The Kayapo declare war with the energy companies and government of Brazil.
FUCK YES.
(via proletarianinstinct)
"The money the government uses to pay producers comes from a monthly surcharge on utility bills that everyone pays, similar to a rebate. Ratepayers pay an additional cost for the renewable energy fund and then get that money back from the government, at a profit, if they are producing their own energy. In the end, ratepayers control the program, not the government. This adds consistency, Davidson says. If the government itself paid, it would be easy for a new finance minister to cut the program upon taking office. Funding is not at the whim of politicians as it is in the U.S. ‘Everyone has skin in the game,’ says writer Osha Gray Davidson. ‘The movement is decentralized and democratized, and that’s why it works. Anybody in Germany can be a utility.’"
— How Germany Is Getting to 100 Percent Renewable Energy (via theamericanbear)
“Over the past four years, we’ve doubled the amount of electricity America can generate from wind—from 25 gigawatts to 50 gigawatts. And to put that in perspective, that’s like building 12 new Hoover Dams that are powering homes all across the country. We doubled the amount of electricity we generate from solar energy, too. And combined, these energy sources are enough power to make sure that 13 million homes have reliable power and support the paychecks that help more than 100,000 Americans provide for their families.
“That’s not imaginary. That is real. And that’s what’s at stake in November. Thirty-seven thousand American jobs are on the line if the wind energy tax credit is allowed to expire like my opponent thinks they should. And unlike Gov. Romney, I want to stop giving $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies to big oil companies that have rarely been more profitable so that we can keep investing in homegrown energy sources like wind that have never been more promising. That’s part of the choice in this election.”
—President Obama in Iowa today
"In 2011, Republicans voted 37 times to block action to address climate change, including votes to overturn EPA’s scientific findings that climate change endangers human health and welfare; to block EPA from regulating carbon pollution from power plants, oil refineries, and vehicles; to prevent the United States from participating in international climate negotiations; and even to cut funding for basic climate science."
— U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, report, “The Anti-Environment Record of the U.S. House of Representatives 112th Congress.” (via climateadaptation)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer
Of course you know oil pipelines never leak or rupture or anything like that right?
Seriously, show this to anyone that ever says the words Keystone XL as if it were some sort of magic bullet that would save the economy. It isn’t even a complicated environmental issue, it clearly cuts through something that if anything were to go wrong would absolutely FUCK this country.
Right here. Right here is why you should be concerned.
(via randomactsofchaos)
Support the End Polluter Welfare Act, introduced by Bernie Sanders
At a time when we have a record debt, Congress should not continue to give away taxpayer money to the established, highly profitable fossil fuel industry.
- Fossil fuels are subsidized at nearly 6 times the rate of renewable energy. From 2002 to 2008, the US Government gave the mature fossil fuel industry over $72 billion in subsidies, while investments in the emerging renewable industry totaled $12.2 billion.
- The fossil fuel energy industry does not need taxpayer subsidies. In 2011, the Big Five oil companies alone made $137 billion in profits. During the first quarter of 2012, the Big Five oil companies earned a combined $33.5 billion, or $368 million per day.
- Unlike renewable energy incentives which periodically expire and require Congress to approve extensions, the fossil fuel industry has dozens of subsidies permanently engrained in the tax code from decades of successful lobbying. In 2011, the oil, gas, and coal industries spent a combined $167 million on lobbying the federal government.
We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.
But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.
President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.
The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.
Governments are falling badly behind on low-carbon energy, putting carbon reduction targets out of reach and pushing the world to the brink of catastrophic climate change, the world’s leading independent energy authority will warn on Wednesday. The stark judgment is being given at a key meeting of energy ministers from the world’s biggest economies and emitters taking place in London on Wednesday – a meeting already overshadowed by David Cameron’s last-minute withdrawal from a keynote speech planned for Thursday. “The world’s energy system is being pushed to breaking point,” Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency, writes in today’s Guardian. “Our addiction to fossil fuels grows stronger each year. Many clean energy technologies are available but they are not being deployed quickly enough to avert potentially disastrous consequences.”
(Source: tartantambourine, via socialuprooting)
This time-lapse video shows the assembly of three wind-power turbines within a two-day period in June 2011 at Puget Sound Energy’s Lower Snake River Wind Project-Phase I, located in Garfield County, Washington. From the ground to the tip of a vertical blade, the 2.3-megawatt turbines stand more than 430 feet tall and weigh 340 tons. The boom on the crane erecting the turbines extends 390 feet into the air. When completed in early 2012, PSE’s newest wind farm will have 149 turbines capable of generating 343 megawatts of electricity, enough to serve 100,000 households.
(Source: thekidshouldseethis, via climateadaptation)
Green Energy Strains Rare Earth Supply
As the world moves toward greater use of low-carbon and zero-carbon energy sources, a possible bottleneck looms, according to a new MIT study: the supply of certain metals needed for key clean-energy technologies.
Wind turbines, one of the fastest-growing sources of emissions-free electricity, rely on magnets that use the rare earth element neodymium. And the element dysprosium is an essential ingredient in some electric vehicles’ motors. The supply of both elements — currently imported almost exclusively from China — could face significant shortages in coming years, the research found.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Green-Energy-Strains-Rare-Earth-Supply-041012.aspx
