Another week is quickly passing and still we have no measurable progress on a workable climate and energy bill. It is now glaringly clear that only with President Obama's focused and direct leadership over the next several days will meaningful comprehensive global warming and energy legislation become law this year.
As Executive Director of the Sierra Club, I can tell the president that our 1.3 million members and supporters are growing increasingly frustrated at the inability of Congress and his administration to move forward in the face of the worst oil disaster in our history. And that only adds to the impatience already fostered by their leaders' seeming inability to address the overwhelming danger global warming poses to the economic strength of our country and the environmental integrity of the planet.
We recognize and appreciate President Obama's leadership on clean energy, yet the extremely limited legislative calendar clearly demands a much deeper and sustained level of personal involvement than he and his administration have demonstrated to date. The president's Oval Office speech about the disaster, while eloquent, did not set a clear goal to reduce oil consumption, establish a timeline in which it could be done, nor rally Americans together to be a part of the solution. His listening sessions with Senators have not led to even a cohesive approach, much less legislation.
This process is adrift, and our country urgently needs the president's leadership. We need the president to take control and ensure that a comprehensive legislative package is ready to be introduced by July 12 when the Senate returns from recess. We urge President Obama to work with Senate leaders personally, to direct his senior staff to finalize strong comprehensive climate and energy -- in short, to do everything necessary to get a strong bill introduced. Then we need the president's full participation with Senate leadership to pass the bill before the August recess.
We at the Sierra Club will be measuring the bill by what it can achieve. Specifically, it must reduce oil dependence substantially, create clean energy jobs, and reduce global warming pollution.
In particular, the Sierra Club believes a package must make significant progress to reduce oil consumption and address the root causes of the BP oil disaster.
Similarly, a bill should include a strong Renewable Electricity Standard, and investments in clean energy and efficiency that will create jobs and spur economic growth, as well as measures to significantly reduce global warming pollution. A comprehensive package cannot include giveaways to dirty energy companies.
President Obama's direct leadership was critical to the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and health care reform. It is also critically important to produce and pass a bill for our clean energy future. America's prosperity, the health and safety of our communities, the ability to meet our international commitments, and our national security rest on the action the president and his administration take in the days ahead.
We stand ready to support President Obama's leadership and work with his administration to pass genuinely strong climate and energy legislation.
Follow Michael Brune on Twitter: www.twitter.com/bruneski
• World population/global poverty
• Global climate change
• Carbon based fuel energy (peak oil, the Gulf oil release is a symptom).
All else is distraction, just like the Roman Circus. Working on anything else is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Expecting anything useful from a politician, a lobbyist, a big business person, or so called experts is
like waiting for Godot. All they do is screw things up worse than they are now, and make a bunch of
money for a few rich people.
All meaningful change begins at the personal level. For the individual, focus on doing what can be
done effectively for yourself and your friends/family/community, and what is best for the world, and
don’t be distracted by things that are beyond our control.
Always vote; pick the least damaging politician or policy, but always vote. Even though government is
totally ineffective on these most important issues, maybe the potential for damage can be minimized.
Also, vote with money. I cast my money votes in this order 1) Co-ops & Credit Unions, 2) Employee
owned businesses, 3) locally owned small businesses, and 4) the “greenest” “large” businesses I can
find. (have to do my homework here)
As the hippies used to say, think globally, act locally.
Passing such legislation is an economic imperative, a social imperative, and a moral imperative. The longer we put off the inevitable transformation of our dirty energy economy to a cleaner energy economy, the more our global economic and social development will remain stifled. We owe it to ourselves, to those who will come after us, and to every species with whom we share this planet to make this shift as soon as possible.
Mr. Obama and his administration can help make this shift a reality. Thank you for pointing that out, Mr. Brune.
See What to Do at http://www.aesopinstitute.org The subtitle is now: 350 or Else - the Gulf Geyser and Human Survival.
