January 11th, 2018 · 3 Comments
Within seconds of the outrageous nightmare scenario being announced as reality, scientists around the world started to mobilize to capture key science information and data from US government websites to maintain knowledge in what some suspected would be a Dark Ages period. Some thought this is absurd, that the Trump-istas just wouldn’t go there.
They’ve been going there. By mid 2017, thousands of climate references had disappeared from US government websites.
https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/909591097730576385
In the intervening months, the climate zombies have extended their reach and extended the darkness.
The Environmental Data & Governance Initiative has just released a report Changing the Digital Climate documenting “how climate change web content is being censored under the Trump Administration”. As Vice put it, Trump is hiding climate change.
Anyone looking at the official websites of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, or the White House might be under the impression that climate change isn’t a threat.
That’s because the Trump Administration has been systematically scrubbing its online references to climate change,
This isn’t an issue of ‘just’ Polluting Pruitt at EPA or Zinke at EPA, but is one of the few things that Team Trump looks to be effective at across the board.
the words “climate change” and “carbon” have been stripped from government websites across a wide range of agencies, including the departments of Health and Human Services, Transportation, the Interior, Energy and State, the report found. They have been replaced with vaguer terms like “sustainability” and “emissions.”
The group also found a wide swath of alterations to climate change webpages.
- The White House no longer lists climate change as a priority.
- EPA, along with the departments of State and Energy, removed language related to U.S. international obligations to address climate change.
- Hundreds of pages at the EPA site that were designed to help local and state governments mitigate the effects of climate change have been removed.
- The Interior Department scrubbed a website for tribal climate programs of the word “climate change.”
- The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences dropped a link to an educational fact sheet about climate change and human health.
- the Bureau of Land Management altered and removed language and links about climate change, renewable energy and the overall mission of the agency and took down its climate change webpage without replacing it.
When it comes to climate science:
“We’re sorry, that page can’t be found.”
Every day is pretty good until we remember that these destructive fossil fools are in control of the U.S. government. And, from promoting polluting fuels to damaging the development of science to reducing data collection to disappearing basic science from government websites, Team Trump is choosing to #ActOnClimate: to act to make the climate situation worse.
Tags: Energy
January 11th, 2018 · Comments Off on Sharing: one objective to drive transforming transportation
Ongoing at the World Bank is the joint World Resources Institute and World Bank annual Transforming Transportation conference. When it comes to Transportation, Sustainable Mobility for All has four core objectives:
- Universal Access
- Efficiency
- Green Mobility
- Safety
Robin Chase, founder of Zip Car and author of Peers Inc, expressed an ‘epiphany’ during the first panel.
Rather than four objectives, which can be hard to absorb and retain, I just had an epiphany that one word can capture this.
Sharing.
Sharing enables access.
Sharing drives efficiency, with fewer vehicles on the road, greater usage of each built item, and less pollution per mile traveled.
Sharing drives and enables safety, as the most dangerous element of the transportation system is the personal vehicle.
Sharing reduces pollution impacts and help drives greater electrification of transportation.
Sharing … the one word to capture the needs for driving a better 21st century transportation system.
NOTE: See Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities.
Tags: Energy
January 8th, 2018 · Comments Off on Global Warming is a hoax: I froze on the soccer field in record cold temperatures
Refereeing youth soccer: a way to clear my mind, get some exercise, interact with people, contribute to society, and to get yelled at by people who don’t have a clue about actual rules and regulations but who, because their child is on the field, is the world’s leading expert.
In early November, refereeing a tournament — game after after game — was a stunningly chilling experience. Actually, in terms of pure refereeing, this ‘All Stars’ tournament was actually a good experience. From the coaches and players in 11 games over two days, a lot of positive feedback (the sincere ‘it was against us but you made the right call’ sort of comments are nice to get in that end of game handshake) along with some complicated situations requiring actual judgment about how best to manage the game, to protect players while enabling them to play …
The tournament was — as above — stunningly chilling. Not normal to tell players, before a game, ‘it is cold — I don’t care if you are wearing winter coats, gloves, or hats as long as your jersey is on top, it is clear to all which team you’re on, and I can see your number …’
It was cold enough to — as Donald Trump would like you to understand — to prove that climate change is simply a Chinese Hoax.
