Citizen Power

This podcast episode highlights from Powershift09 sending a message to end the use of coal — and as speaker Robert Kennedy put it, coal is a criminal enterprise. What they are doing to mountains and our air is nothing short of criminal. It’s time to take action to stop coal. It’s time for a citizens arrest of coal. Speakers from Powershift09 include RFK Jr., Van Jones and Lisa Jackson; also Bill McKibben and Jimmy Carter in the second half.  I start the podcast off with a brief clip from a new documentary on climate change that is coming out next week (in the UK).  It’s called The Age of Stupid.

The Age of Stupid movie trailer can be seen here.

Interested in the Clean Energy Corp — story link about green jobs from the Environment News Service:
“Clean Energy Corps Proposed to Create Jobs, Fight Global Warming“

In the 2nd half, you’ll hear about why natural gas isn’t such a great fuel, why it’s not “clean” like Pelosi is claiming, and whatever happened to Jimmy Carter’s solar panels, and his dream of clean energy? It’s not a happy story, but 30 years later, we have another realistic chance at it. And at the end, bits of a speech from 32 years ago, much of which President Obama could be saying today.

Nancy Pelosi’s conflict of interest is her financial interest in T. Boone Picken’s natural gas venture.
From the Wall Street Journal.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband invested between $50,000 and $100,000 in T. Boone Pickens’s Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which could benefit from legislation the California Democrat favors to boost U.S. use of natural gas.

Nancy Pelosi’s letter about switching the CPP to natural gas: Read the whole thing here.

Pelosi has a conflict of interest with natural gas, being an investor in T. Boone Pickens natural gas company. She’s an investor in natural gas, so she is pushing the use of natural gas on the nation’s capitol, insinuating that it’s “clean” and renewable, which it most certainly is not. She should be installing solar panels instead. — like our president did 30 years ago. The drilling process for natural gas contains the use of toxic chemicals, including Benzene which causes cancer. And get this — the company who perfected this deadly technique was Halliburton. Here more about this in part 2 of this episode.  There is a serious danger of ground water contamination.

From Scientific America:

“Sublette County is the home of one of the nation’s largest natural gas fields, and many of its 6,000 wells have undergone a process pioneered by Halliburton called hydraulic fracturing, which shoots vast amounts of water, sand and chemicals several miles underground to break apart rock and release the gas. The process has been considered safe since a 2004 study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that it posed no risk to drinking water. After that study, Congress even exempted hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. Today fracturing is used in 9 out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.”

And Jimmy Carter’s solar panels–they were removed by the Reaganites, and now you can hear why.
I read much of the story, but. Wouldn’t it be great if the president who followed Carter into the White House not only embraced his solar panel ideas, but expanded on them? My guess would be that if that had happened, today, 30 years later, the entire city of Washington D.C. would be powered by renewable solar energy — maybe even the entire east coast. The problem of the presidents who followed Carter was that they felt oil and gas would last forever and they felt invincible. It’s a very immature way to approach things — it’s like the little kid who feels they are immortal so they don’t take any precautions when they are playing or crossing the street, etc. When you get older, you know better.

You can download this episode here – click here to download – or you can go to the podcast website which is at Futurism Now (same title, different address, as this site.) I do these podcasts approximately once a week, sometimes less, sometimes more. If anyone wants to comment on the podcast or get their comment about energy or climate change or any comment related to these topics played on the podcast, you can call my free comment line. The number is 320-300-4273. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoyed this irregular posting. I have a lot more to write about but I’ve spent a lot of time on the podcast itself (since I do them by myself).

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