“Many of America’s biggest corporations including Apple Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are sticking by their pledges to fight climate change even as President Donald Trump guts his predecessor’s environmental policies,” Christopher Flavelle reports for Bloomberg. “Companies say their pledges, coordinated by the Obama administration, reflect their push to cut energy costs, head off activist pressure and address a risk to their bottom line in the decades to come. ”
“Trump signed an order Tuesday that tells the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider former President Barack Obama’s climate rules, and rescinds a series of orders Obama issued to embed consideration of climate change in government actions from where to lease buildings to whether to allow oil pipelines to be built,” Flavelle reports. “Business’s biggest lobbying force supports Trump on this issue. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce welcomed Trump’s order calling that shift ‘vital to stimulating economic growth.’ The group argues that Obama’s regulations held back economic growth, preventing business owners from constructing needed pipelines, roads and other infrastructure. It also warned that the climate push would lead to a jump in energy prices.”
“Technology companies including Apple, Amazon.com Inc, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft Corp. also expressed their support for Obama’s policies,” Flavelle reports. “‘We believe that strong clean energy and climate policies, like the Clean Power Plan, can make renewable energy supplies more robust and address the serious threat of climate change while also supporting American competitiveness, innovation, and job growth,’ the companies said in a joint statement after Trump’s order was signed.”
“Many energy businesses welcomed Trump’s rollback. The Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents oil and natural gas producers, joined the Chamber of Commerce in praising his move. So did the National Federation of Independent Business, which challenged the Clean Power Plan in court,” Flavelle reports. “‘People are going to freeze in the dark because of the destruction of the reliable electric power grid under Obama and the Democrats,’ Robert Murray, the president and CEO of coal-mining company Murray Energy Corp. said in an interview. ‘Mr. Trump is doing the right things.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s Environment website states, “We take the same innovative approach to the environment that we do with our products. We’re creating new solar energy projects to reduce our carbon footprint. We’re switching to greener materials to create safer products and manufacturing processes. We’re protecting working forests and making sure they are managed sustainably. We’re even creating a more mindful way to recycle devices using robots.”
Moe info here: apple.com/environment/
SEE ALSO:
Greenpeace: Apple again the world’s most environmentally friendly tech company – January 10, 2017
Apple continues supply chain transparency as Trump administration considers suspending conflict mineral requirements – March 27, 2017
Greenpeace: Apple is tech’s greenest – May 15, 2015
Greenpeace: Apple leading the way in creating a greener, more sustainable internet – April 2, 2014
Greenpeace praises Apple for reducing use of conflict minerals – February 13, 2014
Thinking citizens welcome President Trump’s executive order ending the feckless Obama’s misguided war on fossil fuels with open arms.
In other words:
Drill, baby, drill! – Governor Sarah Palin
Neanderthal trolls fawned over having their pvssies grabbed as the incompetent traitor leads the country to ruin.
President Trump’s Energy Independence Policy
“I am going to lift the restrictions on American energy, and allow this wealth to pour into our communities.” – Donald J. Trump
MUCH NEEDED REFORM: The past Administration burdened Americans with costly regulations that harmed American jobs and energy production.
• The previous Administration’s Clean Power Plan could cost up to $39 billion a year and increase electricity prices in 41 States by at least ten percent, according to NERA Economic Consulting.
• The Clean Power Plan would cause coal production to fall by 242 million tons, according to the National Mining Association.
• 27 states, 24 trade associations, 37 rural electric co-ops, and 3 labor unions are challenging the Clean Power Plan in Federal court.
AMERICAN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE: President Donald J. Trump’s Energy Independence Policy Executive Order reverses the regulations on American jobs and energy production.
• President Trump’s Executive Order directs the Environmental Protection Agency to suspend, revise, or rescind four actions related to the Clean Power Plan that would stifle the American energy industry.
– President Trump’s Executive Order directs the Attorney General to seek appropriate relief from the courts over pending litigation related to the Clean Power Plan.
• President Trump’s Executive Order rescinds Executive and Agency actions centered on the previous administration’s climate change agenda that have acted as a road block to energy independence.
– President Trump’s Executive Order lifts the ban on Federal leasing for coal production.
– President Trump’s Executive Order lifts job-killing restrictions on the production of oil, natural gas, and shale energy.
• President Trump’s Executive Order directs all agencies to conduct a review of existing actions that harm domestic energy production and suspend, revise, or rescind actions that are not mandated by law.
– Within 180 days, agencies must finalize their plans.
• President Trump’ Executive Order directs agencies to use the best available science and economics in regulatory analysis, which was not utilized by the previous administration.
– It disbands the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.
• By revisiting the federal overreach on energy regulation, President Trump is returning power to the states – where it belongs.
FREEING AMERICA’S POTENTIAL: President Trump has worked tirelessly to free American industry and ingenuity from the constraints of Government overreach.
