Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Monday, December 11, 2017
Eco-Activists to Oil Company CEO: You want to destroy the earth? We will hold you accountable.
Read the statement by the activists who paid a "nocturnal visit" to the house of this oil company CEO...
"His dream of becoming rich through the destruction of territory will not come to pass. Collective efforts of earth defense – blockades, support camps, demos, education campaigns – as well as all the autonomous initiatives put forward by a multitude of indigenous and non-indigenous groups will be much more powerful than the work of Mr. Lavoie and Junex can accomplish in one life."
Friday, December 8, 2017
Monday, December 4, 2017
Guns and Oil -- good, but a bit unsettling intro pic for Global Energy. What do Idaho and Texas have in common?
Illuminating interview with Guns and Oil Beer founder Cary Prewitt (warning: offensive images and language in this interview and on this website):
https://totalfratmove.com/dudes-doing-business-guns-oil-beers-cary-prewitt/
Key quote: "I came up with the name 'Guns and Oil' which I thought really represented the great American values, and our purpose statement today is to be purveyors of the great American values... boldness, character, opportunity, grit, and innovation..."
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Monday, November 13, 2017
Friday, November 10, 2017
New coal survival strategy: gin up baseless fears about "reliability". Peabody-funded study finds Navajo coal plant needed for grid reliability
First it was "clean coal".
Then it was "energy poverty."
Now the coal mafia is trying to gin up fear about "grid reliability."
All of it is nonsense.
Peabody-funded study finds Navajo coal plant needed for grid reliability
Then it was "energy poverty."
Now the coal mafia is trying to gin up fear about "grid reliability."
All of it is nonsense.
Peabody-funded study finds Navajo coal plant needed for grid reliability
Thursday, November 9, 2017
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Getting ready for Spring 2018: Here are the books that we will be reading in 'Global Energy and the American Dream'
Put in the book orders today for next Spring, these are the books --
I'm excited to get two new ones on the list - Powell on the Navajo and coal, and Jones' history of electricity in the US.
Mitchell is now part of the necessary canon for understanding oil, militarism and war in the Middle East.
Mitchell, Timothy.
2013. Carbon Democracy: Political Power
in the Age of Oil. London: Verso. 978-1781681169.
Powell, Dana E. 2017.
Landscapes of Power: Politics of Energyin the Navajo Nation. Durham: Duke University Press. 978-0822369943
Jones, Christopher F. 2014. Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 978-0674970922
Friday, October 27, 2017
Monday, October 23, 2017
Thursday, October 19, 2017
Monday, October 16, 2017
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Monday, September 25, 2017
Friday, September 22, 2017
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Monday, September 18, 2017
Saturday, September 16, 2017
Monday, September 11, 2017
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
To understand how we can go renewable, one thing we have to understand is a 40 year old federal law called PURPA, here's your chance: An Overlooked Solution for Competitive and Local Renewable Power
An Overlooked Solution for Competitive and Local Renewable Power
This right here. By law, because solar and wind are cheaper, Ameren has to let us buy it from someone else. They are just fudging the numbers to argue about costs. This seems like law-breaking to me...
"The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), which dates to 1978, requires all utilities to buy power from qualifying small-scale clean energy producers when the price roughly matches what a utility pays to generate and deliver its own electricity, or what it would pay a third-party provider. The law provides competitive access to wholesale electricity markets for producers too small to effectively compete with large companies. By doing so, it carves a path for communities to keep energy spending closer to home rather than lining the pockets of utilities’ investors.:
This right here. By law, because solar and wind are cheaper, Ameren has to let us buy it from someone else. They are just fudging the numbers to argue about costs. This seems like law-breaking to me...
