Category: Archive

Eight US Cities exceed 5% renewable target

admin /21 April, 2007

A newly released study conducted by SustainLane Government concludes that Oakland, California, generates the highest percentage of renewable energy out of all U.S. cities, producing 5 percent more energy than any other city surveyed.

Leading the nation with 17 percent of its electricity produced by sources such as solar, wind and geothermal, most renewable energy generation in the city comes from commercial and residential photovoltaic (PV) systems.

According to City of Oakland Energy Engineer Scott Wentworth, the city is undertaking many important projects including: working with San Francisco State University, Marin County, and the City and County of San Francisco to create tools for assessing solar potential of commercial and residential properties; conducting wave and tidal power studies in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute and other California cities; and outfitting new municipal buildings to accommodate solar systems — even if the resources are not available to install the system immediately.

64 Megawatt solar plant to power 48,000 homes

admin /21 April, 2007

There’s no shortage of tourist attractions in the Las Vegas Valley.

But about 25 miles south of Las Vegas, in Boulder City, there’s a new attraction: a 64-megawatt solar thermal power plant, the largest solar project built in the world in 15 years.

Visitors to Nevada for the PowerGen Renewable Energy and Fuels convention at Mandalay Bay in March loaded buses and trekked out to the 300-acre solar field at Nevada Solar One, which will produce enough power for 48,000 Southern Nevada homes.

Gilbert Cohen, senior vice president of Solargenix Energy, the company building the plant, said energy production will not begin on the site until later this month at the earliest. But the 190,000 mirrors, miles of pipes and a $12 million Swedish turbine at the $250 million plant are in place and almost ready for testing.

And Cohen said the plant will continue to be an attraction to the industry and the media, because it’s the largest project of its kind built since the early ’90s and the third-largest solar thermal project in the world.

Wolfowitz just an errand boy

admin /21 April, 2007

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1115&Itemid=135

Written by Chris Floyd   
Sidney Blumenthal hands the Howlin’ Wolf of the World Bank his lupine head in this Salon piece, Wolfowitz’s Girlfriend Problem, which, despite the title, does an excellent job of reiterating the many ways that Wolfowitz’s "problems" — including the lasting damage he has helped inflict upon the American republic and the Iraqi people — go far beyond the greasy deals he procured for his neocon squeeze. Blumenthal also eviscerates the myth that still persists, even among some "progressives," that Wolfowitz is some kind of deep-thinking idealist — misguided perhaps, but sincere in his zealous commitment to democracy — instead of what he is and most patently has been throughout his very long career in the bowels of the Beltway: an amoral, power-grubbing backroom operator, a "willing executioner" of heinous plans for loot and domination. Jon Schwarz nailed it solid last week with this summation of L’Affaire De Loup:

In a sense I feel bad for Wolfowitz. He’s been a faithful errand-boy for the world’s richest people his entire career, providing their various rape-and-pillage schemes with an intellectual veneer they could never come up with themselves. During these decades he must have witnessed scenes of decadence and corruption that would make Caligula blush. Yet when he tries to imitate his patrons on one-millionth the scale, his career is ruined. Life is so unfair!

Exactly. And this leads on to another important point: that Wolfowitz and the neocons are just spear-carriers and bagmen for the American power elite. The notion — pressed by the otherwise excellent Sy Hersh among others — that "seven or eight guys" somehow "hijacked the U.S. government" and led us into this mess has always seemed the purest hogwash to me. I’ve written on this theme before, and forgive the long [slightly edited] self-quote below, but I think it’s an argument worth making again;

…If the neocons all hopped a spaceship for the Hale-Bopp comet tomorrow – indeed, if the cult had never arisen at all – we would still be right where we are today: neck-deep in the Big Muddy.

Russia forms Gas Cartel with Arabs

admin /21 April, 2007

http://www.rense.com/general76/putin.htm

By Imran Khalid

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a shrewd strategist — perhaps more astute than his American counterpart when it comes to the effective usage of diplomatic muscle to promote and safeguard the political, military and economic interests of his country.

His recent visit to the Middle East was a corroboration of his ability to play safe through diplomacy.

He went to the region with three clear and well-defined objectives; knitting together a gas cartel, exploring the business opportunities and the Middle East arms market for the Russian weapon industry, and projecting Russia as a potential ally of the Arabs.

Not surprisingly, to the utter disdain of Washington, he successfully managed to achieve these objectives with a relative ease.

US Iran budget blitzes China’s total military

admin /21 April, 2007

Using official budget figures, William D. Hartung, Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York, provides a number of helpful comparisons:

Proposed U.S. military spending for FY 2008 is larger than military spending by all of the other nations in the world combined.
At $141.7 billion, this year’s proposed spending on the Iraq war is larger than the military budgets of China and Russia combined. Total U.S. military spending for FY2008 is roughly ten times the military budget of the second largest military spending country in the world, China.
Proposed U.S. military spending is larger than the combined gross domestic products (GDP) of all 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
The FY 2008 military budget proposal is more than 30 times higher than all spending on State Department operations and non-military foreign aid combined.
The FY 2008 military budget is over 120 times higher than the roughly $5 billion per year the U.S. government spends on combating global warming.
The FY 2008 military spending represents 58 cents out of every dollar spent by the U.S. government on discretionary programs: education, health, housing assistance, international affairs, natural resources and environment, justice, veterans’ benefits, science and space, transportation, training/employment and social services, economic development, and several more items.William D. Hartung, "Bush Military Budget Highest Since WW II," Common Dreams (10 February 2007). 

Climate change now a global security issue

admin /21 April, 2007

UNITED NATIONS, April 17 (Reuters) — Britain and China faced off on Tuesday in the first United Nations Security Council debate on climate change, with Britain pushing the issue and China saying the 15-member body had no competence to deal with it.

The British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, who presided over the meeting, argued that the potential for climate change to cause wars made it an issue for the Security Council, the most powerful United Nations body, but one that has a mandate to deal only with international peace and security.

“Our responsibility in this Council is to maintain international peace and security, including the prevention of conflict,” said Ms. Beckett, whose country holds the current Council presidency. “An unstable climate will exacerbate some of the core drivers of conflict, such as migratory pressures and competition for resources.”

She noted that President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, whose economy depends on hydropower from a reservoir depleted by drought, had called climate change “an act of aggression by the rich against the poor.”

“He is one of the first leaders to see this problem in security terms,” she said. “He will not be the last.” She called the debate “a groundbreaking day in the history of the Security Council.”