After all, Saturday cold set D.C. record, for first time this century in Nov.,Dec., Jan.
it was the first time that a record for lowest temperature had been set or matched in Washington for any date in November in this century.
Nor has a coldest-day record been set here this century in December or January, either.
D.C. dips to a record low, first in November in four decades and one of many across the Northeast
While the broader Northeast has been visited by many record highs over recent years, a record low is much less common these days. For instance, this is the first record low in November for Washington since 1976. It is the first record low overall in the city since February 2015. That one was the first since May 2002.
Right, a great day to be out on fields with essentially no wind breaks for a good 12 hours of so. Was quite happy to have some hot liquids at home afterwards each day.
Now, those Post articles had a sad element to it that is all too common when it comes to The Washington Post discussions of extreme weather situations: climate change is absent. That failure, sadly, is all too common across US media where underreporting climate change is all too common a case. Virtually no record low temperatures for an extended period — when there are lots of high temperature records — is, well, … without explanation as to potential (actual) causes?
Guess readers are supposed to read between the lines to ‘know’ that this is the case.
Now, that was back in November. This past week, with the Polar Vortex bomb, the entire US East Coast has been hit with terrifying cold temperatures that make that November day look like a heat wave. In reading and watching news coverage of the East Coast’s beyond (below) frosty start to 2018, that gap is just as stunning. The primary driver of ‘this relates to climate change’ were the rare reactions to Trump’s tweeting and certainly not a major portion of the press coverage.
And, for those living under severe cold, there is little coverage telling them that the rest of the world is hotter than normal. Alaska is missing winter. California is dry, hot, and still smoldering from massive fires. And, well, Australia is almost literally burning up with highways literally melting.
In the northeastern United States, temperatures dipped far into the negatives this week.
The streets of Boston were flooded with icy waters that carried dumpsters away. Cars in nearby Revere, Mass., were nearly buried in frozen floodwaters. Wind chills in parts of New Hampshire could hit 100 degrees below zero (That’s not a typo, as the New York Times points out).
In Australia, however, it’s summer — and a remarkably hot one. So hot that part of a freeway in Victoria on Australia’s southeastern coast was “melting.” Several hundred miles northeast, in the greater Sydney area, Australians spent Sunday in the most sweltering heat in nearly 80 years.
Such is the extreme weather greeting 2018 from opposite ends of the globe
So reads an online post from the Capital Weather Gang, The Washington Post Capital Weather Gang. The article points out these extremes and — unlike so many other Post pieces — actually has a discussion mentioning climate change.
Australia’s heat wave — and the United States’s bomb cyclone — both come on the heels of the second-warmest global year on record since the 1800s.
A new report, pointing to signs of climate change such as thawing of Arctic ice and wildfires, says the global average surface air temperature in 2017 exceeded 14.7 degrees Celsius (58.46 Fahrenheit), making last year a bit cooler than 2016, the warmest on record. But 2016 included the tail end of a strong El Niño in the tropical Pacific, and that bumped up temperatures that year, as well as in 2015
We all naturally focus on our own backyard — or our own soccer field/football pitch. “Global Warming”, climate change, is a global event. With global temperatures continuing their upward path, if (when) it is unusually cold in your backyard it is very likely that it is unusually hot in others’ backyards.
In any event, with temperatures barely cracking the teens in the past few days in my backyard, quite glad to be in front a roaring fireplace than out refereeing a tournament.
Tags: Energy
Iran is in turmoil.
People are protesting in the streets — calling for more openness and, even more strongly, policies to boost economic performance. As to the latter, for example, calls to end Iran’s major support for various militant and military forces (Syria, Hamas, otherwise ..>) and use that money at home.
The protests are serious.
There have been a variety of crackdowns, with at least several dozen killed so far.
It is serious enough that the Tweeter in Chief, @RealDonaldTrump, has spoken up.
As to the last, amid Trump’s apparent belief that ice cubes in the freezer disprove climate science, Team Trump is unlikely to recognize how human-driven climate change is a serious contributing factor.
A 14-year drought has emptied villages …
A 14-year drought caused, in part, by human-driven climate change is a major contributing factor to the unrest in Iran.
