Green Your Head

Preface to a Prelude to Peak Oil

This is my book review of Kurt Cobb's Prelude, published on Huffington Post on Friday 11, 2011 - Please visit and leave a comment.

Many green groups and other science-based analysts criticized President Obama's recent State of the Union speech for failing to mention the imminent catastrophe of climate change. Instead, the President focused on a "clean energy and jobs" message. Yet perhaps he did the best he could, given our current political reality and the extreme irrationality that infects our Tea Party nation.

Following the hideous violence in Arizona, it was a stroke of genius to call on Republicans and Democrats to sit together, pairing red and blue like a pair of those old-fashioned 3D glasses -- Obama's attempt to show us that America is much more than a two-dimensional conflict between political parties. But the State of the Union address, while considerably more three-dimensional than many I have heard, still fell far short of the reality we find ourselves in. That reality includes more than just the threat of climate change. It also encompasses the phenomenon known as "peak oil."

Climate and Land Use in the USA

This post from Joe Romm's Climate Progress Blog brings up many very important issues for conservationists. Here's the post:

Big land, big clean energy opportunity - Smart land use in the fight against climate change

Fast-track renewable energy projects

Cross post by Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

View Fast-Track Renewable Energy Projects in a larger map
Source: Bureau of Land Management

America has great advantages as it faces an urgent need to accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy and a lower carbon future, including enormous renewable energy resources and a vast public and private land base to develop and deliver that clean, inexhaustible energy. This transformation will mean greater energy security and a more sustainable and prosperous economic future. Yet getting to that future will test our resolve and ingenuity. And getting there while treating our land resources in ways that sustain rather than deplete and degrade them will test our wisdom.

Saudi Prince Dictates Fox News Anti-Green Energy Stance

This is a real bombshell. Joseph Romm talks on Climate Progress today about a Saudi Prince owning a large stake in Fox News and correlating that with Fox News attacks on green energy - green energy being the biggest threat to Saudi oil interests. Faux News is also Faux Patriotism. I would even call it treason. Here's the quote:

Although little is known about the extent to which Prince Alwaleed weighs in on Fox content, Fox News dedicates much of its coverage to attacking clean energy legislation that would lead to American energy independence. If clean energy legislation dies, America will continue to be a foreign oil-dependent nation, which would benefit Prince Alwaleed and other members of the Saudi royal family.

More Good News - DeFazio Gets Bus Money

The House Rules Committee today approved a bunch of amendments to the stimulus bill for consideration. One of the amendments is Peter DeFazio's provision to increase funding for mass transit investments by 3 billion dollars. It still has to be approved by the full House and the Senate. Keep the pressure on!

Good News for LNG Opponents

Just listened in on a webinar by Platts, the oil and gas industry analysts, on Obama's new energy and climate appointments and the contents of the stimulus package. This group is fighting to get their sea legs as the new approach to energy swells around them. Noting that the stimulus package has a big zero in it for the oil and gas industries and only sequestration research dollars for coal, they remark that renewables advocates are "buoyed." In the mode of "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all, they had no comment on Carol Browner as Obama's new energy and climate czar except to say that oil and gas "don't have the same ally they had in the Bush administration. They did discuss Obama's acting FERC director, Jon Wellinghoff,  an opponent of LNG (liquified natural gas). It seems they feel LNG is in real trouble because of Wellinghoff's background as a "consumer advocate." Bad news for companies like Sempra Energy that are counting on LNG for their Southern California electricity market, but good news for consumers and the environment.