Here are RecycleBank’s 10 romantic ways to green your Valentine’s Day:

1. Set your morning in motion by sharing a pot of fairly traded and organically grown coffee. After all, you will want to keep the night young.

2. Since Valentine’s Day lands on Saturday, skip the power shower and enjoy a soak for two… and save water that way.

[Hmm. That never resulted in less water use in my younger days....]

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The economic recovery plan agreed to by House and Senate negotiators will “pump billions of dollars into ‘smart grid’ projects,” renewable energy, energy efficiency, and public transit. The conference report will make an excellent start on President Obama’s pledge to rebuild our nation with a green economy. The Wonk Room has noted a number of threats to that pledge, loopholes and subsidies stuck in the Senate version of the bill that would keep pushing us down a dirty path. It looks as if the the conferees did an excellent job of cleaning up this critical legislation:

COAL SUBSIDIES

Senate ‘Improvements For Integration’ Loophole May Make $4.6 Billion ‘Clean Coal’ Fund A Dirty Giveaway (2/12/09):

The Senate version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act adds $2.2 billion to the House’s generous allocation of $2.4 billion for the development of “carbon capture and sequestration technologies” (CCS). Furthermore, the Senate language adds a dangerous loophole that changes a potentially green investment into subsidy for a dirty industry.

CONFERENCE REPORT: CCS funding is now $3.4 billion, and the loophole has been eliminated.

NUCLEAR WEAPONS SUBSIDIES

Senate’s Billion-Dollar Nuclear Weapons Provision Should Be Cut From Recovery Plan (2/10/09):

Buried in the Senate version of the economic recovery plan — despite the “heroic” efforts of Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), and other centrists to “fr[y] the bacon” — is an allocation of $1 billion to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for “weapons activities.” This provision, divorced as it is from any semblance of national security strategy, should be eliminated.

CONFERENCE REPORT: Nuclear weapons funding has been eliminated.

NUCLEAR PLANT SUBSIDIES

Senate Appropriators Add $50 Billion Nuclear Waste To Recovery Plan (1/30/09):

On Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to increase nuclear loan guarantees by $50 billion in the economic recovery package (S. 336). This staggering sum “would more than double the current loan guarantee cap of $38 billion” for “clean energy” technology.

CONFERENCE REPORT: These loan guarantees have been eliminated.

We can’t get out of the dirty hole of dependence on polluting energy if we don’t stop digging, and it looks like the conference negotiators recognized that fact.

[Please Digg this by clicking here.]

NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division reports that global concentrations of the primary heat-trapping greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, jumped 2.28 ppm in 2008.

A study in Science from the Global Carbon Project (see “More on soaring carbon concentrations“) noted:

The present concentration is the highest during the last 650,000 years and probably during the last 20 million years.

Worse, the rate of growth of CO2 concentrations this decade is 2.1 ppm a year — 40% higher than the rate from the 1990s. At the same time that CO2 emissions are soaring, CO2 sinks are saturating (see “The ocean is absorbing less carbon dioxide“).

This post is based on preliminary data for 2008 from NOAA’s network of air sampling sites. Reuters has a story based on sampling off northern Norway, which wins the prize for the most confused climate article of the year, starting with the headline:

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Can’t anybody in the media get this story right? The second paragraph of the front page NY Times story reads:

The departure of Mr. Gregg is the latest setback to a White House that has struggled to fill several top positions and to fulfill Mr. Obama’s pledge of building a bipartisan administration.

Not!

Seriously, Gregg was a dreadful choice (see “Is a possible 60th Senate seat worth a not-very-green GOP Commerce Secretary?“). His choice was an unforced error, one that marred Obama’s amazing energy team.

Plus, Gregg is obviously someone who doesn’t think through his big decisions before makes them — a very bad quality in a Cabinet Secretary. As the AP reports stunningly:

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I had reported on the final stimulus deal containing a “3-year extension of the production tax credit for wind and other renewables.” Now Energy Daily (subs. req’d) reports:

In a major victory for clean energy advocates, the $790 billion compromise economic stimulus legislation approved by a House-Senate conference committee late Wednesday retains House language that will allow renewable energy developers to exchange their tax credits for cash grants from the Energy Department, a provision industry officials called essential for the continued growth of the U.S. wind and solar industries.

The article, “Renewables Win, Nukes Lose In Final Stimulus Bill” notes that the conferees stripped out the $50 billion in high-risk, job-killing fraudulent budget gimmickry (i.e. loans) the Senate had added for the nuclear industry, first reported here. Energy Daily adds:

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