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NewEnergyNews

Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

WALL STREET JOURNAL'S Environmental Capital selected NewEnergyNews as one of the "Blogs We Are Reading" in March, April and May of 2007 and quoted NewEnergyNews on June 5, 2007

MOTHER EARTH NEWS' Energy Matters selected NewEnergyNews for its "What We're Reading" list in September 2008

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Anne B. Butterfield of DAILY CAMERA, a biweekly contributor to NewEnergyNews

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  • The big ka-ching in our health care wallet
  • Anne B. Butterfield
  • June 19, 2009 (NewEnergyNews)

    While Americans wonder with noisy drama what the Obama Administration will do to our current health care system, wouldn’t it be great if we could materially reduce the cost of health care in our country by tackling climate change?

    Virtually all of the power for our transportation and electric utilities comes from petroleum, coal, and natural gas, the combustion of which emits the toxins that are heavily involved in costly degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, asthma, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), to name a few. Rural or urban, we are sitting in a faint bath of toxic chemicals that can exacerbate our symptoms or hasten acute suffering and death, and when that happens it is a big ka-ching in our health care wallet.

    The emissions and other by products of fossil fuel use are so ubiquitous, and often well hidden, that they slip from our awareness. Their presence and health effects have become “just the way life is.” Here are a few of our fossil fuel chemical friends:

    Nitrogen oxides (NOx) are precursors to smog, that brown smear of ozone and particulate matter that collects over cities under high air pressure conditions. Smog alerts are accompanied by higher than average hospital admissions and deaths.

    Particulate matter excerbates asthma, COPD, bronchitis, cardiac events as well as congestive heart failure. When smog mingles with very small particles (known as PM 2.5) the risk of mortality for men over 65 rises to 24 percent above average; for women of this age the death rate is 80 percent above average.

    Three hundred counties in the US are designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as clean air non-attainment areas, being perpetually outside of the recommended air quality standards. Pass the nebulizer!

    Coal fired power plants emit about a third of all human-caused release of mercury, a neurotoxin so widely spread that women and children are advised to limit their eating of fish. In Colorado one-fifth of waterways have mercury-based fishing advisories.

    Another health cost of using coal as heavily as we do is the ash waste. All over our country, ash waste is dumped in unlined pits in or near the water table. A 2007 report of the EPA found that poorly lined waste sites (60 percent of all) pose a cancer risk through ground water that is 900 times what is acceptable.

    Environmental groups have fought for national standards for the handling of coal ash waste, to keep state officials from competing in a “race to the bottom” for corporate clients’ sake. But rather than put coal waste under the EPA’s regulation, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security has just announced that the locations of 44 coal ash dumps cannot be disclosed; their toxicity and precarious engineering make them attractive terrorist targets. Meanwhile two senators are seeking support to make sure that coal ash waste is treated less rigorously than household trash.

    Ontario, Canada released a report finding that each kilowatt hour of coal-fired power creates 12.7 cents of health and environmental effects. The next time you get your electric bill, picture two-thirds of your kilowatt hours each causing 12 cents of medical and other costs. Utilities like to talk about delivering low-cost energy, but that sector’s emissions of known toxins, at 722 million pounds each year, dwarfs all other industrial competitors. A large part of our health care costs belong on our utility bill and other energy related costs.

    California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put it best: “We pay for the fuel we burn but not for the pollution we emit. That pollution causes serious damage to our world, and in the long run, we all pay for it...Imagine if we decided to let everyone dump their garbage on their neighbors' lawns instead of being forced to pay for trash pickup. Sure, it would be cheaper, but it would be disastrous to public health.”

    The climate bill coming through Congress is guaranteed to be inadequate, so our path to the post-fossil fuel era will be long. We should keep up the support for local communities, like Coal River Valley in West Virginia, which is fighting to stop mountain top removal mining, and our own effort in Boulder to rapidly decarbonize our electric supply.

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    Anne's previous NewEnergyNews columns:

