand coal-fired power plants.

"You know, I am a strong supporter, I think, of downstate coal interests and our need to prop up and improve the outputs downstate," Obama said on the Senate floor before voting on the 2001 bill.
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I expect to see this from a Republican. I expected better from a Democrat. In May 1998, at the urging of the state's coal industry, the Illinois Legislature... more

JanforGore
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3 years ago
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Destroying African Agriculture

Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis.... more

JanforGore
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McCain Sets Goal of 45 New Nuclear Reactors by 2030

Senator John McCain said Wednesday that he wanted 45 new nuclear reactors built in the... more

covelogibbs
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3 years ago
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Is Nuclear Power Viable?

Nuclear power was the energy of Tomorrowland — in the 1950s it was going to make electricity too cheap to meter — until it came to a standstill over the past couple decades. It's now poised to make a dramatic comeback. At least, that's what many politicians and the media say. As the Senate this week debated the Warner-Lieberman carbon cap-and-trade bill, which would put a federal limit on greenhouse gas emissions, many doubtful senators said they wouldn't vote for the measure unless massive subsidies for nuclear were included. (The bill was shelved.) Even some veteran greens who were once dead set against atomic power, like Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore, now see nukes as the only way to save civilization from climate change. And last month Wired magazine urged environmentalists to "Go Nuclear," claiming, "there's no question that nuclear power is the most climate-friendly industrial-scale energy source."

That's debatable, to say the least. There's no question that a nuclear plant, once it's up and running, produces comparatively little carbon dioxide — a British government report last year found that a nuclear plant emits just 2% to 6% of the CO2 per kilowatt-hour as natural gas, the cleanest fossil fuel — but nuclear energy still seems like the power of yesterday. After a burst of construction between the 1950s and late 1970s, a new nuclear power plant hasn't come on line in the U.S. since 1996, and some nations like Germany are looking to phase out existing atomic plants. That reverse is chiefly due to safety concerns — the lingering Chernobyl fears of nuclear meltdown, or the fact that we still have yet to devise a long-term method for the disposal of atomic waste.

But to Amory Lovins — a veteran energy expert and chairman of the Rocky Mountain Institute — there's a much better green reason to be against nuclear power: economics. Lovins, an environmentalist who is unusually comfortable with numbers, argues in a report released last week that a massive new push for nuclear power doesn't make dollars or cents. In his study, titled "The Nuclear Illusion," he points out that while the red-hot renewable industry — including wind and solar — last year attracted $71 billion in private investment, the nuclear industry attracted nothing. "Wall Street has spoken — nuclear power isn't worth it," he says.

More nuclear subsidies, which many on Capitol Hill are pushing for, won't do the trick either. Lovins notes that the U.S. nuclear industry has received $100 billion in government subsidies over the past half-century, and that federal subsidies now worth up to $13 billion a plant — roughly how much it now costs to build one — still haven't encouraged private industry to back the atomic revival.Nuclear power was the energy of Tomorrowland — in the 1950s it was going to make... more

JanforGore
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3 years ago
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6 comments

EU to open anti-dumping probe into US biodiesel imports

BRUSSELS (AFP) — The European Union will on Friday open anti-dumping and... more

Purdey
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3 years ago
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India: strike over fuel price rise

Communist and opposition parties in India are holding nationwide protests against a... more

merasyad
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3 years ago
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9 comments

Food Crisis: Should the US Go on a Diet?

In this very interesting clip we hear what is going on at the current summit in Rome.... more

HellaDelicious
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3 years ago
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Investors demand tougher US climate legislation

An influential coalition of investors has this week called on the US Senate to deliver binding emission reduction targets or risk undermining firms' long-term competitiveness.

The group of more than 50 institutional investors, including Deutsche Asset Management, F&C Asset Management, and the world's largest hedge fund the Man Group, wrote to senate majority leader Harry Reid and senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, calling for a national climate policy to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by between 60 and 90 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The targets are in line with those proposed under the Lieberman-Warner climate bill, which will be debated in the Senate early next month.

The letter also urges Senate leaders to increase pressure on regulatory bodies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue clear guidance on what climate change risks firms should disclose to investors.

The coalition, which has been organised by ethical investment lobby group Ceres, said there was a strong business case for enacting more stringent carbon targets and legislation.

"Investors hate uncertainty, and that is the problem they face today," said Mindy S Lubber, president of Ceres and director of INCR. "Strong and decisive action from Washington will open the floodgates on large-scale clean technology investments, enabling US investors and businesses to lead instead of lag on climate change solutions."

Oregon state treasurer Randall Edwards, whose office manages $80bn (£40bn) in assets, agreed that far from damaging the economy as its critics claim, the Lieberman-Warner bill would create opportunities for investors. "It is time for Congress to step up to the plate and tackle climate change. Any further delay is inexcusable," he said "The Lieberman-Warner bill would give investors such as myself the ability to see the risks involved so we can begin rebuilding our economy by investing in green technologies."

The calls come in the same week as Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer released an overview of a package of amendments to the Lieberman-Warner bill which are expected to form part of the proposed legislation. The amendments contain a number of measures designed to minimise the financial impact of the planned cap-and-trade scheme, including a mechanism to reduce the price of carbon credits if they hit a certain level and proposals for an $800bn (£400bn) tax relief fund to help consumers cope with rising energy costs.
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Yes, 90% by 2050... That's what I'm talking about.This bill is going to be debated on the floor starting tomorrow. Please contact your senators and tell them that even though this is a start, we need to do much better to pass a more comprehensive bill that truly meets the demands and addresses the adverse effects climate change will have on our country and our world if left unchecked. And that means new forms of energy aggressively brought to market to wean us off the destructive energies that pollute our planet and put us all at risk.An influential coalition of investors has this week called on the US Senate to deliver... more