Pentagon Seeks to Link Iran, North Korea Citing ‘Similar Looking’ Missiles http://news.antiwar.com/2017/05/04/pentagon-seeks-to-link-iran-north-korea-citing-similar-looking-missiles/ Pacific Commander Complains Non-Nuclear Missiles Aren’t Restricted by Nuclear Deals by Jason Ditz, May 04, 2017 Every failed missile test or official warning by North Korean state media against attacking them is a new excuse for the US to offer loud condemnations and new threats, and while the US also likes to threaten Iran, they really haven’t had much in the way of excuses for doing so in recent weeks.
Pentagon officials are looking to resolve that with testimony to Congress claiming that Iranian missiles look suspiciously similar to North Korean missiles. They don’t offer any proof, of course, that this means anything about them having a common origin, but this is clearly the connection Congress is meant to make.
The attempts at “sort of” connections continued throughout the testimony, with officials citing a North Korean submarine missile launch and noting that Iran is also working on the idea of firing missiles from submarines. Attempts to ratchet up the tensions didn’t stop there.
Pacific Commander Admiral Harry Harris even had the gall to complain that neither Iran nor North Korea were impacted by the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in developing shorter range ballistic missiles. Neither is a signatory to the treaty in the first place, of course, and perhaps even more importantly, the missiles in question aren’t even accused of being nuclear in nature.
Still, the Pentagon has been angling for more money for its wars long enough to know that making things about “nuclear” threats is a way to sell Congress on almost anything, and complaining about Iran not complying with a nuclear treaty, even though the missiles in question are non-nuclear and Iran was never a signatory to it in the first place, is always going to play well.
May 6, 2017
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New regs for Monday: Nuclear, relocation, pesticides, The Hill, BY TIM DEVANEY – 05/05/17 Monday’s edition of the Federal Register contains new rules for nuclear facilities, relocation expenses for federal employees and a review of various pesticides.
Here’s what is happening:
Nuclear: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering new procedures for decommissioning nuclear power reactors. As part of the rulemaking process, the commission is publishing a preliminary draft regulatory analysisof the decommissioning rule.
The NRC hopes the new rules will make the decommissioning process more efficient.
The public has until June 13 to comment on the analysis….http://thehill.com/regulation/332074-new-regs-for-monday-nuclear-relocation-pesticides
May 6, 2017
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Pentagon to lease privately owned Trump Tower apartment for nuclear ‘football’: letter, Reuters, By Mark Hosenball and Phil Stewart |5 MAY 17 WASHINGTON
The U.S. Defense Department is finalizing a lease on a privately owned apartment in New York’s Trump Tower for the White House Military Office to use for supporting President Donald Trump without providing any benefit to Trump or his organization, according to a Pentagon letter seen by Reuters.
The Military Office carries and safeguards the “football,” the device that contains the top secret launch codes the president needs to order a nuclear attack, as well as providing him secure communications wherever he is.
The White House, Secret Service, and Defense Department had no comment on whether similar arrangements have been made at other properties Trump frequents – Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where Trump is spending this weekend.
n a letter to Representative Jackie Speier, a Democrat on the House Armed Services and intelligence committees, Defense Department official James MacStravic, said the apartment is “privately owned and … lease negotiations have been with the owner’s representatives only.”
MacStravic, who wrote that he was “temporarily performing the duties of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics,” said any acquisition of leased space with “an annual rental in excess of $1 million must first be approved by my office.”
He “approved this action” after consulting with the White House Military Office and other officials, he said.
Officials declined to reveal the cost of the lease or identify the owners of the apartment…….http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pentagon-trumptower-idUSKBN1812B5
May 6, 2017
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Congress Gears Up For Showdown Over Billions In Nuclear Tax Credits, Daily Caller ANDREW FOLLETT Energy and Science Reporter 5 May 17 Congress did not include a provision extending tax credits for nuclear power in the $1.1 trillion spending bill intended to keep the government funded through September.
