The California Senate’s health committee effectively killed an ambitious proposal to create a near-universal health-care system, dealing a major political defeat yesterday to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a setback to similar efforts nationally. The bill, which would have covered nearly 4 million people, or 70 percent of the state’s uninsured residents, had been a top priority for Schwarzenegger (R) since last January, when the governor presented a proposal to create a system that would guarantee health insurance for all Californians. ‘I will not give up trying to fix our broken health-care system,’ Schwarzenegger said after the vote. ‘The issue is too important, and the crisis is too serious, to walk away after all the great progress we have made.’ Schwarzenegger negotiated mainly with Democrats, who control the state legislature and had their own ideas for a health-care overhaul. They proved more amenable to a major initiative than state Republicans, who were deeply skeptical of the plans. Late in the year, the governor found a partner in Assembly Speaker Fabian N¿¿ez, and the Assembly passed a compromise bill on a party-line vote late last month. But the legislation ran into trouble in the Senate last week, in […]
Providing fresh evidence that solar thermal is one of the hottest segments in green tech, Solel said on Monday that Ecofin is investing $105 million into the company. Solel makes equipment for solar thermal power plants, facilities that use the sun’s heat to create steam and turn an electricity generator. Its specialty is parabolic troughs. Thousands of troughs reflect sunlight to heat a liquid that makes steam. The company’s equipment has been in use in the Mojave Desert since 1985. Solar thermal is one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable power and is best suited for desert areas, such as the southwestern United States and parts of Spain. People in the industry say that a race is on to build out these solar power plants over the coming years to meet utilities’ demand for renewable sources of electricity. Solel, which is based in Israel, has already signed a power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric to supply a 553 megawatt plant in California, and it is in discussions with others. It is also constructing 150 megawatts of plants in Spain. In a release, it said that technology improvements have increased the efficiency […]
Food is love. Food is comfort. What Grandma didn’t tell us and probably didn’t know: Food is also sex. Certain consumables can light up your lovemaking. For the record, I’m not talking about the so-called aphrodisiacs that resemble human genitalia, such as oysters and figs. The way a food looks might be visually arousing or psychologically compelling - bonbons and Champagne no doubt conjure up thoughts of seduction and romance. But for your body to respond to sex like a well-oiled, orgasm-primed machine, none of them does a hell of a lot. So what foods will help you have mind-blowing sex? Like you, I craved such information. Sex with my husband, Steve, was still good after six years. But once you’ve done it with the same person a few thousand times, you need a little extra something to go beyond a run-of-the-mill encounter. I knew that many women - as many as 30 percent, actually - don’t experience orgasms at all, so I considered myself lucky. Yet I was also keenly aware of the difference between the exhilarating sex Steve and I had during our first year and the kind we have now. Sure, we’ve tried to keep […]
The biofuels industry plans on producing record amounts of ethanol this year to meet a mandate of the new US energy law – and will need a lot of corn to do it. At the same time, global food prices are at near-peak levels. The question is, how big is the connection between those two developments? It’s a topic getting more scrutiny as the world enters 2008 with the lowest grain stockpiles on record, near-record grain prices, and prospects for even tighter supplies as global demand rises for food and fuel. Political instability over higher food prices is a key concern. Last year saw tortilla demonstrations in Mexico, pasta protests in Italy, and unrest in Pakistan over bread prices. Soybean prices, meanwhile, prompted demonstrations in front of Indonesia’s presidential palace. Food inflation in China is a major problem. But the connection between the expansion of biofuels and higher global food prices is not clear cut, with the biofuels industry saying its impact is relatively small and biofuel critics saying that ethanol plants are driving up the price of corn and biodiesel producers are taking a bite out of the soybean crop. ‘The United States, in a […]
At a recent Capitol Hill hearing I was surprised to learn that it was far from common knowledge just how competitive wind power has become. As a result, a bit of a data and price update memo may be of use, even to those who follow the industry. In addition, I will summarize the data on a few of the least cost wind farms in the nation. Wind energy in the United States has continued to grow, and represented 19 percent of the new nameplate capacity added to the electrical grid in 2006 . With a total cumulative U.S. capacity of 11,575 MW (1 percent of total U.S. nameplate capacity) at the end of 2006, wind energy is now often directly cost competitive with fossil-fuel generation, and at times is a least-cost supply option. Representative Wind Project and Wind Power Costs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) recently examined the estimated installation and power costs for twelve recent wind projects, finding that 2007 wholesale power prices for these projects range from 2.5 cents/kWh to 6.4 cents/kWh. Six of the projects provide wholesale power at less than 3 cents/kWh. These prices reflect available state and federal incentives, such as […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
