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Drive Star: We can cut oil use in half by 2020

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jun 13, 2010 at 8:45 pm

CalCars’ Kramer writes Obama’s JFK energy moonshot speech

“I am not willing to be the latest in a succession of Presidents telling you we’re going to end our addiction to oil. Finally, it’s time to begin. Oil is holding us all hostage, economically and physically. If terrorists had poisoned 40% of our wetlands and 25% of our fisheries, we wouldn’t ask, “How much will it cost to fight back? The good news? At last we have ways to get far within a few years, not over decades! And it will cost much less than you think.”

Tuesday night, President Obama will speak to the nation about the Gulf catastrophe. In a pre-response to that speech, Felix Kramer, Founder of the California Cars Initiative http://www.calcars.org, who successfully advocated for plug-in hybrids like the forthcoming Chevy Volt, proposes that the President follow that speech up with a “realistic and conservative” roadmap to halve our oil use in 10 years.
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Yglesias

Death of the Shatt al Arab

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 13, 2010 at 5:31 pm

A reminder from Iraq, in case the images out of the Gulf of Mexico weren’t enough, about how serious a problem environmental degradation can be:

Withered by decades of dictatorial mismanagement and then neglect, by drought and the thirst of Iraq’s neighbors, the river formed by the convergence of the Tigris and the Euphrates no longer has the strength the keep the sea at bay.

The salt water of the gulf now pushes up the Faw peninsula. Last year, for the first time in memory, it extended beyond Basra, Iraq’s biggest port city, and even Qurna, where the two rivers meet. It has ravaged fresh-water fisheries, livestock, crops and groves of date palms that once made the area famous, forcing the migration of tens of thousands of farmers.

That’s just a little microcosm of what’s going to be happening planet-wide when sea levels rise and rain & snow patterns shift, depriving rivers of their traditional sources.

Climate Progress

The unbearable lameness of being (Rahm and Axelrod)

By Joe Romm on Jun 13, 2010 at 4:53 pm

Obama to address nation on BP disaster Tuesday, asserting it “echoes 9/11,” vows he’ll use his presidency to insure country embraces “new way of doing business when it comes to energy.”

When it comes to a cap on carbon, the White House’s strategy for 18 months has been to speak softly and … nothing more. Now the oil spill has forced Obama to ramp up his rhetoric. Does he mean it this time? Either he starts fighting or he doesn’t. The “stealth strategy” is inoperative. The White House can’t fake it any more.

That’s Eric Pooley, former managing editor of Fortune, in an email to me about his new book, The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth.  Anyone interested in climate politics should read it, and I’ll review it later.

Rahm Emanuael and David Axelrod are certainly two of the main reasons that Obama has been far too tame on climate.  Obama will apparently be giving his long-awaited prime time BP disaster and energy policy speech on Tuesday — and it could well be make or break for both his presidency and the efforts to address global warming this decade.

Pooley has a short adaptation of his book at The Climate Desk, “Obama’s Climate Complacency: Blame Rahm?” that I excerpt below:

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Climate Progress

Palin tells Hannity, “I read Newsmax,” the right-wing publisher bids for Newsweek, and who gets a fawning cover from the “money bleeding magazine”?

By Joe Romm on Jun 13, 2010 at 4:16 pm

Sarah Palin NewsweekHuffPost asks, “How do you generate buzz if you’re a magazine up for sale and fighting claims of irrelevance?”

Since you’ve already shown Palin’s legs on the cover back in November — to much consternation – now you have to flip the classic dual image of women and make her a saint.  As if — see, for instance, Shill, baby, shill: Sarah Palin to “Extreme Enviros: Drill, Baby, Drill in ANWR – Now Do You Get It?”

The near-death news magazine is on the chopping block, and we learned earlier this month that the “publisher of the right-wing monthly magazine Newsmax” is seriously interested.

Coincidentally, also back in November, uber-conservative Sean Hannity gave Palin another chance to answer her flubbed Katie Couric question about where she gets her news, and she named Newsmax first:

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Yglesias

Bold Alternate History Assertions

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 13, 2010 at 3:58 pm

Aggressive Message by Bullneck 1

A friend sent me this Flickr photo and the accompanying commentary is interesting:

Partially-damaged bumper sticker on back of a 4×4 truck parked in Arlington National Cemetery during a ceremony conducted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans displaying the message ‘This flag (the CSA Battle Flag) would have never left you (POWs/MIAs) there.’ One does wonder, had the CSA managed to survive the Civil War, what its foreign and military policies would have been. Would there have been a WWII, Korea, or Vietnam War, for example?

It seems to me that Harry Turtledove’s Timeline 191 has this correct a successfully seceded CSA would have been geopolitically aligned with Britain and France in a way that would push the USA into alliance with Germany, shift the outcome of World War I, and ensure that the Bolshevik Revolution never took off.

Of course talk of alternate histories is necessarily speculative. But the key thing to keep in mind in this regard is that though the collapse of Romanov Russia was arguably driven by “the fundamentals,” the specific story of the Bolshevik takeover is quite weird and highly sensitive to the way the first World War played out. It seems like minor changes to the geopolitical situation—to say nothing of major ones like the breakup of the United States fifty years earlier—would have led to totally different outcomes.

