There's got to be a better way of financing the media than these subscriber-only walls.  Especially when it comes to commentary and editorials, which should be freely accessible, in the interests of democratic debate.

Maybe a BBC-like fee?  Or pledge donations?  

If we don't have financially healthy media, we won't get good news and commentary.

Bart
Energy Bulletin

Friedman had said long ago that it ought to have been a major objective of the Bush administration to make us energy-independent, not by drilling for more oil in North America but by developing renewable sources of energy.

Lugar, a very intelligent and rather independent Republican Senator, seems to think that Friedman is right, on the one hand, it is terrificly important for us to become energy-independent (i.e., break our "addiction to oil").  But on the other, he goes on, the development of renewable sources of energy, to the extent of replacing fossil fuels, is not yet feasible. So I read him to say.  Moreover, he suggests as if in passing the continued development of coal-based energy (mountain-top blasting?), and drilling in ANWR (caribou-killing?; Gwich'in-starving?).

Please, anyone, correct me if I am wrong.  I shall try to get my husband to send me Friedman's piece in a bit.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Renewables are getting lost in the rush to convert Big Oil to Big Coal.

"While acknowledging that the oil alternatives still require a huge amount of work in order to achieve the necessary scale, Mr. Lugar insists that with a big strategic push we can, and must, get there: "My message is that the balance of realism has passed from those who argue on behalf of oil and a laissez-faire energy policy that relies on market evolution, to those who recognize that in the absence of a major reorientation in the way we get our energy, life in America is going to be much more difficult in the coming decades. ... No one who is honestly assessing the decline of American leverage around the world due to our energy dependence can fail to see that energy is the albatross of U.S. national security."

No mention of global climate change?  Why?

Because Lugar favors ethanol from corn, it pays his homies at Archer Daniels.  Ethanol does not cure global climate disaster.

Only renewable electricity from wind and solar in plugin battery powered transportation does that.

(the whole op/ed should be available soon here:   http://fbihopopeds.blogspot.com/  )

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Their answer?  CO2 sequestration, they plan to pump it down old oil wells.  Another untested boondoggle.  When taxpayers come up with billions to do this will anyone moniter the gas when/if it leaks?  Doubtfull.

Apparently not even the Governor of Montana is considering at least using the abundant wind power there to process the coal cleanly with the least amount of CO2 creation and groundwater destruction.

Synfuels that are produced by burning coal byproducts are worse than oil in terms of CO2 and groundwater pollution.   Of course oil refining is awful too.

20% of oil used is burned to produce refining process heat.  The good ole oil boys will not even do that processing with wind and solar.

Save 20% of oil?  No thanks, that might cut into oil bizz profits.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog