DUNHUANG, China – As the United States takes its first steps toward mandating that power companies generate more electricity from renewable sources, China already has a similar requirement and is investing billions to remake itself into a green energy superpower. Through a combination of carrots and sticks, Beijing is starting to change how this country generates energy. Although coal remains the biggest energy source and is almost certain to stay that way, the rise of renewable energy, especially wind power, is helping to slow China’s steep growth in emissions of global warming gases. While the House of Representatives approved a requirement last week that American utilities generate more of their power from renewable sources of energy, and the Senate will consider similar proposals over the summer, China imposed such a requirement almost two years ago. This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines – after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning […]
WASHINGTON — Two Senate panels are closing in on the toughest unresolved issue in healthcare reform: the scope of a public role in providing insurance. What’s not on the table as the Senate reconvenes next week is a government-run, single-payer plan – an option backed by some 80 House Democrats but not by their party leadership. President Obama favors having a government-run plan compete for customers alongside private insurers. But moving from an employer-based system of private insurance to a single-payer system run by the government ‘could be hugely disruptive, he said at a town-hall meeting in Annandale, Va., on Wednesday. ‘My attitude has been that we should be able to find a way to create a uniquely American solution to this problem that controls costs but preserves the innovation that is introduced in part with a free-market system, he said. If not single-payer, then what? Debate over alternatives to the single-payer approach is taking place primarily within Democratic ranks. In a new draft plan, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee is calling for a public option to pool purchasing power, reduce administrative costs, and expand coverage to all Americans. This […]
LONDON and NEW YORK — ‘Compared with last year, applications are up 14%,’ says Mark Stanek, the principal of Ethical Culture Fieldston, a private school in New York. All through the application season he and his board of governors had been on tenterhooks, waiting to see if financial turmoil would cut the number of parents prepared to pay $32,000-34,000 a year to educate a child. Requests for financial help from families already at Fieldston had been rising fast, and the school had scraped together $3m-on top of the $8m it spends on financial aid in a normal year-in the hope of tiding as many over as possible. Nothing is certain until pupils turn up in the autumn. Some parents could get cold feet and sacrifice their deposits. Yet so far the school is more popular than ever. Across America the picture is patchier, but there is little sign of a recession-induced meltdown in private schooling. Catholic parochial schools and some in rural areas are finding the going harder-but this is merely the acceleration of existing trends. Private schools in big cities with rich residents, and those with famous names and a history of sending graduates to the Ivy League, […]
In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on ‘the Wall Street Bubble Mafia’ - investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi’s piece is ‘an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories’ and a spokesman adding, ‘We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good.’ Taibbi shot back: ‘Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows. They have the ear of the president if they want it.’ Here, now, are excerpts The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know […]
WASHINGTON — Despite its title as the ‘American Clean Energy and Security Act,’ the energy and climate bill that the House of Representatives passed recently takes only a modest step toward reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Two studies project that the legislation would cut oil use in the future, but not enough to make much of a dent in dependence on oil from unstable or unfriendly foreign suppliers. Some experts say that other steps will be needed to cut U.S. oil use significantly. The nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy examined the bill’s efficiency provisions and concluded that they would save 1.4 million barrels of oil per day in 2030. That’s roughly 10 percent of the projected use of 14.3 million barrels a day in that year, according to the government’s Energy Information Administration. The Environmental Protection Agency put the oil savings at 700,000 barrels a day by 2030. The EPA looked mainly at the bill’s terms that would put a declining cap on the amount of emissions of heat-trapping gases allowed each year and create a pollution-permit trading system. EPA’s analysis showed only a modest decrease because the bill would have little impact […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
