Nova: Saved by the Sun. on now, PBS. interesting so far.

[Gabi Hayes]

talking about how NO president has brought government funded alternate energy research up to the levels Carter instituted.

it's at/below 1980 levels

don't get me started on what Carter proposed in terms of energy policy

he made a seminal speech in 1977, which, had most of his tenets been followed, we'd NEVER have invaded Iraq, because we'd have told the ME oil moguls to FFFFFF Off!

just by following the CAFE standards he introduced, we'd have been energy independent

this show goes FAR beyond that, though

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/solar/

I'm posting the principles of Carter's Energy Speech in the first reply, along with the link to the entire thing

it's VERY VERY SAD to see this, to see how PRESCIENT it was. I've linked this before, to little response

it's OK, cause it's already too late, most likely

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html

[Gabi Hayes]

1. Carter's far seeing energy speech, ca. 1977:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html

The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices.

The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems -- wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both at once.

The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and developing a strategic petroleum reserve.

The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve, just as the consumers will. The energy producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer.

The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce the demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way we can buy a barrel of oil for a few dollars. It costs about $13 to waste it.

The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement costs of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford.

The eighth principle is that government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason I am working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy, to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy.

The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are more plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption when they make up seven percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy.

The tenth principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy we will rely on in the next century.

.........

much, much more.

so very sad

as we sit freezing in the dark, a few years hence, all those greedy monsters can flick their bics and read this speech and bemoan what could have been

[Xipe Totec]

2. Face it, Carter was far too good a human being

to be President of the United States.

[Gabi Hayes]

6. excellent point, and he got in because the public was DISGUSTED with

lying thieving rePUBLICans, and they wanted somebody HONEST, for a change

sound familiar?

the PROBLEM was the the corporate media, the entrenched intereste, and BOTH political parties did NOT want his ideas invoked, as represented above. do you see the THREAT those principles posed to the powers that be?

if your library has it/can get it, by all means read Liberty Under Siege, by Walter Karp, as the first half of the book shows what they did to the political naif Carter, and how he didn't realize that he was fighting not only corporate America, but his OWN PARTY! don't forget the media, who savagely turned on him from the beginning. think I'm deluded? just see what noted liberal Sally Quinn had to say about him, and how the rest of the cowering herd followed her (and the Washington Post's) lead.

again, sound familiar? they did the same thing to hillbill Clinton, not that he was nearly as progressive as Carter,

the brief moment of promise presented by the surprising reaction to the corruption of the Nixon regime was blasted out of existence in the first few months of the very fragile Carter administration. he never knew what hit him, what forces were aligned against him, and, not realizing that his own party was as adamantly opposed to his vision as the other powers, waited too long to speak above them, above the media, directly to the American people. By the time he did, it was not only too late, but the media took GREAT pleasure in ridiculing his every plea to us to...SACRIFICE a little, in order that we'd have a future to bequeath to our children

sigh............

[davekriss]

16. It will be very difficult for any progressive,

should we be lucky enough for one to be elected President. Bertram Gross makes the point that any progressive would be eroded into inaction and out of office by the institutional "friendly fascists" arrayed against progress, and that point was made in 1980. Things are much worse now. Money trumps peace, after all; it also trumps social equality, justice, environmental concerns, concerns for the general welfare of the American people, and worse.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor. It must be demanded by the oppressed.
-- Martin Luther King

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

[Gabi Hayes]

21. amen...look what they do to the only progressive dem candidate.

largely ignore him. when they don't it's only to ridicule

[w4rma]

53. The DLC types of the time helped take Carter out. (nt)

[Olney Blue]

3. Thanks for the heads-up- I have it on now!

[and-justice-for-all]

4. The White House had a Solar Energy Array...

..in the 70s and Regan came along and had it removed, idiot. If that Solar Energy was allowed to prevail to this day, can you imagine what things would be like??

