Canadian Centre for Policy Studies: Eight Arguments against a Carbon TaxIn this Canadian Centre for Policy Studies report (released Sept. 2008), David Murrell reviews a list of reasons why he believes a proposed carbon tax would be damaging to the Canadian economy.
After describing the basics of the proposed carbon tax, Murrell provides eight reasons he believes the carbon tax will not achieve its stated goals:
Last September we reported in the Coalblog about former Vice President Al Gore's calls for young people to engage in civil disobedience as a means of stopping the construction of new coal plants.
We are now treating the Earth's atmosphere as an open sewer ... I can't understand why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers ... and preventing them from constructing coal-fired power plants.
In that post we also noted how NASA climate scientist James Hansen continued in his moves further into a more extreme activist form of "science" by joining Gore in his calls for direct action.
It seems to me that young people, especially, should be doing whatever is necessary to block construction of dirty (no CCS) coal-fired power plants.
At the September 24th meeting for the Clinton Global Initiative, the former Vice President upped the ante by once again calling for civil disobediance and direct action against new coal-fueled plants.
This Popular Mechanics article describes the Chrysler company's plans to have at least three models of EV (electric vehicle) in production and for sale by 2010.
In a September 10, 08 ruling a British jury handed down a ruling that essentially encourages vandalism of the UKs coal-fueled power plants.
According to this Wonk Room (Think Progress) blog posting, Senator and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, stated -- at a September 17, 2008 campaign stop -- that the Obama campaign was "not supporting clean coal."
That comment came when Biden answered a question from an environmental activist in the crowd about energy options for the country. In response, he clearly stated his strong support of renewable energy technologies like solar and wind and then moved on to attack coal as "dirty" and claimed it was "causing people to die." He made it abundantly clear that he was "not supporting clean coal."
Jason Hayes, ACC Communications Director has been invited by the editors of a new news and social content website -- www.opposingviews.com -- to join the discussion on important energy issues we are facing today. He was asked to debate two questions, 1) Should the US Build More Coal-Fired Power Plants? and 2) Is Nuclear Power America's Best Energy Alternative?
Several media outlets, along with Senate, and the FutureGen Alliance websites were praising the July 8th and July 11th votes by the The Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee and Senate Appropriations Committee respectively. In both votes, the Senate chose to protect $134 million in federal funding for the FutureGen plant at Matoon, Il.
In two separate FutureGen Alliance news releases, CEO Michael Mudd applauded the decision as helping to move the world's first near-zero emissions coal plant closer to reality.
NCC - Urgency of Sustainable CoalFrom the Introduction to the National Coal Council's latest report, the "Urgency of Sustainable Coal".
On October 12, 2007, the Secretary requested the National Coal Council conduct an additional study to “focus on several technological options to increase coal use consistent with the environmental goals of the country.” Pursuant to this request, the NCC submits the current report, The Urgency of Sustainable Coal. Significant energy-related events have occurred in the past several years that have far reaching implications for the United States and for the central role coal will play in the world’s future. The present 2008 report follows the Secretary’s directive and refines and extends the findings and recommendations in the earlier reports, particularly in regard: 1) Carbon management technologies; 2) Legal and regulatory issues; 3) Hybrid electric vehicles; 4) In-situ coal gasification and; 5) Converting coal to liquid fuel (CTL) and substitute natural gas (SNG).
A June 18th, 08 Powerspan/Basin Electric Power Cooperative (BEPC) news release describes their efforts to advance an industry-leading carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project in North Dakota.
Text from the Rand Corporation website,
Rand Impacts on U.S. Energy Expenditures & GHG Emissions of Increasing Renewable Energy Use
The penetration of renewable energy into the marketplace has been small, held back principally by their higher cost relative to fossil energy. RAND assessed the potential impacts on U.S. consumer energy expenditures and national CO2 emissions of producing 25 percent of U.S. electric power and motor-vehicle transportation fuels from renewable resources by the year 2025. The baseline for the comparisons was expenditures and CO2 emissions in 2025 as drawn from the reference-case tables of the Energy Information Administration's 2006 Annual Energy Outlook. The report shows that increasing renewables use can reduce CO2 emissions and enhance energy security by lowering the cost of imported petroleum. However, a large, inexpensive, easily converted biomass supply is necessary for significantly increased renewable-energy use to have a relatively low impact on consumer energy expenditures. Rapid progress also is needed in the technologies converting biomass feedstock into transportation fuels, and producing power at marginal wind sites. Without progress in these areas, the renewable-energy requirement could substantially increase consumer energy expenditures. Technical advances in provision of economically and environmentally sound biomass energy and wind power generation at lower-quality sites should be top priorities for increasing affordable supplies of renewable energy. The report replaces an earlier version withdrawn in 2006 to correct errors in modeling discovered by RAND post-publication.
Purchase the report or download a pdf version on the RAND website.
