Archive for the 'Environment' Category

China, ‘Clean Coal’ and New Technologies

by @ Thursday, January 7th, 2010. Filed under China, Environment

World's Top Polluter

Emerges as Green

Technology Leader

 

By SHAI OSTER

BEIJING -- Dec. 15, 2009 - Xu Shisen put down the phone and smiled. That was Canada calling, explained the chief engineer at a coal-fired power plant set among knockoff antique and art shops in a Beijing suburb. A Canadian company is interested in Mr. Xu's advances in bringing down the cost of stripping out greenhouse-gas emissions from burning coal.

Engineers led by Mr. Xu are working to unlock one of climate change's thorniest problems: how to burn coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere. China's Push for Clean Coal

Mr. Xu is part of a broader effort by China to introduce green technology to the world's fastest-growing industrial economy -- a mission so ambitious it could eventually reshape the business, just as China has done for everything from construction cranes to computers.

China looms large over the global climate summit in Copenhagen, where Chinese officials are pressing the U.S. and other rich nations to accept new curbs on their emissions and to continue to subsidize poor nations' efforts to adopt clean-energy technology. China is the world's biggest source of carbon emissions. Less understood is the way China is now becoming a source of some of the solutions.

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Worker Co-ops: Green and Just Jobs You Can Own

by @ Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Environment

 

A South Bronx Worker Co-op

Turns Trash into Treasure

 

By James Trimarco and Jill Bamburg

Yes! MagazineOmar Freilla wants to see worker co-ops, like ReBuilders Source, everywhere. ReBuilders Source, owned and operated by workers from the South Bronx, sells salvaged building materials that would otherwise be destined for a landfill. Photo by Erica McDonald for YES! Magazine


Photo: Omar Freilla wants to see worker co-ops, like ReBuilders Source, everywhere. ReBuilders Source, owned and operated by workers from the South Bronx, sells salvaged building materials that would otherwise be destined for a landfill. Photo by Erica McDonald for YES! Magazine

Difficult times call for creative strategies. Time and again during periods of economic hardship and market failure, cooperatively owned businesses have emerged as a democratic, grassroots, and DIY response. It happened during the economic upheavals of the 19th century and again during the Great Depression.

Today, as the current economic crisis deepens, co-ops are again coming to the fore as producers and consumers seek stable sources of employment, goods, and services. There are no easy numbers to quantify this growth, but signs of a new upsurge are becoming clearer. The farmer-owned agricultural cooperative Land O’Lakes, for instance, chalked up its strong performance in 2008 to its co-op status.

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Yankee Doodle Ecologist: Tom Friedman and the Green Revolution

by @ Tuesday, December 15th, 2009. Filed under Economy, Environment, High Road Economics, Socialism

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

by Thomas Friedman.

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

$27.95. Pp. 438.

 

By Jerry Harris

SolidarityEconomy.Net

Thomas Friedman is always the head cheerleader for the next big thing. At first it was globalization and now it’s the green revolution. Friedman’s instincts are good, it’s just his analysis and politics are lacking. There are certainly valuable and interesting insights in his work, but his adolescent enthusiasm for capitalism often turns his critique to shallow propaganda.

The book’s title, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is a good indicator as to how Friedman understands environmental problems. Underline that word crowded because the book takes us on a Malthusian ride through the Third World. It’s overpopulation, not capitalism and its need for every expanding accumulation that is destroying the world’s environment.

Friedman marches us through China, India, Brazil and Nigeria offering a myopic view that only occasional refers to the developed countries and their use of energy and resources. When it comes to energy markets transnationals such as Exxon and Shell disappear as does any discussion of imperialism and its history in the Middle East. Instead Friedman targets “petrodictorships” and “Sheikhs…with bags of cash” indoctrinating madrassa students to “breed like rabbits” and “swarm” over the Islamic world. (p. 88)

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Word to the Wise: China Launches New Green Industries

by @ Thursday, December 10th, 2009. Filed under China, Environment, Socialism

Chinese Leader Calls

for Development of

Environmental Industry

From Xinhua

Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang Tuesday called for advancement of environmental protection industry to strengthen a stable, coordinated and sustainable economic development.


Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (C) visits the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 8, 2009. (Xinhua/Liu Jiansheng)

The environmental protection industry concerned aspects such as infrastructure building, equipment manufacturing and services and it should be considered as a strategic emerging industry, Li said during an inspection tour in the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences and China National Environmental Monitoring Center.
He said as the Copenhagen conference was held currently to address the climate change, "the development of green, low carbon and recycling economy has become a global trend."