[Olney Blue]

5. The Clinton WH couldn't get China and India onboard for emissions controls.

Very interesting show... good interviews.

[Olney Blue]

7. "Kyoto was unfair" - a phony argument used to kill the treaty

95-0 vote in Congress killed the treaty.

Wow- Gore went to Kyoto personally to represent US- against advice of his handlers.

A mandatory cap on carbon emissions was proposed by Gore. He was courageous. However, the Clinton administration decided not to bring it before the Senate because they thought it would lose.

[Olney Blue]

8. Dirty little secret- carbon emissions soared by end of Clinton administration

Even Kyoto wouldn't have been able to keep up.

[razzleberry]

37. how is it fair for Australia to get 108, an increase,

while others have to cut?

[Olney Blue]

51. Please explain.

[razzleberry]

52. some people must cut, others get to pollute more

go here for the numbers

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/global.warming/stories/treaty/index4.html

[Gabi Hayes]

55. and this is news....how? NOBODY in his right mind thinks Kyoto is the be-all, end-all.

ESPECIALLY scientists who make their living studying the effects of global warming

everything said about the iniquities of the treaty is undeniable, but how does one get a very reluctant herd of horses to drink the water?

it's just the first, small step, which is much better explained here than by me, and cites numbers that are far more relevant to the perhaps impossibly daunting task faced by our heirs:


http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6494

It has been a long wait since the Kyoto protocol was signed in the early hours of 11 December 1997. Next year, if Russia sticks to the commitment it made last week, the treaty will at last come into force. And that will allow the world to get on with what really matters: drawing up the successor to Kyoto.

For if ardent greens and out-and-out sceptics can agree on anything, it is that Kyoto will not even come close to solving the problem of climate change. It is, as the UN Environment Programme director Klaus Toepfer said in a statement last week, “only the first step in a long journey”.

The clock is ticking. Every year we are releasing almost 7 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere – carbon that had lain buried since the days of the dinosaurs. It will remain in the atmosphere for around a century, raising the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and trapping more of the sun’s heat.

Before the industrial age, the CO2 level was steady at around 280 parts per million. When the Kyoto protocol was drawn up in 1997, the CO2 level had reached at 368 ppm. Im 2004, it hit 379 ppm.

[Olney Blue]

9. Bush proposed mandatory CO2 caps- "outgreened" Gore

[Gabi Hayes]

10. this isn't new, but German government PAYS EVERYBODY to put electricity back into the grid!

they PAY anybody who puts back in FIFTY CENTS per kilowatt, and they CHARGE users TWENTY!

the show says that almost everybody who puts up solar panels MAKES MONEY on the deal!

can you imagine what would've happened here if we'd spent some of that TRILLION dollars we've thrown down the military rathole on retrofitting our own infrastructure?

[Olney Blue]

12. That's too logical, my friend

[Olney Blue]

11. OMG- showing how C Todd Whitman got screwed by administration

Cheney's secret task force was meeting after she had already said the science was good on Crossfire to cap CO2 emissions

[Olney Blue]

13. Bush broke his campaign promise to make caps mandatory

Christine is singing like a canary. (hummm- canary in a coal mine?!)

[Gabi Hayes]

14. again, not new, but Germany leads world in solar panel production....WHY? WHY not us?

my 'best friend' got his MS in Environmental Engineering/Solar way back when, and could NOT Make a living at it, because the 'market wasn't there' for renewables

now they're talking about a Whole Foods store in NJ, whose roof is covered in solar panels. it was done for FREE by a small solar energy company!

[Olney Blue]

17. He was ahead of his time... but now he needs to dust off that MS!

[Gabi Hayes]

20. he's too entrenched in his job now.....water delivery systems

too many years have passed

he's also raising his loser son's infant, so it's not a time for him to change, though, in his heart of hearts he'd very much like to

[Olney Blue]

22. Oh my. Sounds like he has his hands full. But the bright side is...

he's a recycled father :)

[Gabi Hayes]

36. now THAT was pretty funny!

not your typical stone face tree hugger humor

isn't that what republitrogs consider any sort of pursuit of renewable energy to be? just crazy birkenstockers, living a life of illusion?

