Who would have predicted the world of science fiction films would prove so prophetic? Our planet is being over-run by machines and we need people like Arnold Schwarzenegger to save us

In the world of the film The Matrix, robots, machines and other perennially nasty automatons have taken over the world – another normal day in Hollywood. However, it’s a pleasant surprise to find out that the film’s creators have gone so far as to think about the energy crisis that must ensue from such a power hungry group of captors. In order to sustain themselves, the machines grow humans in cozy little pods and use the energy our bodies generate to power their world.

Ingenious really, aside from the fact that our bodies are way more efficient than any machine yet invented – so the energy output would hardly allow them to make a cup of tea (or warm oil), let alone enable them to achieve their (presumably unconscious) goal of world domination. We mere mortals only need a meal or two a day to power something capable of building the pyramids, reconstituting itself, and designing the combustion engine. Of course, we do all this with a handy little bit of consciousness and, sometimes, ethics along the way.

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“We all remember this time last year,” said Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday. “We were in the midst of an energy crisis, paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline, and Americans were seeing their utility bills skyrocketing.” Since then, he went on to say, the energy problems haven’t disappeared and no changes in policy have been made. He warned that, though the prices have gone down, if we do not make any changes, we will fall into the same hole in which we found ourselves last summer.

His solution? Nuclear. Stating that “the cornerstone of any real solution to the American energy problem needs to involve offshore resources and nuclear power…which generates electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions and has a minimal impact on the environment.”  The first step to escaping America’s current energy crisis according to Wicker is to build more nuclear power plants.

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On March 2, Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry are asking for large civil disobedience at the Capitol Power Plant in Washington D.C. Why, cuz Clean Coal sucks!

Over 2,000 people are expected to risk arrest. And the protest comes on the heels of the upcoming grassroots action — Powershift 2009 — which will bring 10,000 young people to the capitol for two days of training and lobbying.

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The partnership between NREL and Petrobras helps solidify an agreement made between the United States and Brazil on March 9, 2007; it was signed by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Brazil Foreign Minister Celso Amorim.

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Five leading companies joined Ceres today to announce a business coalition demanding stronger U.S. climate and energy legislation as early as 2009. The team includes Nike, Starbucks, Levi Strauss, Sun Microsystems, Timberland And Ceres and is going by the moniker BICEP - I am thinking Nike had something to do with that one.

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FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp, broke ground on its first - and largest - international solar energy facility on Monday. The facility near the Cologne, Germany airport will house over 16,000 square meters of solar panels.

The new solar panel installation is slated for completion by 2010; a 1.4-megawatt (MW) solar power system that will generate 1.3 GWhs of electricity/year. That is equivalent to the annual consumption of 370 homes!

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Thousands of Democratic delegates and members of the press may have had one of those “ah-ha” moments at the Pepsi Center in Denver on Tuesday night when former mayor, Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Energy during the Clinton administration, Federico Peña took to the podium at the Democratic National Convention.

For the vast majority of attendees to the event, plane travel was the preferred method of travel. And of those who flew into Denver, virtually all of them had to drive (or were driven) down Peña Boulevard, which connects Denver International Airport to Interstate 70. As mayor of Denver, Peña led the effort to build the airport - and hence led to the ah-ha moment for the visitors many years later.

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Okay, you say he’s not the Vice President. I say, yet. It’s good news to me. Much ado has been made in the direction of Sen. Obama’s experience. And while I don’t think the Senator quite has the inner propeller beanie that his opponents have painted him with, I myself question his ability. But Biden comes with mad experience. As a sixth term Senator - that’s 34 in people years - he can assuage a lot of those concerns. Also as Chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, that’s just one more thorn he pulls from the Obama camp’s side.

Weighing in with a lifetime score of 84-percent from the The League of Conservation Voters, he shows real environmental cred. Not surprising, during his 2008 presidential run, he had this to say at a rally in South Carolina:

“If I could wave a wand, and the Lord said I could solve one problem, I would solve the energy crisis. That’s the single most consequential problem we can solve. It’s what you have to do to get greenhouse gases under control.”

Along with energy security, he’s been a strong voice on how our own accountability factors into the climate crisis. Instead of fairytale solutions, he calls upon us to clean up our own mess:

“I personally believe that the single most important step we can take to resume a leadership role in international climate-change efforts would be to make real progress toward a domestic emissions-reduction regime. For too long we have abdicated the responsibility to reduce our own emissions, the largest single source of the problem we face today. We have the world’s largest economy, with the highest per-capita emissions. Rather than leading by example, we have retreated from international negotiations.” He said before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

And before you whip out your Al Gore-shapped measuring stick, take a longer look at his scorecard:

• Cosponsor of the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, penned both by Sen. Boxer and Sen. Sanders.
• Calls for raising the fuel-economy standard to 40 mpg by 2017.
• Opposes subsidizing technology and practices that would only worsen global warming.
• Introduced a bill to promote the use of CFLs, unlike that other Senator.
• Active supporter of the U.S. participating in the U.N. climate negotiations.