• President Trump has signed four pieces of legislation to clear burdensome and costly regulations on energy production from the previous Administration.
• President Trump has required that for every new Federal regulation, two existing regulations be eliminated.
• President Trump has directed each agency to establish a Regulatory Reform Task Force to identify costly and unnecessary regulations in need of modification or repeal.
• President Trump has directed the Department of Commerce to streamline Federal permitting processes for domestic manufacturing and to reduce regulatory burdens on domestic manufacturers.
• President Trump signed legislation, House Joint Resolution 38, to prevent the burdensome “Stream Protection Rule” from causing further harm to the coal industry.
• President Trump ordered the review of the “Clean Water Rule: Definition of Waters of the United States,” known as the WOTUS rule, to evaluate whether it is stifling economic growth or job creation.
• President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum and gave a Presidential permit to clear roadblocks to construct the Keystone XL Pipeline.
• President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum declaring that the Dakota Access Pipeline serves the national interest and initiating the process to complete its construction.
FULFILLING HIS PROMISE: By taking action on the Clean Power Plan, President Trump is fulfilling his promise to the American people.
• As a candidate, Mr. Trump promised “we will eliminate… the Clean Power Plan—these unilateral plans will increase monthly electric bills by double-digits without any measurable improvement in the climate.”
Yes bring back the wealth, bring back.
Three Mile Island, the sequel.
Thalidomide babies, are they so cute.
The Ozone hole, blast away, it’s in your DNA (Destructive Nuclear Arsenal).
More oil spills every where.
Agent orange and depleted uranium shells, oh wait you still use that.
Leaded gasoline.
Yes by all means threaten the humane race any and every which way you can, it’s what terrorists do.
Good to see you’re not diving right into the deep end of wild-eyed hyperbole, like a typical addled Dem/Lib/Prog.
Keep up the insane ranting, Dem/Lib/Progs, and we’ll have our unassailable 60+ Senate votes yet! 🙂
I’ll leave that deep end diving to those who have that broken moral and ethical compass. You know the ones that are still off looking for a weapons of mass destruction in Iraq while massacring people.
I must appear insane to you, a peaceful loving person supportive of humanity, what a threat that is to your nation. And you think you are sane.
Be it libtards or repukhanks, you both are terrorist.
By all means go ahead and try to pollute the planet as much as possible…
while you still can.
The Climate Change Hoax has two purposes:
• Financing global government.
• Continued destruction of the economic wealth of the West, primarily the United States.
As usual, paranoid delusions without any facts to back up the claims.
There is no global government, although that would make business easier.
There is no economic wealth destruction of the West. The wealth of the world is still held by predominantly western entities. It’s just that it’s consolidated to a few hundred billionaires and a few hundred megacorporations.
The data is out there to prove it, if you were willing to find the truth, bottvinnik.
Soros just texted, your nickel is in the mail.
Typical. Botvinnik loses another round.
There’s a third purpose of the climate change hoax, morons use it to wedge it into a commentary of pollution.
Oooo! I love your scary goblins bot-wipe!
It’s so mesmerizing watching your incompetent, traitorous, Trump buddy and his deplorable clown posse tumble in slow motion toward their starring roles in the inevitable, upcoming congressional Hearings on Treasonous Activities. Big day for America when the dilusional orange gasbag goes down. (and I don’t mean on Vladdie!) **rim-shot!**
Personally I’m thinkin’, if it was the just and right consequence for the Rosenbergs, well then …
I mean really, think about it. Which is worse, betraying America as citizen spies, or betraying America and conspiring with Russian operatives as the President of the United States? You know, what with that oath thing and all.
yeah, whatever.
I live in the American West. In the biggest coal-extracting state in the country. (Well, one of the former biggest, anyway.) We basically have 3 years of coal sitting in piles waiting for someone — anyone — to buy it. Even if demand for coal miraculously picks up, it will not add any, or many, jobs for quite some time. Besides, most of the major coal companies here have gone bankrupt. In case you have not noticed, the big energy investments out here are now in wind energy. Check out Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Idaho. These investments are being made by forward-looking (fossil) energy companies. They see what is coming.
The world passed “peak coal” several years ago. No one thinks it will come back — except for the brilliant minds at the Breitbart, Fox, Pruitt, & Trump School of Science, Populism, and Pure Fantasy.
Yes, fossil fuels are going the way of the dinosaur. The future is in renewables. They are here and growing fast.
Every major car company, plus some new ones, are working on electric cars of some type. What does it mean when 40% of all the models of one of the largest car manufacturers in the world — Toyota/Lexus — are available with hybrid gas-electric power? (The Chairman of which was the former engineer behind the Prius who, incidentally, believes hybrids are a long and stable bridge to a future of hydrogen fuel cell power.)
It is time for people to get over their obsession with fossil fuels. Its time is past, like the horse carriage. Time to embrace the new reality. Or don’t. Either way, science doesn’t care what you think or do.