"The Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA), which dates to 1978, requires all utilities to buy power from qualifying small-scale clean energy producers when the price roughly matches what a utility pays to generate and deliver its own electricity, or what it would pay a third-party provider. The law provides competitive access to wholesale electricity markets for producers too small to effectively compete with large companies. By doing so, it carves a path for communities to keep energy spending closer to home rather than lining the pockets of utilities’ investors.:
Great introduction to the problem of utilities, and the challenges for going renewable: The simple reason most power utilities suck
The simple reason most power utilities suck
David Roberts, Vox
David Roberts, Vox
"The take-home here is simple: Socially, we need to shift to greener, smarter grids built around aggregated, coordinated DERs, but the regulatory regime under which utilities operate puts them inherently at odds with that shift.Utilities do not have to suck. They have been designed to suck. They can be designed differently."
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Monday, August 28, 2017
Alumni support for fossil fuel divestment
I love Washington University students (most of them, anyway). Read this beautiful letter regarding the Chancellor's position on fossil fuel burning.
Alumni support for fossil fuel divestment
Alumni support for fossil fuel divestment
Friday, August 25, 2017
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Wednesday, July 5, 2017
Thursday, June 29, 2017
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
Thursday, June 8, 2017
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
America's biggest greenhouse-gas polluter, and the place that relies on it
Look here, Ameren made the list of biggest polluters in the country.
America's biggest greenhouse-gas polluter, and the place that relies on it
America's biggest greenhouse-gas polluter, and the place that relies on it
Monday, June 5, 2017
A Response to the Chancellor of Washington University in St Louis, on his recent statement on the Paris Accord and the Trump Decision
Original post: June 5, 2017.
Updates: June 6, 2017. Links to additional information.
After Donald Trump declared the US withdrawal from the Paris Accords, the Chancellor of Washington University made a statement expressing "our disappointment". The statement was followed with a number of declarations about Washington University's commitments to acting on the climate. Superficially, the statement sounds good. But beneath the surface it reveals a weak, insufficient, and unsatisfactory response. In addition it contains dishonest assertions that reflect a failure to enact real leadership on climate. Some observations follow:
You use the word leader way too often. It is meaningless here. We have great faculty and great students in the classroom. However, the university administration and its corporate partners are not leaders in educating the public about these profound transformations. They are just the opposite.
This is not true. WUSTL has historically been involved in efforts to mislead the public on climate. Under the watch of Chancellor Danforth, and then Chancellor Wrighton, the Weidenbaum Center colluded with Exxon to mislead the public on climate science. This was sustained, systematic, and willful. It may have been associated with crime. Until you can be honest about the past, we cannot trust you to be honest about the present and the future.
In addition, WUSTL continues to be involved with various fossil fuel industries, including Peabody Energy and Exxon, in efforts to stage public forums on 'energy issues.' (One of these has been the subject of an academic publication.)
At these events, the industries systematically lie to the public and/or attempt to mislead the public. WUSTL is not only complicit, but actively guilty. (Peabody was in fact declared guilty of lying to the public. More on Peabody and climate science denial here. If WUSTL were publicly regulated by the SEC, they might be under investigation by now too. Exxon may be indicted soon. All of that money is associated with fraud.) Former Peabody CEO Greg Boyce is finally off the board of trustees, but until Peabody and other coal company and other fossil fuel industry brands are not connected to any of our university efforts, we will not be clean either. The university should publicly disavow and disassociate itself with these companies. That would be leadership.
Indeed, just last year, WUSTL collaborated with Ameren (our coal-burning power utility) on a "Sustainability Conference" at St. Louis University. Hank Webber, one of WUSTL's vice chancellors, declared there that the university was a national leader in sustainability. Not only absurd, insulting. Nothing further from the truth.
Ameren's representatives at the conference declared their intentions to keep burning 70% coal by 2040. That's criminal intent to do harm to our children. WUSTL's representatives were happily hob-knobbing with them.
The WUSTL Medical School says nothing about morbidity and mortality tied to coal pollution, perhaps it is because their corporate boards are interconnected (Ameren & BJC that is) and their kids don't live in the high asthma areas. Try wind and solar, it's cleaner and cheaper.
