Our World and Everything in It

 

According to WXYZ News today, Governor Granholm signed a bill for $335 million in tax incentives beginning in 2011 thru 2016 that is “designed to make Michigan the center of U.S. efforts to develop high-tech batteries for electric and hybrid vehicles.”

 

It was approved 31-3 in the Senate and 94-0 in the House. Finally a green business move that our senate didn’t nix, although I don’t think it was the idea of going green that motivated Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop. It was more about helping the Detroit auto industry. The bill is designed with GM in mind relative to its plug-in hybrid “Volt.” It will ensure that all Volt related activities remain in Michigan.

 

At present there is no large-scale lithium-ion battery manufacturing in the U.S. This just shows how far behind we are on many green fronts. Japan, South Korea, INDIA and CHINA do all the manufacturing. The fact that India and China are ahead of us should be a warning to “catch up” fast.

 

And that’s what Governor Granholm hopes to do now that she has a little cooperation from what looked to be for a long time ”anti-environmental” senate. She hopes Michigan will “become a battery epicenter and draw a piece of an estimated $1 billion investment from the federal government.”

 

Read more: http://www.wxyz.com/news/story/Big-Battery-Tax-Credits-Approved/a5JpqyAFz0CjPXBjZnYh1A.cspx.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wrote this as a diary on other blogsites and found people weren’t as down on our car companies as thought. Since this blog does involve the environment I thought I would post it here also. Replies I’ve received from the west coast that buy foreign were a little surprised. One wanted to know about the new Ford Fusion hybrid. And many people including a congressman that I read about also find it curious that all three automakers ignored foreign competition. Here’s the blog:

We all had a hand in the recent demise of the American auto industry. Consumers ate up big gas guzzling SUV’s, trucks, and 300 hp engines in cars like my 9 year old Cadillac. Like most consumers, I figured if the Big 3 produces them, they are all right to buy; after all, the car companies have the inside track, and an eye up on the competition. We trusted their judgment and we were willing to buy.

American automakers sold us big gas guzzling cars, yet at the end of the Clinton administration, the Big 3 produced prototypes of energy efficient and hybrid vehicles for the future. When Bush/Cheney was elected all was abandoned. The Big Three were obviously assured by an overtly oil connected administration that the crude would keep flowing. The Big 3 trusted Bush/Cheney.

It is the trickle down of trust. Even though the source of this trust lies in an administration that is Wall St. friendly, (obviously), and anti-union, (prefers dictatorial management), even though the rest of the industrialized free nations are highly unionized and benefit from national health care systems. Hmm? Meanwhile, the Big 3 blindly and stupidly followed the lead of this anti-environmental administration, and totally ignored the competition that continued making hybrids. Odd. The assurances must have been great enough to go against basic business sense.

And what about the environment? The Bush administration appointed Michael Leavitt as EPA administrator in 2000. As new reports about global warming began to surface, they were either squelched or altered by the EPA. ENS reported: “The White House reversed course and rejected actions to control global warming pollution.” It is one of the worst deceptions the Bush/Cheney regime perpetrated on the American public, to cause doubt about global warming for the sake of the billionaire oil industry relishing the use of gas eating American cars by a trusting America and its auto industry.

As for Michael Leavitt, he left the EPA to head up Health and Human Services. Health and Human Services under his rule turned around and issued an e-mail to some 67,000 govt. employees urging them to buy hybrid cars, when U.S. automakers had none to offer. Of course the e-mail was a mistake, so sorry. What? As in a trial, the jury heard the stricken comment. Buy hybrid, buy foreign.
Within a span of a few years Michael Leavitt at the Bush/Cheney bidding was both anti-environmental, then suddenly green conscious. Bush/Cheney was purchasing more and more foreign oil. The beginning of 2007, before the economy took a dive, the Big 3 raced to Washington when oil prices rose to record highs. The Big 3 recognized the trouble ahead. They were snubbed by the same administration that obviously assured them early on. The oil was flowing but at outrageous prices, and now Bush/Cheney washed their hands of the auto industry. Not their problem. The Big 3 knew they had been duped. The environment was skillfully used as a means to an end.

