United States News
The latest news from and about U.S. issues.Wednesday, March 03, 2010
A Word From the Wise A Word From the Wise
The New York Times, March 3, 2010 - “I was traveling via Los Angeles International Airport — LAX — last week. Walking through its faded, cramped domestic terminal, I got the feeling of a place that once thought of itself as modern but has had one too many face-lifts and simply can’t hide the wrinkles anymore. In some ways, LAX is us. We are the United States of Deferred Maintenance. China is the People’s Republic of Deferred Gratification. They save, invest and build. We spend, borrow and patch. And this contrast is playing out in the worst way — just slowly enough so the crisis never seems acute enough to take urgent action. But, eventually, infrastructure, education and innovation policies matter. Businesses prefer to invest with the Jetsons more than the Flintstones, which brings me to the subject of this column. I had a chance last week to listen to Paul Otellini, the chief executive of Intel, the microchip maker and one of America’s crown jewel companies. Otellini was in Washington to talk about competitiveness at Brookings and the Aspen Institute. At a time when so much of our public policy discussion is dominated by health care and bailouts, my public service for the week is to share Mr. Otellini’s views on start-ups. While America still has the quality work force, political stability and natural resources a company like Intel needs, said Otellini, the U.S. is badly lagging in developing the next generation of scientific talent and incentives to induce big multinationals to create lots more jobs here. Read More.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change
The New York Times, February 28, 2010 - “It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.
Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century. But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake. I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.” Read More.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
We need more NAFTA, not less
Miami Herald, February 17, 2010 - “ There was no mention of the North American Free Trade Agreement in President Obama’s remarks on jobs in his State of the Union Address. But one of the best ways he could help keep and create American jobs would be to expand
NAFTA is a political piñata. The trade agreement concluded in 1993 by Canada, Mexico and the United States is widely blamed for every supposed grievance arising from globalization. Even so, if we want Americans to be able to compete—and win—in an ever-tougher global marketplace, we need more NAFTA, not less. We need NAFTA plus. Opponents of NAFTA say that, overall, it has cost Americans jobs. During his presidential campaign, Obama claimed that ``one million jobs have been lost because of NAFTA.’’
The truth is, most economists say that, on balance, NAFTA has had little or no effect on the overall number of jobs in the United States since it entered into force in 1994.What NAFTA has done is increase trade among the three NAFTA countries more than threefold since 1994—to about $900 billion annually. This has added about $60 billion annually to U.S. income—$200 in added income every year for every American. And what NAFTA has done is lay the foundation for a more efficient and more integrated North American economy that could preserve and produce jobs throughout North America that would otherwise go to China, Europe or elsewhere in a world rife with increasing regional competition. Read More.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up in Deep Freeze
The New York Times, February 11, 2010 - “As millions of people along the East Coast hole up in their snowbound homes, the two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments. Skeptics of global warming are using the record-setting snows to mock those who warn of dangerous human-driven climate change — this looks more like global cooling, they taunt. Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events. But some independent climate experts say the blizzards in the Northeast no more prove that the planet is cooling than the lack of snow in Vancouver or the downpours in Southern California prove that it is warming. As an illustration of their point of view, the family of Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, a leading climate skeptic in Congress, built a six-foot-tall igloo on Capitol Hill and put a cardboard sign on top that read “Al Gore’s New Home.” Read More.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Wind Power Grows 39% for the Year
The New York Times, January 26, 2010 - “Despite a crippling recession and tight credit markets, the American wind power industry grew at a blistering pace in 2009, adding 39 percent more capacity. The country is close to the point where 2 percent of its electricity will come from wind turbines. While that is still a small share, it is up from virtually nothing a few years ago. Continued growth at such a fast pace could help the nation lower its emissions of the gases that cause global warming. The American Wind Energy Association, in its annual report to be released on Tuesday, said the amount of capacity added last year, 9,900 megawatts, was the largest on record, and was 18 percent above the capacity added in 2008, also a banner year. The group said the growth of wind power was helped by the federal stimulus package that passed a year ago, which extended a tax credit and provided other investment incentives for the industry. But the group warned that the growth could slow. Much of the wind development in 2009 was caused by momentum from 2008, as huge turbines ordered then were delivered to wind farms. In 2009, the recession idled many manufacturers and new orders weakened, which could portend an installation slowdown this year.” Read More.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Expanding Use of Wind Power Feasible, but May Be Costly
The New York Times, January 20, 2010 - “Wind could replace coal and natural gas for 20 or 30 percent of electricity supplied in the eastern two-thirds of the United States by 2024, according to a study released Wednesday by the Energy Department, but doing so would require a reorganization of the power grid and a significant increase in costs. And it would have only a modest impact on cutting carbon emissions, the study found. The Energy Department under President Obama has been a proponent of renewable energy, and the study takes a head-on approach to the question of wind energy: how much can the system use and still maintain stability, given that the amount of power generated is as fickle as the breeze.The answer, according to the study, is that heavy reliance on wind energy is “technically feasible” but will require significant expansion of the power grid.The cost of integrating wind into the existing system is “really, really small compared to other major costs,” said David Corbus, a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which supervised the study. He put the price at about half a cent per kilowatt-hour, a quantity of electricity that now sells for an average of about 11 cents. A bigger obstacle is how to overcome a political impasse over building power lines, and how to find, and finance, sites for 10 times more generating capacity. The study did not address those questions.Adding wind gets progressively more difficult as the amount used rises because of wind’s intermittent nature and the need for back-up power generation, according to the study, which was prepared for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Without a better grid, the system would often waste large amounts of wind power because at many times during the year, the power grid would not be able to handle the traffic. But the amount of wasted wind energy, and the amount of backup needed, would decline as grid connections got better, the study said. A better grid, Mr. Corbus said, would also lead to fewer blackouts.” Read More.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Water Crisis, Energy Crisis, Vicious Cycle