As for the “continued destruction of the economic value of the West”, there is a really easy fix to the problem: just bring back homesteading (which, incidentally, began even before Western states even existed) so we can benefit from free Federal land again that the country stole from the natives. Or let us all support the likes of Clive Bundy in his armed uprising to take over National Parks, National Forests, and National Wilderness Areas. They figure “We, the people” own it, anyway. So they figure this National ownership of land confers on them personal property rights over these lands. And also waive the $1 million in fees he owes to the Bureau of Land Management who granted him (subsidized) grazing rights on Federal land.) If you are a moron, you will agree this is the best way for the US to stop the destruction of Western economic wealth.
Anyone concerned about Trump’s environmental and energy policies should redouble their effort to “go green”. Drive efficiently. Plan to buy a hybrid-electric or all-electric car. There are many to choose from. Tesla. BMW and soon Mercedes. Chevy. Toyota. (The new Prius Prime Plug-In Electric is estimated to get 133 MPGe.) Use only LEDs, and help others do the same. Plan to buy or build a smaller, energy-efficient, home. Even here in a Northern Mountain West State (agriculture zone 2b), 20 solar panels should bring my new house to net-zero fossil fuel consumption. Choose energy-efficiency whenever you have the choice.
Willfully ignorant on your part. What do you gain by denying reality, botty?
This week the Arctic Council publishes its latest report on Snow, Water, Ice, and Permafrost in the Arctic. Their extensive studies have concluded:
– in the past 3 decades, the area of sea ice in the Arctic has declined by approximately 50%, total volume decreased by 75%.
– It is anticipated that the Arctic ocean may lose all of its sea ice in the summer by 2040
– Sticking to the requirements of the Paris Agreement could stabilize Arctic temperatures but would not be aggressive enough to recover lost ice mass.
Let me guess: you have no idea how arctic ice personally benefits you, so you feel entitled to tell others that they don’t know anything and your lifestyle should be allowed to continue along its destructive path. That seems to be the attitude of conservatives in general. I hope you enjoy living in the desert or in flooded former coastal communities.
Let me guess: you’re the dumbest motherfücker that ever lived…you are as processed as dull, oily brick of Velveeta.
We have now established that whiny baby botty can’t come up with any rational argument to support his rejection of science. Botty can’t even accept the facts from the corporate overlords that he worships. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/
Botty pretends to be a constitutionalist, where every day is 1792 and any refinement of the sacred document is verboten. Botty pretends his American neighbors are all Indians to be shot and rejects the duty of mankind to leave things no worse off than we inherited them. So with nothing productive to do, botty fills his days attacking other people who have consciences.
Do us all a favor and bury your head in your now regularly recurring arid Oklahoma desert, which is now running at at least 3 degrees above the global average and rising.
You’re right! Fuck this planet! This planet has had it too good for too long! Let’s burn ‘er down!!! We don’t need no stinkin’ regulations! Besides the fossil fuel people know what’s best! And, hell, by the time climate change really kicks in, I’ll be dead! My kids and grandkids can deal with it! Their misery will be hilarious! Their fault for not being born sooner!! Hmm, I wonder if I can convert my furnace to coal.
Not as feckless as your statement citing the asinine words of Sarah Palin.
Quoting Palin to support your position, Fwhatever? That is truly funny. And she is a *former* governor. She did not even finish her term…she quit. And she didn’t make it to the White House, either. She did collect a *lot* of campaign money, though.
Trump’s Energy Progress
A new executive order stops Obama’s war on fossil fuels.
One area where President Trump is notching early victories is unleashing American energy, which for years has been held hostage to progressive climate obsessions. On Tuesday Mr. Trump signed an executive order to rescind many of the Obama Administration’s energy directives, and he deserves credit for ending punitive policies that harmed the economy for no improvement in global CO 2 emissions or temperatures.
The order directs the Environmental Protection Agency to review the Clean Power Plan, which the Supreme Court stayed last year in an extraordinary rebuke. The plan essentially forces states to retire coal plants early, and the tab could top $1 trillion in lost output and 125,000 jobs, according to the American Action Forum. Also expected are double-digit increases in the price of electricity—and a less reliable power grid. All for nothing: A year of U.S. reductions in 2025 would be offset by Chinese emissions in three weeks, says Rice University’s Charles McConnell.
The rule also fulfills a campaign promise to end Barack Obama’s war on coal. It’s true that market forces are reducing coal’s share of U.S. electric power—to some 30% from about 50% a decade ago—thanks mainly to fracking for natural gas. Yet Mr. Obama still deployed brute government force to bankrupt the coal industry. Mr. Trump is right to end that punishment and let the market, not federal dictates, sort out the right energy mix for the future.
