For a moment, the most important news in the entire world flashed across the media like a shooting star in the night sky. Then it was gone. Last month, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries issued a dire warning to humanity. Because of our overconsumption of the world's resources, they declared, we are facing "widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss." They warned that time is running out: "Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory."
"Ask most Americans what they know about coal in central Appalachia, and they’ll tell you it’s a dying industry—one that US president Donald Trump famously vowed to revive during the 2016 election. “We’re going to put those miners back to work. We’re going to get those mines open … I see over here a sign, it says ‘Trump digs coal.’ It’s true. I do,” he told a rally in Charleston, West Virginia, in May 2016. “You’re going to be working your asses off.”
"But the idea that the region’s coal industry is dying is not quite true. For much of the hundred-plus years of its existence, the industry has been on a kind of artificial life support, as state and federal governments have, directly and indirectly, subsidized coal companies to keep the industry afloat."
"The costs of this subsidy aren’t tallied on corporate or government balance sheets. The destruction of central Appalachia’s economy, environment, social fabric and, ultimately, its people’s health is, in a sense, hidden. But they’re plain enough to see on a map. It could be lung cancer deaths you’re looking at, or diabetes mortality. Or try opioid overdoses. Poverty. Welfare dependency. Chart virtually any measure of human struggle, and there it will be, just right of center on a map of the US—a distinct blotch. This odd cluster is consistently one of America’s worst pockets of affliction."
"Leonard McBean had been told for months that his south Los Angeles home was a firetrap. Decades-old wiring had never been replaced, a common situation in his low-income neighborhood. One Tuesday morning, McBean asked a friend about the electrical contractor working on their house. By Wednesday night, the same contractor—a man who gave his name as Yogi—had approved the Jamaican immigrant for $18,000 in energy-efficient improvements."
“I said, ‘I don’t have that money,” McBean, a 67-year-old retired medical shuttle driver, told me. “He said, ‘Mr. McBean, don’t worry, you’re not going to pay a lot, just $100 a month.’ He said it was an Obama program.”
"When McBean electronically signed the contract two years ago, he didn’t realize he was consenting to have a lien placed on his house, meaning the county could take the home away for lack of payment. "He didn’t know the escrow payment attached to his mortgage would jump $400 a month. He didn’t know the lien would make the home difficult to sell."
As I said, NERC doesn’t see any urgent reliability crisis. Its message, if it can be captured in a single sentence: Rapid changes in the electricity sector are raising new challenges and require new thinking, but with a little wisdom and foresight, “the electricity sector will continue to navigate the associated challenges in a manner that maintains reliability and resilience.”
"The booming renewable energy industry is breathing a wary sigh of relief as Congress prepares to vote this week on a sweeping tax bill that preserves critical tax credits for wind energy, solar power and electric vehicles."
"As lawmakers were working over the past week to resolve issues between the House and Senate versions of the bill, the clean energy industry kept a keen eye out for details of the legislation, including provisions in the House bill that would have weakened or eliminated the tax credits for renewables."
"By rejecting that approach, Republicans sent a message that they won't back attempts to kneecap ongoing growth in renewables, despite pressure from the oil and gas industry to scale back incentives for clean energy. The credits have stoked growth in wind and solar, which for the first time this year provided 10 percent of the country's electricity, while jobs in clean energy are among the fastest growing in the country."