The Big 3 scrambled back to Detroit to produce environmentally friendly cars. Ford is unveiling a hybrid Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan that goes up to 47 mph on electric power before switching to gas. The Prius tops out at 30-35 mph. Quite an achievement for Ford in a short time. GM is in the middle of producing a plug-in car. And Chrysler helped produce hydrogen-powered buses for Iceland in 2003. So they have the know how.

But there are new problems out of the auto industry’s control. The beloved Wall St. darlings of the Bush/Cheney era fumbled badly. Instead of just breaking unions, at least two of the Big 3 are on the precipice of extinction now. The final sword is bailing out Wall St. with $700 billion, and corps. like AIG twice, but stalling on the car companies for $25 billion citing that it will just be a cup of water on the fire.

If GM sold all 8 of its jets @ $35 million each, the total $280 million would by the same rationale be a thimble on the fire. If 20 execs conceded $5 million each in any perks or salary increases the resulting $100 million would be half a thimble on the fire. But there is no real fire. The auto industries have advanced greatly toward producing hybrid cars of the future in a very short time after realizing it was sheer stupidity trusting an administration that lead us into a war with Iraq. We’ve been mislead by the Bush/Cheney administration many times over and the one source that has profited greatly is Big Oil.

I believe Big Oil should return the favor to the Big 3 and float them the money to stay on the final stretch of track toward cars that won’t need oil in the future. If Obama can appoint his adversaries, then the oil industry can boost the car companies to a greener future without them. The auto companies deserve a bailout. The oil industry can easily afford it. They were bedfellows before. It’s time for some alimony.

Over four hundred blogs and all of the research, I’ve learned that all things lead back to politics through policy, legislation, and regulation. The past 8 years saw the demise of many things we’ve only just begun to notice. To blame unions and U.S. autoworkers for any of the problems the auto industry is currently experiencing continues to play into the hands of the Bush/Cheney mindset that would like to render our entire country an “at will” entity where no U.S. citizen will have the job security most of our major competitors in the free world enjoy. Understand that unions are the last powerful voice any average citizen has against the likes of a Wall St., that will most certainly make sure nothing, absolutely nothing trickles down. In light of what has happened, we’d be fools to think otherwise.

Japanese unions: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE5D8163EF933A15754C0A964958260.
Germany’s unions: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3755519,00.html
Britain’s unions: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/rov-a
06.shtml

Previewing October 14^th on PBS is a presentation called “Climate Change; Then and Now.” Watch it as it will be replayed on either WGTE or PBS Detroit again. If you want to hear what has happened since the words “global warming” first graced our ears some ten years ago, you might be surprised. The results are in and we definitely have an impact on what’s up with the weather. Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/story/2008/10/heat.html.

I watched another presentation on WGTE’s Frontline last night relative to the oil industry and the environment that’s part of a larger series entitled “Heat.” I swear that it was a compilation of many of the blogs I’ve done over the course of two years from the net wealth of the oil industry down to Detroit automakers. It’s nice to know I’m not totally daft. 

The program began by showing Exxon Mobil’s baby “Hibernia” the largest (by weight) oilrig platform in the world. It’s 16 stories high and 200 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in God forsaken nowhere. Every 5-6 days a tanker leaves with a load worth 500 million dollars. This rig cost Exxon 4 billion dollars!

The storyline then settled in with the statement that no one has resisted change like big oil. The reporter harped about, the ratio of net income for every major U.S. oil company compared to what they invest in alternative technologies. There were quite a few times oil company spokespeople were flustered and could not answer the interviewer. I mean how do you say “we’re greedy?” The coverage then shifted to the Rockefellers, (not so greedy stockholders) demanding in public court that Exxon invest in more alternative energy. Let’s face it, the oil companies are not going to let their bread and butter go without a fight, and do they have the money to fight.

