A great story on local agriculture from NBC nightly news. "The government began a subsidy program for small-scale farmers, providing them with fertilizers and high-tech seeds at roughly 15 percent of the market cost – the fertilizers and seeds were required for a more productive and resilient crop. The scheme cost the Malawian government $60 million, a huge amount for one of the poorest countries in the world where the average annual income is only $250." "Malawi’s major donors, including the World Bank, European Union and the United States balked and warned Malawi to reconsider. They claimed that such large-scale subsidies would cripple the economy. But the government went ahead."   more »

Another NBC nightly news ag story. It seems that with modern agribizz equipment, fertilizer, and seed, abandoned Russian collective farms are yielding bumper crops.   more »

How to reduce oil demand incrementally year after year in order to stabilize the global economy? What is needed is an OPEC for consumer nations. The oil importing countries getting together to "drill, baby, drill" efficiency and renewable energy for oil demand reduction. OPEC puts a billion into a new oil field, we put 10 billion into mass production of solar, wind, plugin hybrids, ground source heating systems, and smart grid technology.   more »

This sounds serious: "Big American utilities are slashing their investments in alternative energy. Florida Power & Light has cut its planned investment in wind power next year by 400 megawatts. Duke Energy of North Carolina has lopped $50m off its budget for solar power. And on October 31st VeraSun Energy, one of America’s biggest ethanol producers, caught out by gyrations in the prices of corn and petrol (gasoline), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the European Union the price of carbon permits has fallen from a high of almost €30 in July to around €20, making clean-tech investments less attractive." But as the failure of VeraSun shows, the drop in oil prices is killing agribizz ethanol. Which is a good thing. Will this also delay the roll out of plugin hybrids? Will it give the auto makers an excuse to put off mass production of oil substituting electric vehicles?   more »

Check this out! Larry Summers, the proposed director of Obama's National Economic Council? David Corn really sounds a warning on Mother Jones blog. This creep, along with Gramm, Greenspan, and Rubin was in on the crucial moment that regulation was prevented. Now we know where the blame really should be placed for "derivatives" and "credit default swaps", whatever they really are, these creeps obviously never understood them, and don't to this day.   more »

A very good presentation, direct to Obama, the latest from climate action pioneer Dr. James Hansen. But he makes a rash statement. That 4th generation, waste eating nuclear reactors can be ready for mass deployment in the 2015 to 2020 time window. Hansen is picking technology, and doing something he says he is against, asking government to pick technology. He uses the old false dilemna fallacy, in a soft way. Stating that we, america and europe, maybe able to rely on renewable/conservation energy technology to replace fossil fuel, but China and India won't. Leaving the reader to conclude that nuclear and CCS will be necessary.   more »

World trade problems have the global economy in a tailspin again. Could we maybe look back into ancient history for a key to local farming versus global commodity agri-business conflict? Maybe Adult Swim could bring back Sherman and Peabody? I think Jay Ward did an episode on the Incan corn based empire? The Incan system worked like a federal reserve, with store houses of corn, rather than storehouses of electronic/imaginary currency.   more »

The GHG climate change tipping point is a well worn scientific theory. The recessionary tipping point is looming just beyond the collective conceptual horizon. To understand when and how a recssion takes on its own momentum and becomes a global depression, a comparison with climate change is most helpfull. The tipping point for climate change will occur when positive feedback mechanisms kick in and take over the climate.   more »

Main stream media, Brian Williams on NBC nightly news, called clean coal an "oxymoron" just last evening. Then proceeded to show a clean coal pure oxygen CCS plant in Germany where the liquid CO2 is trucked to a cap rock sequestration well. "It could raise the cost of coal electricity 50%", was the tagline. Better that government chooses technology to support with subsidies and mass production orders than let industry pursue full scale boondoggles like this. Separating oxygen for combustion, extracting pollutants, then compressing CO2 into a liquid state, trucking it in a tanker truck and pumping it underground, only increasing the cost by 50%?   more »

Peaksters! Give up the "Mad Max" screaming about the end of cheap oil. Admit that if demand drops in conjunction with supply, our oily GHG economic war on terror problems would evaporate into thin air. Climb on the GHG tipping point scream wagon and talk up demand reduction as the only way out. Electric transportation can drop oil demand steadily year after year, and GHG along with it. Look out for the resultant economic boom.   more »

This is excellent, Ashton Kutcher on "Real Time" with Bill Maher: Make the very successful, profitable oil companies bail out the auto industry. Since they killed their business model trying to sell gas guzzlers...to benefit their oil company board room mates and fellow investors. Is this just to simple a plan for politicians to understand? No stolen bailout cash. No cap n' trade, no auctioned GHG permits, no carbon taxes even. Yow, what's a lobbyist to do? Fight it like their very mcmansion and mistress and kids' harvard education depends upon it? Yep. hehey.   more »

Live streaming Puppycam!   more »

This is more than getting to 60 in the senate, although that is vital as well, this is about discipline. Turning the US from a blue/red state mess into a coalition is not just campaign propaganda. Obama's principle is to become the change you want to see in the world, in this case, the world of politics. It's easy to mend fences with green republicans who opposed the war. If we can work with Lieberman, the man who repeated nearly every slur against Obama promulgated during the sleazy McCain campaign, we can work with nearly anyone? Cancel the bickering until the economy is fixed, oil wars are obsolete, and GHG is under control. It's all about oil...again. About replacing it as an energy source over the next 10 to 20 years.    more »

Pretty amazing news! It looks like some of the people running the world economy are considering re-evolutionary notions only discussed on blogs?   more »

