John McCain's Stance On Energy & Environment

Senator John McCain is making environmental news headlines again for taking a stance on climate change and distancing himself from the Bush Administration. In recent days, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate has campaigned in the Pacific Northwest touting his pro-environment commitment and agenda. McCain's commitment to fight global warming differs from current Administration policy and from many other standard-bearing Republican Party agendas.

For McCain, the cornerstone of his environmental plan mandates a "cap and trade" system. McCain argues that establishing a cap on carbon emissions and setting a national goal to reduce overall carbon emissions to 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 is a realistic, and effective way to tackle climate change. (In contrast, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have said they would set a goal to reduce overall carbon emissions to 80 percent of 1990 levels by mid-century.)

In McCain's analysis, establishing a national standard for tradable carbon emission permits will allow the so called "good carbon emitters" to offset the "bad" ones. Furthermore, a nationwide cap and trade system would provide the necessary incentives to promote growth of solar, wind, and other renewable energy industries. McCain does not offer specific policy or market tools for solar or wind technologies because he is confident that a cap and trade system would sufficiently bolster those and other similar renewable energy markets. Nor has McCain outlined a more detailed plan on how his cap and trade system would work or what industries and activities would be targeted.

For McCain, alternative energy means energy independence. As we've mentioned in previous posts, of the three current presidential front runners, John McCain most vocally favors reinvesting in nuclear power. He views nuclear energy as the most viable technology to meet the nation's electricity demands. In his speech he made in Oregon (and posted on his website), McCain views the nexus among energy, the environment, and national security as one of the most important issues facing our nation.

McCain's voting record, however, leaves critics dubious about his intentions and commitment toward the environment. The League of Conservation Voters who created a National Environmental Scorecard gives McCain a lifetime rating of 24 percent for his previous voting record regarding the environment. For this year's legislative session, McCain gets a Zero; thus far he's been absent for any of the environmentally related bills that have come up for a vote.

Critics point to inconsistencies in McCain's voting record. As an article in Monday's Washington Post points out, McCain has embraced some environmental provisions, yet shunted others not so seemingly different from the ones he supports.

Supporters contend that McCain, as a political maverick, has consistently distinguished himself from conventional Republicans. They cite that McCain was one of the first in Congress to acknowledge climate change and introduce legislation addressing the issue.

He's certainly savvy when it comes to renewable energy photo-ops. In February McCain stood in front of a solar photovoltaic manufacturer when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his endorsement for the Senator. On Monday, McCain restated his environmental policy at a wind power company in Oregon. Time may reveal whether these press events truly signify McCain's intentions toward renewable energy.

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"The Clean Energy Scam" Article Critiqued

Michael Grunwald writes articles in Times Magazine and today I read one of his articles. The title of the article was striking, it read: "The Clean Energy Scam" in bold at the top of the first page. The subtitle stated: "Hyped as an eco-friendly fuel, ethanol, increases global warming, destroys forests and inflates food prices. So why are we subsidizing it?" The entire second page has on it a picture of what used to be a large portion of the Amazon Rain Forest, now it looks like farmland as far as the eye can see with a small patch of forest tucked into the lower right hand corner of the page, about the size of a small subdivision. Underneath the picture a statistic reads: "750,000 Acres of Brazilian rain forest was lost in the last six months of 2007 (equal to the area of Rhode Island)"

Deforestation is happening all over the world. Why is deforestation bad? Our forests store carbon. Carbon released into the atmosphere creates global warming. Grunwald writes, "Backed by billions in investment capital, this alarming phenomenon is replicating itself around the world. Indonesia has bulldozed and burned so much wilderness to grow palm oil trees for biodiesel that its ranking among the worlds top carbon emitters has surged from 21st to third." According to Grunwald, Malaysia is converting forests into palm oil farms so rapidly that it's running out of uncultivated land. The picture of what looks like farmland in the picture of Brazil on the second page is actually grazing pastures. Brazil is destroying its Rain Forests to raise cattle. Why? Because according to Grunwald, U.S. farmers are selling one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production. U.S. soy bean farmers are seeing the demand for corn rise and are switching to corn. Meanwhile our corn is getting more expensive because they can't produce it fast enough. To meet the global demand for soy beans, Brazilian soy bean farmers are expanding into fields previously used as cattle pastures. In turn, the cattle ranchers are clearing out the rain forest to make pastures for their cattle.

