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January 26, 2011 :: staff :: Comments Off
The following is an official White House transcript of Pres. Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address, as prepared for delivery in the well of the House of Representatives, 25 January 2011: Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans: Tonight I want to begin by congratulating the men and [...]
January 26, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
One seat was left vacant, in honor of Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), who is currently recovering from a severe gunshot wound to the head, suffered during an assassination attempt that killed 6 people. Pres. Obama opened his remarks with a tribute to the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner of Ohio, a unifying gesture that won loud applause from the hall. Obama then struck a somber tone and asked everyone to consider the lessons of the tragedy in Tucson.
June 10, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is today trying to push through the United States Senate an amendment to proposed legislation which would limit the power of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions. Murkowski claims the constraint on EPA authority is necessary to protect future economic growth and job creation, though it is in fact an effort to deliver huge amounts of public funding to the oil industry and an attempt to establish federal government policy ignoring the Supreme Court.
June 9, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Gulf of Mexico coastline of the southeastern United States has been hard hit by the ongoing BP oil disaster, with catastrophic environmental damage, the collapse of the local fishing and shrimping industry, and tourism bottoming out in some places near zero, just as summer gets going. There is a moratorium on deepwater exploration and drilling, which is putting a strain on the job market across several states. A serious investment in renewable energy resources would build a more vibrant, more reliable jobs market into the regional economy and help prevent the environmental fallout of offshore drilling.
January 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama’s first official State of the Union address was an impassioned call to action, and something of a civics lesson. He reprimanded both parties in Congress, admonishing Democrats not to “run for the hills” and reminding Republicans that if they claim a leadership role by obstructing legislation, then they have an obligation to the public to participate in the process. The address artfully positioned Obama’s agenda astride the political center, leaving the Republicans little room in the center from which to attack his policies.
January 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
After decades of environmental scientists seeking to raise awareness about the detrimental impacts of burning ever more carbon-based fuels, the Copenhagen Accord shows a global willingness to recognize the gravity of the issue and to take concrete —if as yet unnamed— policy actions to address the challenges of coming decades.
December 21, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
(1) [W]e shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis ofequity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. … (2) We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report with a view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius … (10) We decide that the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund shall be established as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programme, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity-building, technology development and transfer….
December 19, 2009 :: Eva Scherson :: One Comment
After two weeks of intense and sometimes bitter negotiations, US president Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen to marshal all his diplomatic skills in brokering the beginnings of a viable framework for global carbon emissions reductions. Late Friday, it was announced that five nations —the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa— had carved out a deal that would, for the first time, bring all the world’s major economies into the same camp on efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
December 19, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The Philippines looks upon these negotiations in Copenhagen with a critical sense of urgency. The average world per capita CO2 equivalent emission is 6 tons and must be brought down to 3 tons to stabilize at 450 ppm in 2050. The Philippines is already doing better than that. Our emissions are only 1.6 tons per capita and we are committed to further deviate from our business-as-usual growth path.
December 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
When Pres. Obama and Pres. Medvedev meet, their agenda will reach beyond carbon emissions and climate change negotiations, however.They are expected to discuss ongoing negotiations on a new nuclear arms reduction treaty. US and Russian negotiations have been meeting in Geneva, holding talks described as “intense”, in the interests of mutual nuclear disarmament. The plan will be a second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (StART 2), aimed at moving the world closer to Pres. Obama’s vision of “a world without nuclear weapons”.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
When US president Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen, there was no global agreement on how to address climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, and talks were described as being “in a state of chaos”. His morning schedule of face to face meetings was reorganized so he could attend an emergency conference of key leaders. Talks were scheduled to continue through the weekend, and yet before midnight, agreement had been reached.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The above video highlights the Danish city of Frederikshavn’s ongoing comprehensive plan to achieve 100% carbon neutral status by 2015, by focusing on wind and other renewable resources to produce its entire municipal energy supply. Mikael Kau, the director of the Frederikshavn energy project explains that other, larger cities in Denmark could adopt similar plans and from the local level help Denmark achieve 100% energy independence and carbon neutrality by 2015.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Gordon Brown plans “plan b” 2nd round of talks if Copenhagen conference fails to achieve global pact. The plan would call for a smaller number of nations to meet to agree to concrete steps to curb emissions and move their contribution to the world economy toward a green energy future.
