Energy & Environment

First, I give White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley a standing ovation for naming Herb Allison, who has served Democratic and Republican administrations, to examine the energy loan program. Second, I strongly support the loan program that was initiated during the Bush-43 presidency, and I applaud President Obama's increased efforts to promote American energy independence and new energy sources that will create the job waves of the future.

When I read Rick Manning's post this morning, I was reminded that the "Blame Americans First" Republicans and the "Hope America Fails" Republicans are back in force! My question to Manning is: Why does he think the Chinese are devoting so much money to support the "green businesses" that Manning and other Republicans oppose?

I will have much more to say about this subject soon. For now, obviously, Solyndra was a screw-up and whoever screwed up should be fired. But the glee that certain Republicans and their voices in the media take in this is absurd. This is why I would not invest in columnists who write about "Obama's fatal" anything, no matter how popular they may be in some partisan and ideological circles.

Green jobs, green jobs, green jobs.

For almost three years, that has been the incessant mantra from the Obama administration — from the president to his Labor secretary to his minions around the nation, the hope of a green jobs recovery has been the lynchpin of this president’s economic policy.

Toward promoting this agenda, the Labor Department is scheduled to spend $500 million of taxpayer money on training workers for this green economy.

Al Gore's 24-hour television extravaganza, which takes his message about protecting the planet from the ravages of pollution through multiple media across multiple time zones, is one more powerful statement of leadership from one of the giants of our age.

It is a phenomenon of our times how so many on the right, backed their pro-polluter sources of money, have such a total contempt for science, facts and truth.

It also a phenomenon of the times how those in the media who are biased to the right and the Republicans demonstrate such contempt toward progressive opinion.

In recent days Al Gore has raked Rick Perry over the coals for his attacks on science, and taken Barack Obama to task several times for his lack of courage on the environment. What is striking to me, though it should not be, is the pathological reaction of the right and their money sources from the pollution lobby to Al Gore.

Readers, readers, readers: I'm agonizing over and debating my thoughts. What I have argued and debated in the past is that industrial activity — anthropogenic activity — has consequences, e.g. the putting of large amounts of carbon-based materials into the environment.

Whether that causes "global warming" I don't know, and I submit can't be proven given the paucity of the database — how can you prove an underlying climatic cycle that may be hundreds or thousands of years long in periodicity with just about 100 years or so of truly detailed and reliable data? And, once you understand that base cycle, you still have to prove that there is a causal connection — not a spurious correlation — between any observed deviation and the base cycle.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney believes global warming is a very significant national problem, that part of the cause is man-made, and that government action is needed. I agree with him, and applaud him for this.

It is now clear that global warming is a major cause of rising food prices that hurt all Americans in their pocketbooks, every day. This will be a very big issue and revive national enthusiasm for action to combat global warming. I am in close touch with one very senior national Democrat who will soon launch a campaign appealing to voters to lower food costs by combating global warming.

For now, let’s applaud Mitt Romney for his global warming position and hope he sticks to his guns on this one.

This Friday will mark the release of the May unemployment report. A report that will reflect the last effects of the Obama trillion-dollar stimulus and of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE2).

The report is likely to show that job creation is mediocre at best, with unemployment insurance claims continuing well above the 400,000 weekly level, housing in a double-dip recession and the gross domestic product contracting to a paltry 1.8 percent growth rate for the second quarter of 2011.

The situation is so dire on the economic growth front that The New York Times has awoken from its slumber to opine, in a May 30 piece titled “The Numbers Are Grim,” that:

“Dang dang dong darn it. Dang dang darn it. Dang. Darn it. Dang dang.”
 
That’s what passes for intelligent political discourse on the Glenn Beck radio show when it comes to clean air and protecting our children from harmful air pollutants like arsenic, mercury, soot, smog and carbon.

Beck and his co-host, Pat Grey, were reacting Thursday to a new television ad from American Family Voices that hits Congress for considering legislation that would prevent the EPA from updating pollution standards on everything from arsenic to mercury to carbon pollution. The ad, rightfully so, indicates that if we don’t reduce these harmful emissions, we are essentially leaving them in our air, water and food for children to consume. Scientific research has found that existing pollution standards have prevented 160,000 early deaths annually, including nearly three hundred infants each year.

In light of the recent Japanese nuclear accident caused by one of the largest earthquakes the country had experienced in more than 300 years, I reflect on the future of nuclear power and how public perception has certainly been affected. These events are devastating, there is no doubt. It might, however, be an opportune time for us to step back and look at recent events objectively. An initial knee-jerk reaction is to point to this accident as a confirmation that nuclear energy is dangerous and causes dramatic public harm. However, giving up on nuclear energy would be hasty, short-sighted and counterproductive.

Our current energy supply and consumption trends are unsustainable in the long term. We live in a word increasingly constrained by multiple objectives competing for finite resources (time, money, technology, availability, etc.). Countries are playing a balancing act between reducing greenhouse gas emissions, addressing climate change concerns, achieving energy security by ensuring an adequate, reliable and safe supply shielded from volatile prices and ensuring economic growth. While there is certainly no silver bullet, nuclear energy does indeed play a critical role in bridging these objectives.