Bikepacker67

For this years #1 polluter and agent for death and disease.
Who is this nefarious profiteer? Read all about this lovely human beast.

jyossarian

Great, the Gov. and the CEO are both pushing the plan. Have they lost their minds?

LittleBigMan

I see a gleam in the eye of Wilder, in the form of cash profit from cheaper methods.

centexwoody 

Bikepacker - this 'flash' is from last August. Since then the environmental coalitions and others have rallied to send a clear political message opposing this. Our Governor Goodhair (to quote Molly Ivins) doesn't have a clue and typically goes to the highest bidder. Both TXU & the Governor misjudged the level of wakefulness on the part of Texans (a pretty easy thing to do, historically).

Now TXU is about to be gobbled by another group of investors and the latest proposal is to just build 3 coal-fired and the other 8 gas-fired. There are TV commercials about how TXU has 'listened' to the citizens of Texas and changed their plans accordingly.

The folks in Minnesota and Canada are the ones who should be howling since they're the ones who'll get the acid rain from the powerplant smokestacks projected oh, so high into the Texas sky that the little drops won't fall until the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness...

flipped4bikes

Didn't they just scrap 8 of the 11 coal-fired plants in order to sell the utility? Still 3 too many.

jfellrath

Fortunately, TXU's plans have been derailed at the station: https://www.nrdc.org/media/2007/070227.asp

jyossarian

I'm surprised the EPA doesn't just outlaw the older technology coal-fired plants and require all new ones to use the "cleaner" technology. Coal's dirty no matter what you do, but it'd still be a step in the right direction.

jfellrath

You have to remember that the EPA is under the control of the Bush Administration, who is decidedly anti-environmental. They're actually doing things to relax the pollution control requirements and such. The EPA isn't exactly our friend right now.

froze

Gee that's really bad all that smoke going up into the atomsphere, I'm coughing just thinking about it...oh wait, that's not smoke that's STEAM you jackass!

froze

Another misconception. You know what I find funny? Public records reveal that as Al Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.,” Peter Schweizer, author of the book Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy,” writes in USA Today. And NONE of those houses use any renewable energy sources!

But wait G W Bush's ranch in Texas uses Solar and Geo Thermal energy: https://www.treehugger.com/files/2007...eorge_bush.php

Another victory for Bush.

jfellrath

How is this a misconception? Quoting some facts about Gore proves nothing in this case - I'm not talking about Gore. I'm talking about the Bush Administration. The fact that Bush's home uses some environmentally friendly options doesn't mean that his Administration is green.

Start perusing this: https://www.bushgreenwatch.org/index.php

froze

I just think it's interesting that one man who goes and makes a big deal about global warming and makes a film, lives in the complete opposite direction of what he preaches; while the other man who gets the bad rap for pollution has the most green house of probably any politician.

Speaking of bad raps read this from Time Magazine: https://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...488848,00.html

Bikepacker67

Sorry all for not realizing this was old news.
I guess the right people were as pissed off as I was.

As for Gore being a hypocrite, I cannot disagree that he should better practice what he preaches, but trying to paint Dubya as some sort of environmentalist is beyond ludicrous.

Let's not forget, it was Georgie's Lt. Gov who pushed for this debacle after his boss took the WH.

unkchunk

Why? He did restore the marshes in Iraq. Thats three times the size of the Florida Everglades. It's the largest restoration of an ecosystem on the planet... ever.

I'm not pro Bush, but environmentalists have to start doing something soon or they will look beyond ludicrous themselves. I utilitarian cycle (sometimes I feel like the only one), I pick up a lot of trash and throw it in the grocery pannier (sometimes I feel like I'm the only one), my electricity bill is around $15 per month (apparently I'm the only one there too) and I don't really give a crap about the environment. Is there more to being an enviromentalist that sitting in a coffee shop and talking about Bush?

I don't mean to got on anyone's case here on the Commuting forum. But if I saw one utilitarian cyclist for every one person I heard go on about Bush's environmental policies... there would be no evironmental problem! Starting tomorrow morning! At about 7:15 am!

And in about 9 months time, chicks would start to have the nicest tigh... Whoa! Sorry, I was starting to get a little out of line there. But, it's true. They would.

Bikepacker67

And then polluted the whole country with depleted uranium! That's bigger than Texas

flipped4bikes

Just guessing here, but you don't have a problem with carbon emissions?

flipped4bikes

Yes! Finally someone shows why it was justified to invade Iraq: Spreading an imperialist pro-enviromental agenda! I had no idea Dubya was that Green!

JeffS

Hardly.

Meaningful changes have to be made on a large scale. Power plants are the single biggest source of pollution and to allow anyone to build the dirtiest example of one is rediculous. If you could somehow convince your whole town to become extreme conservationists, walk to work, never run their clothes dryers, etc. you wouldn't even begin to make up for the extra pollution created by this type of plant.

The kind of car our leaders drive, what size their house is, or how many plane trips they take is irrelevent compared to the larger decisions they control.

froze

NO, not at all! AS LONG AS IT'S CONTROLLED, which by the way the US does the best at that then any other country! While we may emitt more but that because we have more manufacturing processes then other countries...way more, except for China which is catching up with us and they use NO controls! And I'm all for improving our emissions as technology allows.

And if your serious about carbon emissions are you a vegan? Because farm animals emitt a hellish amount of carbon emissions that no one wants to talk about. So to help eliminate that then we need to ALL become vegans or we're just a bunch of hypocrites! Do you use in your home geo thermal heating and cooling sources? or Solar and Wind generation? If you don't your a hypocrite again! So don't preach about me when your doing nothing, at least I ride my bike to work most days when weather allows, do you?

And current carbon emissions are way lower then they were back in history when volcanos were more active today and animals and plants did quite well...in fact better then they do today because the climate was warmer then it is today, much like it was about 2 million years ago when the sun in a hotter cycle.

But you all seem to be missing the point, this carbon emissions problem is not a problem at all, it's all politics and the UN and Al Gore is involved with it. Carbon credits will soon be selling and in fact is currently but on a very limited scale. This is nothing but a world tax system to get all countries of the world on a more or less equal financial footing. Those with the most carbon emissions will pay countries with less emissions for their carbon credits so the ones with the most will be equal with those with the least. BUT THIS WON'T DO A DAM THING TO REDUCE THE EMISSIONS!!! It's just swapping money from one country to another.

And then supposely those carbon credits will be used to help buy trees. Hmmm, it takes 15 trees 20 years to pay back the carbon debt that one car uses for one year. So if you had a billion cars in the world you would need a 15 billion trees TIMES 20 so they could repay the debt in one year!!!! Do you really think that's possible? That carbon debt from cars doesn't even speak about manufacturing process going on throughout the world, one can't even imagine how many trees that would take. We're being duped boys and girls.

froze

That's why we need more nuclear power plants. But then the tree huggers will complain about nuclear waste. In California they put up huge wind generators on large swaths of land because the tree huggers demanded it...guess what happen? Power consortiums put the plants up and then the treehuggers complained that wind generators where killing birds so they had to stop most of them!!! Then the power people put up huge solor arrays in the desert but the treehuggers complained they killed vegetation and animals there too, so some of those have been dismantled. There is no pleasing these treehuggers.

The problem is with politicians like Gore is that they want us to give up certain things but their unwilling to give up the same things themselves; so it is relevent about what kind of car or house or plane etc they use because their dictating to us what we should do then so should they. A true leader would never ask their people to give up something that they, the leader, is unwilling to give up.