Huffington Post, January 4, 2010 - “Water Needs Energy Needs Water Reading Steven Solomon’s excellent new book “Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization” I was reminded again of the connection between the water challenge and the field to which I dedicated my life—energy security.It is widely accepted that water shortage can—and most probably will—lead to military conflict, mass migration, food shortages and a host of other security challenges. What is less appreciated is the connection between water and energy and how intertwined are the energy challenge and the water challenge we are facing today globally. Water is essential to the production of energy of all forms. In the aging oil wells of Saudi Arabia more water is pumped in to increase reservoir pressure than the amount of oil that is actually being pumped out. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 2 to 2.5 gallons of water are used to produce each gallon of gasoline from conventional crude and more than 6 gallons of water are required to produce one gallon of gasoline from oil shale. Alternative fuels are also water intensive. The voice of the U.S. ethanol industry, the Renewable Fuels Association, estimates that 3.45 gallons of water are used per gallon of corn ethanol produced. Electric generation is no less water intensive. Ninety percent of all power plants in the U.S. are thermoelectric, requiring billions of gallons to cool the steam used to drive their turbines. In recent years, plans for new power plants had to be scrapped because water-use permits could not be obtained. In most countries in Latin America including Brazil, Paraguay, Peru and Argentina, hydroelectric power is the main source of electricity. Want to build a concentrated solar thermal power plant or a nuclear power plants which produce clean energy? Better make sure there is ample supply of water nearby. Solar thermal power plants require large amounts of water to create the steam that spins the turbines and for their cooling towers. Sunny places like southern California and Nevada where solar power would otherwise be an ideal source of electricity often suffer from water shortages that make this form of energy a non-starter.” Read More.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Climate Deal Announced, but Falls Short of Expectations
The New York Times, December 18, 2009 - “Leaders here concluded a climate change deal on Friday that the Obama administration called “meaningful” but that falls short of even the modest expectations for the summit meeting here. The agreement addresses many of the issues that leaders came here to settle, but the answers are bound to leave many of the participants unhappy. Even an Obama administration official conceded, “It is not sufficient to combat the threat of climate change, but it’s an important first step. “No country is entirely satisfied with each element,” the administration’s statement said, “but this is a meaningful and historic step forward and a foundation from which to make further progress.” The statement added, “We thank the emerging economies for their voluntary actions and especially appreciate the work and leadership of the Europeans in this effort.” But many of those emerging economies are likely to express displeasure. Europeans said the deal does not require enough of the United States, China and other major emitters and could put European industries at a competitive disadvantage because the European Union is already subject to a carbon emissions constraint program.” Read More.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
No Slowdown of Global Warming, Agency Says
The New York Times, December 8, 2009 - “The decade of 2000 to 2009 appears to be the warmest one in the modern record, the World Meteorological Organization reported in a new analysis on Tuesday. The announcement is likely to be viewed as a rejoinder to a renewed challenge from skeptics to the scientific evidence for global warming, as international negotiators here seek to devise a global response to climate change. The period from 2000 through 2009 has been “warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s, and so on,” Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the international weather agency, said at a news conference here. The unauthorized release last month of e-mail messages between climate scientists in Britain and the United States has provided new ammunition to global warming skeptics. Some of the messages seemed to suggest that some data be withheld from the public. Mr. Jarraud said the release of the climate analysis was moved up from year’s end to coincide with the international conference on climate change.” Read More.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
US senators urge renegotiation of US trade deals
Reuters, November 30, 2009 - “A group of U.S. senators urged President Barack Obama on Monday to back legislation requiring the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement and a long list of other trade pacts they blame for millions of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs. “We want trade and plenty of it, but we want trade under new rules. The TRADE Act will help Congress and the White House craft a trade policy that makes sense and learns from our many mistakes over the past couple of decades,” Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, told reporters in a conference call. The bill, which has seven co-sponsors in the Senate, shows the strong opposition Obama could face from many members of his own Democratic Party if he pushes for new trade agreements without addressing concerns about past trade pacts. Six Democrats are among the co-sponsors, as well as independent Bernie Sanders.U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a speech on Monday at a World Trade Organization meeting in Geneva that the United States was “ready to move into the endgame” of the eight-year-old world trade talks if other countries made meaningful market-opening commitments. The proposed Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment Act requires the U.S. Government Accountability Office to evaluate the impact of NAFTA, which groups the United States, Canada and Mexico, and other trade deals on U.S. jobs, wages and business investment and for the White House to give Congress a plan for renegotiating those pacts.” Read More.
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