This willful intent to mislead the public includes the collusion with the industry propaganda phrase 'clean coal' which actively confuses the public about the possibilities of burning coal without emissions, let alone cleanly. Neither is physically possible. There is nothing that can be discovered to make coal clean. Clean coal is a lie. The Chancellor is dishonest when he says it. Maybe he believes it, like Trump, but that does not make it true.
This would be wonderful, if true. However, the 'world-class research and education' is again tainted by the influence of the money and the dishonesty of the fossil fuel industry whose hands are involved in many of these efforts. Take the so-called flagship effort recently renamed InCEES. It has taken control over Environmental Studies and Sustainability efforts and is advised (and funded) almost entirely by fossil-fuel related interests and industries. We do not take you seriously Chancellor.
Chancellor, your own way of treating students, whose lives will be more impacted by climate change than yours, is insulting. You suggest that the university must do only what the corporate donors want it to do. This corrupts academic freedom and the entire mission of the American university. That's not leadership.You express disrespect for students, faculty and staff when you ask us to believe that you are sincere or that this is actually significant. There are good people with the right ideas involved in these efforts. But they are silenced and controlled because you have handed over academic freedom to the very industries that are at the heart of the problem.
This is not entirely true. You can examine for yourself the participants and activities. Most of them seek to find ways for big industries to do business in times of global environmental crisis. This includes agroindustry, in particular. Were it a consortium of renewable industries, we might be convinced by this. But it's not. Nothing against the international scholars, but they are not doing what we really need to be doing on climate.
The next one is the really disappointing one:
This, again, insults our intelligence. The Paris Accords were ok, but were themselves insufficient. We must go way beyond those reduction commitments and commit to renewables, now.
"Mitigating the potentially devastating effects?" You fail to acknowledge what we know and mislead the public about the gravity of the situation. There are already devastating effects, they are not potentials. Mitigation is not good enough.
Scientists know that to keep temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels we must leave the vast majority of fossil fuel reserves unburned. There is no technological fix that will allow us to keep burning fossil fuels. We must transition to 100% renewables as fast as possible. We have the technology for that.
You say the university is returning to 1990 levels? Who wants to go back to the 1990s? To say we will return to 1990 levels of C02 emissions by 2020 is to basically say "we are doing nothing." It would be funny if it were not so outrageous.
What could be done, you may ask?
There are many real, practical, and meaningful things we could do. What we are doing now is insufficient and unsatisfactory. WUSTL could lead the St Louis region. Instead it chooses to join a region that follows, and one that itself suffers from a lack of leadership, much of it due to the way that the political class has been corrupted, or at least co-opted by some of the worst corporate polluters in the nation, Ameren being at the top of the list, the coal companies right behind.
This indeed, is the only hope: the faculty and students who are not bought off by the corporate interests of the fossil fuel companies. And this is the true heart of the university. It is the learning and teaching community. The university is not you, the board, nor is it the donors and companies who have corrupted your ability to speak honestly. The students are the heart of the university as are those who learn with them, and support them, the faculty and staff. We are the heart of the university and most of us disagree with you on this.
You use the word 'leader' a lot, but we will not forget your legacy on this Chancellor Wrighton. Perhaps you just do what the board tells you to do, in which case, they are the guilty party. In whatever case, until we see real change, we will continue to challenge every untruth that you speak, for our children, and all of the world's children yet to come.
Updates: June 6, 2017. Links to additional information.
After Donald Trump declared the US withdrawal from the Paris Accords, the Chancellor of Washington University made a statement expressing "our disappointment". The statement was followed with a number of declarations about Washington University's commitments to acting on the climate. Superficially, the statement sounds good. But beneath the surface it reveals a weak, insufficient, and unsatisfactory response. In addition it contains dishonest assertions that reflect a failure to enact real leadership on climate. Some observations follow:
In addition, WUSTL continues to be involved with various fossil fuel industries, including Peabody Energy and Exxon, in efforts to stage public forums on 'energy issues.' (One of these has been the subject of an academic publication.)