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Putting the Obama Stimulus Toward Green Manufacturing

by @ Sunday, October 4th, 2009. Filed under Economy, Environment, High Road Economics

Green Power Revives

Defunct Battery Plant

By Dennis Spisak

Mahoning Valley Green Party


NEW CASTLE, Pa. - Just outside this town in the western part of the state,
famous for its chili dogs and fireworks, a low-rise battery plant sits along a
side road named Clover Lane.


To miss it is to miss a back-from-the-dead story, one that Gov. Rendell hopes
will inspire a manufacturing revival across Pennsylvania.


With a workforce of 59, Axion Power International is no industrial giant. But
its resurrection - from a shuttered lead-acid battery plant to one now turning
out lead-carbon batteries for use in electric cars, among other eco-friendly
applications - is cited by Rendell and his representatives as evidence of the
green economy's transformative powers.

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Green Structural Reform Works - If Wall St Doesn’t Sabotage It

by @ Monday, August 3rd, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Economy, Environment

 

  Now Hiring:

Green-Collar

Workers

 By Prashant Gopal

Yahoo! News

July 31, 2009 - When Alden Zeitz started the Wind Energy Program at Iowa Lakes Community College five years ago, 15 students enrolled.

This year, 102 students enrolled in the two-year training program for wind turbine technicians, including some students who abandoned another career for the economic promise of green technology. The wind energy industry hasn't been immune to the recession, but students are counting on the federal government's injection of $80 billion in clean energy projects to change that.

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Green Reconstruction vs. Speculative Capital

by @ Thursday, May 21st, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Environment, High Road Economics

How a Green Economy

Is an Antidote to

Casino Capitalism


By Robert Pollin

New Labor Forum

April 2, 2009 - The convergence of a profound economic crisis and the inauguration of Barack Obama as President has created both tremendous challenges and opportunities for progressives in the United States. Two of the overarching economic issues around which progressives will need to struggle are: first, how to build a clean energy economy, creating millions of good jobs in the process; and second, how to create a financial system focused on channeling money toward productive investment as opposed to destabilizing speculation.

In fact, the link between these matters becomes clear once we pose the simple question: how can we pay for the transition to a clean energy economy? Realistically, there is no way to construct a clean energy economy -- driven by solar, wind, and geothermal power and biomass fuels, and operating at dramatically higher levels of energy efficiency -- unless trillions of dollars are channeled into this project over the next 20 years.

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Prairie Power: Iowa Communities Own Wind Power Farms

by @ Thursday, May 14th, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Environment, High Road Economics

  Community-Owned

Is Business Model for

Two Wind Farms in Iowa



By Apollo News Service

4/21/2009 - The farmland of Iowa’s Emmet and Dickinson counties will soon be home to the nation’s two largest community-owned wind farms. Red Rock Wind Energy LLC and Emmet County Energy LLC, both based in Estherville, Iowa, announced in December their intent build 300 and 200-megawatt wind arrays respectively near Estherville, a northwest Iowa agricultural community of 6,000 residents east of Sioux Falls near the border with Minnesota.

Both projects are much larger than Minnesota’s 100-megawatt Trimont array, currently the country’s largest community-owned wind farm.

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‘Solidarity Economy’ Emerging in North Carolina

by @ Friday, April 10th, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Economy, Environment, Global Justice, High Road Economics

The 'Plenty':

Local Currency Is One Tool

of Local Coop Economy

 

From Democracy Now

April 9, 2009:


AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to look now at how one North Carolina town is trying to become more self-sufficient by moving towards, well, being able to feed, fuel and finance itself. The town of Pittsboro, North Carolina—we just passed it yesterday—it houses the nation’s largest biodiesel cooperative, a food co-op, a farmers’ market and, most recently, its own currency, the Pittsboro Plenty. Pittsboro is one of a number of communities across the country printing their own money in an attempt to support local business.


We’re joined right now by community activist, entrepreneur and author Lyle Estill. He is also the author of Small Is Possible: Life in a Local Economy, and he’s founder of Piedmont Biofuels. He is also author of another book, as well.
We welcome you to Democracy Now! It’s good to have you with us, Lyle.

LYLE ESTILL: Thanks.


AMY GOODMAN: Plenty—where is that currency? I had it here somewhere. How could I lose that? Ah, here it is. Here it is. This is a—looks like—a little bit like Monopoly money. And tell us about Plenty. What does it stand for?