[Olney Blue]

43. Does Arnold wear Birkenstocks?

The governator must be giving Cheney heartburn with his environmental efforts. :)

[Gabi Hayes]

46. you know the trogs hate him...he really is a RINO. unfortunately, he's

in the Enron screwing of California up to his eyeballs

[Olney Blue]

15. Showing the world backlash against the US when it pulled out of Kyoto Treaty

[razzleberry]

23. US was never part of the Treaty ..n/t

[Gabi Hayes]

25. and your point is.....?

it's obvious from previous posts that the US 'pulled out' via the Senate's REJECTING THe treaty 95-0.

feel better for injecting that useless bit of 'information?'

[razzleberry]

34. totaly misleading rubbish

way before the Kyoto meeting

the draft of the treaty was circulated

the Sanate, in senate resolutiom 98 of 1997,
laid out its terms, the Byrd-Hagel resolution,
passed 95-0

these terms were not included in the eventual treaty.
at the time, Gore was saying he expected the
treaty to be ammended.
never happened

[Gabi Hayes]

38. again, what's your point?

seriously....

are you saying that the dems proposed participation in the treaty out of pure cynicism?

or what?

I don't understand your point of view at all.

[razzleberry]

42. the treaty was never ratified ...

the signature by the 'US',
only requires good-faith behavior toward
the treaty by the (then) Clinton administration.

[Gabi Hayes]

44. I'm WELL aware of that fact.

you seem quite pleased to bring up many negative points here concerning efforts that have been made to at least begin the process of governmental participation in reduction of carbon emissions. and you tone is less than civil

why?

care to let us know where you stand on anthropocentric contribution to global climate change?

[razzleberry]

48. how about the rich, bearing some of the burden

internation aviation, exempt from Kyoto

tax on jet fuel for international flight, zero, not a penny
US domastic, tax on jet fuel, four cents a gallon

fix that first, then
go after the little people

[Gabi Hayes]

50. excellent start! thank you

I couldn't agree more with the idea of those who've benefitted most from our global economy starting to bear at LEAST as much of the burden as that from which they've profited

what then? what you mention is bearly measurable, when compared to overall energy consumption

government subsidies here, as in Germany, which spurred phenomenal growth of home generating capacity, in which homeowners contribute more to the grid than they draw off?

[Olney Blue]

26. You're right-I should have said pulled out of negotiating to be part of the

treaty.... sorry!

[Olney Blue]

18. Fast-tracking the use of coal in Texas... meanwhile in California Arnold

is doing something smart

[Olney Blue]

19. Great show, Gabi. Thanks again for the heads-up!

It's hard for me to relax though. I feel angry.

[Gabi Hayes]

24. you SHOULD! we ALL should! I moved to DC in 1976, and saw my

hopes for a progressive national government dashed on the rocks of corporate/media/political corruption the likes I'd never seen, never realized existed, until I saw what Messrs. ONeill, Jackson, and the DINOS had in store for someone who actually thought he could change the way things "worked" inside the beltway.

little did any of us know

[Gabi Hayes]

28. if you want to get REALLY angry, "The Smartest Guys in the Room" is on now, here in Chicago.

Independent Lens

dunno if it's on everywhere, but I'm taping it for later, as I'll get SO pissed that I'll never sleep tonight

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/

[Olney Blue]

33. Another steamer will be Bill Moyer's show tomorrow night on the media's

complicity in the Iraq war :grr:

[Gabi Hayes]

40. heard him on Terri Gross today. he wants to have Ken Tomlinson on his

new PBS TV show.