At these events, the industries systematically lie to the public and/or attempt to mislead the public. WUSTL is not only complicit, but actively guilty. (Peabody was in fact declared guilty of lying to the public. More on Peabody and climate science denial here. If WUSTL were publicly regulated by the SEC, they might be under investigation by now too. Exxon may be indicted soon. All of that money is associated with fraud.) Former Peabody CEO Greg Boyce is finally off the board of trustees, but until Peabody and other coal company and other fossil fuel industry brands are not connected to any of our university efforts, we will not be clean either. The university should publicly disavow and disassociate itself with these companies. That would be leadership.
Indeed, just last year, WUSTL collaborated with Ameren (our coal-burning power utility) on a "Sustainability Conference" at St. Louis University. Hank Webber, one of WUSTL's vice chancellors, declared there that the university was a national leader in sustainability. Not only absurd, insulting. Nothing further from the truth.
Ameren's representatives at the conference declared their intentions to keep burning 70% coal by 2040. That's criminal intent to do harm to our children. WUSTL's representatives were happily hob-knobbing with them.
The WUSTL Medical School says nothing about morbidity and mortality tied to coal pollution, perhaps it is because their corporate boards are interconnected (Ameren & BJC that is) and their kids don't live in the high asthma areas. Try wind and solar, it's cleaner and cheaper.
This willful intent to mislead the public includes the collusion with the industry propaganda phrase 'clean coal' which actively confuses the public about the possibilities of burning coal without emissions, let alone cleanly. Neither is physically possible. There is nothing that can be discovered to make coal clean. Clean coal is a lie. The Chancellor is dishonest when he says it. Maybe he believes it, like Trump, but that does not make it true.
Chancellor, your own way of treating students, whose lives will be more impacted by climate change than yours, is insulting. You suggest that the university must do only what the corporate donors want it to do. This corrupts academic freedom and the entire mission of the American university. That's not leadership.You express disrespect for students, faculty and staff when you ask us to believe that you are sincere or that this is actually significant. There are good people with the right ideas involved in these efforts. But they are silenced and controlled because you have handed over academic freedom to the very industries that are at the heart of the problem.
This is not entirely true. You can examine for yourself the participants and activities. Most of them seek to find ways for big industries to do business in times of global environmental crisis. This includes agroindustry, in particular. Were it a consortium of renewable industries, we might be convinced by this. But it's not. Nothing against the international scholars, but they are not doing what we really need to be doing on climate.
The next one is the really disappointing one:
This, again, insults our intelligence. The Paris Accords were ok, but were themselves insufficient. We must go way beyond those reduction commitments and commit to renewables, now.
"Mitigating the potentially devastating effects?" You fail to acknowledge what we know and mislead the public about the gravity of the situation. There are already devastating effects, they are not potentials. Mitigation is not good enough.
Scientists know that to keep temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels we must leave the vast majority of fossil fuel reserves unburned. There is no technological fix that will allow us to keep burning fossil fuels. We must transition to 100% renewables as fast as possible. We have the technology for that.
You say the university is returning to 1990 levels? Who wants to go back to the 1990s? To say we will return to 1990 levels of C02 emissions by 2020 is to basically say "we are doing nothing." It would be funny if it were not so outrageous.
What could be done, you may ask?
- We should join cities, states, and countries who are declaring a goal of 100% renewables by 2030 or 2040. This is absolutely possible, with technology we have today.
- We should recognize the truth about climate change and divest from fossil fuels (and start unwinding all of the ways the industry has hijacked the university mission). Over 100 faculty and staff have joined students to demand divestment.
- We should give autonomy to Environmental Studies and Sustainability efforts, so they are not hijacked by the very interests that we must challenge: those of the fossil fuel companies.
