A Look at the Oil Industry’s Favorite Climate Solutions | DeSmog
Energy
More Than 11,000 Scientists Declare ‘Climate Emergency’ – VICE
NPR
With the global economy in a pandemic-induced coma, the world just doesn't need a lot of oil.
But oil is still flowing out of wells, and with nowhere else to go, it's filling up the world's storage tanks. The oversupply is so intense that this week U.S. oil prices briefly went negative.
But why is that oil still flowing, anyway? Why don't producers turn off the spigot when demand falls?
The short answer is that production is decreasing — just not fast enough.
Trump Should Adopt a Carbon Tax
I was thinking what would be the most effective, job creating tax proposal out there. I think it would be a carbon tax.
Right now, America does not tax fossil fuels based on their carbon content. President Bill Clinton once proposed taxing carbon using a “BTU tax” but the idea never really got off the ground. But that was 25 years ago, and if anything the climate crisis has gotten more urgent. At the same time, the tax code has gotten more complicated, picking winners and losers without much of a sense of fairness.
I really like the idea of a national carbon tax. Individuals and most businesses would not pay the carbon tax — the only businesses who would pay a carbon tax would be those who extract or import carbon products into America. Certainly it would be an expense to owners of coal mines and oil and gas wells — but those are a small fraction of the American economy. While it would mean consumers would pay higher gas prices and more for heating fuel — it could be offset by growing the economy by eliminating taxes on investing and saving.
I suggest the carbon tax be used to cut taxes on businesses and investors. One of the taxes which has bothered me to no end is the tax on capital gains and on most interest-bearing investments. It just doesn’t seem right that after working hard, and paying taxes — and doing the right thing to invest money into growing the economy — I should be hit with another round of taxes. Imagine if all investments were tax free, like municipal and most government bonds are. It would encourage millions of Americans to invest their money rather then spending it on consumption. Tax the fossil fuel-burning car, not the growth of the economy.
Tax-free investments would provide billions in new capital funding, rather then being blown on frivolous things like new cars or disposable toys. If people didn’t ever have to pay on investments, they would be much more likely to save for retirement or just a better tomorrow. And because investments would be tax-free, investors wouldn’t have to report their gains to governments. It would make taxation much simpler, as your taxing much fewer people — just the carbon fuel producers, and not the general economy.
A carbon tax would allow the government to replace the Clean Power Plant program with just a tax on carbon-rich fuels. It would discourage the use of the most-carbon intensive fuels, especially dirty coal. And as many of the most carbon-intensive industries are the most polluting, it could allow government to reduce the level of regulation on many polluters, especially if there was a dramatic drop on overall emissions over time when people move away from burning large quanities of coal and oil to make energy.
This is why support replacing the Capital Gains tax and the tax on interest-gaining investments with a Carbon Tax.
Coronavirus Live Updates : NPR
Pennsylvania raises alarms on transfer of radioactive Three Mile Island reactor | StateImpact Pennsylvania
Each nuclear facility has a mandated trust fund — known as the Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund, or NDT, and financed with ratepayer dollars — to cover the costs of the decommissioning. Companies such as EnergySolutions and Holtec International, which bought the license of the shuttered Oyster Creek facility in New Jersey, hope to turn a profit by spending less than the dollars remaining in the trust fund to dispose of the radioactive waste.
Eric Epstein, chair of the anti-nuclear watchdog group TMI Alert, opposes the transfer and has petitioned the NRC for a hearing. Epstein argues that the transfer is an illegal taking of public funds.
“TMI-2 Solutions, an investment vehicle based in Delaware, wants to come in and clean the plant up, something that nobody’s been able to do in 41 years, and do it cheaper and faster than anybody else,” Epstein said. “… there’s over $1 billion in public money sitting in the decommissioning fund. And that’s what this is about, them coming in, taking the money, and then getting whatever is left over.”
U.S. crude oil futures for May plummet to minus $37 — lowest price in history
U.S. crude oil prices dropped by almost 300 percent to turn negative for the first time as plunging demand pushed storage facilities to their limits.
May delivery for the U.S. benchmark crude, West Texas Intermediate, sank to a new low of minus $37.63 a barrel by the close of the oil market Monday, a staggering level that essentially means producers would be paying buyers to take oil off their hands.