  • The big ka-ching in our health care wallet (June 19, 2009)
  • It takes a Governor (May 24, 2009)
  • Want a job? Think Wind. (May 10, 2009)
  • Just Say No to Xcess Energy (April 28, 2009)
  • NREL’s history of fickle funding (April 12, 2009)
  • Wagons firmly circled: Governance at REA’s and Tri-State (March 26, 2009)
  • A new migratory pattern: Colorado youth go to Washington (March 12, 2009)
  • Even coal is in for a revolution (February 22, 2009)
  • High Flyers and the Commons (February 11, 2009)
  • Come on Baby, Sit by Me (January 25, 2009)
  • A return on investment (January 3, 2009)
  • Mr. Secretary, we're watching you (December 28, 2008)
  • Canary in the Coal Mine (December 13, 2008)
  • Crash test dummies (November 16, 2008)
  • Needless markup (November 2, 2008)
  • The flap about 58 (October 19, 2008)
  • Hip towns and a clever measure (October 7, 2008)
  • Are we afraid of change? Still? (September 21, 2008)
  • Cheney in a chignon (September 7, 2008)
  • Don't tick off the blonde (August 10, 2008)
  • Buying us time on global warming (July 27, 2008)
  • Hint from Heloise - It's the pH, Stupid! (July 13, 2008)
  • Nukes: the position ridiculous and the expense damnable (June 29, 2008)

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    NOTEWORTHY IN THE MEDIA:

  • Young, Green Entrepreneurs Flock to Carbon Market, from NPR's Morning Edition: "...climate change and a billion-dollar carbon market that trades in carbon credits — as if they were pork bellies — have created a new career niche."

  • Ethical Markets TV: A remarkable TV series showcasing people who “…illustrate the triple bottom line, respecting people and the environment while earning a profit…” Part of Ethical Markets: “Your gateway to cleaner, greener 21st century economies.”

  • Energy Security and Global Warming, from Warren Olney's TO THE POINT at KCRW in Santa Monica: "US energy demands are rising as the price of oil goes through the roof...Canadian tar sands and domestic coal would provide energy security, but at the risk of increased global warming. Can renewables be developed in time?"

  • Designer Biofuels, from KQED Radio in San Francisco: "...making a gasoline alternative to run our cars has great promise but there are huge problems...The next answer [may come]...from a UC Berkeley lab, a Silicon Valley start up or...the jungles of Costa Rica."

  • HELEN’S WAR: Portrait of a Dissident, showing periodically on the Sundance Channel (click title for listings), profiles the medical doctor turned anti-nuclear activist as she continues her nearly 4-decade-old campaign to educate the public on the serious drawbacks to the development of nuclear energy.

  • A CRUDE AWAKENING: The Oil Crash, showing periodically on the Sundance Channel (click title for listings), studies the implications of world dependence on oil and declining availability of it.

  • Lee Iococa predicts the Plug-In Hybrid will be the next big thing in cars NPR’s Morning Edition: Thursday, April 26, 2007.

  • Robert Redford Presents "the GREEN": A weekly block of New Energy and Environmentally-Friendly programming. Check local listings.

  • John Rabe's OFFRAMP, Saturdays at noon (and podcasts) via NPR-affiliate KPCC-FM. A radio magazine show about Los Angeles, sometimes covering energy issues but frequently featuring John telling anybody he can about his vegetable oil-burning, converted Mercedes.

  • NOW: PBS's David Brancaccio talks with Laurie David, a producer of the Oscar-nominated documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" and a major environmental activist.
    • Stream it at your convenience here.

  • Living with Ed, an HGTV tons-of-fun reality/comedy show about the trials, tribulations, hilarity and rewards in the marriage of environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr., and his appearance-oriented actress-wife Rachelle Carson. Click here for listings

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  • My Novels: OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades & OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction
  • Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman
  • OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.
  • As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.
  • In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.
  • As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.
  • Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.
  • Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.
  • Oil history journal articles by Dr. Trabish: Oil Stories and Histories
  • Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman
  • "...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)
  • OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.
  • The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.
  • She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.
  • In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.
  • There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.
  • In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.
  • Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."
  • Oil history journal articles by Dr. Trabish: Oil Stories and Histories

    • About Me

    Name: Herman K. Trabish
    Location: La Crescenta, CA

    *Doctor with my hands *Author of the "OIL IN THEIR BLOOD" series with my head *Student of New Energy with my heart

    View my complete profile

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    CONTACT: herman@newenergynews.net

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      A tip of the NewEnergyNews cap to Phillip Garcia for crucial assistance in the design implementation of this site. Thanks, Phillip.

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    Pay a visit to the HARRY BOYKOFF page at Basketball Reference, sponsored by NewEnergyNews and Oil In Their Blood.

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    • Sunday, June 29, 2008

    AGROFUELS BAD NEWS: OXFAM

    There is an ongoing debate about exactly how much the AGROfuels industries are impacting world food prices and aggravating world hunger. The AGROfuels industry associations point to inflated oil prices and the falling dollar as the main culprits.

    A recent authoritative report from New Energy Finance     (see BIOFUELS AND FOOD, BY THE NUMBERS) says AGROfuels are not the main part of the problem.

