Columnist Kathleen Parker wrote in her column in the Washington Post, Tuesday August 4, that the Waxman-Markey energy bill now before Congress, would make us less secure if passed. She claims we only have two choices:  we can either be green or we can be less dependent on foreign oil. Her reasoning is a bit convoluted. She is assuming that we continue business as usual. To her alternative energy is a non-starter. Any attempts by the government to cap CO2 emissions will cause a stampede to OPEC for our oil supplies. We will certainly continue to need oil for some time as we transition to a fossil fuel free economy. Most of our oil comes from Canada and Mexico, but there is some new developments that could alter that...

Carbon dioxide levels are rising faster, Arctic and Antarctic ice is melting faster, glaciers are melting faster,  oceans are warming faster, and carbon dioxide levels are rising higher than anyone thought in their worst case scenarios. It is predicted, based on data collected between 2007 and today, that carbon dioxide, one of the chief climate warming gases, will reach a level of 450 parts per million, considered a point at which irreversible change will have occurred, by 2040. Pre-industrial levels were 280 ppm and in 2008 the level was 385 ppm. At the current rate of increase, 2.5 ppm per year, we will have reach the critical 450 ppm  level before 2040. Why in the world would I care...

On December 22, 2008, a holding pond for coal ash at the Kingston, Tennessee, coal fired power plant, the nations largest, breached the levee allowing 5.4 million cubic feet of toxic ash to flow into a nearby river, onto two dozen homes and covering 300 acres. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that operates the facility has already spent $143 million on cleaning up the spill and current estimates could top $933 million, and possibly going as high as $1.2 billion. There are hundreds of similar plants  around the nation with holding ponds for toxic sludge that are potential time bombs. Who do you think will be paying the tab for this clean-up?...

Oil Speculation needs some rules

In the summer and fall of 2008, when the cost of oil and gasoline hit unprecedented heights, oil speculators were actually buying and storing oil to take it off the market in hopes that prices would go higher. Charles Gibson talked about this and even visited oil storage facilities in Oklahoma, for his documentary on ABC called, Over a Barrel, The truth about oil. Brokerage companies, like Lehman Brothers, were not breaking the law by doing this, but they should have been…

Exxon Mobil Is flooding Washington with lobbying money, more than all US clean energy companies put together in the first 6 months of 2009. They are apparently afraid that the clean energy bus will leave without them, or the American public will become convinced that clean energy is better than fossil fuels. They aren’t spending it all on drilling for oil, but you can bet your boots that the majority is for beating the business-as-usual horse. He isn’t dead yet, but he is on life support...