December 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
With the US promising to commit $100 billion over ten years to help fund mitigation efforts against the impacts of climate destabilization and China all but refusing outright to agree to any pact that requires international verification of emissions reductions and/or how international funds are spent, the technological solution remains a key priority.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Good morning. It’s an honor to for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you —like me— were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. That much we know.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The furious negotiations of the final days of the Copenhagen conference on climate change has produced another draft of a potential Copenhagen Accord, which would drop the 2010 deadline for establishing a binding global treaty, but would keep the absolute upper limit of an eventual 2ºC global average temperature rise above pre-industrial levels.
December 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Copenhagen climate conference is intended to round out two weeks of global negotiations with an agreement of some sort aimed at securing major progress on carbon emissions limits. It remains uncertain whether an agreement will be reached, so Pres. Obama’s trip is being treated as a “high-stakes gamble” in the US media. In fact, Obama will be one of 115 heads of government in attendance, and the White House’s statement that while his attendance cannot guarantee agreement, a decision not to could scuttle negotiations, seems the most level-headed.
December 17, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Devoting valuable grain crops to fuel production has had an immediate negative impact on the global food supply, reducing supply and pushing prices higher, even as one billion people suffer from chronic hunger. In the United States, high prices and economic crisis mean on in eight are now insufficiently able to access adequate food supplies. But a new generation of crop-based biofuels will be more efficient and need not interfere with the food supply.
July 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
One day, recently, I saw a fire-engine, crawling its way through a stop light, sirens blaring, hulking its way to provide the noble service of putting out someone’s fire or performing some other rescue operation. It was pouring a dark grey exhaust from one side, looking shiny new and well cared for, but obviously lacking advanced exhaust filtering or clean-energy drive technologies.
July 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama has proposed a national high-speed rail program that would develop eight to ten regions for high-speed rail (currently, only the so-called northeast corridor, running from Washington, DC, to Boston, through Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, has a regular high-speed service), as part of a phased-in long-term economic recovery plan. The rail project comes into play also as part of Obama’s plans for a comprehensive energy-sector overhaul, aimed at reducing carbon emissions.
July 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Pres. Barack Obama praised African community values and called Africans to transcend conflict and promote government from the ground up and peaceful transfers of power, democratic values and international cooperation, in his first presidential visit to subsaharan Africa. Addressing Ghana’s parliament in Accra, Obama outlined US policy toward Africa and said endemic conflict was holding back African development.
July 11, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
At the G8 summit, leaders from nearly thirty nations met to discuss how we will collectively confront the urgent challenges of our time, from managing the global recession to fighting global warming to addressing global hunger and poverty. And in Ghana, I laid out my agenda for supporting democracy and development in Africa and around the world. But even as we make progress on these challenges abroad, my thoughts are on the state of our economy at home. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today.
July 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI) was announced in L’Aquila by Australia’s premier Kevin Rudd. The GCCSI amounts to a global intergovernmental effort to produce state of the art carbon capture projects to sequester and store carbon produced by industry in the period leading up to a zero-emissions energy infrastructure. Rudd unveiled the project at the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, convened by US president Barack Obama alongside the G8 summit of leading world economies.
July 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
US president Barack Obama convened a G8-parallel Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, comprised of 17 nations representing over 80% of the world’s industrial and consumer greenhouse gas emissions. The goal was to push governments to move their emissions and energy strategies closer to consensus for meeting bold targets for carbon emissions reductions, in anticipation of the September G20 summit in Pittsburgh and the UN climate summit at Copenhagen in December.
July 8, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
Developing nations have failed to deliver the collaborative consensus sought by US president Obama and other G8 leaders in anticipation of the Copenhagen Climate Conference scheduled for later this year. While G8 leaders agreed global climate policy should be oriented toward avoiding any increase in global average temperatures of more than 3º Fahrenheit, they did not reach agreement on how to cap or reduce emissions to set levels by 2050.
June 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Swiss-based Solar Impulse unveiled this month the first ever 100% solar-powered airplane with global reach. The HB-SIA is the culmination of six years of daring research and hard work. The aim of Solar Impulse is to demonstrate the ability of solar power to enable a plane to fly around the world with no combustible fuel.
June 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The US is considering a climate and energy bill, H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), amid much controversy over competing methods of calculating costs and benefits. Climate skeptics that rule out global climate change as a real long-term cost are concerned that energy-industry economics will be “distorted” by this legislation, leading to massive losses across the economy; environmentalists are concerned that widespread rapid climatic variation could destabilize not only natural ecosystems and reliable agriculture, but political institutions, borders and nation states.