Let’s be clear: just one can’t say ‘the Syrian Civil War was created by human-driven climate change’, climate change is just one of many factors driving today’s unrest in Iran. Bad government economic policies, few jobs for young people, continued efforts to suppress openness, massive increases in smart phone ownership (with less fettered access to the world and each other), and … there are a multitude of factors at play in this complex situation. But one cannot (unless rejecting realities, like Trump and his #alternativefacts supporters) deny that human-driven climate change,
- is helping drive the disruption/unrest in Iran (with a 14-year drought), and
- is disrupting international security and creating increased risks for upheaval, refugee movements, conflict.
For photographs of
The Impacts of Climate Change in Iran,
see Ako Salemi’s work.
“Fishermen at a small port in Sistan, Iran are looking into the dried Hamoon lake, where once was a place for fishing but after big drought in last decade they lost their jobs and most of them have immigrated to large cities around. December 2016” Ako Salemi (http://www.akosalemi.com/climate-change-in-iran.html)
[Read more →]
Tags: Energy
January 2nd, 2018 · 1 Comment
Tobias Buckell is a prolific and thought-provoking science fiction writer with a number of CliFi (climate fiction) books and short stories. For example, the Arctic Rising series‘ first book is described thusly:
Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it’s about to get even hotter. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean.
Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself—but in doing so, they have created a superweapon the likes of which the world has never seen.
Buckell has just posted a relatively short piece (<10,000 words) that easily rates as one of the top CliFi pieces that I’ve ever read. Easy for a reader to get caught up in the action, with serious science implied, serious ethics suggested, and a stunningly powerful inherent case for us (the US and all of us) to choose to #ActOnClimate seriously.
In a “world to die for,” Buckell presents us with a future where (a very few) people are leveraging technology to move between parallel universes, parallel Earths. The core difference between these alternatives: humanity’s ability to coalesce for climate action. The starting world is an electrified version of Mad Max: very violent and with degrading systems as ‘nothing is being built’ and climate catastrophe looms eminent. A second world is functioning, with police and helicopters and sweet air to breath in. The third is truly horrific, climate catastrophe has occurred and breathing air without protection is close to a death sentence. And, the last one readers encounter is “a world to die for … a world to fight for”.
These worlds are described on an “RCP scale”. RCP stands for Representative Concentrative Pathways, four trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions and concentrations used by the 2014 IPCC report to frame analysis
The pathways are used for climate modeling and research. They describe four possible climate futures, all of which are considered possible depending on how much greenhouse gases are emitted in the years to come.
Buckell’s four worlds are the notional result across the four RCPs.
That ‘world to die for’ represents, in essence, the most optimistic scenario: the one where (despite the Donald Trump’s, Scott Pruitt’s, Koch Brothers, and other climate-science denying power brokers in the world) humanity gets its act together for a World War II-like mobilization to shift the economy toward lower carbon, to carbon neutral, and then to negative carbon as quickly as possible.
Looking across Buckell’s alternative futures — captured in an well-framed, even powerful, story — there really isn’t a choice as to which humanity (with perhaps rare exception) would like to end up even as there are powerful forces seeking to derail progress that might get us there.
As to that ‘world to die for,’ many of us are fighting for that world.
Tags: climate change · climate disruption · Global Warming
December 31st, 2017 · 1 Comment
Like all too many Americans, part of New Year’s Eve rushing around always seems to be getting in just a few more donations. Thanks to the GOP Tax Scam, along with millions, that end-of-year rush is, well, even rushier. (We always try to clean out and donate useful stuff and that, generally, is a ‘whenever’ activity. The #TaxScam pressured us to do a clean sweep last week — and, well, we weren’t the only ones as there was a long line to donate to Goodwill …)
Many of my donations, as per the focus of this blog, go into clean energy, climate, environmental, and related spaces.
A just made donation covers many arenas. Just completed a donation for helping put up a solar microgrid at a Puerto Rican Hospital. While such measures should have been core to a major and ongoing US government response to Hurricane Maria and the tribulations of 3.5 million American citizens on the island, such a Disaster 4R response simply wasn’t in the cards with the Trump regime and its seeming disdain for the plight of so many Americans.
It is not every donation that seems to hit so many arenas of concern:
- Clean Energy future: Helping put up clean energy systems, that will displace diesel fuel, my family’s donation will help Puerto Rico’s transition to a clean energy future and reduce climate impacts from the hospital’s operations.
