Tech | February 04, 2010 | 24 comments

Obama administration continues to support non green technologies

source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-biofuels4-2010feb04

,0,6179879.story

Corn ethanol? Just how much do they owe the corn industry and Monsanto? Do they realize there is a food crisis going on? And yet, they support MORE corn ethanol that has already been proven to contribute to climate change? And they are still supporting "clean coal!" There is no such thing as "clean coal." This proves they are totally out of touch with the true urgency of cutting Co2 emissions. To say they will have carbon sequestration up and running by 2016 is misleading. We spew 70 plus million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere EVERY DAY. Do they even comprehend what that will amount to by 2016? So what good are their "green jobs" making solar panels if people will still be able to get dirty coal energy cheaper? Where is the aggressive stance on movng us to cleaner energy? All I see are the same markers being paid to campaign contributors over caring about the environmental and health effects of burning fossil fuels and also in clearing land to grow corn for fuel instead of food!
  1. groups:
    Community,   Tech,   Green,   Earth and Science
  2. tags:
    Politics,  Environment,  Climate Change,  Obama Administration,  12 more
  3.     
    |

24 comments // Obama administration continues to support non green technologies

  • futuregen
    • +1
      futuregen  

    • Dr. Vandana Shiva and David Blume need to get together to discuss biofuels. Page 27 of David's book: "Mesquite's harvested seedpods would generate 33 billion gallons of alcohol, without irrigation, fertilizer, or annual planting." India just needs to use a crop native to the area that produces starch growing it on non-farmland. There are solutions here.

    • 2 years ago
  • futuregen
    • 0
      futuregen  
    • Image

    • We are dealing with a Congress sold to the highest bidder. America just took out Toyota with fake OBD codes. Ford, the military industrial complex, and Peoria County Republicans have been playing with my first generation Prius since the day I purchased it. (And my VW Beetle). They can make false codes appear, cut your engine. and cause all kind of problems electronically through the computer codes in the car. It's economic warfare. Redneck Republicans don't care about educating themselves or improving their products. They just eliminate the competition through abusing technology and ruining the competition's good name.

      http://www.tradervar.com/Obd-II-Code-Scanner-C9226.htm

    • 2 years ago
  • thrillya
    • +1
      thrillya  

    • Forget corn and soy. We should be making biofuels out of hemp. Everyone who is serious about getting on the biofuels bandwagon should support hemp production.

    • 2 years ago
  • JanforGore
  • futuregen
    • +1
      futuregen  

    • http://www.permaculture.com/

      Alcohol should be the solution but not made with GMO's or corn. Many native plants that are on non-farmland as well as kelp grown in the ocean can produce alcohol. Current practice is for the starch (sugar) to be removed from the GMO corn with the remaining product fed to livestock. Sugar beets or the jerusalem artichoke are good high starch (sugar) content vegetables that can be used to make alcohol. Unfortunately Monsanto has dominated the sugar beet market with GMO sugar beets. Alcohol/ Ethanol should not be blindly dismissed by environmentalists until David Blume's book, Alcohol can Be A Gas, is read and fully consumed. This is a way to sustainably fuel America and the planet without impacting the food supply or biodiversity of this planet. Please take time to read this or attend a David Blume seminar before dismissing biofuels. We have to stop invading other countries and stealing their natural resources.

    • 2 years ago
  • futuregen
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • Don't think this clique system you've designed to shut certain people up is going to work on me. Now go ahead and mark this down too, coward.

    • 2 years ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • And another Obama supporter marks someone down for an on topic non personal attack comment. This is another reason why I don't like this cliquish comment rating system designed to squelch dissent on this site about certain topics. Go ahead though and mark me down because you can't stand an honest opinion and actually see the environmental devastation these hypocritical carryover Bush policies support because you can hide behind your modem. I shouldn't expect anything less here.

    • 2 years ago
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • ibrake4rappers13
  • ChunkyCheezes
    • +2
      ChunkyCheezes [removed]  

    • Its irrational to want all the change you voted for to occur at once. Give it time. In his second term the economy will turn around and he will more actively pursue green technology.

    • 2 years ago
  • futuregen
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • ChunkyCheezes
  • eternal_springs
  • JanforGore
    • -1
      JanforGore  

    • I'll try to find another link to this story since for some reason it isn't posting properly on Current, even though I can access it from the site where I read it.

    • 2 years ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • Excerpt

      Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration gave a boost to the corn and coal industries Wednesday, announcing a series of moves to accelerate biofuel use and deploy so-called clean-coal technology on power plants.

      Unveiling the actions in a meeting with energy-state governors at the White House, President Obama said the steps would create jobs in rural areas, reduce foreign energy dependence and curb the emissions that scientists blame for global warming.

      "It's important for us to understand that in order for us to move forward with a robust energy policy," Obama said, "we've got to have not an either/or philosophy but a both/and philosophy -- a philosophy that says traditional sources of energy are going to continue to be important for a while, so we've got to just use technologies to make them cleaner and more efficient."

      Most notably, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made final a regulation that could give corn ethanol a much larger share of the renewable-fuel market mandated by Congress in 2007.

      An earlier version of the rule included a controversial calculation -- since reworked by EPA scientists -- that would have minimized corn ethanol's role because of concerns about the fuel's overall pollution-fighting credentials.

      The administration said the EPA rule alone would lead to a $41.5-billion reduction in oil imports and take the equivalent of 27 million vehicles off the road.

      Administration officials also announced a revamped strategy to put the nation on track to meet the congressional mandate of 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022, in hopes of fixing a government effort that officials admit has fallen short in its attempts to wean cars and trucks away from fossil fuels and move toward ethanol, biodiesel and other crop-based fuels. The nation currently produces about 12 billion gallons of biofuel, mostly corn ethanol, and the federal government projects the country will not meet the 2022 goal.

      And Obama issued a presidential memorandum to speed the development of technologies that capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants, with a goal of bringing five to 10 commercial-scale projects on line by 2016.

      Many industry groups cheered the decisions, particularly corn-ethanol boosters, who have lobbied heavily for an expanded corn role under the EPA's renewable-fuel standard.

      Under a draft of the regulation released last year, EPA scientists determined that corn ethanol produced too many greenhouse gas emissions to qualify as a renewable fuel, effectively limiting the fuel's role to a level mandated by Congress.

    • 2 years ago
JanforGore
more from Tech:
from the community

top videos