Posts tagged with 'china'
Weekly Mulch: Nuclear Plants will go up in Georgia
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
If you were to look out to the horizon of the clean energy field right now, you would see the hazy outlines of nuclear reactors. President Barack Obama announced this week that two new nuclear plants will go up in Georgia, built on the promise that the federal government will guarantee $8.3 billion in loans—nearly the entire estimated cost of the project.
“It is a slap in the face to environmentalists,” says Matthew Rothschild at The Progressive. “Though these will be the first nuclear reactors constructed in more than three decades, Obama still labeled them, somehow, as part of the “technologies of tomorrow.””
The president’s announcement wasn’t the only environmental downer this week. Expectations for the next international climate negotiations, to be held in Mexico at the end of 2010, are already low, and yesterday Yvo de Boer, the United Nations’ top climate negotiator, said he would step down this summer and join the private sector. To top it all off, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now faces sixteen lawsuits that would block its ability to decrease carbon emissions, including one backed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R).
A nuclear error
Although the Georgia reactors would be the first new nuclear construction in the country in decades, they mark the beginning of what the Obama administration hopes will be a shift towards nuclear energy. In the 2011 budget, President Obama proposed an expansion of the loan guarantee program that funds projects like these from $18.5 billion to $54.5 billion.
These nuclear projects deserve close scrutiny. At AlterNet, Harvey Wasserman details the problems with the Georgia reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) already rejected the initial designs for the plant. That means the estimated cost could well exceed the projected $8.5 billion, which Wasserman says, was low at the start.
“Over the past several years the estimated price tag for proposed new reactors has jumped from $2-3 billion each, in some cases to more than $12 billion today,” he explains.
Risky business
In the past, energy firms like The Southern Company, the Atlanta-based group that is building the plants, could only imagine securing funding for new nuclear projects. These projects have a high risk of failure, and private investors do not dream of touching them.
Inter Press Service’s Julio Godoy reviewed several European studies on the feasibility of financing nuclear plants. One study from Citibank concluded that “the risks faced by developers … are so large and variable that individually they could each bring even the largest utility company to its knees financially,” Godoy reports. These risks include uncontrollable construction costs, long delays, and the possibility of low power prices that would not support that plants’ operation.
That’s one reason that green advocates disapprove of nuclear energy: The money could be better spent elsewhere. “People tend to think that environmentalists have some sort of allergic reaction to nuclear because they’re scared of radioactive waste and unsecured nuclear materials,” writes Aaron Wiener at The Washington Independent. “But when it comes down to it…It’s simply a bad investment to pour billions of taxpayer dollars into a nuclear sinkhole when proven technologies such as wind and solar would provide guaranteed benefits.”
Wind to fly on
While the administration lavishes attention on nuclear, other clean energy industries are trying to move forward. In Wisconsin, a Spanish company is opening up a plant to build wind turbine components, which will bring much-needed jobs to the Milwaukee area, as Kari Lydersen reports for Working In These Times.
There’s always the threat, however, that gains like this will be rolled back by competition from China. Clean energy jobs can still be sent overseas, Lydersen points out. She argues that the United State could be providing a boost to the solar and wind industry in order to keep jobs here.
“Manufacturing in the United States could be driven both with incentives to the actual producers – like the tax break to Ingeteam [the Spanish company building the Wisconsin plant] and support for renewable energy through renewable energy portfolio (RPS) standards and other incentives,” she writes.
China as competition
From a purely environmental perspective, China’s headway into green technology is not a problem. Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum reminds us that the whole world can benefit from advances in clean energy, wherever they happen. Climate change is, after all, a global crisis. But Drum concedes that fear of Chinese competition does serve some purpose:
“I’ve lately become more receptive to the idea that, for better or worse, the only way to get Americans to take this stuff seriously is to kick it old school and start hauling out that old time Cold War evangelism,” he says. “Frame green tech as a matter of vital economic and national security superiority over the Reds and quit worrying overmuch about whether that’s really technically accurate. Just figure that it’s close enough, it’s language everyone understands, and it’ll do a better job of motivating development than a couple hundred more PowerPoints about receding glaciers.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The Mulch: Peaceful Protests Turn Violent in Copenhagen
By Alison Hamm, Media Consortium Blogger
The United Nations Climate Change Conference (Cop15) turned ugly today when police officers beat back hundreds of demonstrators, including a group of 50 to 100 delegates that were trying to meet with the protesters.