- Puerto Rico has an expensive, highly polluting, and — even before Maria — unreliable electricity system.
- Disaster resiliency: The solar microgrid system will help provide resiliency in the face of a future disaster — and even help keep the power on during the all-too-often intermittent outages.
- Helping Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans post Maria: Our fellow citizens have nearly disappeared from the concerns of too many — including from those running the Federal Government. They need our assistance — and this is a useful path.
- Medical care: Okay, clean energy solutions helping save people’s lives directly … that is a pretty good combo.
- Etc …
The project I donated to, a crowdsourcing being run by acquaintances of acquaintances seeks “to install a 6 kilowatt solar emergency microgrid on the Migrant Health Center in the western region of Maricao, Puerto Rico”, is just a small drop into the ocean of Puerto Rico’s needs. If you wish to look elsewhere and have something ‘more’ than a crowdsourcing re solar & Puerto Rico, the Solar Foundation is helping move money to projects–go to see their very appropriately named site: Solar Saves Lives. The project I donated to, in fact, is being done in coordination with the Solar Foundation. From the organizer:
“Right after Hurricane Maria ripped through Puerto Rico, I read that FEMA was asked if they were going to put in solar panels and they said no. They were just tasked with rebuilding Puerto Rico‘s electricity grid the way it was before. Their budget to rebuild was $5 billion and they were going to rebuild the antiquated, dysfunctional dirty grid transmission and distribution infrastructure. PR electricity comes from 98% fossil fuels and 2% renewables. This is tragic! It’s up to us to help move the needle to a clean energy system.
I am working with The Solar Foundation in DC which is serving as the project manager. Solar Foundation is coordinating equipment donations, equipment purchases and contractors to install solar photovoltaics and batteries. There are many companies that are willing to reduce their equipment prices, donate equipment or donate their time to help Puerto Rico. Feels like a barn raising.
Solar Foundation had a list of 62 medical clinics, mobile clinics and hospitals and identification of how much solar PV and energy storage they need to continue operations when there is a blackout. I asked them for a small, rural clinic that otherwise would not be helped for years. Policlinica Jayuya is the site we chose. Solar Foundation is working with New Energy to engineer and install the installation pro bono.”
2017 has been a very difficult year — on so many levels, in so many ways, for so many people.
Ending the year taking a step to help put solar systems into Puerto Rico is, well, a good way to end that difficult year.
Tags: renewable energy · solar
December 28th, 2017 · 2 Comments
The classic climate science denial line: it’s cold outside, we really could use some of that global warming … It is such a standard tactic that the Washington Post’s Capital Weather gang, in association with warnings of serious (record-breaking (in many cases)) cold descending on the East Coast, warned against this.
If anyone on the US East Coast asks “where’s that global warming”, the rest of the world is answering: HERE!
Much of the US is incredibly cold — while the rest of the world isn’t … but let’s say Global Warming doesn’t exist …
To be clear, one moment’s weather situation doesn’t prove climate change … just like a cold weather snap in part of the world doesn’t prove it doesn’t exist. Winter still happens, cold weather records still occur … but winters, globally, are shorter and not as cold. And, when it comes to weather records, they should be roughly balanced between hot and cold weather records — with human-driven climate change, high temperature records (including high lowest temperature) are blowing past cold records to the order of 10-1 globally decade to decade.
This isn’t ‘normal’ but the result of humanity putting its thumb (or 7 billion thumbs) on the climate scale.
Rational thinking, listening to experts, understanding science are far from the hallmarks of @RealDonaldTrump.
With perhaps dismay at having to wear a sweater while playing golf for something over the 100th time since he occupied the Oval Office, Trump tweeted out …
In addition to ignoring science and celebrating his science denial, its clear that Trump doesn’t follow the Capital Weather Gang and didn’t realize that he was providing the straight man idiot to prove their point yesterday.
From my perspective, a response to Trump:
Along with literally billions of other thinking humans around the world, as of 6 November 2016, I thought such idiocy was being relegated where it should be — to the dustbins of history. Instead, thank you to abysmal media practices, Republican abusive practices (voter suppression), Russian interference, and …, these anti-intellectual, anti-expert, anti-science fossil fools are occupying the US Federal government and damaging humanity’s ability to set a path to tackle climate change and foster a way forward to a prosperous, climate-friendly future.
