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1 - Global warming
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Really bad news -- 'Heat'
This entry was posted on 11/23/2008 11:12 PM and is filed under Coal,Action,OIL,Global Warming,Leadership.
Really bad news from someone that's taken the time to ask the key people. Watch Frontline's program Heat.
Excerpts Frontline's intro article (my comments in parentheses):
- "The report paints an ominous portrait. Despite increasing talk about "going green," across the planet, environmental concerns are still taking a back seat to shorter-term economic interests."
- "China. In the midst of unprecedented growth, the Chinese are clearly moving in the wrong direction. He visits Shenhua Energy, one of the largest and fastest-growing power companies in the world—a coal conglomerate with a huge carbon footprint. But its CEO, Ling Wen, tells Smith that he answers not to the public but to his shareholders." (it's government's job, in all countries, to recognize this and set-up an economic climate with incentives for conservation and renewable energy sources) "....China continues to build two new coal-fired power plants every week."
- "India, where rapidly rising income levels have prompted an explosion in the demand for new cars. Automakers are thriving, pushing out new models, including the Nano, a small car aimed at helping even the poorest citizens get behind the wheel—no small thing, as India stands to overtake China as the world's most populous country by mid-century."
- "I think the difficulty we have is that countries that have developed and have done the polluting part are now asking the countries that are developing, `OK, you can't pollute,'" says Hameed Bhombal, of Aditya Birla Group, an Indian megaconglomerate. "It has to be done in a way that's fair."
- "According to Dr. Pachauri of the IPCC, the onus is on the developed world to lead the way. Now, with the rise in gas prices, there is an additional incentive for American car companies to offer smaller, more efficient vehicles." (Gas prices aren't high right now.......that's why we need a tax shift NOW.)
- "Smith asks Beth Lowery, head of environmental affairs at General Motors, why Toyota beat GM to the Prius. Lowery replies that GM looked at hybrids from a "business case" and asked, "Can this vehicle make money?" GM banked instead on trucks and SUVs and is now suffering its worst performance in 50 years." (The U.S. government should have taken the uncertainty OUT OF gasoline price swings via a tax shift. We didn't do it then, so let's do it now President-Elect Obama and new Congress.)
- "The answer, the industry says, will be "clean coal"— a complex process by which the burnt-off carbon will be captured and buried in the earth's crust. But as Smith investigates, he finds there are serious doubts about whether "clean coal" will ever work. When pressed, utility CEO David Ratcliffe of Southern Company, one of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, concedes that "we haven't even come close to defining what are the legal liabilities and what are the permitting requirements" for removing carbon from coal and burying it underground. Recently, several "clean coal" projects in the U.S. have stalled over these and other uncertainties. As Jeffrey Ball, environmental news editor at The Wall Street Journal, tells Smith, "There was huge, rosy optimism about it. What's wrong is that reality is intruding.""
- "...California's attorney general, Jerry Brown, reminds Smith that it won't be easy. "Our wealth, our society, our being is driven by oil and carbon. It's intellectually dishonest to somehow say we can get some light bulbs or get a Prius, and then we're all done. No, this is going to take massive technological innovation. It's going to take changes in the way we live and work. And it's going to take cooperation of unprecedented degrees among business and government and among countries. That's where we are, and that's why there's no other word except `daunting.' I'm hopeful. I'm cautiously optimistic. But I would have to say one has to approach this with great humility.""
- "Author and journalist Jeff Goodell adds, "We seem incapable of grasping what's at stake here, perhaps because so much is at stake. Addressing this really means reinventing the engine of our lives—which is fossil fuels.""
   
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enough oil for the next 50 years at the current use rate, for $2 a barrel.