Category: Disastrous

Clinton refuses to answer on Keystone XL

~ susie

No Keystone XL pipeline protest - Hillary Clinton #nokxl

I just don’t understand why she won’t answer, because her refusal to answer is going to piss off twice as many people as answering would:

Hillary Clinton took a strong stance on clean energy Monday, telling a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa, that her efforts to tackle climate change would parallel President John F. Kennedy’s call to action during the space race in the 1960s.

“I want to get the country back to setting big ambitious goals,” Clinton said. “I want us to get back into the future business, and one of the best ways we can do that is to be absolutely ready to address the challenge of climate change and make it work to our advantage economically.”

Her remarks tracked closely with an ambitious plan her campaign released Sunday night, which set a target of producing enough renewable energy to power all the nation’s homes and businesses by 2027.

“America’s ability to lead the world on this issue hinges on our ability to act ourselves,” she said. “I refuse to turn my back on what is one of the greatest threats and greatest opportunities America faces.”

Still, the Democractic front-runner refused — as she has several times before — to say whether or not she supports construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. That project, which would carry crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries and ports in the United States, is seen by many environmentalists as a blemish on President Barack Obama’s climate record. It has been stalled for years in a lengthy State Department review that began when Clinton was still Secretary of State. The Obama administration has resisted several recent attempts by Congress to force Keystone’s approval, but it has yet to make a final decision on the project — although one is expected sometime this year.

“I will refrain from commenting [on Keystone XL], because I had a leading role in getting that process started, and we have to let it run its course,” Clinton said, in response to a question from an audience member.
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The holes in Hillary’s climate plan

~ susie

hillary-clinton-columbia

It would be nice if just once, she came right out and told us what she has planned — keeping in mind, of course, that she intends to govern and won’t really offer voters a Christmas list of what they want if she can’t deliver:

Hillary Clinton’s newly unveiled climate vision sounds ambitious on its face: 500 million new solar panels from coast to coast, eco-minded energy tax breaks and enough green power to keep the lights on in every U.S. home.
But just as glaring were the details she left out.

Does Clinton support or oppose the Keystone XL oil pipeline? Or Arctic offshore drilling? Or tougher restrictions on fracking? Or the oil industry’s push to lift the 1970s ban on exporting U.S. crude oil? Clinton avoided all those questions in the solar-heavy climate plan she outlined Sunday night, and in her speech promoting it Monday in Iowa — and she declined yet again Monday to say where she stands on Keystone.

That means that liberals longing for Clinton to erase what they see as the dirtiest spot on President Barack Obama’s environmental record — his support for an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy that includes domestic oil and gas drilling — have to keep waiting. Greens want to cheer for Clinton, but Democratic rivals Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley are already trying to outflank her with even more ambitious climate plans, while the GOP attacks her from the right.

“Clinton’s climate plan is remarkable for what it doesn’t say, yet,” California-based environmental activist R.L. Miller, who founded the Climate Hawks Vote PAC, said in a statement. Specifically, she added, Clinton offered “no effort to keep fossil fuels in the ground, no price on carbon; no word on Keystone XL, Arctic oil or other carbon bombs; no word on fracking.”

Climate activists are also looking for the Democratic front-runner to put some distance between herself and her record at the State Department, which issued a series of studies finding no significant environmental obstacles to approving Keystone.

“We’re expecting a reset” of the former secretary’s platform, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in an interview, “and a completely different climate and energy policy than the last time she ran for president.”

While Clinton’s pitch to boost renewables to a 33-percent share of the nation’s power supply is “a positive first step,” Brune added, “we’re looking for her to reconcile her climate and energy policies, which is something Obama has not yet been able to do effectively.”

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Fukushima daisies

~ susie

fukushima daisies

So life is turning into one long Simpsons episode:

Photos of flowers on Twitter and Instagram may be as commonplace as sunsets and selfies, but one Japanese amateur photographer has captured something a bit more unique than a beautiful bloom.

Twitter user @san_kaido posted a photo of mutated yellow daisies last month, found in Nasushiobara City, around 70 miles from Fukushima, the site of the 2011 nuclear disaster.  The photos show daisies with fused yellow centres and with the petals growing out the side of the flower.

The daisies are not the first deformed plants found after the disaster. In 2013, the Daily Mail posted photos of mutated vegetables and fruit, attributing the apparent abnormalities to high levels of radiation found in the groundwater.

The daisy photos come four years after the Fukushima Daichii Nuclear Power Plant meltdown which was caused after a devastating earthquake and tsunami knocked out three of the plant’s nuclear reactors.

Three eyed fish from the Simpsons