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Our colleagues at Ohio River Radio report that Wells Fargo is joining “the ranks of several other big firms that have decided to limit or stop funding mountaintop removal coal mining projects.”
It says pressure on the bank came from an unlikely source, the Rain Forest Action Network, which lobbied the bank for years. JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America have also published policies that say they’re reducing ties with MTR projects, or submitting them to more scrutiny.
Pittsburgh-based PNC bank, as well as the Swiss firm UBS, have not made any such announcements, and still finance related projects.
It’s not yet clear what effect this drying up of funding will have on the mining industry.
National Geographic has a story about clean coal. It seems that the federal government is putting up money to test technology that could (possibly) keep carbon out of the air. But without legislation requiring plants to keep carbon out of the air, energy companies aren’t interested in using the technology.
This has led some critics to ask if carbon capture experimentation funds wouldn’t be better spent on searching for ways to generate energy that do not produce as much carbon or require natural resources to be mined, drilled etc.
“You can build a small number of demos, but seriously deploying? It doesn’t have a future without legislation,” says George Peridas, a scientist in the Natural Resources Defense Council climate center. “Unless the finance community has a certainty about what will happen in the policy domain, they won’t go there.”
NRDC parts ways, to some extent, with environmental groups that reject carbon storage outright, arguing that the mining of coal is too damaging or that the huge investments required would be better spent on energy sources that don’t emit carbon in the first place. NRDC has advocated more research on CCS, although the group has been critical of coal industry efforts to block the very climate legislation it sees as essential to spurring the huge investment that is needed.
Opposition to climate legislation indeed proved effective, as repeated efforts to refashion a bill narrowly passed last year by the House failed to garner the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster in the Senate.
We’ve heard Senate candidates Rand Paul and Jack Conway argue over the so-called “cap and trade” legislation. (Mostly they argue over whether Conway supports it, will support it, ever supported it, or once had a dream in which he supported it.)
And when the argument becomes the focus, the actual purpose of the legislation is lost. There are loads of links out there that explain what cap and trade is and why it may or may not work, but if you’re in the mood for an animated explanation, try this Story of Stuff video. (Here’s a YouTube link)
The video’s creator, Annie Leonard, is not a fan of cap and trade, but she does support federal action to reduce pollution. Some people may disagree with her views, so feel free to send along your own video to balance it out…if you think that’s necessary.
Soon, TARC will have 21 hybrid buses on the streets.
Nine new hybrids will be unveiled this week. TARC has recently reduced service due to revenue shortfalls, but as LEO points out, most of the new buses are federally-funded, and all of them will save money.
The funding for seven of the new buses were funded through stimulus dollars and two from a variety of federal and state sources. The hybrids are silver with a new butterfly design that compliments the metallic silver with red, white and blue decal design that was introduced last year.
The new fleet will be unveiled July 9, at the pavilion in Shawnee Park by Mayor Jerry Abramson, who will be joined by U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-KY, Kentucky Transportation Service Delivery Director Vickie Bourne and TARC executive director Barry Barker.
The buses cost $558,000 apiece and are better for the environment, more fuel efficient, easier to maintain and smoother to ride than TARC older diesel-fueled buses. TARC officials say the new buses bring many benefits including:
Improving air quality and emissions reduced
Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx) – 61% less
Particulate Matter (PM) – 93% less
Carbon Monoxide (CO) – 90% less
Hydrocarbons (HC) – 21% less
Reducing energy consumption
Better fuel economy with an annual savings of 3,000 gallons per bus
High Mechanical performance
Fewer brake repairs necessary
Sixteen times fewer transmission fluid changes required
No major mechanical errors
We’ve read about how local-affiliate TV weathermen tend to not believe climate change is man-made and addressable. But a weatherman in Huntsville, Alabama is breaking from the norm. From the Rural Blog:
Dan Satterfield, weatherman at WHNT, “recognizes that many in his audience are ‘climatically challenged,’ and his profession has the power to help those afflicted by science illiteracy,” Lynne Peeples writes in OnEarth, the journal of the National Resources Defense Council. Only about 7 percent of all TV meteorologists work at a station with a designated science reporter, which often turns them into the station expert, Kris Wilson of the University of Texas, told Peeples. (OnEarth photo by Alex Martinez)
“People learn to trust weathercasters and like them, so whatever they say about things like climate change carries tremendous weight,” Wilson said. “By choice or by default, weathercasters end up being the science experts.” Satterfield said he remained unconvinced regarding global warming until the mid-1990s, but repeated exposure to the “overwhelming evidence” of climate change, made him finally say, “Whoa, I need to start looking into this.” After going back to school for a master’s degree in earth science, Satterfield began sharing his views on the air. He expected a backlash from his conservative audience, but “aside from a handful of complaints, the show’s ratings and viewer questions suggested that people were listening,” Peeples writes.