Tomlinson NEVER answered his questions about why he ordered NOW to be surveyed for liberal bias, among other questions

[Old and In the Way]

27. I blame Bush 1 on the strategic continuance of oil.

He's the one who dismantled those energy panels, belittled Carter's ideas on conservation, and kicked the Department of Energy out of the cabinet. Why? Because Bush was a creature of Big Oil. He saw the huge opportunity to exploit cheap oil in Saudia Arabia...which obviously benefited his interests, too. The Republicans gave us "Morning in America" which only delayed the accountability and hard choices. This Bush war in Iraq is for cheap oil that Big Oil can control, it's another chapter in the same book. But it won't be cheap and it won't bring us another "Morning in America".

We really should recognize Carter as being the guy who saw the writing on the wall....he, unfortunately, was in the White House when OPEC formed and created the first oil shock. There ought to be a lesson here for Democrats-

Democrats = Cheap, renewable energy = cleaner environment = domestic jobs = national security
Republicans = Big Oil = Global Warming advocates = declining living standards = wars without end

[Gabi Hayes]

30. Excellent post, but Reagan took them down. they're STILL working, though:

here!

http://www.unity.edu/sustainability/carter.htm

[Old and In the Way]

39. No doubt Reagan took them down...but I suspect it was at Bush's suggestion.

"Pssst Ron, we shouldn't let those crappy panels defile our White House. We don't want to associate with this stuff...not good for our image."

We lost a viable technology industry by not promoting this back in the 70's. Had we encouraged the market with taxcuts and incentives, we could be the worlds leader in this technology. It would have encouraged other alternative/renewable technologies as well. This will be viewed as America's greatest strategic mistake when the history of the late 70's are written. We should have learned something when we suffered through the Iranian hostage fiasco and how tenuous our ability to control events in the ME are....we obviously didn't.

[Olney Blue]

32. Well said.

(I never think of you as Old and in the Way, by the way)

[dweller]

29. just 2 more recs to the greatest page

come on. just 2 votes, i know you have it in you.

dp

[Gabi Hayes]

31. who cares? it's just the sustainability of human life on earth, that's all.

who cares?

[dweller]

35. i care Gabi

bless you for bringing up this info.

peace
dp

[Old and In the Way]

41. Me 2!

It's smart business, smart politics, smart environmentalism.

[dweller]

49. and 5 recs came in that quickly

we do care, Old and In the Way.

it's evident. just a prod and a nod sometimes is all it takes
peace
dp

[leftofthedial]

45. the repukes and their agenda are the worst thing that ever happened

in human history.

alternative energy is just one example.

[Gabi Hayes]

47. couldn't agree more, and it will take DECADES to find out just HOW

bad they were, if we ever do

and lord knows how long it will take to reverse the damage they've done, if ever

that's a HUGE if

[proud patriot]

54. Frontline afterward looks interesting as well

:)

[proud patriot]

56. Nova Starting Now on the West Coast

:hi:

[Canuckistanian]

57. K&R. In honor of Earth Day

I've resurrected my wind turbine. It's still in the experimental stage (I have no generator or alternator yet). But the tower is up and I've had it going.

I still need to work out the details for what I'm going to do with the power once I get it and how to get it into my house. But I have an idea for a low-RPM alternator hooked up to a hot water "pre-heater" and battery combo.

And I've recently purchased a small solar panel and I'm working on a small, automatic battery charger, which I'll use for emergency LED lighting.

Every little bit is going to count in our future.

[skids]

58. The Frontline after it was great. This one was so-so.

I found it a bit lacking in a serious look at the trends in the solar industry. What was there was good, but it could have gone much further.

Like they mention the problem of power storage but don't mention the new storage techs coming along. They mention the cost issue, but don't mention residential-size PV concentrators or many of the thin film developments other than DSSC. They don't talk about employment figures or production figures or current pricing trends for solar panels. All they did was show one guy saying solar won't grow fast enough and another guy saying it will.

But at least they got a few critical points right. Like the better cost payback of solar where you have extremely high daytime rates and it's ability to "peak shave," which the "sun doesn't always shine" people routinely fail to mention.