The story is similar on a methane rule that the executive order will begin to roll back. Total U.S. methane emissions have dropped 15% since 1990, as Bernard Weinstein of Southern Methodist University told the House last fall, even though domestic oil-and-gas production has doubled over the past decade. One reason is that energy companies have a financial incentive to capture the stuff and sell it. Still, EPA promulgated expensive new emissions targets, equipment rules and more.
The order also dumps the “social cost of carbon,” which is a tool the Obama Administration employed to junk mandatory cost-benefit analyses for regulations. For example: An EPA power plant rule predicted net benefits from $26 billion to $46 billion, but as much as 65% of that derived from guesswork about the positives of reducing carbon, as Bracewell & Giuliani’s Scott Segal explained to Congress at a 2015 hearing. The Obama Administration rolled out these new calculations with no public comment, and the models surely wouldn’t survive a rigorous peer review.
Our contributor Paul Tice makes an intriguing case nearby that the Trump Administration should go further to bring regulatory certainty for energy investment. He argues that the EPA should revisit its 2009 “endangerment finding,” which blacklisted carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
The Trump Administration could update this finding, as recent literature has revealed a pause in rising global temperatures that can’t be explained by carbon reductions. Meantime, progressives will continue to flog the endangerment finding in court as long as it exists, and then use it as a pretext for more regulation when a Democrat returns to the White House.
Another question is whether President Trump will withdraw from the Paris climate deal, which would—in theory—force annual U.S. emissions reductions of 26% over 2005 levels by 2025. That decision is “still under discussion,” according to a White House official who briefed reporters Monday night.
Yet the Clean Power Plan would only fulfill a fraction of the U.S. Paris commitments at an exorbitant cost. Not even Mr. Obama’s entire regulatory agenda would have reached the targets. Already other countries with no intention of reducing their emissions are demanding U.S. compliance and threatening tariffs, so a prompt exit may minimize the damage.
Environmental groups are accusing Mr. Trump of “reversing climate progress,” even as they call the order “symbolic” because the regulatory damage to the coal industry—from rules on mercury, ozone, dust—is mostly irreversible. In any event, Scott Pruitt’s EPA can expect lawsuits that may take years to untangle.
The Trump order is a promise in the bank for the voters who elected the President because he promised to focus on jobs and revving up the economy. It’s also a welcome return to regulatory modesty: One of the more outrageous aspects of the Obama anti-carbon agenda is that agencies rammed through what Congress refused to pass in legislation.
As for climate change, President Trump’s order will have the same practical effect on rising temperatures as the Clean Power Plan: none.
— The Wall Street Journal, Editorial, March 28, 2017
Well of course the Wall Street Journal would side with short term profits over long term health. Do you think they understand or care about anything but profits? Get a F’n clue. Everything you post is in support of corporate greed past and present, and nothing shows that you have the capability to see the consequences or think long term.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/trump-climate-eo/520986/
The Clean Power Plan proposed by the Obama administration was put forth in an effort to meet the requirements that all civilized nations agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement. If the USA chooses to honor its international commitments, it could save more than 1 billion tons of carbon emissions by 2030. The EPA estimates that lowered pollution would save US taxpayers more than $55 billion in healthcare cost avoidance.
Now I realize that First and his ilk don’t believe in science or calculating the effects of pollution, but it has been done. The cost of healthcare directly linked to coal pollution has been estimated to be $37 per ton. It’s not hard to see trends in lung disease and other pollution-caused diseases if you are willing to use data to make policy decisions for the best long term outcome for everyone. But that is not what First and his buddy Trump does. Idealogues care only about their personal profit. Trump and his cronies can’t be bothered to look at the facts, and can’t be bothered to craft healthcare reform bills, so at least coal miners can enjoy health care insurance under Obamacare while more of them fall sick from avoidable diseases. And I know that the last remaining coal workers will demand for more Trump administration meddling, handouts, and welfare, but the reality is that they are being replaced by cleaner natural gas that doesn’t need to be dug out of the ground and can be pumped into every home and every shiny new gas-fired powerplant cheaply. Which is what electric utlities are planning to do for economic reasons. They aren’t in business to keep people employed.
One wonders why Trump isn’t attacking the electricity industry. Shouldn’t he demand that electricity be generated by human guinea pigs on exercise cycles? If Trump really wants to roll back the clock and create jobs for disaffected coal miners, he would tweet about the patriotic benefits of being a lumberjack, offer praise for axe manufacturers, and put an import tarriff on foreign oil. Environment be damned, he could denude all of Appalachia of trees for a few years of home fireplace heating wood. Since he doesn’t believe in free markets, obviously we need to block transnational pipelines and block ports to foreign ships too. That would really make America great.
Or we could maintain standards and strive for more efficient technologies to compete on the world stage. Your choice.
Where do you think natural gas comes from?
Ultimately all energy on earth came from the sun. What differs is how it is stored.
