Though Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA), Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Mike Lee (R-UT) all acknowledged the existence of a changing climate to some degree — though Ernst hedged that “the climate is always changing” — the three Republicans expressed doubt about and resistance to potential federal efforts to combat what climate scientists have characterized as a fast-moving threat to humanity.
Ernst expressed concern about the impact of federal efforts on “American industry and jobs” but acknowledged “there is a balance that can be struck there,” pointing to the wind energy farms in her state.
Sasse criticized “alarmism” on the side of those advocating for federal efforts to address climate change, and appeared to stand by President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord — the global agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions — calling […]
The map lays out OPEC’s nightmare in graphic form.
An infestation of dots, thousands of them, represent oil wells in the Permian basin of West Texas and a slice of New Mexico. In less than a decade, U.S. companies have drilled 114,000. Many of them would turn a profit even with crude prices as low as $30 a barrel.
OPEC’s bad dream only deepens next year, when Permian producers expect to iron out distribution snags that will add three pipelines and as much as 2 million barrels of oil a day.
“The Permian will continue to grow and OPEC needs to learn to live with it,’’ said Mike Loya, the top executive in the Americas for Vitol Group, the world’s largest independent oil-trading house.
The U.S. energy surge presents OPEC with one of the biggest challenges of its 60-year history. If Saudi Arabia and its allies cut production when they gather Dec. 6 in Vienna, higher prices would allow shale to steal market share. But because the Saudis need higher crude prices to make money than U.S. producers, OPEC can’t afford to let prices […]
Events in Charlottesville recently cascaded into domestic terrorism. Three dead and dozens wounded as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other “alt-right” members descended upon the university that Thomas Jefferson built; their purpose, it is alleged, to defend a statue – a monument – to the Confederate Civil War soldier, General Robert E. Lee. These radical rightists arrived from all across the United States upon the college town of Charlottesville to protect, in their words, their “white” heritage. Among the many problems I have with so-called “white supremacists” is their purposeful mixing of “heritage” with “history,” rhetorically pining for a once proud “white” America.
But history proves that America was never white.
That I need to make this statement, and worse, that some may take offense from it, shows the blurring rhetoric between what is Heritage and what is History. I’ll return to this later. For now, some History.
The first successful colonial holding in these current United States was Spanish, at St. Augustine, Florida, established 1565, four decades plus prior to Virginia’s Jamestown.
America was never white.
Speaking of Jamestown, the first Africans were brought into Virginia on a Dutch trading ship in 1619, a year before Pilgrims landed in Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.
America was never white.
And […]
