Commentary: First 100 days show Joe Biden to be surprisingly radical Toggle share menu
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Commentary: First 100 days show Joe Biden to be surprisingly radical But in some ways there is less to Biden’s radicalism than meets the eye, says the Financial Times’ Edward Luce.
President Joe Biden speaks during a rally at Infinite Energy Center, to mark his 100th day in office, Thursday, April 29, 2021, in Duluth, Ga. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
01 May 2021 06:10AM) Share this content
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WASHINGTON DC: Whether you ask Americans or foreigners, liberals or conservatives, Joe Biden’s presidency strikes most people as surprisingly radical.
In his first 100 days, Biden boosted US spending by roughly 15 per cent of gross domestic product, embarked on a charm offensive with allies, reclaimed US leadership on global warming and put Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago rear-view mirror.
Yves here. This post indirectly raises a critical problem with renewable energy sources, that they are intermittent and not hugely reliable. And that’s before getting to another issue that this article does not address head on: the need for load-shifting even within a day, since peak energy production for solar (the favored clean source for residential energy) is mid-day, when peak consumption is late afternoon-early evening. So users in theory need a combination of storage or a different source to provide base load requirements.
This piece puts too much emphasis on cost, as opposed to what ought to be the first line of attack, radical conservation. But it does in the end acknowledge that the stakes are too high to consider only consumer desires.
Extinction rebellion 16th Sept 2020, There have been a number of stories in the press in the last few weeks with criticisms about Extinction Rebellion by Zion Lights, UK director of the pro-nuclear lobby group Environmental Progress. It appears that Lights is engaged in a deliberate PR campaign to discredit Extinction Rebellion.
For any editors who might be considering platforming Lights, we would like to make you aware of some information about the organisation she works for and her employer, Michael Shellenberger. Environmental Progress is a pro-nuclear energy lobby group. While the group itself was only established in 2016, its backers and affiliates have a long and well-documented history of denying human-caused climate change and/or attempting to delay action on the climate crisis.
The truth isn t so politically simple. In truth,
both wind turbines and gas plants froze because of the abnormal weather.
And when Warren Buffet s Berkshire Hathaway said it had plans for additional generation capacity in Texas, it wasn t talking about wind turbines. It was talking about more gas-fired power plants
ten more gigawatts of them.
While the Texas Freeze hogged headlines in the United States, across the Atlantic, the only European country producing any electricity from solar farms was teeny tiny Slovenia. And that s not because Europe doesn t have any solar capacity on the contrary, it has a substantial amount. But Europe had a brutal winter with lots of snow and clouds. Despite the often-referenced fact that solar panels operate better in cooler weather, sub-zero temperatures are far more drastic than
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New York is about to spew a lot more carbon into the air, thanks to Andrew Cuomo and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. s anti-nuclear crusade
New York is about to spew a lot more carbon into the air, thanks to Andrew Cuomo and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. s anti-nuclear crusade
Anthony L. FisherApr 16, 2021, 21:22 IST
These 2013 file photos show New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, in Albany, N.Y. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Dallas, Texas.AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez
Andrew Cuomo and the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. pushed to close the Indian Point nuclear power plant.