Andy Borowitz | "Pocahontas" Not a Racial Slur, Says Prominent White Expert

29 November 17 PM

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Andy Borowitz | "Pocahontas" Not a Racial Slur, Says Prominent White Expert 
 
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker 
Borowitz writes: "Donald J. Trump's use of the name 'Pocahontas' at a White House event honoring Navajo veterans was not a racial slur, a prominent white expert said on Monday." 
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Tax Bill Close to Having Votes 
Jim Newell, Slate 
Newell writes: "The votes are falling into place. In fact, all 52 Republican senators could be within reach." 
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Trump Retweets Series of Horrific Anti-Muslim Videos Posted by Far-Right British Group 
Molly Olmstead, Slate 
Olmstead writes: "On Wednesday morning, President Trump retweeted three anti-Muslim videos originally tweeted by the deputy leader of the far-right British group Britain First, sparking condemnation among some in the U.K.'s parliament." 
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Garrison Keillor Fired by MPR: 'I Put My Hand on a Woman's Bare Back,' He Says 
Neal Justin, StarTribune 
Justin writes: "In an email to the Star Tribune Wednesday, Keillor said, 'I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.'" 
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Ann Curry Is Every Woman Cast Aside for a 'Shitty Media Man' 
Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast 
Fallon writes: "She isn't the host of a top-rated morning news program that she had devoted the bulk of her career contributing to and turning into a respected source of news. She isn't a leading television personality, with a career commensurate with her talent. She is, however, someone whose livelihood was essentially ruined in a power play by one of the many men who have since been revealed to be despicable." 
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Media Erase NATO Role in Bringing Slave Markets to Libya 
Ben Norton, FAIR 
Norton writes: "The American and British media have awakened to the grim reality in Libya, where African refugees are for sale in open-air slave markets. Yet a crucial detail in this scandal has been downplayed or even ignored in many corporate media reports: the role of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in bringing slavery to the North African nation." 
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Oil Exploration in Arctic Ocean Approved by Trump Administration as ANWR Drilling Bill Moves Forward 
Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch 
Chow writes: "The fight against new Arctic drilling took a major setback on Tuesday. On the same day that the Senate Budget Committee passed a bill allowing oil and natural gas drilling in Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Trump administration granted oil company Eni's request to explore for oil in nearby Alaska waters." 
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ZOMBIE OIL & TAXPAYER SUBSIDIES

Oil pump jack. (photo: Bureau of Land Management)

The Oil Industry Needs Taxpayers to Prop Up Nearly Half of Its New US Drilling

By Stephen Leahy, VICE

05 October 17

Subsidies are keeping “zombie energy” alive.

ombie oil" that ought to stay in the ground is kept alive thanks to federal and state governments in the US feeding it billions of dollars. This is oil consumers don't need, and that oil companies therefore wouldn't touch without these subsidies, a new analysis published in Nature Energy reveals.

Subsidies are not cash handouts. They're a mix of tax breaks, tax credits, and regulations that forego government revenue, transfer liability, or provide services at below-market rates. Another significant subsidy takes the form of uncompensated government costs for fixing roads damaged by heavy fracking trucks. Governments justify these as supporting economic growth and job creation.

About half of 800-plus untapped US oil fields (what's widely called "zombie energy") would be too costly to drill when oil is $50 a barrel, report co-author Peter Erickson, senior scientist at the US Center of the Stockholm Environment Institute, told me in a phone interview. Oil has averaged just under $50/barrel for the last 24 months.

The analysis looked at the impact of $4 billion a year in production subsidies given to oil companies. Study authors argue this money encourages companies to drill oil fields that would otherwise be unprofitable. That would likely produce 17 billion barrels and, once burned, add 7 billion tonnes of additional climate-heating carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere by the year 2050.

In the US, the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (behind China), CO2 emissions for 2016 totalled 5.2 billion tonnes.

For untapped fields that would be profitable even without receiving government funds, subsidies just pad the oil industry's bottom line. For oil producers in Texas, subsidies boost profits by 11 percent, said Erickson. "Who wouldn't want an 11 percent bump in salary?"

"This is oil we don't need and it takes the US further away from its climate goals of reducing CO2 emissions," he said.

The US is awash in oil and has become a major exporter since Congress lifted the crude oil export ban December 2015. By late September of this year, the US was exporting 1.5 million barrels of crude oil a day to 20 different countries, including China and Brazil. That translates into 30 million gallons of gasoline leaving the US every day.

While $4 billion is a lot of money, it's only part of the estimated $20.5 billion a year giveaway to the oil, gas, and coal industries, according to a separate new report published today by Oil Change International, a nonprofit based in Washington DC. At least $6 billion of this is from state governments.

"These industries have permanent subsidies at least seven times greater than what renewable energy receives," said report author Janet Redman in an interview.