Our government, true to its form, in trying to find a solution to our dependency on oil, has created another problem for the world. In the article Grunwald writes, "Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled an eye-popping plan that would require all gas stations in the U.S. to offer ethanol by 2017... Barack Obama immediately criticized her - not for posing such an expansive plan but for failing to support ethanol before she started trolling for votes in Iowa's caucuses." Iowa is famous for corn which is used to make ethanol. Who is to blame? Our whole system of government is to blame, a system in which lobbyists control politics. The farm lobby is extremely powerful and it is influencing decisions. Our government has found a cheap and lucrative alternative to oil in which they are marketing it like crazy. What do you think is going to happen when the our government brings ethanol to every gas station in America? The rest of the world will follow, in order to compete, and soon all forests will be gone. We will destroy nature's way of trapping carbon and could drastically increase global warming.

http://www.TIME.com, "The Clean Energy Scam"

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Give Me 10 minutes and I’ll Give You the green future.

Green energy is the future
I don't know if you following the news or not, or whether you aware of the latest developments in politics economics and energy technology, but if you are, you probably already know how much buzz green energy technology are making these days. So give me a few minutes, and I'll explain in simple words the reason for that, and what I think the future is hiding.


The main reasons that renewable energy ("green") is so crucial are:
1. Oil prices are rocking high, rising above the most pessimistic predictions. This phenomenon have many reasons, but the most fundamental is the constant increase in demand, mainly from the developing countries, while the production rate is limited. Since fossil-fuels are limited, it will eventually run out, causing catastrophic economic crisis. This why experts think that it is so important to come out with renewable resources, that will solve this problem.

2. From the political point of view, oil is still belongs to the countries that have large oil reservoir, and many of these countries have a problematic agenda, that collide and even treat the western world. This why politicians try to devise new ways to get free form the oil needs, that will bring political freedom to countries without natural fossil-fuel resources.

3. The third main reason for the rising popularity of green energy is the growth in environment awareness among the public, and the concern about the effects that fossil fuels have on the environment, the air and the entire planet. using carbon-based energy market, causing a severe air pollution and environmental hazards to the wild life and plants. There are some evidences that support the notion that high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, is the main cause to global warming, and more.

Three general ways are proposed to change the energy market:
1. use biofuels - this solution is more conventional and suggests that instead of using limited fuel reservoir, we will try to produce cleaner, and more efficient oil from natural resources like plants and animals oils and sugars. The two main biofuels used today are biodiesl, which is based on fats, and ethanol which is produced from plan sugars. both fuels are cleaner and renewable, buth the amount of agriculture products required to produce them and the inefficient production methods, make them inefficient and too expensive. So in the meanwhile this solution is sound, but in smal quantities and not as a global solution.

2. using alternative, natural energy resources. This approach, try to harvest the energy of the sun, the wind, the planet gravity (by using waterfulls), or the planet activity (geothermal). Thsi approach have some success already, and it si provide the most elegant solution for the future. However, these technologies are still not efficient enough and provide just a small fraction of the energy required. The current technology is still very expensive and not economical, but it is changing fast.

3. Nuclear power. nuclear power is an old solution, clean and elegant, but it is hold many risks and technological problems that prevent it from being a perfect solution. not all countris can exploit it, and it can be used to cause huge damage.

So what about the future?

As you can understand, the train of green energy is already running with full power, and the main reasons that preventing it from being the main leader of the energy markets is the technology. In such cases, we can be sure that further technological advances in the near future will realize the green energy as the main source of energy for tomorow.
I belive that it is a matter of few years until the technology of alternative energy and biofuels will burst trough the shell of inefficiency, and then it will swiftly replace all of the known energy resources. Soon we will see more and more production of biofuels, and cars that can use them, and more and more wind and solar farms, harvesting the sun and wind energy to produce electricity. The future is green, if you like it or not.

The critical mass of political economical and technological needs, was already achived, it is now the job of engineers and scientist to make it happen.

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