The shallow ignorance arrogantly demonstrated by Trump might have been been amusing if coming from a powerless old man sitting yelling at his TV … sadly that is not the case and I am not amused …
PS:
- Did not have time/energy to take on Trump’s deceit re Paris Accords (“going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS”) — in short, false on so many levels. (1) other countries investing too; (2) “pay” assumes no return, when the ROI would (will) be multiple times larger than the investment cost due to multitudes of factors other than simply reduced climate risks; and (c), (d), (e), …
- See after fold for a number of related tweets/items. Among other things, others similarly warned that deniers would make hay of cold weather … such as climate scientist MIchael Mann.
- Of particular value, see WashPost’s Dino Grandoni’s After chilly forecast, Trump tweets U.S. ‘could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming’ for some history re Trump’s climate science denial tweets and discussions of the idiocy of Trump’s tweet today.
- For a relevant earlier discussion, see “Where’s the Global Warming?” thought Buffalonian; then they looked at a map.
“Yes, Buffalo is having a massive, massive snowstorm. (And, I do not envy — sympathize greatly with — those who are trying to deal with its impacts — from shoveling massive amounts of snow, to worrying about whether your home will cave in, to …) For too many, that (beautiful) white stuff somehow is a disproving item when it comes to climate change science. To try to explain that, in fact, the snow is related to climate change opens the door for ill-educated mockery. Yet, it is …”
- UPDATEs: The outrage/engagement re Trump’s tweet is impressive … 1000s engaging. Two excellent ones.
[Read more →]
Tags: climate zombies · science denial · Trump · Trump Administration
December 28th, 2017 · Comments Off on Climate change threatening what might be world’s most ubiquitous addictive drug
This guest post is from Pakalolo.
While not thrilled with ‘your luxury is at risk’ climate change discussions ( from skiing to wine to …_, the reality of threats to such luxuries can … or might be able to break through to get (some) people’s attention and, perhaps, (support for) action to reduce climate impacts.) In this case, the title caught my attention — coffee is my one ‘addiction’, with withdrawal symptoms emergent when I don’t have that morning coffee (or that second cup …).
This year will rank as one of the planet’s top five warmest years on record according to new data from NOAA and NASA.
NASA concludes that 2017 will be the 2nd warmest year on record behind 2016 which in turn removed 2015 from the top spot. Meanwhile, NOAA predicts 2017 will be the 3rd warmest year on record.
[Read more →]
Tags: agriculture · catastrophic climate change · guest post
December 22nd, 2017 · Comments Off on Playthings lead to substance? Incremental to real change? What does a “solar train” really mean?
Electrification of rail, a global phenomena (with, sigh, a major exception in the US/Canadian market), has significant positive impacts:
- Improved rail capacity
- with no other change, roughly 15% improvement in capacity due increased efficiency in braking/acceleration
- Interesting options for improving grid reliability, connections, etc …
- rail right of way as viable for power lines
- Reduced costs
- Increased safety
- including due to reduced oil movements
- Reduced pollution
- both local and globally
- moving from diesel to electric locomotives (or overhead power lines)
-
Solar panels provide electricity to run coach systems
With the plunging cost of solar power, an increasing ‘buzz’ over the past few years has been various ‘solar train’-related stories. India has been a space of dramatic change over just a few years — with decisions to move from diesel to electric trains soon followed by decisions to invest in solar (including at train stations) to moves to incorporate solar power into the trains themselves. Serious progress that has accelerated with improving technologies, dramatic price cuts, and clear-thinking analysis supporting decision-making processes. Along the way, however, some breathlessly headlined stories suggesting total change when, in fact, it was more ‘simply’ an incredible step along the way.
For example, from India came stories headlined like Endgaget’s India’s first solar-powered train makes its debut. As something in the range of >95% of people never read more
Solar on coaches will displace diesel fuel
than the headline (or the tweet or …), easy to understand why people would think “wow, India Rail is moving people with solar”. Before ‘debunking’, to make clear, the real story from India is a pretty good one that shouldn’t be dismissed but it isn’t accurately reflected by the headline. A more accurate headline from Quartz India is rolling out trains with solar-powered coaches that’ll save thousands of litres of diesel. “Solar-assisted coaches” — each coach has 16 300 watt panels (total peak capacity of 4.8kilowatts) to take up the hotel load: “for powering internal lights, fans and other electrical systems of the coach”
This is the first instance involving the installation of a solar rooftop system in a diesel-run passenger train with a battery backup. The system is capable of developing up to 20 kilowatt-hour (kWh) per day throughout the year
Those solar panels are displacing electricity that, otherwise, “from a diesel-driven generator“. Thus, the solar panels are absolutely reducing diesel-fuel use to move passengers — but certainly not eliminating it and, well, really acting at the margins.
