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Taxes, This is No Laffing Matter.

BySustainMe

Taxes, This is No Laffing Matter… A general Republican philosophy is that cutting taxes will lead to increased investment, increased economic growth AND ultimately to increased tax revenue to the government. Empirical evidence, including the article(s) discussed here bear only part of that out. True, true and not necessarily true. Reducing taxes does increase the private sector investment and it does increase economic growth. The end result of this does not necessarily result in more…

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U.S. National Debt Clock Now and Then (2016)

BySustainMe

If you haven’t visited the US national debt clock recently, you should do so. www.usdebtclock.org As of January 1, 2013, the US Federal deficit has now exceeded the size of the annual US economy as measured by GDP: $16.4T vs. $16.3T, respectively. But the hidden feature of our deficit that your friendly congressman will not discuss is the HUGE unfunded mandates that are looming large while congress putters around. The unfunded mandates are fully 7…

NextEra Energy Resources commissions its 10,000th megawatt of wind energy – 12/18/12

BySustainMe

NextEra Energy Resources commissions its 10,000th megawatt of wind energy – 12/18/12: NextEra (FPL by an older name) now produces enough Wind Power to run a city the size of Chicago, or it will. Rather cool is to check out the company’s Sustainability Report. http://www.nexteraenergy.com/news/index.shtml This will give you an indication of what power generation companies should be talking about in terms of their production capacity and their carbon footprint. For example: “In 2011, 52 million tons of…

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Better BTU Blog: Global Climate Change Summit Brings Questions of America’s Role in Reversing Carbon Trends

BySustainMe

Better BTU Blog: Global Climate Change Summit Brings Questions of America’s Role in Reversing Carbon Trends: Great article on the point that no government is leading on sustainability, at least in terms of those countries that count, namely the US, China and maybe India. It is amazing and surprising that conservation and energy efficiency (EE) efforts don’t move forward even without any government assistance or encouragement. A kilowatt or gallon never used is one that…

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Energy and Ecology: Comparison of global CO2 emissions estimates by GCP, IEA, BP, EDGAR, and US EIA (1990-2012)

BySustainMe

Energy and Ecology: Comparison of global CO2 emissions estimates by GCP, IEA, BP, EDGAR, and US EIA (1990-2012): Here is a cool chart of the estimates for global carbon emissions. It shows the estimates from various sources and proves an interesting view as to high and low estimates. So we are probably at about 35B tonnes per year. The increase doesn’t look like it is planing off any time soon though, no matter which way you…

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The global energy challenge: Awash with carbon : Nature News & Comment

BySustainMe

The global energy challenge: Awash with carbon : Nature News & Comment: Happy days, all you can eat at the energy banquet. Or would that be happy daze.:-( This is a great visual summary from the article in 2-page brochure and graphics of our fuel consumption ways. Note how much China has passed the USA and how much of Chinese energy is from coal. Ouch! ‘via Blog this’