The Time to Act is Now. But, First Do Your Research

The International Energy Agency released a report covering the cost of inaction for abating Climate Change via not reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen this December. A key to the Copenhagen meeting is the USA passing national Climate Change legislation, without the USA little will happen as we are a world leader and the largest polluter in the world. The oil, gas and coal industries are increasing their efforts to kill the US Climate Change bill and supporters of the bill, mainly non-profits, are being outspent in advertising. 14 Democratic Senators have decided to back the coal industry and GRIST highlights this in a report, the Senators back the coal industry by supporting a way to give pollution permits under the national cap and trade bill that would, in effect, give lots of money to large polluters just because they pollute a lot. Giving away so many permits gives polluters money instead of gets money for out government which is currently in a financial crisis.

Standard Oil was John D Rockefeller's Company and its goal was to control the oil market, they were mostly successful until 1911 when they were broken up by the US Congress. Since Standard Oil was broken up into 32 companies they have reformed into several companies that, individually, make more profit than any companies in history (BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and smaller ones like Valero). Since Standard the price of oil has not reflected market fundamentals (supply and demand), speculation on oil pushes the price up, Reuters covers the current state of oil prices and predicts another bubble like last year when oil shot up to $148 a barrel and oil companies broke all records for profits during a global recession.

The International Energy Agency claims that oil reserves have been inflated to not alarm people that we are running out of oil. This map from the Guardian shows Global Oil Reserves, check it out.

The Environmental Defense Fund claims that polls show that the majority of Americans want renewable energy now, and a climate change bill from Congress. The PR against getting out of the coal, oil and natural gas business comes from the coal, oil and natural gas companies claiming that doing anything now would raise energy prices too much. The overall cost of not switching to renewables now is the larger cost that we should be trying to avoid.

A group of Engineering experts claim that it is impossible for Britain to meet its renewable energy targets. A fleet of electric scooters was just put on the market in Britain; progress in environmentalism is still being made.

The Boston Globe published a list of the top ten green technology jobs. They are almost all green collar (environmental blue collar) jobs.

The Journal of Science highlights new study that claims that bad decisions are contagious when a decision maker is influenced by someone they identify with or feel close to. Good thing to be aware of.

The US Climate Change Bill

Many are calling this Climate Change Bill a monumental piece of legislation that will change America for ever. Surely it puts the US on a path of regulating CO2 emissions from large industries in America, but there is one very large flaw. As it is negotiated currently, 85% of the permits, which is a certificate saying you can pollute x amount, are being given to companies for free. The argument is that if companies had to all-of-a-sudden start paying for the damage they are doing to our environment and society they could not make as much profit as they currently do. That argument has some validacy, but the problem is that by giving away 85% of the permits for free we are giving companies money for being large pollutors. The money generated from selling permits was going to help makeup for the large US deficit that so many people are worried about.

Arguing that giving permtis for free will allow companies to keep their prices low and this will benefit the consumer is false because the consumer is also the taxpayer that is giving these permits for free. It is all just pushing around money and if Americans weren't so fear ridden when they heard the word tax we could just use a simple tax scheme to tax large emitters of CO2, instead of the complex cap and trade system that takes a permit trading bank, regulators for the market and bank, and regulators that make sure that claims of permanent reductions in emissions are honest.

The Gaurdian covers this story

As well as the Christian Science Monitor

And the economist seems to be the only one that understands what is going on, but maybe that is because they know more about economics

For all of the possible environmental catastrophies that we forsee due to our resource use, if technology advances fast enough many of our problems will dissapear into the past. Australian researchers figured out how to put 10 terabytes onto a single cd, that is 2,000 times the space that a DVD currently holds

The Russians are not doing so bad during this downturn because of their natural gas and oil stock that they sell to Europe. Where will Russia be in 50 years when they have sold off most of their oil and gas reserves and have made no grand effort to adapt to a post fossil fuel dependent world?, if we get there.