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And, Solving it Presents Opportunities for a New Economy While the automobile companies deserve some blame for the problems in their industry, there is blame to spread around. The root cause of the biggest problems is the alliance between big corporations and government which has led to poor decision-making in Washington. It is embarrassing to hear Congress put all the blame on the Detroit triopoly and not acknowledge their irresponsible behavior in bowing to corporate pressures. Solving the auto industry problems is an opportunity to begin to shape a more effective new economy that changes the relationship between corporations and government as well as share's the wealth more equitably. The Causes of the Auto Crisis

Most climate experts accept that, in order to avoid catastrophic effects of global warming, greenhouse gas emissions (mostly CO2) must be cut by 60-80% by 2050 (though the figure may need to be a 95% cut in the US). The belief that replacing fossil fuels with solar and wind technology can accomplish this reduction tends to overlook several factors: 1. Corporations bombard the world with the message that everyone should consume like Americans do; 2. Corporations tell those in the US that they should ape after the playthings of the rich; 3. Population is growing; 4. Market economics force pathological expansion; and, 5. Solar and wind comprise a minute fraction of current energy. Let's combine these to get an idea of how much solar and wind would need to expand to replace coal, oil, nukes and gas by 2050. First, the US consumes about 25% of the world's energy while having only 5% of the world's population. For the rest of the world to consume at the rate of the US would require global production to increase by a factor of 6.33.

One of the world's largest power generating companies caused horrendous birth defects, lung injuries, and other acute and chronic medical problems from illegally dumping 100 million pounds of toxic coal ash onto a pristine Caribbean beachfront, according to a groundbreaking mass tort lawsuit filed late November 4th against Arlington, Virginia-based AES Corporation ("AES"). The eight-count lawsuit on behalf of 11 plaintiffs, living and dead, from the small rural village of Arroyo Barril in the Dominican Republic was filed in Delaware Superior Court. Two of the children died after birth from catastrophic birth defects. Two boys survived: one with no arms; the other, born with his stomach outside his body, had to endure several surgeries. Another child was found -- in utero -- to have massive cranial defects and had to be aborted, according to Diane Paolicelli, Esq. of Levy Phillips & Konigsberg LLP in New York City. Paolicelli, who leads the firm's medical malpractice and catastrophic injury practice group, represents birth defect victims.

One of the world's largest power generating companies caused horrendous birth defects, lung injuries, and other acute and chronic medical problems from illegally dumping 100 million pounds of toxic coal ash onto a pristine Caribbean beachfront, according to a groundbreaking mass tort lawsuit filed late November 4th against Arlington, Virginia-based AES Corporation ("AES"). The eight-count lawsuit on behalf of 11 plaintiffs, living and dead, from the small rural village of Arroyo Barril in the Dominican Republic was filed in Delaware Superior Court. Two of the children died after birth from catastrophic birth defects. Two boys survived: one with no arms; the other, born with his stomach outside his body, had to endure several surgeries. Another child was found -- in utero -- to have massive cranial defects and had to be aborted, according to Diane Paolicelli, Esq. of Levy Phillips & Konigsberg LLP in New York City. Paolicelli, who leads the firm's medical malpractice and catastrophic injury practice group, represents birth defect victims.

Tom Wilbanks, a corporate fellow at ORNL and a significant contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change work that shared a Nobel Prize with Al Gore, said the reports emerging out of the University of East Anglia's climate research unit are embarrassing and indefensible. But he said he doesn't believe there will be a huge effect long-term on studies of global climate change. Wilbanks said he was stunned to read reports of the e-mails, including some reported to be from scientists he knows well from Lawrence Livermore and the National Center for Atmospheric Research and other institutions.

Tom Wilbanks, a corporate fellow at ORNL and a significant contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change work that shared a Nobel Prize with Al Gore, said the reports emerging out of the University of East Anglia's climate research unit are embarrassing and indefensible. But he said he doesn't believe there will be a huge effect long-term on studies of global climate change. Wilbanks said he was stunned to read reports of the e-mails, including some reported to be from scientists he knows well from Lawrence Livermore and the National Center for Atmospheric Research and other institutions.

