Renewable Revolution

EcoWatch


February 1, 2018

By Lorraine Chow

President Donald Trump—who remarked Tuesday that his administration ended the nonexistent "war on beautiful clean coal"—really wants to make fossil fuels 🦖 great again.   


The White House plans to ask Congress to cut the Department of Energy's renewable energy and energy efficiency programs by a massive 72 percent in fiscal 2019, according to draft budget documents obtained by the Washington Post.

The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's (EERE) current spending level is set at $2.04 billion for the current fiscal year ending on Oct. 1. But the Trump administration will significantly lower that amount to $575.5 million for 2019, the Post reported.

The EERE supports the development of sustainable transportation, renewable power, and energy-efficient homes, buildings and manufacturing. Its SunShot Program has significantly reduced the total costs of solar energy.

The draft budget document calls for a number of cuts, including:

֍ A staff cut of 680 in the enacted 2017 budget to 450 in 2019.

֍ Reducing research in fuel efficient vehicles by 82 percent.

֍ Cutting research into bioenergy technologies by 82 percent.

֍ Shrinking research into solar energy technology by 78 percent.

This is the second year Trump has targeted clean energy spending. Last year, he proposed cutting the office's budget by two-thirds to $636.1 million, which Congress later rejected.

"It shows that we've made no inroads in terms of convincing the administration of our value, and if anything, our value based on these numbers has dropped," one EERE employee told the Post.

The reported spending cut comes not long after Trump's decision to impose steep tariffs on imported solar panels and related equipment—a move that experts say will stifle the current solar boom, harm the fastest-growing job sector in the U.S., and drag down clean energy innovation.

The draft document could change before the federal budget is due later this month, but as the Post pointed out, the budget "will mark a starting point for negotiations and offer a statement of intent and policy priorities."

In response, the White House🦀 told the newspaper: "We don't comment on any leaked or pre-decisional documents prior to the release of the official budget."   


https://www.ecowatch.com/renewable-energy-budget-cuts-2530485007.html

February 12, 2018

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com.

SNIPPET:

Think of President Trump 🦀 and his administration as a den of thieves. There is, of course, the obvious thievery: what they will in the end, as with the recently passed tax “reform” bill, steal from ordinary citizens and offer as never-ending presents to the already staggeringly wealthy, among them the president himself (possible savings up to $15 million annually) and son-in-law Jared Kushner (possible savings: up to $12 million annually). According to the Congressional Budget Office, government cash reserves are already starting to fall faster than expected as a result of lost revenue from that bill. And the modest gains offered to ordinary taxpayers to give cover to a vast increase in the wealth of the top 1% will all sunset in the 2020s, while that bill’s corporate tax cuts are meant for eternity.

Think of such moves not as acts of petty theft, but as robbery of the most basic sort, since they involve stealing from the future to fund an increasingly plutocratic present. The Donald, in other words, isn’t just stealing from us but from our children and grandchildren. And if that’s true of his tax bill, it’s so much truer of his energy policies, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear in a newsworthy manner today. That the president’s addiction to fossil fuels, his belief that freeing Big Energy from every form of restriction and regulation, is crucial to future American global domination has, Klare informs us, been embedded in the administration’s recently released National Security Strategy.  In other words, the exploitation of fossil fuels in North America is now officially the heart and soul of the global policy-making of President Trump and his generals.

This isn’t just a matter of stealing future money from our children and grandchildren, or even of polluting the American environment in which they’ll grow up in a fashion familiar to anyone — like Donald Trump (or me) — who was raised in the 1950s.  It’s a matter of stealing everything from them, including potentially the very environment that’s nurtured generation after generation of children on this planet for all the thousands of years of human history.  If the president and his crew of climate deniers have their way and a fossil-fuelized version of energy “dominance” comes to rule our American world, while the path to alternative energy growth is crippled, then they will have stolen from the future in the most basic way imaginable for the comfort of just a few human beings now.  As part of what can only be thought of as a semi-conscious plan to further warm the planet, President Trump’s energy policy will, without any doubt, represent not just thievery, not just the crime of this century, but terracide, the destruction of the planet itself, which will be the crime of any century. Keep that in mind as you read Klare’s piece today. Tom

Full article:

http://warisacrime.org/2018/02/12/tomgram-michael-klare-militarizing-americas-energy-policy/

John Voelcker Feb 15, 2018

SNIPPET:

With the release of proposed new and lower fuel-economy rules expected from the NHTSA by March 30, many eyes have turned to the powerful California Air Resources Board.

The state's pioneering role in reducing emissions and cutting air pollution predates even the existence of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That agency, now run by Scott Pruitt—an unabashed proponent of burning fossil fuels and a climate-science denier—will shortly issue its own related proposal for boosting the carbon-dioxide emissions allowed from road vehicles.

California, however, is not likely to accede to any radical increase in national emission standards.   

Instead, it has a long-established legal right to establish its own, tougher emission rules, recognizing its pioneering role and the specially dire air-pollution conditions in the Los Angeles Basin.

Unless, that is, Pruitt reverses himself and decides to attack that right by rescinding the "waiver" to the national rules that permits that, one of a long series stretching back 30 years.

If Pruitt does that, however, CARB is ready to go to war.

Full article:

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1115323_california-allies-ready-for-emission-law-war-with-trump-epa-carb-head-says

 
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As we hold on for dear life at the start of the second year of the Trump administration, the crazy wave of national news that breaks each week can feel overwhelming. But a few key pieces of pipeline news from last week are worth a revisit.