More than 250 people were arrested, including spokespeople for Climate Justice Action (CJA), a global network of NGOs that organized a walkout at the Bella Center today. CJA’s spokesperson Dan Glall told Mantoe Phakathi at Inter Press Service that “as a condition for going back to the negotiations, we demand industrialized nations uphold the Kyoto Protocol, commit adequate funds to adaptation and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly.”
OneClimate has video (below) of today’s walkout.
“More than 1,000 people have been arrested, detained and released over the course of the past week,” Jennifer Prediger writes for Grist. “Some were made to sit on freezing sidewalks for six hours in a nasty version of time out. The people who threw rocks and set cars on fire were rightfully detained. But the droves who were dragged in last night for dancing awkwardly in Christiana? Seems like overkill to me.”
The chaos outside reflects the increasing pressure inside the Bella Center, as delegates turn to the United States and China for leadership in the final days of the summit. Together these countries account for 42 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.
In order to finalize a global climate agreement in Copenhagen, both countries need to take a big step forward, as David Doniger and Barbara Finamore report for Grist. For the U.S., this means aid for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people; for China, this means making steady progress to meet the country’s carbon reduction goals.
The U.S. has already committed to pay its share of a $30 billion fund to last through 2012. “But to lead in Copenhagen, the U.S. needs to back even larger investments to meet these core needs for the longer-term—2015 or 2020,” Doniger and Finamore write. “China has the opportunity to enhance its standing as a responsible world leader by building global confidence in the implementation of its carbon reduction goals.”
But as David Corn reports for Mother Jones, China and the U.S. are apparently “stuck in a standoff.” An Obama administration official insisted that it’s not about the money: “‘We have to get the developing nations into an international agreement,’ the official said… Yet China has forcefully resisted the idea of incorporating their self-professed emissions goals (essentially, slowing the growth rate of emissions) into a binding agreement. China has also repeatedly said that it will not submit its performance to official outside vetting.”
Corn writes, “But with 115 heads of states beginning to arrive, the Copenhagen talks have left some fundamental gaps for the last minute. Even if those gaps are bridged, the resulting agreement could fall far short of what experts say is necessary to redress the dire consequences of rising global temperatures. Just ask the scientists roaming the halls.”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Copenhagen today in a last minute appearance. Clinton has booked a full day of meetings on Thursday and will join President Barack Obama in negotiations when he arrives Friday. Like Obama’s schedule switch at the conference (he originally planned to be there last week and instead will arrive Friday), Clinton’s arrival could indicate the U.S.’s intention to seal a deal by the end of the week.
For live updates of the negotiations and protests, check out The Uptake’s live video stream from the Bella Center.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Weekly Mulch: No Treaty in Copenhagen?
By Raquel Brown, Media Consortium Blogger
Last weekend in Singapore, President Barack Obama acknowledged that a comprehensive international climate deal will not be reached during the climate change summit in Copenhagen. While many might view this as a letdown, lowering expectations might actually be a good thing, as Matthew Yglesias notes for the American Prospect. According to Yglesias, the conference can now be framed as a relative success whatever happens, and that will keep the momentum for climate action going after Copenhagen. (more…)
Weekly Audit: Power to the People’s Republic
by Sara Luckow, TMC MediaWire Blogger
In the past few years, the economic relationship between the United States and China has changed dramatically. As Tim Fernholz writes in the American Prospect: “Chastened U.S. officials who once lectured their counterparts in [China] on financial liberalization are now humbled in front of their largest creditor, reduced to offering promises of fiscal responsibility.” It’s a strange state of affairs. Fernholz rightly argues that:
“The common interest of the peoples, rather than the economic elite, ought to be the driving motivation behind the two countries’ interactions. There is no doubt that economic openness has brought wealth to both countries, and the Obama administration is happy to laud the Chinese for bringing millions out of poverty. But in a relationship between “capitalism with American characteristics” and “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” sometimes the people—whether they be workers losing jobs in the United States or the millions of Chinese living without political freedom or prosperity—have interests other than the elites. Today, we’re in an economic crisis, and pragmatism overrides all else. But as recovery continues, the U.S. will require more thought on the strategic track, and perhaps in a few years our discussions with China, as they should be with all our friends, will be more frank.”