The fight consisted of spin regarding the state of our environment. This spin has made the plight of the environment political rather than scientific, inciting even more divisiveness. The program showed that big oil had a connection to many denial machines like “The Heartland Group, Competitive Enterprises,” and I have to add “Friends of Science,” Senator Inhofe’s favorite. Inhofe was included in last night’s foray of who and what helped stifle the movement toward alternative energy.

Not to be left out, there was a segment on American auto companies. I could not believe my ears when a scientist being interviewed reiterated my words about our auto industry: “Where was the foresight?” It continued to show that Clinton funded the American auto industry to develop hybrid cars in 98. The prototypes were shown. The auto companies rolled them out and bingo, Bush got into office. That all stopped. The American car companies made bigger and bigger gas-guzzlers like SUV’s, Hummers, etc.  But Japan kept up with the hybrid idea since that time. Now Japan is 10 years ahead of us.  Japan’s factories are also aiming to cut emissions drastically more than they already have. If only we could work on the dolphin/whale thing…

It was quite a night for me to see the same content of some my past blogs come to life in a presentation. We live chaotic lives at times and so our news becomes disjointed and senseless. We only get bits and pieces. Heat is a long series to catch in its entirety. There are 9 chapters. But you can view them online. It’s nice to see it all strung together and for that effort we can always thank Public TV.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/view/6.html

WXYZ news announced this morning that Detroit area Coca Cola trucks would soon be running on hybrid electric motors. The trucks were purchased earlier this year from Eaton Corp.

Eaton is an impressive corporation as far as transportation and the environment. There website states: “We create innovations in hybrid power and low emission vehicles as a leading provider of diesel-electric hybrid power systems for truck and bus applications on three continents. Eaton is also developing hydraulic hybrid power systems technologies for use in refuse trucks, delivery vehicles, buses and other applications. Eaton has a hybrid truck drivetrain center outside of Kalamazoo and is a Cleveland-based Corp.

http://www.eaton.com/EatonCom/Markets/Truck/index.htm.

Coca-Cola ordered 120 of the hybrid trucks, the largest North American commercial order from Eaton’s hybrid systems according to WWJ. Coke previewed these trucks when they purchased 20 of them last year. They evidently liked their performance.

The article below said that Coca-Cola did extensive tests and found that “Eaton’s hybrid-electric drivetrain equipped trucks decreased emissions by 32 percent and fuel consumption by up to 37 percent.” This kind of fuel savings could start a trend.

http://www.wwj.com/Coke-to-Buy-Hybrid-Delivery-Trucks-From-

Eaton/1729913

Ford Motor Company is really reinventing itself. Ford is not just concentrating on delivering cars with greater mpg and lower emissions, but transportation in general for growing population centers.

Ford, in partnership with U of M, has been studying congested cities worldwide, tracking growing populations, and the migrations of these populations in order to offer solutions for metropolitan traffic. Their answer is a network of hubs within big metro cities that suffer the most traffic congestion. According to an article on world-wire:

By 2015, about two-thirds of the world will be living in urban areas, which will exacerbate traffic congestion and present major challenges to basic transportation and personal mobility.

“Ford Urban Mobility Networks” is a pilot program that is exploring how to coordinate a variety of transportation options and provide vital real-time information to individuals living in densely populated urban centers.

The program is the result of Ford’s ongoing collaborations with University of Michigan’s Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation (SMART) initiative.

Ford’s Urban Mobility Network considers all types of transportation, buses, trains, taxis, car-share fleets, mopeds and bicycles. All or some of these modes of transportation transfer at the hubs. The hub idea looks to me like a way to converge and disperse smaller packs of people all over simultaneously, rather than allowing everyone to herd along in one big jam pile of traffic until individuals peel themselves out of the pack as they near his/her destination.