The lack of nuclear energy tax credits threaten the viability of two nuclear reactors being built in Georgia and South Carolina.
“The extension of the tax credit for advanced nuclear energy production is absolutely imperative to nuclear new build at Vogtle and VC Summer – and next-up U.S. nuclear projects, including SMRs, currently in the queue,” David Blee, executive director of the U.S. Nuclear Infrastructure Council (NIC), told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Its urgency is even more so given challenges emanating from the Westinghouse Chapter 11 filing.”
Georgia and South Carolina lawmakers strongly supported extending the tax credit. Supporters claim congressional leadership is delaying the issue until lawmakers take up tax reform later this year.
Westinghouse’s March bankruptcy filing will likely delay the construction of the Vogtle and VC Summer reactors. South Carolina’s two Republican senators, Tom Scott and Lindsey Graham, were shocked when the federal tax credit was left out and have already introduced legislation extending the tax credit to 2025.
The Obama administration gave the developers of the Vogtle reactor in Georgia a $8.3 billion loan guarantee. Nuclear power supporters say taxpayers may be at risk of losing money if the Vogtle project falters.
Industry representatives think Scott’s legislation could save the Vogtle and VC Summer reactors……
“I’m not going to sit on the sidelines and watch the nuclear industry be destroyed,” Graham told Politico Wednesday. “For three years, we’ve been trying to get these tax credits extended…The reactors that are being built are very much at risk.”…http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/05/congress-gears-up-for-showdown-over-billions-in-nuclear-tax-credits/
May 6, 2017
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Miami New Times, BY JERRY IANNELLI, 3 May 17, For the past seven years, Florida Power & Light has battled environmentalists over its plans to build two new reactors and inject their radioactive waste 3,000 feet underground, just below the aquifers where South Florida gets its drinking water. Environmentalists have vigorously argued that science shows the dangerous waste could leech upward into Miami’s drinking water. And yesterday, those green activists finally earned a hearing before the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
But it turns out the two environmental groups leading the fight aren’t the only ones opposed to the plan: Lawyers for the City of Miami and the nearby Village of Pinecrest both slammed FPL’s plan and urged the NRC to reconsider the electric monopoly’s proposal. Miami Assistant City Attorney Xavier Albán called FPL’s final “environmental impact statement” for the new reactors at the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station “deficient” and begged the NRC to force FPL to come up with a waste-storage plan that would not affect Miami’s drinking water.
FPL has failed to adequately demonstrate that the direct effect, indirect effects, and cumulative impact to the natural physical environment are ‘small,'” Albán said. “The environmental impacts will not be ‘small.'”
The risk of possible carcinogens leaking into the city’s source of drinking water “can never be small,” he added.
FPL also spoke in front of the NRC yesterday and argued that the environmentalists and city officials were wrong. Its science was just fine, the company claimed.
“The NRC is not required to look at every potential environmental impact and does not have to consider worst-case scenarios,” an FPL representative said before the NRC board.
In Miami and Pinecrest, FPL has found its two largest opponents to date. The official challenge to the company’s plans was brought by two groups: the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE) and National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). The power company had dismissed groups such as SACE as “anti-nuclear” extremist using the wastewater-storage plan as a cover to try to tank a Turkey Point expansion.
“The City of Miami has serious concerns with respect to FPL’s application for a combined operating license for Turkey Point proposed units six and seven,” Albán said. “With respect to the contention before you, this matter specifically relates to the sanctity and protection of a designated source of drinking water, the Upper Floridan Aquifer.”……….
The NRC will likely take weeks, or perhaps months, to issue a ruling. http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/city-of-miami-slams-fpls-plan-to-inject-radioactive-waste-below-drinking-water-at-turkey-point-9320009
May 6, 2017
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Projectile blasts off just after midnight from Vandenberg Air Force Base, 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles – the second in a week, The Independent, Tom Batchelor @_tombatchelor , 5 May 17 The US has test-fired a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile from a site in California, the second such launch in a week, amid rising tensions with North Korea.
