Sarah Palin used her Saturday speech in Nevada before Tea Party activists to call for wider domestic oil drilling and nuclear power development, alleging the White House and Congress are risking U.S. security by allowing continued reliance on foreign energy.
Palin bemoaned the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on oil imports – including payments to “regimes that do not like America” – and cited the risk of al-Qaeda attacks on Middle East oil fields.
“Just think what that would do to our economy as we become more beholden to these volatile, dangerous regimes because Congress and those in the White House choose to not allow us to develop our own God-given resources in the United States of America,” Palin told a conservative rally in Searchlight, Nev., the hometown of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D).
White House officials, when boasting about their work on climate change and energy, like to say the big 2009 stimulus law was a big step forward.
They’re right, insofar as it represented a massive jump in federal spending on climate change programs. A new Congressional Budget Office report tallies the extent of the increase.
“From 1998 through 2009, appropriations for agencies’ work related to climate change totaled about $99 billion (in 2009 dollars); more than a third of that sum – $35.7 billion by CBO’s estimation – was provided in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,” states a post on CBO’s blog about the new study.
EPA proposed on Friday to "significantly restrict" or stop altogether a controverisal mountain top mining project in Logan County, West Virginia, approved for operation three years ago. *
The Spruce No. 1 mine, owned by Arch Coal, is one of the largest mountaintop mines ever proposed in Central Appalachia and posed significant risks to the environment, EPA said. The project won permit approval in 2007 but has been delayed from opening by litigation. A public comment period lasting 60 days now follows EPA's proposal, to be followed by a final decision.
EPA's decision marks the first time the agency used its veto authority under the Clean Water Act to stop a project previously approved.
The action drew a quick rebuke from the coal industry. The National Mining Association said the original permit was issued after a 13-year evaluation that included weighing the potential environmental impacts of the mine. The mine is “the most reviewed" the nation’s history, the mining group said.
The nonbinding accord struck at the summit calls for rich nations to jointly mobilize $100 billion annually in climate aid for developing nations by 2020.
The paper suggests a multinational Green Fund that is initially capitalized with developed countries’ IMF reserve assets called “special drawing rights.” The Green Fund would then issue “green bonds” in capital markets to raise money to help nations battle global warming and adapt to changes.
A New York Times article may take some of the shine out of the Energy Star program, the Energy Department’s “stamp of approval” for energy efficient products.
The paper got the goods a day early on a report from the Government Accountability Office that suggests lax oversight of the popular program. NYT’s Matthew Wald reports that congressional auditors invented four fictitious companies that supposedly made conventional devices like dehumidifiers and heat pump models.
“The fake companies submitted data indicating that the models consumed 20 percent less energy than even the most efficient ones on the market. Yet those applications were mostly approved without a challenge or even questions,” the report said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Thursday said the carbon fee on gasoline that his brewing climate bill would establish will not drain drivers’ wallets because many people would receive refunds.
Graham – who is crafting an energy and climate bill with Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) – discussed the proposal after the trio met with industry groups in the Capitol, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Their plan would essentially keep motor fuel greenhouse gas emissions outside of cap-and-trade, and instead assess a fee on oil companies to account for transportation-sector pollution.
