Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has launched a project to build the first nuclear research reactor in the kingdom, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, launched seven strategic projects in renewable energy, atomic energy, water desalination, genetic medicine and the aircraft industry during his visit to King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology on Monday.
The two most significant projects include a nuclear research reactor and a centre for the development of aircraft structures.
Seems like a nice guy
In March, MBS announced his country’s readiness to develop nuclear weapons in the event that Iran heads in that direction.
“Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt, if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible,” he told US broadcaster, CBS, in an interview.
Incidentally, the US, which withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal with Iran signed in 2015, reimposed oil and financial sanctions against Iran starting Monday.
In a country so closely divided as the US is right now, the emergence of climate as an issue that a significant number of voters care about can be a game changer in close races.
We have seen in this cycle a number of Democratic politicians embrace climate, and more broadly, a respect for science and fact, as an issue – as well as advocating for clean energy strategies.
Prominently, Andrew Gillum in his run for the extremely important Florida Governor seat, and Beto O’Rourke in his Texas Senate race, have been fearless and out front on climate change and renewable energy.
In regions like South Florida, Rep. Carlos Curbello, a Republican, has joined a bipartisan “climate caucus” as a means of demonstrating concern about climate and the sea level rise so obvious in his district.
Regardless of today’s results, the importance of climate and clean energy as a political issue has crossed a threshold.
The industry’s dilemma is brought home by a recent bit of market research and polling done on behalf of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group for utilities. It was distributed at a recent meeting of EEI board members and executives and shared with me.
The work was done by the market research firm Maslansky & Partners, which analyzed existing utility messaging, interviewed utility execs and environmentalists, ran a national opinion survey, and did a couple of three-hour sit-downs with “media informed customers” in Minneapolis and Phoenix.
The results are striking. They do a great job of laying out the public opinion landscape on renewables, showing where different groups have advantages and disadvantages.
The takeaway: Renewables are a public opinion juggernaut. Being against them is no longer an option. The industry’s best and only hope is to slow down the stampede a bit (and that’s what they plan to try).
In our polarized age, here is something we almost all agree on: Renewable energy is awesome.
Here’s the most striking slide in the presentation:
In case you don’t feel like squinting, let me draw your attention to the fact that a majority of those surveyed (51 percent) believe that 100 percent renewables is a good idea even if it raises their energy bills by 30 percent.
That is wild. As anyone who’s been in politics a while knows, Americans don’t generally like people raising their bills, much less by a third. A majority that still favors it? That is political dynamite.
Meanwhile, there are some on the climate action side who view Republicans like Rep. Curbelo as “climate peacocks”, more show than substance.
Washington state has a carbon tax on the ballot. It’s been a bumpy, aggravating, but maybe illuminating ride to get here.
Washington Governor Jay Inslee is a dark horse Presidential candidate, who might get a lot more visible if this passes. Leading in the only poll that I saw. (below)
Long piece, I’ve excerpted, but it demonstrates the complexity of making things simple.
Just two years ago, Washingtonians rejected a “carbon tax” initiative, which would have initially charged businesses $25 per metric ton of emissions before ramping up over time. The debate over I-732 drove a rift between progressives. While it found some high-profile supporters, from Leonardo DiCaprio to the state’s Audubon Society, it was criticized by activist author Naomi Klein, the Washington Sierra Club chapter, and the Seattle Times editorial board.
This time around, the coalition behind the Protect Washington Act is taking a different tack, rebranding the effort to put a price on carbon and bringing the climate conversation to the streets in hopes of generating broad support. The initiative proposes a “fee on pollution” that would put a $15 charge on each metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted in Washington starting in 2020. That charge would rise by $2 plus inflation every year until the state meets its climate goals, which include cutting its carbon footprint 36 percent below 2005 levels by 2035. The revenue raised would go toward investing in clean energy; protecting the air, water, and forests; and helping vulnerable communities prepare for wildfires and sea-level rise.
The groups behind the proposal are “hands-down the most diverse coalition I’ve seen in 20 years,” says Aiko Schaefer, director of Front and Centered — an alliance of organizations advocating for low-income residents and people of color that played a key role in drafting the new initiative.
Experts agree that putting a price on carbon is one of the best ways for a government to act on climate change. And public opinion polls have found that almost 70 percent of Washington voters — including a solid majority of the state’s Republicans — would support a measure to regulate carbon pollution. But no one has successfully managed to craft a policy that satisfies the whole environmental movement or the electorate.
There are reasons to believe that this time could be different. If I-1631 passes, it could serve as a template for an approach that could one day go national, state by state. Groups in Oregon and in Northeastern states have reached out to the initiative’s backers, inspired by Washington’s approach. And you can bet that they — and others — will be watching this fall.
Why did you recently call the Republican Party “the most dangerous organization in world history”?