The unarmed Minuteman 3 missile has a range of around 8,000 miles, putting it within striking distance of Pyongyang.
It blasted off just after midnight from Vandenberg Air Force Base, 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and delivered a single projectile to a target approximately 4,200 miles away at Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, US Air Force Global Strike Command said……..
Meanwhile, China has called on all parties in the standoff to stay calm and “stop irritating each other”.”We again urge all relevant parties to remain calm and exercise restraint, stop irritating each other, work hard to create an atmosphere for contact and dialogue between all sides, and seek a return to the correct path of dialogue and negotiation as soon as possible,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang,
Rising tensions are also pushing Japan to consider dropping its pacifist charter.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-nuclear-missile-tests-north-korea-range-reach-pyongyang-california-site-a7715331.html
May 5, 2017
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USA, weapons and war |
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Americans have placed vast military power at the discretion of this mind, a presidential discretion that is largely immune to restraint by the Madisonian system of institutional checks and balances. So, it is up to the public to quarantine this presidency by insistently communicating to its elected representatives a steady, rational fear of this man whose combination of impulsivity and credulity render him uniquely unfit to take the nation into a military conflict.
Trump has a dangerous disability, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-a-dangerous-disability/2017/05/03/56ca6118-2f6b-11e7-9534-00e4656c22aa_story.html?utm_term=.97e4e52a988c By George F. Will May 3 It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either. This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.
In February, acknowledging Black History Month, Trump said that “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice.” Because Trump is syntactically challenged, it was possible and tempting to see this not as a historical howler about a man who died 122 years ago, but as just another of Trump’s verbal fender benders, this one involving verb tenses.
Now, however, he has instructed us that Andrew Jackson was angry about the Civil War that began 16 years after Jackson’s death. Having, let us fancifully imagine, considered and found unconvincing William Seward’s 1858 judgment that the approaching Civil War was “an irrepressible conflict,” Trump says:
“People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
[When is it okay to say the president might be nuts?]
Library shelves groan beneath the weight of books asking questions about that war’s origins, so who, one wonders, are these “people” who don’t ask the questions that Trump evidently thinks have occurred to him uniquely? Presumably they are not the astute “lot of,” or at least “some,” people Trump referred to when speaking about his February address to a joint session of Congress: “A lot of people have said that, some people said it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber.” Which demotes Winston Churchill, among many others.
What is most alarming (and mortifying to the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated) is not that Trump has entered his eighth decade unscathed by even elementary knowledge about the nation’s history. As this column has said before, the problem isn’t that he does not know this or that, or that he does not know that he does not know this or that. Rather, the dangerous thing is that he does not know what it is to know something.
The United States is rightly worried that a strange and callow leader controls North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. North Korea should reciprocate this worry. Yes, a 70-year-old can be callow if he speaks as sophomorically as Trump did when explaining his solution to Middle Eastern terrorism: “I would bomb the s— out of them. . . . I’d blow up the pipes, I’d blow up the refineries, I’d blow up every single inch, there would be nothing left.”
As a candidate, Trump did not know what the nuclear triad is. Asked about it, he said: “We have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ballgame.” Invited to elaborate, he said: “I think — I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.” Someone Trump deemed fit to be a spokesman for him appeared on television to put a tasty dressing on her employer’s word salad: “What good does it do to have a good nuclear triad if you’re afraid to use it?” To which a retired Army colonel appearing on the same program replied with amazed asperity: “The point of the nuclear triad is to be afraid to use the damn thing.”
[Trump has been sued. Here’s why the Justice Department shouldn’t represent him.]
As president-elect, Trump did not know the pedigree and importance of the one-China policy. About such things he can be, if he is willing to be, tutored. It is, however, too late to rectify this defect: He lacks what T.S. Eliot called a sense “not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.” His fathomless lack of interest in America’s path to the present and his limitless gullibility leave him susceptible to being blown about by gusts of factoids that cling like lint to a disorderly mind.