The federal government said late Monday it had received a report it commissioned on the best way to break up and sell Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. - but refused to release the report's recommendations, citing "commercial confidentiality considerations." Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt announced last spring that the government was prepared to break up AECL, a Crown corporation, into two parts. One part would include the business responsible for selling and building CANDU reactors, the large powerful machines that provide electricity at plants in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. The government signalled its intention to a seek a private sector partner to buy all or part of the CANDU business.

The federal government said late Monday it had received a report it commissioned on the best way to break up and sell Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. - but refused to release the report's recommendations, citing "commercial confidentiality considerations." Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt announced last spring that the government was prepared to break up AECL, a Crown corporation, into two parts. One part would include the business responsible for selling and building CANDU reactors, the large powerful machines that provide electricity at plants in New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. The government signalled its intention to a seek a private sector partner to buy all or part of the CANDU business.

Constellation Energy: Nuclear Operators Although it is too dangerous, too expensive and too centralized to make sense as an energy source, nuclear power won't go away, thanks to equipment makers and utilities that find ways to make the public pay and pay. Case in point: Constellation Energy Group, the operator of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant in Maryland. When Maryland deregulated its electricity market in 1999, Constellation - like other energy generators in other states - was able to cut a deal to recover its "stranded costs" and nuclear decommissioning fees. The idea was that competition would bring multiple suppliers into the market, and these new competitors would have an unfair advantage over old-time monopoly suppliers. Those former monopolists, the argument went, had built expensive nuclear reactors with the approval of state regulators, and it would be unfair if they could not charge consumers to recover their costs. It would also be unfair, according to this line of reasoning, if the former monopolists were unable to recover the costs of decommissioning nuclear facilities. In Maryland, the "stranded cost" deal gave Constellation (through its affiliate Baltimore Gas & Electric, BGE) the right to charge ratepayers $975 million in 1993 dollars (almost $1.5 billion in present dollars). Deregulation meant that Constellation's energy generating assets - including its nuclear facility at Calvert Cliffs - were free from price regulation. As a result, instead of costing Constellation, Calvert Cliffs' market value increased.

You better watch out! Better not cry! Better not pout! I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is comin' to town. He's making a list and checking it twice. He's going to find out who's naughty and nice. Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town. We better watch out. We better not cry. While Santa checks his list twice, so too might you and I. The ebony chunks Old Saint Nick might place in our stocking, contrary to what coal corporation sponsored commercials might claim, are not clean. Nor is this source of energy cheap. When used as a resource for power, this sedimentary rock is dirty, deadly, and digs deep into the pocketbooks, and personal lives, of those the industry touches. In America, that may be you and me.

The coal industry is attempting to organize bloggers to promote their false "clean coal" propaganda. The Reality Coalition, a group of national environmental organizations, have begun airing the message that "There's no such thing as clean coal," to counter the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by coal-powered corporations to pretend that coal is a "clean" fuel. So the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) and Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), essentially one coal propaganda group with two different faces, is fighting back with an email blast asking people to join their "Blogger Brigade":

When the TVA Board of Directors gets together in Knoxville Thursday, it will be their first announced gathering since the Dec. 22 Kingston coal ash disaster put the nation's largest public utility in an unwanted spotlight. One part of the Tennessee Valley Authority's operation that has received almost no attention is the board itself, which oversees the $10.4 billion a year federal corporation.

Today's announcement that Joseph Kelliher, chairman of the powerful Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and a commissioner since 2003, is stepping down provides President-elect Barack Obama with an opportunity to fix an agency with a history of promoting deregulation and power company profits at the expense of fair energy prices to American families. Under Kelliher's watch, FERC continued the failed policy of deregulation, resulting in consumers paying billions of dollars more in home energy costs than if markets under FERC control had been properly regulated. Kelliher, who served as the Energy Department's liaison to Vice President Dick Cheney's infamously corporate-biased Energy Task Force prior to becoming FERC commissioner, consistently overlooked the agency's top statutory mandate: to ensure that all electric rates be "just and reasonable."As a result, Kelliher's FERC has undergone ongoing criticism by states and consumer groups for its backward priorities.

I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil - Alan Greenspan (2007) The Guardian had an interesting article recently on the auction of 40 billion barrels of Iraqi oil reserves. The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40bn barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London. BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani. Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40% of the Middle Eastern nation's reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by US and British forces. Two smaller agreements have already been signed with Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation, but today's sale will ignite arguments over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a "war for oil" that is now to be consummated by western multinationals seizing control of strategic Iraqi reserves.