Well good luck with this one if our populations grow out of control that badly. The article said some 35 cities worldwide would have populations of over 10 million. In honor of George Carlin’s death, and his wonderful truths, I think he would say something like “wouldn’t a better solution be a little abstinence so we don’t have population explosions? I mean if we have to really gear up for all these people that are going to be born, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to forgo that big growth and just maintain for awhile. Afterall, population is something we can control.

And I would add,  if we can’t control our garbage, can’t sustain ourselves comfortably, can’t help ourselves let alone someone else, why are we still procreating like it’s 2,000 years ago?

Before I digress farther, the article is a good read to get a idea of what our transportation future might be: http://world-wire.com/news/0806110002.html.

I went car shopping today. I’m not going to give a report on all the makes and models because I was looking for kinda sporty cars and sedans that get 30 mpg or more. I’m not and never have been an aficionado of SUV’s. If I wanted a truck, I’d buy a truck. I have a problem with the idea of exiting from an SUV all dressed up in heels. Not going to happen, even if that sucker cost over $50,000. Besides that, I hate getting behind them where I’m at the mercy of their brake lights only. And the women that drive them…Omagawd. They’ve come right over in my lane more than once because they just can’t see, and are always, always on that cell phone. And I don’t have a small car. I have a tank of a Cadillac STS.

I shopped in Monroe just to see and drive the cars. It’s a great place to look since just about all the dealerships are either on Monroe St. or Telegraph Rd. But it still took me 4 hours to browse through 4 dealerships. I went to the Toyota, Mazda, and VW dealership on the south end of town first. Check out the Eos VW. It looks like a little hardtop but with the flick of a switch, it’s a convertible. You have to watch this magic. It reminds me of a Lady Bug flicking its wings to take off when it transforms itself.  Ah the Germans are ingenious. As a hardtop it also sports a moon roof. When I drove this car, I swear I was in my old BMW. It hugs curves, zips around, is almost silent, and with the top down there isn’t a really big draft so you can actually hear the radio, and talk to one another. I made the comment that my old Beemer was manual, and guess what, with the flick of a switch on the automatic gearshift, it becomes a clutch free manual drive. One button puts the top up and down into the trunk, and one button makes all the windows go up and down at once if you like. What a great little car, RED of course.

Next stop was the Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge dealership. I’ve been seeing an awful lot of Avengers and Chargers around that look downright sporty. They look so much alike that I went with the Avenger since it gets a little better gas mileage. It was black with the sports package. What a comfortable ride. The seats were the best on my back anyway. It had good pickup, and what I couldn’t cram in that huge trunk, especially when both back seats pull forward. It would be good for trips to Lowe’s or packing up for camping, fishing, sporting trips. And what a deal. You can pretty much get one of these with little to nothing down, and for only $200/mo. for a 3-year lease. No wonder I’m seeing so many of these. I think I’d take the red one.

Groulx GMC, Pontiac, and Olds has more than a few choices also. The G8 has the look of a luxury sedan and sports car. There are two black ones sitting out front that I was immediately drawn to. What I ended up taking for a ride was another convertible, a white G6 Pontiac. It does pretty much what that little VW Eos did. With the flick of a switch the metamorphosis takes place from a hard top to a convertible. This car rode like my Cadillac and was fast. I took every car out on the expressway, and this one just floated. I’d have to say this was definitely a luxury convertible. Oh, and the one I test drove was discounted—a lot, as it was previously owned with only 1500 miles on it. If you’ve been holding back to get a convertible like this, better get down there for a great deal on this car.

I continued on to Victory Honda where I planned on looking at an Accord Coupe but could not get past the 4-door sedan. They’ve redone these cars to look like they belong in the Mercedes class of cars. What a mighty fine looking luxury sedan in the mid-$20,000 range. The leather seats and appointments are beautiful, and the back seat could fit two 6 ft. tall people no problem.