Also interesting, of course, is the possible consequences for US domestic politics. Turtledove posits that the rump USA would feature a more “European” style of politics, with the GOP collapsing in the wake of military defeat and a Socialist Party facing off against a conservative Democratic Party. I think that may be mistaken—the relevant precedent is probably Canadian politics, somewhat more left-wing than what you see in the U.S. and featuring a meaningful parliamentary presence for the NDP, but still not a Socialist Party as a viable party of government.

Climate Progress

Zakaria on the media’s double standard on oil disasters

By Joe Romm on Jun 13, 2010 at 3:11 pm

“Conservatives who have long urged limits on the federal government are now suddenly discovering their inner FDRs.”

I agree with virtually everyone out there who’s complaining on camera and in print that our response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been just terrible. Except that by “our” I don’t mean the government’s or the country’s but ours””the media’s….

To read and watch the coverage of the Exxon Valdez is to be transported back to a different time. There was no effort to implicate Bush in the accident, few calls for him to emote more, no great clamor that he magically “do something” to get the awful images off the television screen. In fact, he never traveled to see the oil spill.

Fareed Zakaria nails it.  Here’s more:

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Politics

Paul On Mountaintop Removal: ‘I Don’t Think Anyone’s Going To Be Missing A Hill Or Two Here And There’

By Zaid Jilani on Jun 13, 2010 at 3:05 pm

One of the themes of U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul’s (R-KY) campaign has been that businesses are burdened with overregulation, with Paul even decrying the anti-discrimination provisions imposed on private businesses in the Civil Rights Act.

Now, Crooks and Liars has unearthed an interview Rand Paul gave in 2009 where the candidate aired these strident views with respect to mountaintop removal. When asked about the environmentally disastrous process, Paul told the interviewer that he thinks “whoever owns the property can do with the property as they wish, and if the coal company buys it from a private property owner and they want to do it, fine.” To justify his hands-off approach to environmental regulation, Paul then went on to explain that mountaintop removal isn’t that bad, anyway, saying, “I don’t think anybody’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there”:

INTERVIEWER: What about mountaintop removal?

PAUL: I think whoever owns the property can do with the property as they wish, and if the coal company buys it from a private property owner and they want to do it, fine. The other thing I think is that I think coal gets a bad name, because I think a lot of the land apparently is quite desirable once it’s been flattened out. As I came over here from Harlan, you’ve got quite a few hills. I don’t think anybody’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there.

Watch it:

To illustrate what Paul views as “a hill or two,” here’s a satellite-taken before-and-after image of a mountaintop removal site in Mud River, West Virginia:

mudriver

As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has pointed out, “Mountain-top mining has been more accurately described as the ‘rape of Appalachia,’ as rural communities are destroyed economically and environmentally for coal industry.”

Related Posts

Climate Progress

Chevron spills over 21,000 gallons of oil in Utah days after Governor called for more domestic production

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jun 13, 2010 at 2:53 pm

oilYesterday, Chevron discovered a leaking pipeline that was spewing 50 gallons of crude oil per minute into Red Butte Creek in Salt Lake City. By the time crews capped the leak, more than 21,000 gallons “” between 400-500 barrels “” of oil had spilled out, “coating geese and ducks” and closing the city’s largest park.  TP’s Amanda Terkel has the story.

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Yglesias

When No News is Bad News

By Matthew Yglesias on Jun 13, 2010 at 2:27 pm

It’s often hard to know how to cover non-events—things that might have happened, but didn’t—and the tendency is to just ignore them. But to understand the world, it’s important to explore this kind of negative space. So Nicholas Wade’s piece on how the Human Genome Project has produced lots of interesting scientific information but little of the hoped-for medical progress that was used to sell it is well worth a read.

Whenever reading about advanced medical research, meanwhile, it’s always worth reminding yourself of the fundamentals—if on average physical activity and fruit and vegetable eating went up a bit while overall calorie consumption, cigarette consumption, and alcohol consumption went down a bit then the population would be much healthier.

Politics

At state convention, Texas GOP oust chairwoman and call for Arizona-style immigration law.

By Matt Corley on Jun 13, 2010 at 12:59 pm

Despite his well-earned reputation for catering to the far right, Texas Gov. Rick Perry released a statement in April criticizing Arizona’s draconian new immigration law, saying that “it would not be the right direction for Texas.” But at the Texas Republican state convention yesterday, right-wing activists bucked “Perry by pushing for a crackdown on illegal immigration similar to Arizona’s new law“:

The immigration proposal, a hard-line approach that Perry has said isn’t right for Texas, was one of several initiatives debated as delegates wrapped up the two-day convention. The Republican Party platform is a blueprint of the policies that GOP activists want elected officials to pursue.

Delegates voted to include a plank advocating for a state law that would bar illegal immigrants from “intentionally or knowingly” living in Texas. Similar to Arizona’s strict law that has sparked nationwide debate, the proposal would require local police to verify U.S. residency when making arrests.

Perry has said the Arizona law, if adopted in Texas, would unduly burden police.

The convention also saw delegates “ditch their firebrand leader, conservative activist Cathie Adams, in favor of Houston businessman Steve Munisteri.” Adams had recently “angered some GOP activists by declining to release financial information about the party.” Munisteri, who said he “shared many of Adams’ socially conservative views,” “focused his campaign on the party’s $500,000 debt” and said that “Republicans should be in better financial shape since they control both houses of the Legislature and all statewide offices.” Ironically, though the delegates pushed for an Arizona-style law, Munisteri “pledged to reach out to independents, disenchanted Republicans and minority groups, especially the burgeoning Hispanic community, to strengthen the party.”

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