Climate Files 61 / Question the EPA
I attended the EPA Townhall Meeting and asked a good question. Everyone should question the EPA. Mine was about that nasty Canadian tar sands oil and the pipeline that is spilling oil into the beautiful northern part of one of the Great Lakes states. The EPA must not care very much about that, because they wouldn’t answer a simple question: how does a dirty oil pipeline fit in with the new green economy being promoted in the Great Lakes states? I like this EPA so much better than the last one, but it’s hard to believe it’s so easy to stump the EPA.
Also in this episode, what U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders said about climate change deniers, and what President Obama said about energy and climate in his speech to the business roundtable in Washington DC. Some headlines were covered too, including the exciting news about Bloom Energy, a new company making a revolutionary new type of stand-alone power station. It sounds almost too good to be true — fuel cells that run on oxygen and biomass? Yes, and it’s already being used by companies in Silicon Valley. Here is what I wrote about it on Futurism Now.
The Delta Institute website is here.
The EPA video page where you can watch the entire Townhall meeting from February 23rd is here.
News covered:
- Poor Nations Could Be Paid to Preserve Marine CO2: UN (Reuters)
- Curbing Smokestack Emissions Tops EPA’s 2011-2013 Enforcement Goals (Greenwire)
- Groups ID Toxic Coal Ash Sites in 14 States, Demand Regulations (ENN)
- Tackling Climate Change ‘Urgent,’ President Hu Jintao Says (China Daily)
- Italy Delays New Solar Plan Again, Industry Worried
- World’s Temperature Record To Be Re-analyzed (The Independent)
- Check out the Enbridge Pipeline in my Backyard blog.
- Waste could fuel part of Spain – read here.
- Did you hear about the 126,000 gallon oil spill in northern MN, the 2nd in months?
You can download this episode here, or subscribe on Climate Files Radio.
Final song is by Galactic, “Heart of Steel feat. Irma Thomas” from the MPR song of the day podcast.
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Climate Files 32 / Great Big Green Jobs Victory
This episode contains a recording from the Green for All conference call from October 5th. It was all about green jobs and there are some good solid ideas in this recording. We definitely need jobs in the United States. In September the U.S. lost over 230,000 jobs. Unemployment continues to grow and where ever you might be in the world, you probably don’t have a great economy either.
Green for All is a national organization working to build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. Green For All’s mission according to their website is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through a clean energy economy. We work in collaboration with the business, government, labor, and grassroots communities to create and implement programs that increase quality jobs and opportunities in green industry – all while holding the most vulnerable people at the center of our agenda.
Green jobs are blue collar jobs, or that’s what the Senate bill allows for, but those aren’t jobs everyone wants or can do. That’s only one of the many problems with the Senate’s CEJAPA bill. It’s good there is money provided for a new green economy but we need much more devoted to that purpose.
Speakers during the call were Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, Green For All; Jason Walsh, policy director at Green for All; Mark Ayers, AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department; Madeline Janis, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy and Jessy Tolkan, Energy Action Coalition.
Not talking about the seriousness of climate change would be impossible, so at the end there is a discussion of the implications of green jobs, a weak Senate bill that doesn’t really address climate change, and a recent article by Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org. His article is titled, A Timely Reminder of the Real Limits to Growth. The implication is that capitalism just won’t be the sustainable economy of the future because it can’t be.
Download this episode here or subscribe on the right.
Music: “Who Knows” by Marion Black, and “Post Millennium Extinction Blues” by Living Things
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