Who would you trust on climate change? Do you get your climate news from your friendly neighborhood (and regional) environmental news consortium?
Writer Wendell Berry says the University of Kentucky’s decision to name a new dorm the Wildcat Coal Lodge “puts an end to his association with the school.”
From the Herald-Leader:
“The University’s president and board have solemnized an alliance with the coal industry, in return for a large monetary ‘gift,’ granting to the benefactors, in effect, a co-sponsorship of the University’s basketball team,” Berry wrote in the typewritten letter. “That — added to the ‘Top 20’ project and the president’s exclusive ‘focus’ on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — puts an end to my willingness to be associated in any way officially with the University.”
[edit]
Berry, among the most revered of Kentucky writers and a former recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, told the university “it is now obviously wrong, unjust and unfair, for your space and work to be encumbered by a collection of papers that I no longer can consider donating to the University.”
The papers, which measure 60 cubic feet in volume and would fill about 100 boxes, remain at UK while Berry negotiates their transfer to the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort. He said the papers include letters he has received over the years, drafts of various books and corrected proofs.
Berry, 75, said UK’s push to become a “Top 20” research university has caused it to stray from its land-grant university obligation to address Kentucky’s problems.
[edit]
In a statement, UK spokesman Jimmy Stanton said the university was disappointed by Berry’s decision to pull his personal papers, particularly because UK has purchased a significant portion of his works, which are in the UK libraries archives’ permanent collection.
“We do regret that our students and researchers who wish to study his life and works will now be unable to access all of his previously donated works in one archive that contains the papers of many of Kentucky’s greatest writers,” Stanton said.
UK President Lee T. Todd Jr. was made aware of Berry’s letter, but UK archives director Deirdre Scaggs responded to Berry on behalf of the university in late January.
“Our commitment to you was demonstrated by our purchase of a significant portion of your collection,” Scaggs wrote on Jan. 20. “… By your recent decision, UK Libraries suffers an irreplaceable loss, but it is the students and researchers who will now pay the price.”
Is the increase in the market for natural-gas electric generating stations evidence that coal is on its way out as a power source? The Rural Blog has a summary of recent stories which suggest just that.
This week Siemens Power Generation Groupannounced that it “has won contracts to supply five new high-efficiency gas plants to Progress Energy at two sites in North Carolina that have old coal-fired generators,” Matthew W. Wald ofThe New York Times reports on the paper’s Green blog. “It is also replacing old gas-fired plants in Florida.” The six Progress plants are among the 11 coal-fired plants the company owns that do not have scrubbers. Progress says it will eventually close all 11.
What do you think? Is the market driving out coal? At the same time, the EU could be driving out gas.
Forget the latest job loss numbers, Science Daily is reporting that between October 2009 and April 2010, nearly 34% of managed honeybee colonies were lost. This isn’t necessarily Louisville news, but we have covered the (increasingly popular) bee beat here before, and there are reportedly beekeeping classes coming soon to Louisville.
(via Rural Blog)
This is an increase from overall losses of 29 percent reported from a similar survey covering the winter of 2008-2009, and similar to the 35.8 percent losses for the winter of 2007-2008.
The continued high rate of losses are worrying, especially considering losses occurring over the summer months were not being captured, notes Jeffrey Pettis, research leader of ARS’ Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Md. ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s principal intramural scientific research agency. The survey was conducted by Pettis and past AIA presidents Dennis vanEngelsdorp and Jerry Hayes. The three researchers said that continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers.
It’s a late night here at news central, so the posts may start a bit late Wednesday. In the meantime, here are the Indiana primary updates:
- Coats Is GOP Nominee For Senate
- Hill Wins Nomination For 9th District Seat
- Young Wins Close GOP Primary
- Southern Indiana Legislative Races Set
And in early news for Wednesday morning is this from the Metro Council’s Majority Caucus (we’ll have more afterward):
After months of online surveys, community meetings and information gathering Councilwoman Tina Ward-Pugh will announce the next steps for moving forward with the Green Triangle Initiative at a news conference on Wednesday. The Green Triangle Initiative began as an idea designed to find ways of creating a more sustainable vision for the future in the 9th District. Interested groups have been involved since September 2009. Ward-Pugh will announce the vision and next steps of the Green Triangle Initiative at the news conference. [edit] Ward-Pugh will also announce an exciting Green Pilot Program that is one of many such sustainable activities, projects and programs envisioned for the 9th District
The Edit: WFPL's Gabe Bullard blogs the news 