June 26, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
Congressman Henry Waxman, one of the main sponsors of the “ACES” climate bill, H.R. 2454, has added the Titus-Giffords-Heinrich amendment, which would require the federal government to steadily ramp up contracted clean energy agreements over the next 20 years. The clean energy amendment had been pushed by a number environmental and progressive advocacy groups, including MoveOn.org, which urged millions of supporters to contact Congress to demand inclusion of the amendment.
June 24, 2009 :: staff :: 4 Comments
In the past two and half years, the Committee has held dozens of hearings on energy and
climate change policy and has built a detailed factual record on the need for legislation in this
area. The nation’s dependence on foreign oil has significantly increased over the last decade.
Consumers have faced increasing and volatile energy prices. Other countries have overtaken us
in the manufacture of wind and solar energy. Energy company investments are paralyzed
because of uncertainty about what policies the Congress will establish. Meanwhile, global
warming pollution has increased unchecked.
June 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
Major new climate legislation is pending before the United States Congress. The bill has been called the most important climate-related legislation ever to be voted on by the US House of Representatives, and has been the cause of intense policy negotiations among supporters, opponents and legislators. The League of Conservation Voters has taken the decision that it will not endorse any member of the House of Representatives that does not support the legislation.
June 6, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The European Parliamentary elections are the world’s largest transnational democratic vote, with 375 million people across 27 nations, choosing among 650 parties for 785 seats in the Parliament. It is worth asking what effect these elections, held once every 5 years for all the seats in the European Parliament, will have on EU environmental policy. Will these elections speed the spread of clean energy resources, like wind, solar and wave power, across the EU member states and neighboring states?
May 11, 2009 :: staff :: 4 Comments
The wind-power generation paradigm is wind turbines turning due to the pressure of oncoming winds. The standard is a single fan with three blades that turns at a relatively slow and constant rate to maximize energy extraction from wind currents passing over the blades and turning the turbine. The ‘WindCube’, however, fits a wind-amplification paradigm, a possible first-step to a new era in wind-turbine technology.
May 2, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Community opposition, legal challenges, and financial uncertainty over future carbon costs are prompting companies to rethink their plans for coal. Since the beginning of 2007, 95 proposed coal-fired power plants have been cancelled or postponed in the United States—59 in 2007, 24 in 2008, and at least 12 in the first three months of 2009. This covers nearly half of the 200 or so U.S. coal-fired power plants that have been proposed for construction since 2000. The vast majority of the remaining proposals are essentially on hold, awaiting word on whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is going to impose limits on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. With further legal challenges ahead and the regulation of CO2 imminent, 2009 may very well witness the end of new coal-fired power plants in the United States.
November 24, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
TheHotSpring.com is forming an ongoing research community project to develop zero-combustion energy sourcing technologies. The first phase of the project entails filling in the conceptual space of the zero-combustion paradigm for energy generation. Next, we propose thinking toward the “jump generation” technologies, which emerge from advances still not in practical application, but which will enable us to vastly expand the energy-productivity of our resource base.
August 10, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The World Bank estimates that 750,000 people are killed each year by China’s impenetrable pollution problem; and 400 million people are expected to migrate to China’s already super-saturated metropoli by the year 2025. China is now burning one-third of the world’s coal for electric-power generation, and has opted to move its national transport infrastructure toward the automobile, a potentially catastrophic choice that could have a decidedly negative impact on health and economic wellbeing across the world.
July 14, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
The chairman of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Stephen Johnson, says the Clean Air Act is “ill-suited” to fighting the greenhouse effect, and that Congress should pass laws mandating the regulation of carbon emissions, with global warming in mind. The move may lead to a more comprehensive regulatory regime, but as the Guardian newspaper notes: “Last year’s Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court ruling had found that greenhouse gases can be regulated under the U.S. Clean Air Act. The decision pressured the EPA to reconsider its refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from new cars and trucks.”
July 3, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
TheHotSpring.com :: Every participant in any system, is dependent upon the quality of information behind the major forces at play, just as any player in any system is beholden to the quality or jeopardy posed by the system’s prevailing methods. Free flow of information is the best hope of achieving the optimum level of functionality [...]
December 3, 2007 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
TheHotSpring.com :: Between the years 2008 and 2020, we are likely to see a still unimaginably sweeping shift away from fossil fuels and high-contamination modes of powering our economy. The transition will have a political component, but will be driven mostly by cost concerns, resource scarcity, and public demand for cleaner air and responsible climate [...]
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