But what matters is what it does when the energy reserves are used. Some poison people, others are clean. Natural gas is toward the clean end of the fossil fuel spectrum, not to mention being infinitely easier to transport than many denser dirtier fuels. That is why everyone with a brain wants to see natural gas completely replace oil and coal for heating and electricity.
Trump can say whatever he wants, he’s clueless on the economics of coal. Black rocks aren’t going to be cost effective ever again. Appalacian miners: find something better to do with your lives. Trump ain’t gonna save your shitty old job.
Well, if that isn’t a total load of crap. The percentage of the national power supply running on coal has been rapidly decreasing via a combination of increased natural gas supply and increases in renewable energy production. If anything, the diversification in the power flowing into the national grid will enhance reliability and accessibility.
And how did any of Obama’s actions lead to the “destruction” of the “reliable electric power grid”? The national power grid has been in need of upgrades for decades – since I was young, in fact. And Obama recognized that fact – here are a couple of examples:
Obama Announces Massive Power Grid Upgrade (2009)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114204680
Rise of the Smart Grid
Obama’s plan for a state-of-the-art electrical grid is gaining power bit by digital bit
http://business.time.com/2012/07/26/obamas-smart-electrical-grid-plan/
Please question the information that you are receiving from all sources. Question the information that supports your viewpoint even harder than you question the information that conflicts with your viewpoint. Because it is much easier to manipulate you with information that strokes your ego. Research issues events and you will undoubtedly discover that things are not so nearly binary, so cut-and-dried, as the sound bites and tweets and official statements would have you believe.
Here in Ontario, our Liberal government is following a ‘green policy’ at any cost agenda…causing our electricity rates to double, now becoming the most expensive in North America. So yes, people are freezing in the dark because of the destruction of the reliable electric power grid. We are living it!
That’s not true. The Liberal government has mishandled the money and now that they are up for re-election have magically discovered a way to slash rates by 25%. Renewable energy is the future. Why fight it? Why cling to old ways that are nearing their end? Invest in the future. Yes, the future is scary…be brave
It has to be implemented gradually as the technology becomes more efficient. It cannot be MORE important than the economy and peoples jobs. These energy sources have to be backed up continuously by fossil fuels because they are notoriously inefficient. Also, once government subsidies end, so to do the companies. It is not sustainable.
http://www.ontario-hydro.com/historical-rpp-rates
Looks to me that Ontario Hydro rates have been climbing for quite a while. It took 8 years to double. You just expected the crazy low rates you used to have would last forever. I read that your current government has has no choice but to repair the electrical system that was not well maintained by prior administrations of any party. If you bothered to look, you would see that the ancient coal plants in Ontario needed to be replaced, the nuclear plants need increasing maintenance especially following Fukishima, and unlike neighbor provinces, Ontario does not have an abundance of hydroelectric potential. So today you have to pay a huge 11 cents Canadian per KWH. Here in NY it’s more like 17¢ per KWH.
Why the attempt to pin this on the libs?
Sorry sherm66. Ontario electric prices do not look so bad. Just looked at the Ontario Energy Board website. Rates are: 8.7 Canadian cents per kWh during off peak hours (7 am to 7 pm weekdays, and all weekend); 13.2 Canadian cents per kWh from 11 am to 5 pm weekdays; and 18 Canadian cents during peak hours from 7 to 11 am AND 5 to 7 PM weekdays (peak hours are for winter; they are different for summer). This means that if people are smart, the average price they pay for electricity is not all that bad.
In US dollars, these rates translate to: 6.5 US cents off-peak; 9.9 US cents mid-peak; and 13.5 US cents during peak hours. These are not even close to the highest rates in North America.
The Ontario rates do not look as bad as you suggest. In 2014, the ten US states with the highest electric rates ranged from 15.72 US cents per kWh in Michigan to 37 US cents per kWh in Hawaii.
For my former state, New Jersey — which is not in the top ten — electric rates in are 10 to 12 US cents per kWh.
So stop your whining. And just reduce your consumption of electricity. Especially during peak hours. Is every lightbulb in your house and LED? Do you defer electricity use to off peak hours (laundry, dishwasher, etc).
You have no idea. My delivery charge…(yes that’s right) is MORE than my electricity cost bundled into that, plus 13% HST. It is what I say, and the province has turned against the Liberal government who has mismanaged our power grid for 12 years now.
Melvin, you just hate coal because a lump is all you ever get for Christmas.
Well now we all know how botvinnik heats his hovel.
actually, it’s a van down by the river.
You do know that without subsidy it is cheaper to produce electricity by renewables than by fossil fuels? Or did Sean Hannity, Rush, Savage, Fox and NewsMax with old that nugget of information?