    Another Inconvenient Truth; How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating climate change, a new report from OxFam UK, draws a different conclusion.

    Economists are hard to wrestle with because when one hand is pinned, there’s the other hand. (As in "But on the other hand...") Still, Oxfam is on the front lines in the fight against world hunger. Its case deserves a hearing:

    “The current biofuel policies of rich countries are neither a solution to the climate crisis nor the oil crisis, and instead are contributing to a third: the food crisis. In poor countries, biofuels may offer some genuine development opportunities, but the potential economic, social, and environmental costs are severe, and decision makers should proceed with caution.”

    Oxfam’s report calls on “rich” countries to (1) freeze implementation of AGROfuels mandates and revise their targets; (2) dismantle subsidies and tax exemptions and stop import tariffs; and (3) deal with climate change and fuel security with measures that work like vehicle efficiency improvements.

    Recognizing the importance to developing countries' economies of bioenergy programs, Oxfam calls on them to (1) choose bioenergy projects that are clean; (2) consider the long term costs as well as the short term benefits of bioenergy programs; (3) prioritize food supplies and food crops and (4) protect the rights and needs of “smallholders” in big development.

    Oxfam: “The West’s biofuels boom is contributing to deeper global poverty and accelerated climate change, while allowing governments to avoid difficult but urgent decisions about how to reduce spiralling demand for energy in transport.”

    From the Oxfam report. (click to enlarge)

    Biofuels pushing 30 million into poverty
    Pete Harrison (w/Christopher Johnson), June 25, 2008 (Reuters)

    WHO
    Oxfam UK

    WHAT
    Oxfam’s Another Inconvenient Truth; How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating climate change shows how AGROfuel industries in the developing world and AGROfuels subsidies in the industrial world conspire to aggravate a food crisis.

    From the Oxfam report. (click to enlarge)

    WHEN
    - The World Bank estimates the price of food has gone up 83% in the last 3 years.
    - Although most authorities believe greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions must peak and being falling by around 2020, it will take 167 years for land use from producing U.S. corn ethanol to balance the cost of its emissions.
    - Oxfam estimates land use changes from palm oil-based fuels will by 2020 have caused 46 to 68 times the GhGs they will have saved by their use.
    - The EU’s “10% biofuels by 2020” target can be expected $90 billion while providing fuel security worth only $12 billion.

    WHERE
    - The report looks carefully at soy biodiesel in the Brazilian Amazon region and the Brazilian Cerrado, sugarcane ethanol in the Brazilian Cerrado, palm oil biodiesel in the Indonesian lowland tropical rainforest and the Indonesian peatland tropical rainforest and corn ethanol in the U.S. central grasslands.
    - There is a detailed case study of a village in Tanzania taking up the growing of Jatropha.
    - The report looks at U.S., UK and EU policies affecting AGROfuel use including targets, subsidies and tariffs.
    - It looks at world food prices and world hunger.

    WHY
    - The world’s poor spend 50% to 80% of their income on food. The implications of an 83% increase in cost over 3 years are almost too grim to ponder. 30% of the price increase is directly attributable to AGROfuels.
    - Oxfam estimates the livelihoods of 290 million people are threatened. 100 million have already fallen into poverty.
    - Oxfam says the rationales for AGROfuels development are 2 reduce greenhouse gas emissions and produce an economically competitive alternative liquid fuel source but AGROfuels do neither.
    - It cites studies indicating they do little to cut emissions in the near term and may worsen global climate change beyond their ability to make it better.
    - It cites studies to show there really isn’t enough agricultural production to significantly reduce petroleum dependence and it cites studies to show the cost of producing AGROfuels far outstrips the value of the energy they provide.

    From the Oxfam report. (click to enlarge)

    QUOTES
    - Rob Bailey, biofuel policy advise/report author:"Rich countries' demands for more biofuels in their transport fuels are causing spiralling production and food inflation…Grain reserves are now at an all-time low."
    - Report: "Biofuels are taking over agricultural land and forcing farming to expand into lands that are important carbon sinks, like forests and wetlands," the report said. "This triggers the release of carbon from soil and vegetation that will take decades to repay."
    - Report: “So will second-generation biofuels have fewer adverse impacts on poverty and the environment? Although yields are likely to be higher, many second-generation technologies may still pose similar problems because they will depend on large-scale monocultures that threaten biodiversity, food production, or land rights. Just because a second-generation biofuel does not use food as a feedstock, it does not necessarily mean that it does not threaten food security: it may still compete with food for land, water, and other agricultural inputs.”

    posted by Herman K. Trabish @ 6:19 AM

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