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Skip the Gas Guzzlers, Leapfrog to the Green Car

by @ Sunday, April 5th, 2009. Filed under China, Environment, High Road Economics

 BYD electric car

China's E6 Electric Car:

Seeking a Great Leap

in Clean Transportation

By Jonathan Watts

The Guardian, UK

When BYD Auto launches one of China's first mass produced fully electric sedans later this year, it will be trying to conquer the world rather than save it. But such is the explosive growth of China's car market and thirst for petrol that the two goals are likely to become ever more synonymous.

The E6 plug-in is currently under wraps at the company's sprawling industrial complex in Shenzhen, but it will soon be at the vanguard of a company's -- and a nation's -- plans to dominate the global market for "clean-transport".

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Dynamic Duo: Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy

 


Green Jobs Meets the Solidarity Economy:
A Dynamic Duo for Changing the World

 

A Review of 'Green Collar Economy:

How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems'

By Van Jones, Harper-Collins, 2008

By Carl Davidson
SolidarityEconomy.Net

It's time to link the newly insurgent U.S. Green Jobs movement with the worldwide efforts for the solidarity economy. Both are answering the call to fight the deepening global recession, and both face common adversaries in the failed 'race to the bottom,' environment-be-damned policies of global neoliberalism.

That's the imperative facing left-progressive organizers with connections to these two important grassroots movements. It's even more important in the wake of the appointment of a key leader of one of these movements, Van Jones of 'Green For All', to a top environmental and urban policy post in the Obama administration.

Jones is a founder of an urban-based campaign focused on low-income young people, multinational and multicultural, that first developed as a progressive response to police repression, gang killings and all-round "criminalization of youth." He saw the exclusion of this sector of the population from living-wage work and other opportunities as a key cause of the violence and destruction. Putting young people to work at low-to-medium skill levels retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency seemed like a no-brainer, so the demand for 'Green Jobs, Not Jails' was raised.

The slogan found deep resonance as it spread across the country. Its all-round implications were spelled out in Jones' widely acclaimed book, "The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems." It spells out a string of ingenious, interconnected programs aimed at resolving the savage inequalities of structural unemployment and the global dangers of climate change rooted in carbon-based energies systems.

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Green Jobs 2009: Steelworkers, Hip-Hoppers and Tree Huggers Get It On at DC Conference

by @ Wednesday, March 4th, 2009. Tags: ,
Filed under Economic Democracy, Economy, Environment

Blue-Green Insurgency
Gets Fired Up at the DC
Green Jobs Conference

 

By Carl Davidson
Beaver County Blue

When you walk into a large Washington, DC hotel lobby and find it teeming with thousands of smiling, buzzing people-half in labor union jackets and ball caps, the other half dressed in 30-something hip-hop causal-you know some special is happening.

This was the lively, energized scene for three cold wintry days this Feb 4-6 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, as nearly 3000 activists and organizers gathers for the "Good Jobs, Green Jobs" National Conference. The gathering was convened by more than 100 organizations, representing every major trade union and every major environmental group in the country, among others. (more...)

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Gore sees ’spiritual crisis’ in warming

by @ Tuesday, May 8th, 2007. Filed under Environment
al-Gore.jpgby Anton Caputo Playing equal parts visionary, cheerleader and comedian, Al Gore brought his message of how to fight global warming to a capacity crowd of receptive architects Saturday in San Antonio. The former vice president referred continually to a "new way of thinking" that is emerging in the country and offered hope in the battle to control the effects global warming will have on the planet. "It's in part a spiritual crisis," Gore told the crowd in the Convention Center at the American Institute of Architects (more...)

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A Carbon Rush at the World Bank

by @ Friday, May 4th, 2007. Filed under Environment, Globalization
_41572158_carbon_funds_203x199.gifby Daphne Wysham As the Kyoto Protocol comes into force this month, a carbon rush is gaining steam in the financial industry. Investors predict that carbon could become one of the largest markets in the world, with a trading volume of $60 billion to $250 billion by 2008. Supporters assert emissions trading allows the invisible hand of the market to do what the “command and control” approach to regulation of greenhouse gas emissions can not; that is, meet and even exceed expectations of emissions reductions. Critics charge that carbon trading is a smokescreen: At best, it will represent a (more...)

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Global capitalism now has no serious rivals. But it could destroy itself

by @ Thursday, March 8th, 2007. Filed under Economy, Environment
earthfromorbit.jpg[Note from SolidarityEconomy.net Editors: This article is significant because of its source. Timothy Garton Ash is no Leftist. He’s a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford (where Milton Friedman held forth until his recent death). He’s always been fiercely anti-communist.] Our planet cannot long sustain the momentous worldwide embrace of the manufacture of desires by Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does (more...)

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