You do know one of the executive orders Trumpenstein signed off allows Coal mines to bump toxic overburden- laced with heavy metals and other harmful stuff into streams? Tens of millions of Americans living downstream from Coal Country will be getting a dose of Lead in their water courtesy of Drumpf and that would include Washington DC. The Potomac River is where D.C. Gets it’s drinking water and the headwaters are in Coal country. What fool would pollute the water supply of his own home ? Apparently the answer is Agent Orange.
I do not know what school you have, but heavy metal poisoning is not a formula for happiness, health or prosperity in the long run.
“You do know that without subsidy it is cheaper to produce electricity by renewables than by fossil fuels.”…..
Could u please reference some nonepartizan, nonpolitical and objective, substatiated articles that prove/address this ..
Im very curios.
Lots of data out there. Here’s just one from what I hope people here will accept as a nonpartisan source.
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/business/solar-wind-cost-competitive-for-peak-energy-study-finds-1.2781609
There is no doubt that renewables are the way to go in regions blessed with wind or sun or big rivers. Everywhere else, the rush is on to build gas power plants to replace old coal plants. It’s just economics. Nuclear looks to be done, it is not renewable and it isn’t getting cheaper.
The fossil fuel industry has gotten huge tax write-offs over the years for research, development, extraction, refining, transportation, and distribution costs. In addition, there are economic costs associated with unwanted adverse effects, or “negative externalities”, from pollution, oil spills, and global warming. When write-offs and the costs of externalities are considered, fossil fuel becomes considerably more expensive than they appear from the price consumers pay for a gallon of gas.
The one thing most economists have agreed on for many decades is that fossil fuels should be taxed. Yet somehow, our ignorant, self-interested populace and politicians are unable to make it happen. Since fossil fuels are underpriced, we consume more of them than we would if their prices were appropriately high. Essentially, we waste more fossil fuel (because it is relatively cheap) than we would if it cost more.
Few people think about conservation anymore. Which tells me fossil fuel prices are not high enough. Because we want prices to be high enough that people want to conserve on their consumption in order to reduce their expenditures on them.
If we had had a sound energy policy in place since the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, the country would have transitioned much faster away from fossil fuels and in to renewables. Yet, despite our collective ignorance and stupidity, the world is marching inexorably towards renewable energy. It is just a matter of time. Hopefully we do not ruin the planet first.
Energy independence is as important to national security as a strong military.
Agreed. So stop building pipelines to transport nasty canadian tar sands across the nation to Alabama.
It you want to be independent, you have to act like it. For the first 250 years the USA wanted to trade with others. Now the isolationists have taken over and the empty headed parrots are all singing a different tune. Hypocrites.
From 1789 until 1913 (The implementation of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Income Tax) the United States federal government was financed primarily through tariffs on foreign goods, this had two wonderful effects:
• Protection of American labor and its markets.
• Limiting the size of the federal government.
Back then America had free labor thanks to slavery you stupid idiot. The federal reserve was created because not once but twice JP Morgan had to bail out the chronically penniless federal government, which was incapable of anything when the regular recessions occurred in the recklessly unregulated economy. America looked smelled and acted like China, sweatshop to the world. Go live in China if that is how you want to live.
you have no idea what the Federal Reserve is, Mr. Twinky.
Apparently neither do you, botvinnik. The federal reserve was a direct response to the 1907 recession. The Glass-Owen Act solved the problem of a nation unable to manage its own money supply. You may be the only one stupid enough to believe that banks were honest and well mannered during the first unregulated decades of the nation. Every one else who has read any history knows better. The booms and busts were brutal and self serving banks made things worse. The Fed may not be perfect, but it’s the best system we have to combat runaway inflation or deflation. Can’t think of a democratic country that does a better job managing the money supply, can you?
like I posted, you don’t even know what the Federal Reserve is.
Sounds like a huge endorsement for renewables.
First:
Please read and comment on this article:
http://www.popsci.com/air-pollution-death
You will find it much more compelling than anything Palin has ever uttered. Facts matter.
Greed and soundbites are all it takes for FirstThenWhatever to sell his soul and leave his children a polluted uninhabitable planet.
Did Obama put coal miners out of business? No, it was technology–cheap and easy natural gas.
Did Obama put oil companies out of business? No, quite the opposite. Record earnings and consumers enjoyed low prices.
Did Obama put carmakers out of business? No and cars are better today , and US automakers more competitive on the world market, thanks to US regulations catching up to Japanese and European standards.
I honestly don’t understand what point the polluter greedheads are trying to make. By trying to rebuild US infrastructure for dirty 1950 technology, Trump is ensuring that every other nation will leap ahead in cost effective renewable energy and have the infrastructure to use it well.
Clinging to conservative concepts can be effective in some fields, but pollution, ecology, energy, and technology are not among them. The more the Trump administration shuns science and new tech development, and rolls back standards to reqard tech laggards, the worse off America will be.
Vote more wisely next time, luddites.
Please .. please… enough Obama… its getting nauseating.
