Trading 8s » Environment

It Never Happens Here…Until It Does

Anthony W. Orlando — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:35:55 +0000

I was traveling a couple weeks ago, so I couldn’t post my column in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel on nuclear energy and climate change. Click here to read it. Sorry for the delay.

Here are my sources:

All the 2010 weather information was compiled from official/reputable sources by meteorologist Jeff Masters
Minot evacuation (Jeff Masters)
Tornado damage estimates (AIR Worldwide)
Nuclear regulator investigation (AP)
Radioactive tritium leaks (AP)
Government response to leak investigation (GAO)

An Epidemic of Amnesia Takes Over Congress! I’m back at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, and this time...
A Very Unfortunate Time to Say “I Told You So” I published the following op-ed six months ago: Aren’t you...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Quote of the Day: Grover Norquist

Anthony W. Orlando — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 20:17:48 +0000

If Perry was president, one of the things I’d not worry about is a carbon tax. I’d worry about big spiders eating New Jersey first.

– Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform)

Quote of the Day: Garry Wills [Most] Republicans in Congress…have left behind their consciences in the...
Quote of the Day: Arnold Gundersen With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima,...
Sarah Palin and Froot Loops by Norman Horowitz Almost all Americans are familiar with Sarah...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

What to Read on Tim Pawlenty

Anthony W. Orlando — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 18:57:54 +0000

Pawlenty Stands Against Clean Air — Raj Salhotra & Stephen Lacey

Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty doesn’t seem to like any sort of regulation: “We need less EPA monitoring of our economy. And more monitoring of EPA’s affects on our freedom. I will require sunsetting of all federal regulations. Unless specifically sustained by a vote of Congress.”

According to a 2010 EPA progress report: “An analysis estimates annual public health benefits of the program in 2010 alone at more than $120 billion, about 40 times the estimated cost. Power plants have decreased emissions of SO2, a precursor to acid rain, to 5.7 million tons in 2009, a 67 percent decrease from 1980 levels and a 64 percent decrease from 1990 levels.”

A Contender to Reshape GOP’s 2012 Image — Dan Balz

He argued strongly for a stay-the-course policy in Afghanistan. He opposed President Obama’s July 2011 deadline for the start of a drawdown of forces and said more troops might even be necessary to assure eventual success.

On fiscal issues, he said the administration has spent too much for too little on the economy and that, if…the president’s debt and deficit commission then offers recommendations that include any new taxes, “it’s going to be a non-starter.”

He called the new health-care law misguided and said he and most Republicans still want to repeal it and replace it with something else. He said Arizona’s new immigration law has been “wildly and irresponsibly and recklessly mischaracterized” by government officials including the president.

Is He Too Nice for His Own Good? — Michael Crowley

Ventura had left behind a $4.5 billion deficit, which Pawlenty closed not by raising taxes (which he would slash by $800 million over the course of his term) but by dramatically slowing spending. He vetoed dozens of Democratic tax-hike bills, and in 2005 he allowed a nine-day state-government shutdown rather than give in to the Democrats’ budget demands.

In 2005, Pawlenty set out to cut the generous pension benefits of the state’s mass-transit workers’ union, triggering a 44-day strike before the union cried uncle. [...] On social issues, Pawlenty approved tough new abortion restrictions and gave local school boards the freedom to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.

Critics say Pawlenty used accounting shortcuts, like postponing spending and accelerating revenue collection, to balance budgets. Today, Minnesota is struggling with a projected budget deficit of $5 billion, which some blame on Pawlenty. “I don’t think any governor has left behind a worse financial mess than he has,” says Arne Carlson, a Republican who was Minnesota’s governor from 1991 to 1999.

But he tends not to mention the help he got from nonconservative sources — including more than $2 billion from an Obama stimulus bill that he has trashed as “largely wasted” and a 75 cents cigarette-tax hike he swallowed to end that 2005 budget shutdown.

Pawlenty will also have to explain to conservatives his stint of activism on global warming, which in 2007 he called “one of the most important [issues] of our time.” He signed bills promoting clean energy and a cap-and-trade system of carbon limits similar to the model envisioned by Obama. He toured the state with the Minnesota-based Arctic explorer Will Steger to “convince the skeptics,” as he put it, and even considered visiting the Arctic. He made a 2008 radio ad urging Congress to “cap greenhouse-gas pollution now!” But he now takes it all back, saying the human impact on climate change is unproven. “It was a mistake, and I’m sorry,” Pawlenty said…

What to Read on Jon Huntsman Jon Huntsman on the Issues — Ezra Klein So he...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Quote of the Day: Arnold Gundersen

Anthony W. Orlando — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 02:44:32 +0000

With Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, and now with Fukushima, you can pinpoint the exact day and time they started. But they never end.

– Arnold Gundersen (former nuclear industry senior vice president, reactor operator)

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Quote of the Day: Christopher Caldwell

Anthony W. Orlando — Tue, 24 May 2011 17:30:00 +0000

One Oklahoma bureaucrat complains that US authorities are trying to impose a “one-size-fits-all” regulatory regime. But one man’s one-size-fits-all is another man’s equality-under-the-law. Because it minimises compliance costs, simple regulation is exactly what a rational actor in a free market ought to want. The alternative — a jumble of authorities like the one that characterised the US banking system until 2008 — promotes jurisdiction shopping, regulatory arbitrage and one-off deals with interested legislators.

– Christopher Caldwell (Financial Times)

Quote of the Day: Martin Wolf [People] say that the WTO will collapse if we don’t...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.