But our current economic relationship with China pre-dates President Obama’s “talk first” style of diplomacy. As Robert Scheer of The Nation writes: “Don’t blame any of this on peacenik liberals. The new conciliatory—nay, deferential—tone toward China precedes the Obama administration, having begun in bilateral talks during the last years of the Bush administration as the U.S. economy began its ignominious downfall. It was George W. Bush’s treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, who set the course when the former Goldman Sachs chairman realized how dependent were his Wall Street buddies on Chinese goodwill.”
Strange relations with China aside, things aren’t going so well at home. Rick Wolff, an economist from the New School, says the stimulus package has big problems in a discussion with The Real News. Wolff also notes that we shouldn’t take Wall Street chatter about an economic upswing too seriously. “I think the first thing to remember is the people who are celebrating where we are now are the same people who could not imagine, did not imagine, did not foresee the problem we had last year,” Wolff says.
But what’s going on with our favorite bailout recipients? Talking Points Memo takes on the case of former Federal Pension Guarantor Charles Millard, who exploited his personal ties with employees at BlackRock Capital and Goldman Sachs while choosing firms to manage the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. At this point, both firms “may have run afoul of federal contracting rules in how they courted Millard.”
Goldman Sachs and BlackRock are also on the lookout for the next big economic bubble. Salon reveals that both firms are diversifying their portfolios to include agriculture, in addition to government contracts. “Food is becoming the new oil,” especially since the world’s population is expected to crest nine billion by 2050. And a lot of land is necessary to grow enough food for nine billion people. Phillipe Heilberg, founder of American investment firm Jarch Capital, is hedging his bets on farmland in distressed countries. “Instead of buying stocks, the former banker is now speculating on the political future of South Sudan, which he insists will be an independent country in 10 years, at which point land will be far more expensive than it is today.”
It’s abundantly clear that we can’t rely on the economic elite to represent the people’s interests. Tomorrow’s economic structure must be drastically different if the United States is going to thrive. Put simply, we’re going to have to seriously reevaluate our economic priorities and decide who calls the shots. Here’s hoping that everyday people have a say.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy and is free to reprint. Visit StimulusPlan.NewsLadder.net and Economy.NewsLadder.net for complete lists of articles on the economy, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical health and immigration issues, check out Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.NewsLadder.net. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.
Weekly Mulch: Why Diplomacy is Key to Fighting Climate Change
by Raquel Brown, TMC MediaWire Blogger
International climate negotiations are currently bogged down in smog. Many countries are in disagreement about the best way to go about reducing emissions and curbing climate change. Some, like the U.S. and Great Britain, are working together to cut carbon emissions; while others say it’s their way or the highway. Until the air clears, it will be difficult to determine which global leaders are making the most effective choices—or even what the best path to a cleaner earth will be.
On Tuesday, the world’s two leading polluters, the United States and China, finally signed a “memorandum of understanding” and pledged to work together to create a global solution to arrest climate change by December’s United Nations summit in Copenhagen, as Stephen Robert Morse reports for Mother Jones. The two countries have long disagreed on the best way to control climate change and used each other as an excuse for inaction. Disagreements have centered around which country should pay for clean-ups and new technologies.
As Agence Grance-Presse emphasizes in Grist, China and other developing nations have argued that they shouldn’t have to cut their emissions, as the bulk of pollution comes from industrialized countries. Developing countries do not have the means to finance a more energy efficient economy and many argue that the U.S. should take a leadership role and help them.
India made a similar point when Secretary of State Hilary Clinton visited last week. India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, was remarkably candid when he told her that India would not succumb to international pressures to set targets on emissions. After all, as Barbara Crossette points out for The Nation, developing countries shouldn’t have to clean up after rich countries’ negligence. Although India has a strong economy and is one of the world’s largest polluters, their rising population keeps per capita emissions lower than other developed nations.