How about apple sticking with making the best most advanced products and offering the most comprehensive lineup out there. …. ..? ( from schools, to average comsumer to Pro/power user , from macminis, to displays to macpros and all the other goodies which seem to be getting axed slowly but surely…Shame! )
It seens like politics is taking A disproportionate amount of attention from Apple and fans alike.
It rather depends on what you regard as “politics.” My guess is that Apple sees its commitment to guaranteeing a sustainable energy supply for the company that is not subject to the volatility in price and supply of fossil fuels as a business decision, not politics. Unless you happen to own stock in a coal company, green power is better power–cheaper and more reliable.
When you are Apple, with a ton of cash reserves, you don’t care so much about the initial cost of building a power plant (actually not that much more for wind or solar than for natural gas, and much cheaper than for coal or nuclear). What you do care about is the long term cost of operating the plant, which is enormously lower for renewables than for fossil fuels. If you buy your power off the grid, you are paying not only for the construction of expensive power plants but also the interest on the construction loans.
Similarly, I would guess that Apple does not see the ability for a multinational corporation to recruit and deploy a multinational work force as primarily a political issue.
I do not regard Apple’s interest in making money as disproportionate.
I see your point.. as im sure many do..
I was just using the issue( must admit inappropriately) to point out Apple’s (and fans ) disproportionate attention to politics and advocacy in the past few years , rather than absolute focus on product !
And we have seen the results in many cases… list is very long.
Imo
If Apple believes in the “climate change” narrative and wants to do what they can to counter it, more power to them.
I don’t believe in that particular narrative, but I do believe in “do as little harm as you can,” and I respect those who put their money where their mouth is.
Narrative. Right, it’s a matter of opinion. https://climate.nasa.gov
When it comes to global warming Australia is considered one of two countries that are seen as the “canaries in the coal mine”.
New South Wales, the largest state has just had what has what meteorologists are calling the angry summer.
Over 200 hundred records in the state were broken with the town of Moree experiencing 52 days over 35 degrees celsius (95 in the old language). Many days were in the forties.
In Sydney, the state capital, the city had three consecutive days above 42 degrees celsius (107.6), and that’s on the coast. In western Sydney it reached 47 degrees celsius (111.6).
One hundred kilometres north at Umina where I live (which is on a coastal peninsula) we had three days above 42 degrees celsius (and one day was 43.4 C).
Climatologists have been spot in their predictions of climate change and its effects for this country, and they have predicted less tropical cyclones but more intense ones.
Our northern state of Queensland has just been whacked by a category 4 cyclone with wind gusts up to 264 kilometre per hour winds. Rainfall has been up to 400 millimetres over a two day period.
Normally in a neutral weather year we would expect around five to ten smaller cyclones on the east coast. We’ve had three!
I just finished adding the rainfall for Umina (from my rain gauge) and it came in at 462.5 millimetres. The average for March is 114.9!
In April 2014 the year moved to Umina we had a massive east coast low (right off the coast) and the wind and rain was incredible. We were lucky as we only lost power for 18 hours and the damage to the house was only a couple of thousand dollars (and insurance covered most of that), whilst others in the area weren’t so lucky.
An east coast low is formed by cold air interacting with warm ocean waters. Where we live the ocean temperature is consistently one to two degrees celsius above what was once average.
Climatologists are now predicting another El Nino which will mean record heat again.
As I said at the beginning, if you want to see how the weather is changing just look at Australia to see how the weather is changing. Our Great barrier Reef is dying (the northern third) and so are some of our elderly and young. Our crops, in places are under threat as well. We’ve had some areas that have been in drought for over seven years.
So global warming is a myth…yeah right!
lol, “The Angry Summer”…followed by “The Pissed-Off Winter.”
First of all it’s not Global warming anymore it’s climate change.
It is not a myth, it has just been happening for millions of years and is part of the normal cycles of weather.
Go to a museum of natural history and learn the facts.
Climate Change is the nature of weather. It’s the man made part that is pure baloney and a hoax
Remember that the next time some red state starts begging for federal disaster relief following an unprecedented major weather event.
The last decade has seen the highest average temperatures in recorded history. What do you suppose happens to all that increased energy on an unevenly heated planet?
So, too, in the Northern Hemisphere, Telstar.
When I read your comment on my iPhone, I was in my garden watching a large flock of white-wing doves flying by. When I moved here a few decades ago, mourning doves filled that local niche and white-wings lived 100 miles to the south. I haven’t seen a mourning dove this year.
The Texas state flower inspires Bluebonnet Festivals all over the state. Most of them are in mid-April, which used to be the blooming season. It has been moving steadily earlier. I saw my first flower this year on Feb. 5, and we are moving past the peak before the end of March.
To deny that the climate is changing does not just involve delusion, but also blindness. The evidence is everywhere.