On Wednesday the 21st, a US District Court Judge ruled that the Trump administration needed to turn over documents explaining its decision to reverse course and approve the Keystone XL pipeline, or explain why that reasoning should be kept secret. The Obama administration spent years studying the pipeline’s impacts, and ultimately that body of evidence justified blocking the pipeline. But upon assuming office, President Trump almost immediately decided the opposite. Given that such decisions are required to be based on facts, what new evidence did the government suddenly find to change its mind so quickly?

As we’ve said before, according to the Administrative Procedures Act, federal decisions need to be based on science and facts. If not, they can be struck down in court for being “arbitrary and capricious,” a fancy way of saying something is done for political reasons that aren’t supported by the evidence.

For example, on Thursday, Judge William Orrick of the U.S. District Court for Northern California ruled that the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had to start enforcing a rule to limit methane waste from oil and gas operations on federal land. Judge Orrick allowed the lawsuit defending the waste prevention rule to proceed because BLM “relied on opinions untethered to evidence,” didn’t show their work to justify the decision, “and it is therefore arbitrary and capricious within the meaning of the APA.”

Though Trump is in the process of deciding what to do about the rule, the judge’s order means the administration can’t keep procrastinating and must enforce the rule while they figure out what’s next. (In case you’re wondering what methane emissions might look like, the emissions from various facilities have been captured by Earthworks on infrared camera.

These are encouraging decisions, particularly in light of the fact that pipeline fights are still raging across the country with significant battles being played out locally. News broke last week per HuffPo’s Itai Vardi that a front group for natural gas and gas-heavy utility companies is masquerading as a “sustainable energy” organization. In a letter to Massachusetts Governor Baker, the Mass Coalition for Sustainable Energy argues for more natural gas pipelines as part of a climate solutions. It’s signed by the presidents of various mundane sounding business groups, like Boston and Springfield Chambers of Commerce. Not signing on, however, are some of the groups other funders, like Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, or the utilities Eversource and National Grid.

These companies are actively seeking new pipelines through Massachusetts. They’re funding the PR effort to get more pipelines. Why oh why wouldn’t they want their name on the coalition’s website, and on the letter to the governor? Surely a great mystery, that.  

Another totally unsolvable mystery? Why ALEC and pro-pipeline politicians are trying to get the Department of Justice to prosecute pipeline protesters as terrorists. Alex Kaufman at HuffPo explored last week how the “valve turners” who shut down a pipeline as an act of protest against climate change are being equated by the lawyers prosecuting them to the 9/11 hijackers and the Unabomber.

Who are these apparently terrifying terrorists the pipeline profiteers so gravely fear? Well, there’s Chief Avrol Looking Horse, who penned an op-ed last week about how the Standing Rock pipeline protests have gone global. He’s a Native American chief whose peaceful religious ceremonies are apparently a 9/11-scale threat.

Then there’s Danielle Pierre, a 16 year old whose op-ed last week on New Jersey’s pipeline fights is hardly the Unabomber’s manifesto.

But as we’re seeing with the #NeverAgain movement for gun control, maybe the oil and gas industry’s terror at the thought of a high school protester isn’t so arbitrary or capricious.

March 10, 2018


While pledging the administration's dedication to the fossil fuel industry  🦖 , Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke 😈 made the inaccurate but oft-cited claim that turbines kill 750,000 birds a year. Scott Edwards of Food & Water Watch discusses the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure and states' efforts to pass climate regulations in the absence of federal laws

http://therealnews.com/t2/story:21314:Save-the-Birds%2C-Kill-the-Planet%3A-Interior-Attacks-Wind-Turbines-in-Push-for-Fossil-Fuels

Agelbert NOTE: Zinke is a fossil fuel funded LIAR! Bird deaths from Fossil fuel Power Plant Stack Pollution and glass on multistory buildings DWARF the relatively tiny number of deaths from wind turbines! Zinke is trying to kill the planet's biosphere 🌎💣, INCLUDING the birds 🕊🔫 too!

Zinke 😈 is the ENEMY of Renewable Energy BECAUSE he has arbitrarily picked, something he😈 and Perry😈 and Pruitt 😈 mendaciously claimed they didn't want to do, fossil fuels as GOVERNMENT FAVORED WINNERS!.

Zinke's LIES about Renewable Energy "caused bird deaths" are proof!

New International Version (NIV)

Proverbs 26:

12 Do you see a person wise in their own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for them.

24 Enemies disguise themselves with their lips, but in their hearts they harbor deceit.

25 Though their speech is charming, do not believe them, for seven abominations fill their hearts.

26 Their malice may be concealed by deception, but their wickedness will be exposed in the assembly.

28 A lying tongue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin.

March 13, 2018


"If I were on the confirmation committee, I would be asking Mike Pompeo exactly how much money the Koch network has invested in him that has not been publicly disclosed," says Lisa Graves of Documented

Quote from: Golden Oxen on March 13, 2018, 02:48:52 pm

Donald Trump is a graduate of West Point and a true patriot.

The voters chose wisely.

If they are anything like you
   , clearly not very well informed voters.   As Eddie has demonstrated, Trumpovetsky never went to West Point.

RE

 

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Black communities in Virginia, led in large part by faith leaders, are galvanizing against fossil fuel lobby messaging specifically targeted to them, according to a new report from Grist.

A Koch-funded gospel concert to surreptitiously promote oil and gas held in Richmond in 2016 generated significant backlash in the community, activists say--and encouraged many community members and faith leaders to reconsider how the fossil fuel industry targets and exploits black Americans. "God didn’t put me on this earth to pimp death ☠️ for profit," Rev. Paul Wilson   , who took up arms against environmental racism after the concert and was recently arrested protesting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, told Grist. "That’s what the Kochs 🦕 and these energy folks 😈 are doing to my people now.

It’s up to us in the church to stop it."   

The Koch Brothers 🦀 Vs. God