Yet, actions speak louder than words. Going back to Grist, Grance-Presse notes that despite China’s non-committal stance, it has made significant strides in wind and solar power. Their next step towards improved energy efficiency should be reducing its coal-dependency, which accounts for 85 percent of its carbon emissions. However, as global temperatures continue to rise, it’s clear that active collaboration between industrialized and developing nations is necessary to meaningfully tackle climate change.
Much like China, India has made gains towards renewable energy. At a conference organized by a OneWorld.net sister organization in India last week, Special Envoy to the Prime Minister on Climate Change, Shram Saran, explained that India will do “Whatever we can within the limitations of our resources.” The country is exploring investments in solar, hydro, biomass and wind power. Some specific strategies are to replace incandescent with energy-saving flurescent bulbs, and to go “local” among Indian communities and farmers with a “people-centric” environmental campaign.
OneWorld reports that “This project intends to link grassroots communities, development practitioners, academia and policymakers with a view to encourage them to forge new partnerships with the government, domain experts, and community-based organizations working with vulnerable sections of society.”
Great Britain’s innovative solution to climate change is the “clean energy cash back” program. According to Chelsea Green’s Paul Gipe, the program features feed-in tariffs for Combined Heat & Power (CHP), small solar PV systems on new homes and a tariff for existing homes. What distinguishes this from other tariffs are the added incentives: if a homeowner reduces their own consumption, they can sell the surplus electricity to the grid, and receive an additional paid bonus in return.
“The proposed program, like the successful programs it was modeled after, was designed to ‘set tariffs at a level to encourage investment in small scale low carbon generation.’ This is in contrast to faux feed-in tariffs that set the tariffs on the ‘value’ of renewable energy to the system as in the California Public Utility Commission’s largely ineffective program,” says Gipe.
Britain was the first to set legally binding carbon budgets when they passed Britain’s Climate Change Act last year. This low carbon policy aims to transform Britain’s economy and has a realistic shot at reaching the country’s renewable energy and carbon targets.
Meanwhile, how does the U.S. measure up? The Nation has an excellent overview of the current status and future of the climate bill. In this interview, the Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin says that farming and manufacturing interests will be one of the key battles in passing climate change legislation through the Senate. The future of the Senate bill is also contingent on the outcome of international negotiations in Copenhagen. And although the ACES bill does not meet the requirements scientists believe are necessary to curb climate change, Eilperin remains optimistic that the bill sets up a valuable platform for successful legislation in the future, much like the Clean Air Act.
The U.S. appeared hypocritical when they urged other nations to reduce their carbon emissions and commit to climate change when they themselves haven’t made strides. Rather than lead by example, Republicans like Michael Rogers (R-MI) opposed the U.S. climate change bill because the bill will “eliminate our middle class and send it to China and India,” as Osha Gray Davidson reports for Mother Jones. Some argue that a U.S. effort to cut carbon emissions will put America at an economic disadvantage if China and India do not take similar steps.
In other news, The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen reports on global warming skeptic James Inhofe’s (R-Okla) shocking claim that burning oil doesn’t cause pollution. Really?! I thought we were past all that nonsense.
But there are pervasive problems on the home front too. As climate legislation dawdles in the Senate, few have considered how climate change will impact marginalized communities. In an article for In These Times, Michelle Chen highlights how global warming widens the climate gap and exacerbates social and racial inequalities:
“The reality is, poor people always lived in the most environmentally vulnerable places – places that were vulnerable before the climate change problem made them worse. The real problem in this country is we haven’t had a real serious discussion about the social equity issues connected to climate and environment. Sadly, too many people aren’t inclined to engage in that discussion,” said Elliot Sclar in an interview with Chen. Sclar is the director of the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at Columbia University.
As the world tries to break the stalemate over how to reverse climate change, it is ambiguous whether the U.S. has encouraged any collective progress. While our government has taken small steps toward investments in alternative energy, other nations have leapt ahead in their commitment towards a sustainable environment.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment. Visit Sustain.NewsLadder.net for a complete list of articles on the environment and sustainability, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health, and immigration issues, check out Economy.NewsLadder.net, Healthcare.NewsLadder.net and Immigration.newsladder.net.
This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of 50 leading independent media outlets, and was created by NewsLadder.