From Australia, however, comes news of an actual fully solar-powered train which made its maiden voyage earlier this month. This is a tourist (and local transit) project, ‘combining the new technology of solar power and a heritage train’. Using bus technology, the solar panels on the train — on a sunny day — provide enough power for five or round-trips on this three-mile track. In this case, Inhabitat accurately headlined: The world’s first 100% solar-powered train launches in Australia. The system has 6.5kw of panels, a 77 kwh battery, and regenerative braking. Reportedly, it requires just 4 kwh for each leg. Clearly, not everywhere is Australia with Australian sun.
Electrification of rail is real — with real benefits. And, increasingly, this is being married with the solar revolution. In India, we have a clear example of incremental moves toward this marriage with serious green-eye shade calculations showing the the cost-benefit relationship. In Australia, we have a demonstration project (a tourist ‘plaything’ it might be termed) that shows, at least in some circumstances, transit can be handled primarily with its own panels. In coming years, we should see an acceleration marrying these paths supporting an every cleaner transportation system globally.
Tags: rail · solar · trains · transportation
December 21st, 2017 · Comments Off on Fossil Fools don’t pay taxes
The Republican Party just passed and is celebrating the GOP Tax Scam, with the obsequious genuflecting to Trump added even more insult to the injury that they have done to the nation. Amid the Tax Scam, the Republican Senators and Representatives tried to stuff in measures every which way to Sunday to gouge wage-earning Americans to put money into special interests and billionaire contributors. Within this were numerous deals providing special deals to fossil fuel interests.
When it comes to benefiting from tax cuts, those dirty industries needed special deals because they pretty much don’t pay any taxes relative to their incomes as is seen strikingly in this table from 538.
- Coal firms essentially don’t pay Federal taxes.
- Oil firms are under ten percent effective tax rate.
Pretty hard to take seriously fossil fools whining about oppressive taxation when, essentially, they aren’t paying taxes.
This is made explicit after the fold. Even looking solely at money-making companies, fossil fools don’t look so foolish when it comes to avoiding taxes. With years of sneaking in this benefit and that exclusion, coal and oil firms pay a fraction of the taxes of other industries.
- Aerospace/defense: 23%
- Auto parts: 27%
- Construction supplies: 30%
- Food wholesalers: 34%
- Machinery: 27%
- etc …
The average, across all industries, is an effective tax rate of 26.22% for money-making companies.
What about fossil fuels?
- Coal: 0.69%
- Oil/Gas:
- integrated: 8.01%
- production/exploration: 7.08%
- Distribution: 7.78%
No wonder they aren’t focused on tax cuts and are pleading for even more subsidies, special deals, and enabling more polluting. After all, how can you cut taxes when they barely pay them?
To show the absurdity, let’s stay sort of in the same extraction world,
How about other traditional energy:
How about dirty energy’s clean competition?
- Green & renewable energy: 26.42%
While clean energy firms, pretty much, are paying ‘what business pays’ in taxes, the dirty energy firms polluting the air our children breathe, the water they drink, and the future they will live in are barely paying any taxes at all. When you hear of fossil foolish subsidies, this fossil-foolishly low effective tax rate is a cogent example of their reality.
Now, even with their absurdly low tax rates, the OIl Giants win giantly (YUGELY) from the GOP tax scheme, perhaps even boosting earnings per share by five percent. There are gains from expensing (allowing, for five years, 100 percent deducted in year one rather than deduction schedules), reduced US implications of overseas earnings, etc, etc, etc … For decades, the legions of lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists have worked hard to assure that the oil, natural gas, and coal industries pay as low an effective tax rate as possible. With their claws in the Republican Party, they successfully snuck plenty of fossil-foolish provisions that will even further lower their contribution to the general treasury.
[Read more →]
Tags: Energy
