Green Options

Advocates for better, green transportation achieved great success this year with a transportation bill in the House of Representatives that could change the United States forever. Not only advocates have brought this to where it is, though. The general public, the US Chamber of Commerce, AAA, the AFL-CIO, Associated General Contractors of America, and others have brought it to where it is today. This progressive bill would reverse auto-centric federal transportation policies that have led the US into various environmental, social and economic crises for the past several decades.

Unfortunately, delay due to lawmakers’ inability to come to a consensus and the Obama administration’s reluctancy to increase gas prices at this time (which are much lower, in real terms, than they were 54 years ago) may postpone the bill for another 18 months. However, there is opportunity to take action!

The climate bill that was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month is getting wide support and attention. However, activist groups who have taken a closer look at the bill are wondering if it’s a climate bill addressing global climate change or a climate bill addressing the concerns of the coal and oil industry. Public Citizen, a national, non-profit, public interest organization, states that the bill “will prove a boon to the coal and oil industries, will fail to protect consumers and may very well not even curb global warming.”

With some of the world’s most spectacular landscapes, Utah is a haven for the seeker of peace and a respite from the industrialization of the modern world. But those lands have long been in the cross hairs of development’s long sight. With the possibility of an oil well beneath the Fisher Towers, a mine in Moab’s Goldbar Canyon or an off-road vehicle trail paralleling the Colorado River in Westwater Canyon, lovers of the land have fought for decades to preserve the solitude of the desert.

Senior US Representatives Henry Waxman (D-Calif) and Ed Markey (D-Mass) today released draft cap-and-trade legislation that would reshape US energy and climate policy through drastic cuts in emissions in the next 20 years and significant increases in renewables by 2025.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES), intended to “create jobs, help end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, and combat global warming” according to the official announcement of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, centers around four titles:

• A clean energy title that promotes renewable sources of energy, carbon capture and sequestration technologies, low-carbon fuels, clean electric vehicles, and the smart grid and electricity transmission;
• An energy efficiency title that increases energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy, including buildings, appliances, transportation, and industry;
• A global warming title that places limits on emissions of heat-trapping pollutants; and
• A transitioning title that protects U.S. consumers and industry and promotes green jobs during the transition to a clean energy economy.

The bill seeks emissions reductions greater than those proposed by the president: calling for a 20 percent cut in emissions from 2005 by 2020 instead of the 14 percent included in Obama’s Feburary budget. It also calls for utilities to produce one-quarter of US electricity from renewables sources by 2025, and includes a federal low carbon fuel standard modeled on California legislation.

Yesterday the House of Representatives approved the $819 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act which will give roughly 1 out of every 8 dollars directly to various green projects.

Given the hue and cry that has been unleashed in America with regard to the bailout, there is finally good news for the renewable energy industry. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, passed by the House of Representatives and signed into law by President George Bush immediately afterwards, extends investment and production tax credits for the wind and solar industries. The extensions will be partly paid for by a change in the tax code for the oil and gas [...]

It’s official, according to the New York Times, the bailout proposition has been rejected by the House of Representatives. The Dow Jones just plunged more than 400 points and America is standing up for itself as the bastion of free market economics!

According to the New York Times, “supporters of the bailout proposal had argued that it was necessary to avoid a collapse of the economic system, a calamity that would drag down not just Wall Street investment houses but possibly [...]

Following a meeting earlier this week with House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, the ‘big three’ US automakers are optimistic about their prospects of receiving a multi-billion dollar loan.

Before last Friday’s Republican-led sit-in morphed into a full blown press conference, there was no ‘real’ media to speak of. But ‘New Media’ is different. It can slip in, un-noticed, via mobile phone or Blackberry and slip out via 180 character-or-less Twitter updates or YouTube videos.

Bill picks up strong bipartisan support

[UPDATE: The Senate version of the Conservation Act passed overwhelmingly today, by a vote of 91-4]. The House of Representatives has voted to pass H.R. 2016, the National Landscape Conservation Act, by a tally of 278-140. The bill will give legal recognition to the National Landscape Conservation System, a Clinton-era program that oversees some 27 million acres of federal land mainly in 11 Western states and Alaska. Joining the 238 Democrats in support of the legislation were 50 Republican members of the House [follow this link to see how your Representative voted].

For everyone sick of paying higher oil prices while watching Big Oil reap in the profits, Thursdays vote by the House of Representative to roll back subsidies and tax breaks for the industry comes as a sweet reprieve.