- We should have enlightened and renewable-minded industry representatives on our board of trustees.
- We should stop giving the university's name to fossil fuel industry interests. We should stop using the phrase 'clean coal.'
- We should rewrite the University sustainability plan so that it actually means something, and commits to join with other institutions to push Ameren to shift away from coal. The current sustainability plan is a plan to maintain the status quo.
- We should push to generate our own electricity. Design buildings that can incorporate solar. 'Collegiate gothic' is a climate crime, notwithstanding all we hear about LEED.
- Rather than assist in gentrification efforts, we should help neighborhoods in the city set up decentralized solar and wind grids with storage, pursue training in clean tech jobs, push the city and state to support wind and solar.
- We should join other regional advocates – not the dirty industries – to push the Missouri legislature to enact law and policy to transition the grid away from fossil fuels.
- We should really be a leader on public health and acknowledge the links between fossil-fuel burning and public health, locally and globally. We do not take seriously what you say about public health, because you lie about fossil fuels.
- Our Medical Faculty and leadership should be honest about what their coal-burning power usage does to public health in the region. They should also speak out.
- And we could say more...
There are many real, practical, and meaningful things we could do. What we are doing now is insufficient and unsatisfactory. WUSTL could lead the St Louis region. Instead it chooses to join a region that follows, and one that itself suffers from a lack of leadership, much of it due to the way that the political class has been corrupted, or at least co-opted by some of the worst corporate polluters in the nation, Ameren being at the top of the list, the coal companies right behind.
This indeed, is the only hope: the faculty and students who are not bought off by the corporate interests of the fossil fuel companies. And this is the true heart of the university. It is the learning and teaching community. The university is not you, the board, nor is it the donors and companies who have corrupted your ability to speak honestly. The students are the heart of the university as are those who learn with them, and support them, the faculty and staff. We are the heart of the university and most of us disagree with you on this.
You use the word 'leader' a lot, but we will not forget your legacy on this Chancellor Wrighton. Perhaps you just do what the board tells you to do, in which case, they are the guilty party. In whatever case, until we see real change, we will continue to challenge every untruth that you speak, for our children, and all of the world's children yet to come.
June 5, 2017
Friday, June 2, 2017
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Monday, May 29, 2017
What we've been talking about for awhile now: the increasing criminalization of protest, the militarization of policing, and the corruption of democracy and rule of law through privatized (paramilitary) policing: Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies”
All of which offers more support for our thesis about the inherent (and increasing) criminality of the fossil fuel industry. More troubling, we see the blurred lines between public law enforcement and these private mercenary contractors. Troubling signs of the lengths that the fossil fuel industry and those sectors of law enforcement without the principle to question them will go to defend the interests of private fossil fuel capital.
Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies”
See also, Ruth Hopkins' earlier report on private security at NoDAPL: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/40681-footing-the-15-million-bill-for-the-dakota-access-pipeline-s-private-army
Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies”
See also, Ruth Hopkins' earlier report on private security at NoDAPL: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/40681-footing-the-15-million-bill-for-the-dakota-access-pipeline-s-private-army
Friday, May 26, 2017
Big Payoff After Blackstone Courted a Saudi Prince
Big Payoff After Blackstone Courted a Saudi Prince
Or, how oil dollars can be used to make more money off of the US public when we hand over infrastructure projects to Schwarzman's hedge fund and the Saudi princes....
Or, how oil dollars can be used to make more money off of the US public when we hand over infrastructure projects to Schwarzman's hedge fund and the Saudi princes....