Is he the absolute greenist candidate Obama could have picked - maybe, maybe not. But I bet he can spell potato(e).

Related Posts:

Potential McCain Running Mate Florida Governor Charlie Crist Has Green Cred
Obama and Ethanol: Is it Just About Winning Votes?
The 5 Best Presidential Candidates to Address Climate Change

Image source: Joe Biden’s Senate website

House Resolution 362:

(3)demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program;

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]]> http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/08/13/a-us-blockade-of-iran-would-cause-an-energy-crisis/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/07/28/are-biofuels-another-inconvenient-truth/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/07/28/are-biofuels-another-inconvenient-truth/#comments Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:33:37 +0000 Masimba Biriwasha http://ecoworldly.com/2008/07/28/are-biofuels-another-inconvenient-truth/ Biofuels have been widely touted as a solution to redressing the world’s overdependence on oil and a significant part to resolving the climatic crisis  particularly in the developed world. But according to new report by Oxfam, the fascination with biofuels may not be a solution to either the climatic or oil crisis and is instead fueling a third crisis: food.

According to the report, interest in biofuels has intoxicated rich country governments to the extent that they are foregoing difficult but urgent decisions about how to reduce consumption of oil.

Sadly, the cumulative effect of the over-dependence on biofuels as a solution to the energy crisis is being felt in developing countries.

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/07/28/are-biofuels-another-inconvenient-truth/feed/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/06/16/peak-oil-in-europe-a-preview/ http://ecoworldly.com/2008/06/16/peak-oil-in-europe-a-preview/#comments Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:00:25 +0000 Mark Seall http://ecoworldly.com/2008/06/16/peak-oil-in-europe-a-preview/ As the price of oil continues to climb, we are beginning to get a glimpse of what the post peak-oil world may  look like, and it’s not entirely pretty.

Protests in Europe have been widespread, as Europeans who already pay twice that of our US cousins for fuel begin to feel the financial consequences of consistent price increases.

Truck drivers in Spain and France have blockaded major roadways and paralysed traffic on major city arteries. Meanwhile in the UK, similar protests by truck drivers - who claim they are rapidly being forced out of business by high fuel prices - have taken place across the country.

Adding to the chaos, Shell tanker drivers chose the same weekend to strike over pay disputes, causing many petrol (gas) stations to run out of fuel. Government calls to avoid panic buying have predictably caused a peak-oil dress rehearsal, with long queues forming on many petrol station forecourts.

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]]> http://ecoworldly.com/2008/06/16/peak-oil-in-europe-a-preview/feed/ http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/06/12/mccains-plan-to-combat-climate-change/ http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/06/12/mccains-plan-to-combat-climate-change/#comments Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:01:41 +0000 Sarah Lozanova http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/06/12/mccains-plan-to-combat-climate-change/ Editor’s Note: This is a follow up post to Obama’s Plan to Reduce Foreign Oil Dependence.

Regardless of who is elected next November, both candidates agree that climate change is a fact and not a theory. “I know that climate change is real,” said John McCain. “We can have a debate about how serious it is, but the debate about climate change is over.”

McCain and Obama however vary widely in their response to this issue, leaving the American people with a choice of approaches when choosing the next president. McCain’s primary weapons in this battle includes implementing a cap and trade system for emissions and utilizing greater amounts of nuclear power.

Cap and Trade

“Cap and trade is being implemented in Europe and they have stumbled and they’ve had problems but it is still the right thing to do,” said John McCain. “It is what we did in relation to acid rain.”

One of the reasons McCain supports this approach is because it encourages the market to respond with the lowest cost approach. He believes the market will correct itself with the use of cleaner technologies without the need for intervention, such as a tax credit or major investment from the government.

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]]> http://redgreenandblue.org/2008/06/12/mccains-plan-to-combat-climate-change/feed/ http://ecolocalizer.com/2008/05/19/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-peak-oil/ http://ecolocalizer.com/2008/05/19/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-peak-oil/#comments Mon, 19 May 2008 16:11:13 +0000 Shirley Siluk Gregory http://ecolocalizer.com/2008/05/19/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-peak-oil/ I’ve recently witnessed a few scenes of life after peak oil, and it isn’t necessarily the Apocalypse.

In Juneau, Alaska, for example, people are proving it’s possible to change our energy-hogging ways literally overnight and still keep a community up and running. The inspiration in their case: an avalanche that severed the hydroelectric power lines serving the remote Alaska capital, cutting off about 80 percent of the city’s available electricity.

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