I had my 85-year-old mother in tow for this shopping spree. She was with me for the last 3 cars I bought sans my husband. Mind you this car only has 4 cylinders, (memories of my Beemer), but is really quick on the E-way. This car isn’t my Cadillac but it’s mighty close. The sales girl was showing me all the gizmos and a car has to go a long way to match what my 9 year-old STS has but this was close for half of what I paid for that Cad back in 99. And the safety features are phenomenal. There is a covering under the hood held in place by plastic tabs. If for some reason the engine starts on fire, the tabs melt, the covering comes down on the engine and smothers the fire. There is a breakaway engine mount so that if the car is hit head-on the engine drops and doesn’t end up in your lap. The front panels by the lights are super reinforced, and there are more airbags than I’ve ever seen on a car. Even the bumpers are 5 mph proof. If someone taps you, the bumpers crunch in but pop back out. Needless to say as we were driving along my mom looked over and said: “This is the car.”

And this probably will be the car, but that is me. There are fine Chevy cars too, especially the new Malibu, which I looked at before. I’ve also perused the Ford stock of cars like Ford’s Fusion, and Ford’s Escape that gets absolutely great mileage for a great price on a fine looking SUV if that is your preference. I have two friends that bought the Ford Focus that absolutely love their cars too.

If you’re tired of paying high gas prices, get out there and look around. The pickings are really, really great, and the deals are galore. The more cars I drove, the harder it was to make a choice. They all offered something I was looking for, and pretty much came with great stereo systems, MP3 and Bluetooth capabilities, nice interior appointments, sport’s packages with great looking wheels and trim, etc. The wheels and color can really make a car in my opinion. What a day. I’m bushed. 

It’s also the largest landfill redevelopment in the state of Michigan situated over the former Allen Park Clay Mine Landfill. Ford turned this Brownfield project into something green, really green. According to a World-Wire article:

The development not only reuses the landfill property, it preserves more land than it develops. In all, nearly two-thirds of the site will be natural green space, including prairie fields, ponds, trails and a future 43-acre park surrounding one million square feet of shops and restaurants.

Furthermore, the buildings on the site feature the latest in green design and construction. Fairlane Green Phase I is the first multi-tenant retail development to earn gold-level Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Environmental characteristics include high efficiency, CFC-free heating and cooling equipment, white reflective roofing, low-emitting materials, water-efficient plumbing fixtures, recycled and locally sourced building materials, windows and skylights, and a cistern to capture and re-use rain water.

More visible examples of the site’s environmental mission include large prairie fields and extensive native landscaping in parking lots, entryways, along store fronts and up the sides of buildings. Native plants require less irrigation and fertilizer while providing wildlife habitat. Additionally, rock gardens and landscaped swales cleanse and slow the flow of stormwater, which is captured in several large ponds.

Fairlane Green’s wide paved trails wind through prairies, along the ponds and through the mature woods bordering the site. Plans for the 43-acre park are underway and may include sledding, playscapes and nature study.

Read more:

http://world-wire.com/news/0805050001.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My girlfriend just bought a Prius. A touring Prius, which is a little bigger and comparable to a four-door sedan. She and her husband went to the auto show in search of a true hybrid, and mulled over the idea of a Prius. He already has a little Ford Focus and loves it. She said she would have gladly bought American, but they didn’t have much. I told her American cars are soon to get their parts from all over the place, pretty much do already, and hopefully vice versa for the foreign cars. So the term American means the company, not where the labor, the parts, or the money comes from.

I don’t blame her for getting a Prius. Her 12-year-old Buick Roadmaster had seen its better days and had 108,000 miles on it. She wanted to be environmentally friendly this time around and cut her gas bill to nothing. She only uses the car to drive around Monroe, MI, and to and from work probably less than an 8-mile round trip everyday. If she takes the back roads, that Prius will only be using gas to keep the electric motor running.