Monday, May 22, 2017
Friday, May 19, 2017
The Grid: Ameren seeks special rates for a steel smelter, so that people can subsidize dirty coal as well as steel investors. Greitens, our governor, is in bed with the utility. They want to gut the Public Service Commission, which already is relatively weak. Schaaf, McCaskill respond to Governor's call for special session
Schaaf, McCaskill respond to Governor's call for special session
And more on this:
http://www.missourinet.com/2017/05/18/poplar-bluff-state-senator-outlines-his-position-on-norandasteel-issue/
And more on this:
http://www.missourinet.com/2017/05/18/poplar-bluff-state-senator-outlines-his-position-on-norandasteel-issue/
Monday, May 15, 2017
Dakota Access Pipeline security arrested. - Native Daily Network
The legacy of wars for oil in the MiddleEast: Militarized men w PTSD now charged with securing oil back home #NoDAPL https://t.co/j7yzrOsfSt— Energy Politics (@energy_politics) May 15, 2017
Dakota Access Pipeline security arrested. - Native Daily Network
Friday, May 12, 2017
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Monday, May 8, 2017
Exam review: How does #hegemony work? #coercion and #consent: Oklahoma Governor Signs Anti-Protest Law Imposing Huge Fines on “Conspirator” Organizations
Oklahoma Governor Signs Anti-Protest Law Imposing Huge Fines on “Conspirator” Organizations
By Alleen Brown, The Intercept... (click image for full story)
A STATUTE AIMED at suppressing protests against oil and gas pipelines has been signed into law in Oklahoma, as a related bill advances through the state legislature. The two bills are part of a nationwide trend in anti-protest laws meant to significantly increase legal penalties for civil disobedience.
By Alleen Brown, The Intercept... (click image for full story)
A STATUTE AIMED at suppressing protests against oil and gas pipelines has been signed into law in Oklahoma, as a related bill advances through the state legislature. The two bills are part of a nationwide trend in anti-protest laws meant to significantly increase legal penalties for civil disobedience.
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| Photo: Mike McCleary/The Bismarck Tribune via AP (via The Intercept) |
Friday, May 5, 2017
Exam review, The #Grid: As utilities embrace DERs, pilot projects emerge as key element of compromise
As utilities embrace DERs, pilot projects emerge as key element of compromise
As in Bakke's book, see here a couple of key points:
1) Utilities are generally reticent to change ("first to be second")
2) Issues of incoporating new technologies slowly
3) Regional variation (NE and Cali most advanced, the rest laggards)
4) Political and policy challenges
5) Importance of regional and state level grassroots action and pressure
As in Bakke's book, see here a couple of key points:
1) Utilities are generally reticent to change ("first to be second")
2) Issues of incoporating new technologies slowly
3) Regional variation (NE and Cali most advanced, the rest laggards)
4) Political and policy challenges
5) Importance of regional and state level grassroots action and pressure
The Paris Agreements aren't enough, but they are something, and Trump is dead wrong: via Timmons Roberts: From Harrisburg come two profound misconceptions about the Paris Agreement | Brookings Institution
Timmons Roberts
Highlights:
“The United States pays billions of dollars while China, Russia, and India have contributed and will contribute nothing.”
This statement is misguided and misleading. India and China are industrializing countries. China’s emissions have leveled off over the past three years, 13 years ahead of the deadline they agreed as part of their Paris pledge and with per capita emissions one-third that of the U.S. India’s are still rising, but from a per capita level of emissions one-tenth of the U.S. and with per capita incomes only 3 percent of the U.S. Both countries have invested massively in expanding renewable energy with generation capacity that now surpasses the U.S. by a large margin. Meanwhile, the U.S. remains by far the country most responsible for today’s carbon pollution....
Trump’s claim appears to draw from a Heritage Foundation report, which looks narrowly at the costs of climate action, without factoring in the enormous cost of doing nothing. This oversight is crucial: If we don’t act on climate change quickly, rising seas will cost hundreds of billions to hold back from damaging coastal cities. Fires, droughts, and more intense hurricanes will continue to drive up disaster relief costs. The 2006 Stern Review back pioneered the economics of trying to understand those costs, and they are huge. Sir Nicholas Stern and his co-authors found that not acting to prevent climate change was far more expensive than acting on climate change, and the point has been confirmed repeatedly since then.
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