The election of Barack Obama has put the wind back into the sails of the renewable energy sector, where investor confidence had been badly punctured by the credit crisis. Clean technology and green energy stocks have soared as City analysts predict a major boost from the incoming president. Solar Integrated Technologies rose by 30% yesterday after increases of 22% by Renewable Energy Corporation and 16% by the wind turbine maker Vestas in the 24 hours before, when they were helped upwards by oil prices returning to above $70 a barrel.

Rising Tide is an international network born out of the conviction that corporate-friendly and state-sponsored "solutions" to climate change will not save us. As a matter of survival, we must decrease our dependence on the industries and institutions that are destroying the planet and work toward community autonomy and sustainable living.

Thom fits recent events in Georgia into a historical context and into the competition for oil. This is a very, very serious situation, what's going on in Georgia, and I want to take it, bring it out to the whole great big picture because the media won't do it. The corporate media won't do it. And the Republican Party definitely won't do it and the Democrats probably won't do it because they're all, by and large, to one degree or another, complicit in how this all came about. So let's just kind of play the way back machine here, all the way back to 1860. In 1860, I think it was 1865 or 1867 [1859], the first oil well, Colonel Drake drilled the first oil well in the United States in Titusville, Pennsylvania, the first gusher and thus began the American era of oil. And we had a hell of a lot of oil in the United States. Pennzoil was the Pennsylvania Oil Company.

Virtually every individual, family, business and institution in the United States is grappling with the destructive consequences of our national failure to devise a responsible energy policy. The price of oil has risen 85 percent in the past two years. Because of our extreme dependence on fossil fuel, that price increase is causing a shock to our economic system that is apparent in higher gas and food prices, rising costs for manufactured goods, damaged corporate profits and painfully stretched household budgets.

On June 3 of this year, Dr. Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, correctly outlined the problem to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation:

Construction Management Degree has posted a list of The Top 50 Blogs Shaping the Energy Debate. The list is divided into categories - General, Alternative, Environmental, Coal, Oil, and Corporate - and includes numerous sites that I suspect TCOE readers would find interesting. And yes, TCOE made the list.

"We know the right thing to do," President Obama said about renewable energy at his press conference Tuesday. "We've known the right choice for a generation. The time has come to make that choice and act on what we know.…We have achieved more in two months for a clean energy economy than we have done in perhaps 30 years." Thirty years. Let's see, that would be 1979, right? Hmmm… wasn't that the year -- yes, that was when Jimmy Carter finally got his Grand Energy Plan through Congress, setting us the road to corn ethanol, the Synthetic Fuels Corporation and a host of other harebrained schemes.

Police arrested 44 anti-coal activists engaged in acts of civil disobedience today to protest expansion of Duke Energy's Cliffside coal-fired power plant. Those arrested will likely be charged with second degree trespassing. Event organizers Stop Cliffside have declared to protest a success: Duke EnergyScryve Corporate Social Responsibility Rating CEO Jim Rogers has publicly said that all of Duke's coal power plants will be shut down by 2050, but considering that many climate change scientists consider shutting down coal-fired power plants to be the single greatest thing that can be done to curb emissions, Rogers' promises have been received with little fanfare.

Reliable, accessible and affordable energy has been one of the primary pillars of American prosperity since the dawning of the Industrial Age. Unfortunately, many of the energy sources that we have always used have been seriously depleted or produce a dangerous build up of waste products in our common environment. As the people's representatives, Congress wants to help change that pattern by enabling and encouraging entrepreneurs, established corporations and private investors to make the long term investments that will be required to change a pattern of energy use that has been developing for almost 200 years. One attempt at making that possible was the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which established a program where the federal government would back loans for carefully selected projects whose payback profile did not exactly match the demands of the short term thinkers on Wall Street. Unfortunately, that bill put the burden of developing the program onto the Department of Energy, an organization that remains ill equipped for the task. Part of the reason is that the DOE is dominated by other considerations (protection of the nuclear weapons stockpile) and by the established energy industry that has no desire or incentive to make a big change in the current market.