Stephan: Here is some good news about the transition out of carbon energy.
Navajo Generating Station
It’s big. It’s coal-fired. And it’s about to go bye-bye. The West’s largest coal-fired power plant — the Navajo Generating Station — is facing closure because it’s no longer a cost-effective method of generating energy.
Opponents of coal power who are concerned about its contributions to climate change are thrilled, but there’s a catch: A changing administration could mean some shifts in energy policy that alter the future for this plant and other coal-fired stations in America.
There are 968 coal-fired generators in the US, a number that is slowly declining — much like emissions. Coal is a fuel source that’s dirty all the way down, from the mining practices used to extract it to the greenhouse gases emitted when it’s burned for power.
Even with various tools that trap and filter emissions, coal plants contribute a heavy load to a struggling planet — one reason US energy companies are under pressure to phase out coal and replace it with cleaner sources of energy.
In 2014, the Navajo Generating Station […]
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Wednesday, February 15th, 2017
Stephan: The Republicans spent tens of thousands of hours, and millions of taxpayer dollars on a red herring chase through Hillary Clinton's emails. What did they find? Nothing. You might think then that President Trump's tax returns would be of equal concern. You might think that, but you would be wrong. The Republicans have no interest in any of the multitude of conflicts of interests, debt held by Russians, or any other of the snake pits that constitutes Trump's financial network. Notice the phony argument they advance for not doing the obvious.
A congressional tax oversight committee will not seek U.S. President Donald Trump’s tax returns despite calls from Democrats for a review to determine possible business ties to foreign countries including Russia, the panel’s Republican chairman said on Monday.
Defying decades of precedent, Trump has refused to release his tax documents, which Democrats say could show whether his business empire poses any conflicts of interest as he moves forward on issues ranging from tax reform to foreign relations.
“If Congress begins to use its powers to rummage around in the tax returns of the president, what prevents Congress from doing the same to average Americans?” House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady told reporters.
“Privacy and civil liberties are still important rights in this country, and (the) Ways and Means Committee is not going to start to weaken them.”
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Tuesday, February 14th, 2017
Stephan: American healthcare is so awful, and so costly, and it seems on track to get even worse. Particularly offensive is the outrageous increases in drug prices. What I find so offensive is the naked greed of the pharmaceutical industry. We have a huge opioid epidemic, mostly rural and small Red value town Whites. An addiction plague that has killed 10s of thousands of people annually. The price for the drug that can save people's lives, as this report details, has increased by nearly a factor of 8; the inhumanity of what Kaléo Pharmaceuticals has done is just despicable.
Kaléo Pharmaceuticals has dramatically increased the cost of an easy-to-use injection device for the opioid overdose reversal drug known as naloxone, and lawmakers believe the price hike could put lives at risk.
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) and 31 other senators issued a stinging rebuke and call for answers on February 8 after the details of the price increase emerged.
The device, known as Evzio, was listed at $690 in 2014. It now reportedly costs $4,500. The drug company has previously said that it is increasing prices on products to meet the rising costs of manufacturing.
While it is true that naloxone has increased in price — now somewhere around $150 per 10cc vial — the senators pointed out that this does not come anywhere close to the near 700 percent increase on Evzio instituted by the company.
“At a time when Congress has worked to expand access to naloxone products and to assist state and local communities to equip first responders with this life-saving drug, this startling price hike is very concerning,” the senators wrote in a letter to Kaléo Pharmaceuticals CEO Spencer Williamson.
As is standard for this kind of […]
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Tuesday, February 14th, 2017
Jessica Glenza, - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Kaléo Pharmaceuticals is not just gouging people with opioid addiction issues, they are also sticking it to people who have wasp and hornet allergies. Please write your representative and senators and tell them pharmaceutical costs in this country are out of control. Check the SR archives for information concerning another Epi-Pen alternative that is being sold at a much lesser price.
NEW YORK, NY — Pharmaceutical company Kaléo – already under fire for raising the price of an overdose antidote – now plans to put an alternative to the EpiPen on the market for more than seven times the cost of the leading $608 drug.
Kaléo’s epinephrine injector, used to stop severe allergic reactions, will go on sale for $4,500 for a pack of two beginning on 14 February. The auto-injector’s innovative audio instructions walk caregivers through administering less than $5 worth of epinephrine.
Remarkably, because of a system of coupons and discounts, Kaléo’s epinephrine injector Auvi-Q may have the lowest out-of-pocket costs for patients, a strategy some critics say may help some customers, but leads insurance companies to redistribute the cost of the drug through insurance fees to remain profitable.
“It’s a brilliant auto-injector – is it fair to say it’s worth $4,000 itself? That’s $3,000 more than your iPhone, and you can only use it once,” said Dr Joseph Ross, an associate professor of medicine at Yale University who has written about drug pricing for the
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Tuesday, February 14th, 2017
Stephen Edelstein, - Green Car Reports
Stephan: Here we see a confirmation of my assessment that the shift out of the carbon energy era is going faster than many, including many large corporations, anticipated. Good news.
a lot filled with BMW i3 electric vehicles
Credit: BMW
Mass adoption of electric cars and renewable energy could significantly decrease global consumption of fossil fuels.
But does the established energy industry view these new developments as a threat?
In a recent report, ExxonMobil said coal could continue to provide the majority of the world’s electricity-generation capacity in 2040, and that electric cars would only make up around 10 percent of the U.S. new-car market by that time.
DON’T MISS: Which oil companies invest in renewables, electric-car services?
Yet new estimates from other sources indicate ExxonMobil and other fossil-fuel giants might want to take electric cars and renewable energy more seriously.
Falling costs for both electric cars and solar panels “could halt fossil-fuel growth by 2020,” according to findings by Imperial College London and Carbon Tracker reported by The Guardian.
By 2035, electric cars could make up 35 percent of the vehicle market, and could account for […]
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