In 2009, countries in the G20 (including the US) pledged to reduce fossil fuel subsidies, acknowledging that they distort markets, impede investment in clean energy sources, and frustrate efforts to address climate change. The Trump administration has already reversed the few modest curbs that had been put in place by President Obama, like increased royalty rates, and is working to open up more public lands to oil and gas exploration, such as the 19.6 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Last week, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry proposed new government pay-outs to the coal industry that's losing market share to cheaper natural gas and renewables.

Redman isn't surprised. In the 2015-2016 federal election cycle, oil, gas, and coal companies spent $354 million in campaign contributions and lobbying, and received $29.4 billion in federal subsidies in total over those same years—an 8,200 percent return on investment, the report said.

Both parties are recipients of those campaign contributions. Many members of Congress have close ties to the industry, Redman said.

President Trump's push to position the US as a major exporter of fossil fuels doesn't take into account "the environmental damage and costs, nor how it harms human health," she said. In that sense, the public is paying for Trump's "energy dominance" with their health, and with their taxes.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/46145-the-oil-industry-needs-taxpayers-to-prop-up-nearly-half-of-its-new-us-drilling

RSN: Trump: Let's Drill for Oil in America's Last Pristine Wilderness to Balance the Budget

26 May 17

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Trump: Let's Drill for Oil in America's Last Pristine Wilderness to Balance the Budget
Andy Rowell, Oil Change International
Rowell writes: "As the rest of the world embraces renewables, President Trump is belligerently ignoring the global trends and trying to promote fossil fuels."
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The Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (photo: Hillebrand/U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

isruption" is one of the buzzwords of the energy market right now as plummeting costs of renewables is changing the way we heat our homes and drive our automobiles.

Some of the biggest names in the energy business spoke Wednesday on that very topic in London at the Financial Times' Energy Transition Strategies Summit, at the panel Rethinking Energy in a Time of Disruption.

The speakers discussed the "major trends transforming the global energy industry and the leading-edge strategies to adapt, thrive and prosper in the brave new post-COP world which is emerging."

At the conference there was huge excitement about the clean energy transition, with the FT believing the transition is well under way. Wilfrid Petrie, CEO of ENGIE UK & Ireland, told the audience, "The transition to clean energy is more like a revolution."

Juliet Davenport, founder and CEO of Good Energy, one of the UK's first 100 percent renewable electricity supply and generator companies, added that rapidly changing "consumer behavior" as well as "technological change" was leading to a "fast energy transition to renewables."

Even Big Oil admitted that rapid change was amongst us. Spencer Dale, chief economist of BP, told the conference that "renewables will grow faster than any energy source ever, any time in history."

Indeed, the International Renewable Energy Agency annual report believes some 9.8 million people are now employed by the renewable industry, up 1.1 percent from 2015. More than three million of those are insolar power.

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#RenewableEnergy Generates Jobs for Nearly 10 Million Peoplehttp://bit.ly/2qVXmys  @IRENA @SEIA @AWEA @mzjacobson@MarkRuffalo @NRDC

9:50 AM - 24 May 2017

Renewable Energy Generates Jobs for Nearly 10 Million People

"We expect that the number of people working in the renewables sector could reach 24 million by 2030, more than offsetting fossil-fuel job losses and becoming a major economic driver around the...

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As the rest of the world embraces renewables, President Trump is belligerently ignoring the global trends and trying to promote fossil fuels. Ed Fenster of U.S. solar group Sunrun told the FT conference, "We really don't see a material impact from the Trump administration."

Despite this, Trump will have some discernible impact on the global energy market, specifically in North America. And while business increasingly wants to rip up the rules of the energy market, Trump wants to rip up one of North America's last pristine wilderness areas for oil: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

Many people thought the debate about whether to drill in ANWR, the largest protected wilderness in the U.S., was long dead and buried. Drilling for oil in ANWR was first mooted in the seventies, and has continued ever since.

According to Defenders of Wildlife, "At more than 19 million acres, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the crown jewel of the National Wildlife Refuge System. It is also one of the last intact landscapes in America, and home to 37 species of land mammals, eight marine mammals, 42 fish species and more than 200 migratory bird species."

But if you thought ANWR was safe, think again. Trump and his fossil fuel cronies want to try and drill it for oil one last time. In his budget announced Tuesday, opening up ANWR is a priority for Trump.

The ANWR line item in the budget plan "is entirely consistent with, and in fact a central part of, the president's desire to be not only energy independent, but energy dominant. We want to dominate that space," according to Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Trump wants to dominate the energy market. But as energy pioneers disrupt that market towards clean tech, Trump and his fossil fuel buddies cling to a by-gone age of fossil fuels. But we must not let them destroy America's "crown jewels" in what could be one of the last destructive acts of the hydrocarbon age. We must disrupt. We must resist.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/43782-trump-lets-drill-for-oil-in-americas-last-pristine-wilderness-to-balance-the-budget

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