Take its leader, who recently applied to the government of Ireland for a permit to build a huge wall to protect his golf course, appealing to the threat of global warming, while at the same time he withdrew from international efforts to address the grim threat and is using every means at his disposal to accelerate it. Or take his colleagues, the participants in the 2016 Republican primaries. Without exception, they either denied that what is happening is happening – though any ignorance is self-induced – or said maybe it is but we shouldn’t do anything about it. The moral depths were reached by the respected “adult in the room,” Ohio governor John Kasich, who agreed that it is happening but added that “we are going to burn [coal] in Ohio and we are not going to apologize for it.” Or take a recent publication of Trump’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a detailed study recommending an end to regulations on emissions. It presented a rational argument: extrapolating current trends, by the end of the century we’ll be over the cliff and automotive emissions don’t contribute very much to the catastrophe – the assumption being that everyone is as criminally insane as we are and won’t try to avoid the crisis. In brief, let’s rob while the planet burns, putting poor Nero in the shadows.
This surely qualifies as a contender for the most evil document in history.
There have been many monsters in the past, but it would be hard to find one who was dedicated to undermining the prospects for organized human society, not in the distant future — in order to put a few more dollars in overstuffed pockets.
And it doesn’t end there. The same can be said about the major banks that are increasing investments in fossil fuels, knowing very well what they are doing. Or, for that matter, the regular articles in the major media and business press reporting US success in rapidly increasing oil and gas production, with commentary on energy independence, sometimes local environmental effects, but regularly without a phrase on the impact on global warming – a truly existential threat. Same in the election campaign. Not a word about the issue that is merely the most crucial one in human history.
Hardly a day passes without new information about the severity of the threat. As I’m writing, a new study appeared in Nature showing that retention of heat in the oceans has been greatly underestimated, meaning that the total carbon budget is much less than had been assumed in the recent, and sufficiently ominous, IPCC report. The study calculates that maximum emissions would have to be reduced by 25% to avoid warming of 2 degrees (C), well above the danger point. At the same time polls show that — doubtless influenced by their leaders who they trust more than the evil media — half of Republicans deny that global warming is even taking place, and of the rest, almost half reject any human responsibility. Words fail.
In one of South Florida’s congressional districts, the party machine swept in to prop up a two-term incumbent by painting his opponent as a puppet of fossil fuel interests and “dirty coal money.”
The only catch? The incumbent is Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo and the party apparatus is the National Republican Congressional Committee, whose coffers this cycle contain nearly $7 million in donations from the oil and gas industry.
The ad was released on Oct. 30 and immediately national environmental groups that generally align with Democrats called foul, underscoring their support of Curbelo’s Democratic challenger, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
Climate Hawks Vote:
Oh, and the dirty coal money that’s supposedly flooding Debbie’s campaign? It’s $2700 from climate hawk Tom Steyer. And his business used to invest in fossil fuel-powered utilities, a long time ago, before he became a climate hawk. And… well, sorry. I. Can’t. Even. #eyeroll #facepalm
Here’s the real target of the NRCC: the disillusioned, occasional voters who say “both sides are the same” and then stay home on Tuesday. But you and I know that both sides aren’t the same. One in Congress voted to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The other won’t. That’s why it’s so important that climate hawks stand with Debbie.
“If Curbelo had been half the climate champion he claims he is, he wouldn’t be desperately seeking an ad littered with lies such as this,” said Sierra Club PAC Director Sarah Burton in a statement. “But Curbelo isn’t a climate champion, he’s a consistent vote against clean energy, against our public lands, and in favor of fossil fuels. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is a climate champion, and the advocate South Floridians need as they watch sea-levels rise, see beaches destroyed by red tide, and live with the increasing threat of stronger, more powerful hurricanes.”
Curbelo has received more than $192,000 from energy and natural resource firms, in comparison to the less than $5,000 that Mucarsel-Powell has received from the same sector of donors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
A spokesperson for Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Curbelo is one of the founders of the Climate Solutions Caucus, a bipartisan group in Congress ostensibly committed to fighting global warming, but restricted in practice by the reliance of its 45 Republican members on support from oil and gas firms. While he broke ranks this summer to express his support for a carbon tax as a possible way to combat climate change, more than 30 of Curbelo’s Republican colleagues on the caucus supported a symbolic measure that disavowed a carbon tax. Last December, he joined caucus members in a budget vote that would have opened up “1.5 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling,” Mother Jones reported at the time.
The super PAC Climate Hawks Vote, which supports candidates with a progressive energy agenda, has been running ads against Curbelo that point to his history of receiving donations from fossil fuel companies, including Chevron and Exxon Mobil. This cycle, his No. 1 donor has been NextEra Energy, the Florida electric utility which is one of the largest purveyors of solar and wind energy projects in the country.