400 parts per million of carbon has recently been found to be the Arctic Tipping Point, which could conceivably endanger all of humanity. We are presently approaching 390 ppm. The safe limit is 350 ppm. See www.350.org
Ironically, confronting the surprising dimensions of the problem might generate a huge number of jobs.
A very thin film on the surface of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans threatens to raise temperatures toward the catastrophic Tipping Point.
Consider the possibility that a massive mobilization is needed to combat what might be looming - if substantial oil is coming from fissures in the sea floor and the leak cannot be capped.
Little known and hard to believe breakthroughs involving radically new energy technologies appear capable of helping to supersede oil much more rapidly than might be easily understood.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same Aesop Institute website.
Cars and trucks could begin to cost-competitively leave behind gasoline and oil.
We need far more robust and sensible steps to massively attack the problems in the Gulf and prevent as much oil as possible from reaching the Atlantic ocean.
Sustainability and independence from oil is possible. Making it happen rapidly may require a greater effort that was required to respond to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Here's the lamentable fact: A technology to do just that existed in 1994. It was canceled by the Clinton administration, in response to the environmental and anti-nuclear-war people, on totally spurious grounds. The reactor design was meltdown-proof, its plutonium production was not only totally unsuitable for weapons, it was confined in an environment lethal to intruders. And the fast neutrons, unlike those of non-breeder plants, could consume all of the neutron capture products. Contrary to the accusation that it would increase the stock of plutonium available for misuse, it could be run as a net consumer of plutonium. Its waste was fission products only, which are very short lived compared with Pu-239.
Newly invented technology can use nuclear waste at power plants to run modified engines and generate electricity on a cost-competitive basis.
No need to transport the waste off-site.
No weapons grade materials are involved.
A nuclear plant uses 5% of the energy in the fuel rods. The remaining 95% can be captured by this new technology.
It has not yet been publicized.
Anyone interested can contact me. mgoldes@chavaenergy.com
Nuclear power plants, using one part in 140 of the raw uranium metal, produce 20% of the USA's electrical energy consumption, with great reliability.
For 2008, the total enriched uranium for civilian purposes was 4,897 thousand pounds U3O8 Equivalent That's 4162 thousand pounds of enriched uranium, not more than 4% of it 235U. Call it 2000 tons, of which about 80 tons is fissile. Those 80 tons of fissile isotope supplied all of the 20% of our electrical demand that is accounted for by nuclear power plants.
If all of the uranium were made fissile, by neutron bombardment, those 2000 tons could supply 25 times one fifth of the USA's electric energy demand of 2008. -- five times the total electric consumption. That's close to the total energy required by all sectors. But that's not counting the "depleted" uranium.
Here's the lamentable fact: A technology to do just that existed in 1994. It was canceled by the Clinton administration, in response to the environmental and anti-nuclear-war people, on totally spurious grounds.
See Running on Water and Moving Beyond Oil at http://www.aesopinstitute.org
Future cars will become power plants, with later models eventually selling up to 150 kW to the local utility when suitably parked. No wire connection needed.
Controversial BlackLight Power will give nuclear power a cost-effective competitor that runs on water.
They are now working with National and other laboratories to validate their breakthrough science and technology.
We disagree with their theory.
However, they are correct that a barrel of water can replace 200 barrels of oil.
Their website is: www.blacklightpower.com
We have no connection with BlackLight, but I have personally followed their work since it surfaced, as it reflects a prediction made by the late Dr. Robert Carroll, a mathematical physicist who saw what they have done would be possible in 1975. He worked with us for 12 years and his 1990 paper on Inverse Quantum States developed the equations that offer one explanation of the potential BlackLight discovered using water as fuel.
The implications for replacing all fossil fuels inexpensively are remarkable - and now exceedingly timely.
The scientific community, with few exceptions, does not yet accept this work. However, I predict that will change as an increasing number of laboratories independently confirm their work.
Given the unrecognized planetary emergency, once the science and technology is accepted, 24/7 development and production would seem wise.
Parallel new energy science, based on magnetics, is also en-route.