We all packed in her new car Saturday night and went for a ride. I was in the front and have to say it felt like I was in a Jetson mobile. The windshield is long, and angled and so is the dashboard, so the digital readout is way in front of you. Very futuristic. It’s doesn’t have the walled in feeling of a regular dashboard. There is a small monitor in the middle of it that shows all type of functions. My friend’s husband left the screen on consumption. What shows is an animated picture of the underside of the car, the wheels turning, and arrows showing the direction the energy is going to and coming from. The Prius is supposed to switch from electric to a mix of electric and gas at 25 mph, and then to gasoline alone after 55 mph. On the highway, it gets 47 mpg on top of that.  Surprisingly her Prius didn’t do that. It didn’t use gas until 37 mph sometimes. That was an added bonus.

When we approached the railroad tracks, her husband shifted a gear on the console and didn’t bother to brake because that shift slowed the car down to a crawl instead. I guess slowing down is as bad as taking off as far as fuel consumption. The shift slows the car down gradually without a lot of friction.

Other things we found out: You don’t have to have your keys in hand to get in. Her Prius reads the key fob in her pocket as she walks up to the car and unlocks it. She only needs to step on the brake and push a button to start the car. When she’s backing up, the monitor shows her what’s behind and what she is approaching along with a back-up alarm.  And her Prius is really roomy inside, albeit another car where you feel like you’re sitting on the floor, but for now it feels solid. She is 5′8″ and sat quite comfortable stretched in the back seat.

Tech wise it has blue tooth so she can dock her phone. There is a place for an Ipod of course. Both the phone and music are voice activated and are shown on the monitor as well. There are 7 hidden speakers surrounding the interior. And the back seats fold down creating quite a large hatchback.

Oh, I forgot. Her Prius only holds 8 gallons of gas. She bought it Thursday, January 31, 2008 and filled it up, all 8 gallons. I’ll blog when she stops to get gas for her Prius again. It’ll probably make us sick.  

I was listening to Good Morning America this morning and it seems cities around the country are having a hard time controlling speeding drivers. Follow along here. Scottsdale, AZ was the first city to have speed enforcement cameras on one of its highways. Other cities are following suit. A county in Maryland that has speed cameras simply sends a citation to the speeder in the mail if they are clocked at more than 11 mph over the limit. Eleven miles over is a far cry from one driver that was caught doing 131 mph past a 65 mph sign. This camera system has its detractors that claim the cameras aren’t always accurate and they are limited. But the cameras work.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety knows that Americans speed and on all types of roads.  The speed cameras have got the 75 mph crowd way down from 15 percent to less than 2. That’s quite a drop.  But why do we speed? Because we can. And most of the time we do it around 20 percent over the limit. We should be asking why during this oil crunch and with CO2 emission overload hasn’t our federal government lowered the speed limit to 55 mph like it did in the 70’s?
The idea of speeding because we can is bolstered by our car industry. Don’t get me wrong; it’s sheer joy to hear pistons slamming while jumping out in front of the guy that wasn’t going to let me on the expressway. But that’s about it. Keep traveling too fast and get caught, not to mention burning way too much gas and emitting excessive CO2 in the process. We should wonder about the contradiction of producing speedy cars in a country of speed limits. It’s stupid irony.

Lowered speed limits and the introduction of ethanol pumps, something I have yet to see anywhere, were the combination of choice in the 70’s when gas was high. I don’t think ethanol is the best idea, it will burden the space for food crops and give us another empire that is corn rich, but among alternative choices, it has its place. So where are the ethanol pumps? Are they gone the way of a lower speed limit?

Some of the excuses look extremely flimsy for all the things we do and don’t. If we had ethanol pumps back in the 70’s, than we should most surely be able to get them out there now and fast. It isn’t like we don’t have the technology. Ditto for lowering the speed limit. As for car manufacturers, Daimler-Chrysler (at the time) had the technology to produce hydrogen buses for Iceland 5 years ago but “nada” for us now. Ford and GM are slow to present true hybrids and keep lobbying on fuel economy issues. They claim they need time to produce 40-mpg cars. But back in 1984, the Big 3 automakers produced a total of 35 cars that got 40 mpg or more.  GM had 19, Ford had 6, and Chrysler had 10 of those gas savers. I say drag out those engineering plans and slap a new, sleek, light weight body on those babies and get em out there! My girlfriend who is in the market for a hybrid came back from the auto show disappointed and a little unnerved by the propaganda she heard like, “this is a REAL car,” because it goes too fast for the speed limits and burns mega petro.