How is one to account for that? The scientific method is to look at the evidence, form a hypothesis, and test that hypothesis against the data. The hypothesis that explains the most data in the most elegant way is to be preferred over alternatives. If there is a new theory that explains more facts more elegantly, that theory is to be preferred over the old ones.
The principle goes back to the 14th century Occam’s Law: When judging between alternative explanations of the same facts, the simpler theory is more likely to be correct. I made exactly that argument to judges and juries for thirty years as a prosecutor: if the hypothesis of guilt explains the evidence better than any reasonable alternative, the defendant should be convicted. Unreasonable alternative theories are no excuse for an acquittal.
The simplest explanation for the observed changes in climate isn’t difficult to understand: CO2 is formed any time a carbon compound is burned in air. In a closed system, whether a lab flask or a planetary atmosphere, that increases the proportion of CO2. In fact, the measured proportion of CO2 in earth’s atmosphere has been rising for a couple of centuries at a rate that approximates the increase in combustion of carbon compounds due to the industrial revolution.
It has been known since the 1880s that CO2 traps solar heat like the glass in a greenhouse. If there is more CO2 (all other things being equal), the equilibrium temperature where equal amounts of energy are coming in and going out must be higher. Not “might be,” but “must be.” In fact, any number of independent lines of evidence indicate that the earth-sea-atmosphere system has been growing warmer in step with the measured rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. It is all very simple.
The alternative theories offered to explain why you are seeing profound climate change in NSW and I am seeing white-winged doves in my garden are much more complicated than this simple explanation believed by the overwhelming majority of scientists in relevant fields of study.
I recently had a discussion with someone who insisted that the observations of rising sea level that go back for 160 years or more are bogus. For some unexplained reason, the land is subsiding everywhere along every coast, even the ones where bedrock is visible, causing a relative rise in the tides. That is not as simple an explanation as that the observed retreat of glaciers and ice sheets has added melt water and the observed rising sea temperature has caused the water to expand.
The burden is not on the proponents to prove global warming, but on the opponents to explain how increased combustion could fail to produce increased CO2, how increased CO2 could fail to cause a rise in temperature, and how increased temperatures could fail to cause higher sea levels and climate change. To deny those three propositions is to deny primary-school physical science.
Anyone who believes that there is a vast conspiracy pushing the simple theory over the complicated ones might also believe Alex Jones when he suggests that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings were staged by paid actors at an abandoned building, as part of a conspiracy that must have involved every man, woman, and child in Newtown, Connecticut (pop. 27,560) without a single leak. A lone gunman is the simplest and most likely theory, just as global warming is the simplest and most likely theory to explain the Queensland cyclone and the Texas bluebonnets.
Telstar,
This is exactly what climate experts predict with global climate change: Big Heat and Big Rain. Plus Big Variability when it comes to annual and geologic variation. It is no surprise to those of us who do not have our heads in the sand…
Curious whether Apple’s green initiatives and policies are also applicable to subcontractors in China and India.
Ivid,
A descriptive point taken. And I’m sure as hell not looking forward to next summer.
TxUser el alia,
I used to tell my students that if they didn’t think the climate was changing then they should just go out into their backyards and have a look at the changes that were going on.
One change that I noticed is that my Frangipani tree now flowers from November until May when it should be flowering from December until the end of March. In my neck of the woods May is the last full month of Autumn.
Our winters had a cold period that used to last for six weeks but now it lasts for three weeks and that’s every year.
This summer was so hot we had birds dropping out of the trees. And last summer was extremely hot as well.
It seems that for the past ten years or so we’ve been getting weather that is termed “a once in a 100 year event” and then it happen again and again. It’s just nuts what’s going on with our weather.
This is the way it should be! Apple makes this decision on their own, rather than doing it because the government gave them no choice. Government mandates enFORCEd, whereas enlightened self interest is an expression of free will.
but you don’t seem to understand, Zax, with libtards it’s never about free will, it’s always about coercion.
Botty has a label maker! who-hoo, botty, you make more strawmen, that is the way to lose arguments!
You cannot point to a single action that any Republican congress has done in decades that has left more Americans better off in the long run. You can point to hundreds of instances where winners and losers were chosen base on short term greed. The only difference between the “libtards” is that they want the money spent on people inside American borders, and your partisan isolationist chicken hawks would rather bankrupt America dropping bombs and waging war in foreign countries. To a rational person, the waging of war is a last resort. To idiots like you and trump, it is the first proposal and a recurring campaign rally theme.
How much do you get paid to cut and paste the propaganda?
No. All games need rules and officiating under a fair governing body. Waiting for human enlightenment will take too long and cause too much damage.
The Sahara was a forest before it became a desert from human tree cutting and domestic animal overgrazing. Permanent Desertification almost happened again in the American midwest dust bowl days. Don’t think the climate can’t get worse before it gets better
Lovely! But would this post not look quite a bit better with good-looking images? We got such, and they are 100 free. No sign-up, no limit. See you at https://straffa.com