Romm is right, think tanks need flushing. Most political/environmental prescriptions still have that underlying "free" market Reagan revolution flaw at their heart. Cap and trade, offsets, auctioned GHG permits, they all have that illusionary market efficiency, let-big-business-do-it attitude. The false premise behind these schemes is obvious, that unregulated markets are onmiscient saviours of the human species. Kind of like Jesus, but with money? Government directed WW 2 war production, competition survived and capitalism thrived, so what is the problem with a million car per year government contract with the automakers?   more »

Auto companies want a bailout? They better accept new people along with the taxpayer cash. Consider the lack of judgement of the failures now in charge. For instance, what about the current GM answer to our oil problems? The Volt a long promised, but never mass produced plugin hybrid. A redesigned, higher hp EV-1, with less battery range and a backup generator.   more »

Long term, safe returns do not lie in oil exploration and development. Or in nuclear power investment. Or in "clean" coal. The new energy economy is a better, safer investment. As renewable/conservation smart grid technology lowers oil demand and electricity demand itself, and plentiful renewable supply takes over energy markets, money is safe in the leading suppliers of these new energy devices. Money in the old energy economy companies will evaporate and condense in the hands of investors in the new paradigm. And so it goes.   more »

This is great news! One would think we could hit the ground running, finally having a chance to push a green job wave that will revive the economy and stop climate change. That doesn't seem to be happening. It's hard to tell why. Is it collective shock?   more »

Can the same old anti-government regulation talking points of the last 30 years of GOP corporate shilling win the war(s) we find ourselves in now? Removing subsidies for the old energy economy wouldn't be enough to win this time around. Subsidies need to be diverted to the new energy economy. The "free" market could choose which path to follow if those paths actually existed. But to open those paths, like plugin hybrids, government needs to set standards and order millions of units of these vehicles in order to spur mass production.   more »

Composters unite! Digest your hot waste first. Generate clean backup power for a renewable grid in the process. You'll still have plenty of compost, fed with the biodigestor fertilizer. This also eliminates the pathogen problem. That first germ killing biodigestion process. These latest pandemics originate in interspecies manure/food stream intake and the development of resistant mutated strains of pathogens that migrate from species to species. Bird flu to humans for instance.   more »

This makes all the days trail running to get ready even better. A little bit of every trail infuses through the psyche into every other trail. Pretty soon the trail becomes your real life, and your "real" life a detour from the trail.    more »

Barack notices Pollan's NYT article on food and ag policy, that's great. But the connections between food, ag, and energy must be better transmitted up the political food chain.   more »

I awoke to her first policy speech, on special needs children like her 13 year old nephew and her infant son Trig. It's shocking to see this much dumb, even with the experience of 8 years of the gibberisher in chief.   more »

This job creation out on the west coast shows the way to economic recovery. California solar companies are short of installers. Jobs are being created faster than they can be filled. Obama can make that green job wave wash over the whole nation. The template is there, it is working in California. Ground source heating/cooling, solar cogeneration panels for roof installation, wind farms on farms, offshore floating wave/wind and desalinization systems, biogas systems on farms hooked to distributed solid oxide fuel cell/turbine power plants, and plugin hybrids.   more »

On a clip featured in the latest "Daily Show" (link to follow when it's up on the net) we find out that we are still "real" americans, according to the McCain campaign! Oh lucky us, we here in northern Wisconsin, along with the Minnesota Iron Range residents, and those in a few other regions, have been labeled "real" americans, because McCain still has a marginal chance to win here. We are still "pro-america america". I guess if/when Obama wins, that will make all of america anti-american. Yep.   more »

Yes, Sarah takes the stage from Tina. A fitting media tribute to Palin, the skit is written to make her look great. Just like the applause for McCain at the Al Smith dinner, to put it in palinese, "Thi(a)nks, but no thi(a)nks (sic)."   more »

Cellulosic ethanol is the go-to excuse for the built in drawbacks of biomass guzzling. The governor of Iowa said in a town meeting here recently that McCain opposing farm state ethanol subsidies was like dissing maple syrup in Vermont. Political suicide. He did however recognize farm biogas as a potent energy source.   more »

This objection to nuclear power always tends to slip by. Even with a new generation of mass produced modular nukes, it still takes water to run the steam turbines. Water we don't have. All the water conservation efforts possible are necessary just to stop the depletion of aquifers and rivers, nothing is left over for nuclear power except desalination.   more »

$700 billion is the yearly "defense" budget of the US. $700 billion is the bailout cash reserve. $700 billion per year is the US bill for foreign oil. Why not use the 700 billion over 10 years to eliminate those oil imports? And the need for oil wars over that oil supply?   more »

So you want to buy into the next Google? Follow every rumor about these Silicon Valley venture capitalists. My feeling is that the better the correction, the more old line corporations that are slaughtered, the better the boom will be.   more »

Mental deficit leads to mental recession. With Palin as chief energy strategist we would raise the mental deficit astronomically.   more »

Nuclear is Great, As Long As I’m Not Near The Waste
Midway through the interview he’s asked: “What about the transportation?  Would you be comfortable with nuclear waste coming through Arizona on its way, you know going through Phoenix, on its way to uh Yucca Mountain?”

To which McCain shakes his head, gulps a little and responds, “No, I would not. No I would not.”

McCain says he wants 45 new nuclear plants, but it would take 10 times that number to power his unlimited gas guzzling future.  To replace coal and natural gas for electricity and heating and process coal, shale oil, and tar sands into oil.

And now we find out that most of the nuclear plant components are made offshore, no new jobs in nuclear manufacturing.  No way to transport and store the waste.  Was Palin the "expert" who advised him on this energy plan?

"The rules on Yucca Mountain are especially critical given that some in Congress, including Sen. McCain, are calling for an explosion in nuclear construction that would generate the need for a new Yucca Mountain every 17 to 24 years."