Have you followed the logic and gathered a clear idea that nothing adds up here? We chase our tail—backwards! The experience and technology is there, so we have to look to the reason it’s not happening. There is only one industry that benefits from speeders, inefficient fuel economy, and no alternative fuel sources readily available—OIL.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4221537

http://www.mpgomatic.com/2007/10/19/super-cheap-high-mpg-cars-1984/
 

Get a load of our democratic process with this latest veto out of Washington. The Bush EPA nixed California’s proposed emission standards for the state that targeted the trucking, shipping, cement, semiconductor and consumer product industries. Instead Bush signed into law a new energy bill that requires automakers to cut emissions by 25 percent by 2009 and by 40 percent by 2020. The EPA said this covers the issue of emissions, end of story. Was that apples to apples?

Sixteen other states have already approved emissions laws and were waiting for this waiver by the EPA too. The EPA is supposed to have sole authority to make pollution rules, but our Federal Clean Air Act allows states to create their own rules with an EPA-approved waiver. The waiver was nixed today. The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of 12 states that sued the same EPA for dragging their feet about CO2 emissions. The Supreme Court had to tell the EPA that greenhouse gases can be considered “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act and they were in violation for not regulating them. And today the EPA blocked California and the other states from doing what should have been the EPA’s job and substituted with Bush’s flimsy energy bill. 

So the states go through a lot of effort for nothing. The emission laws were part of California’s “Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.” The NRDC and many public interest groups co-sponsored it. California committed to reducing overall global warming pollution by 30% by 2020. They figured on new technologies as well as pollution cutting strategies to meet these goals. They sought the help of E2, “a national network of business people who work with the NRDC to champion the economic benefits of good environmental policy” and “who built a solid case for the ways in which curbing global warming could actually benefit California’s economy” (Nature’s Voice Newsletter by the NRDC Jan/Feb 2008). Just what I thought. Green is good for the economy.

I was intrigued by E2 and read on that they argue, “that clean technologies would create jobs and attract new companies to the state…supported by the fact that clean tech now ranks third in venture capital investment in North America.” Told ya so Michigan. Clean technology isn’t likely to coexist alongside coalburners and refineries. They showed that California would save “barrels” of money by reducing dependence on fossil fuel. It also stated that it took 124 meetings at the state capital by E2 volunteer members to “present their business-based argument.” They worked hard to come up with legislation that protects the environment and creates economic opportunity. They believe global warming controls will spur economic prosperity. This was a great program, until the automobile lobby got involved. Yeah, another lobby.

According to our own Detroit News:

Using a one-page script and a list of auto facilities obtained from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group that represents automakers, staffers at the Department of Transportation called nearly every congressional member from Michigan and Ohio, urging them to oppose California’s request, according to records released this week by the House Oversight Committee. They also targeted other auto-heavy districts and governors in at least seven other states.
While federal law bars government officials from lobbying lawmakers on issues before Congress, there are no such restrictions on regulatory questions, such as the California waiver.

California filed a lawsuite challenging the EPA’s denial of the waiver. And there is a House Committee investigating the agency’s decision to deny it also. This is getting good.

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Read more about the veto at: http://lawyersusadcdicta.wordpress.com/2007/12/20/epa-nixes-states-plan-to-limit-greenhouse-gases/#comment-285.

Read more about E2: http://www.e2.org/jsp/main.jsp.

About the Supreme Courts decision: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june07/emissions_5-29.html.

The Detroit News article about the auto lobby: http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070705/AUTO01/707050350/1148.