Americans have placed vast military power at the discretion of this mind, a presidential discretion that is largely immune to restraint by the Madisonian system of institutional checks and balances. So, it is up to the public to quarantine this presidency by insistently communicating to its elected representatives a steady, rational fear of this man whose combination of impulsivity and credulity render him uniquely unfit to take the nation into a military conflict.
May 5, 2017
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Stephen King: Trump’s nuclear ability ‘worse than any horror story I ever wrote’, The Hill, BY BRANDON CARTER – 05/03/17 Author Stephen King slammed President Trump on Wednesday, saying Trump’s tweets show that “he’s an almost textbook case of personality disorder.” King also signaled fear over Trump’s ability to launch a nuclear attack.
“That this guy has his finger on the nuclear trigger is worse than any horror story I ever wrote,” King said…..King’s comments come as lawmakers are pushing a bill that would deny Trump the authority to launch a first strike with a nuclear weapon without congressional approval. http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/331865-stephen-king-trumps-nuclear-ability-worse-than-any-horror-story
May 5, 2017
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500K People Sign 500K People Sign Petition Barring Trump’s Nuclear Weapons Use, telesyr, 4 May 17 According to the bill, the President will be prohibited from using the Armed Forces to conduct a “first-use nuclear strike” until a congressional declaration of war expressly authorized such a strike.
Nearly half a million people have signed a petition supporting the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017,” a legislative proposal submitted to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.
The legislation, introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu of California and Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, is aimed at keeping U.S. President Donald Trump from launching a nuclear weapon without Congress’ approval of declaring a war.
Calling out Trump’s rhetoric on North Korea and Russia, Markey called the action, “absolutely critical during the Trump administration,” adding that the petition is “a reflection of concern across our country of the use of nuclear weapons by the president.” Just recently, the president tweeted that there’s a possibility of a “major, major” conflict with North Korea over the ongoing tension between the U.S. and Pyongyang’s nuclear program.
“A nuclear first strike, which can kill hundreds of millions of people and invite a retaliatory strike that can destroy America, is war,” Lieu said.
“The current nuclear launch approval process, which gives the decision to potentially end civilization as we know it to a single individual, is flatly unconstitutional. Furthermore, the single individual currently possessing the sole power to start World War Three is Donald J. Trump.”…..http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/500K-People-Sign-Petition-Barring-Trumps-Nuclear-Weapons-Use-20170503-0028.html
May 5, 2017
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With Renewables Surging, Nuclear And Petroleum Battle Over Subsidies, Forbes, Jeff McMahon , 4 May 17 If the petroleum industry continues to fight subsidies for nuclear power, the nuclear industry will go after petroleum-industry tax breaks, the president of the Nuclear Energy Institute said Tuesday.
“They might say, oh don’t subsidize this, but let me tell you, you open up the books and you might not call it a subsidy but I tell you there’s a lot of tax breaks that the American Petroleum Institute gets,” said Maria Korsnick, president and CEO of NEI, the leading nuclear industry lobbying group.
“If in fact that’s the playing field that we’re going to be set with, then you’re going to hear more about comparisons of subsidies vs. tax breaks in order to get all the information, if you will, out on the table.”The American Petroleum Institute, the largest lobbying group for oil and gas companies like ExxonMobile and Chevron, has lobbied against legislative efforts in several states to save aging nuclear plants that are struggling to compete against cheap natural gas and, in some places, cheap renewable energy.
In Ohio, for example API Ohio Executive Director Chris Zeigler sent a message to state legislators:
“Abundant natural gas has provided Ohio consumers with reliable and affordable energy and created countless jobs throughout the state without government subsidies,” Zeigler said. “Instead of subsidizing nuclear power companies, we should let the markets work to protect consumers.”
API accused the nuclear industry of misleading consumers about the consequences of closing nuclear plants, arguing that natural gas would continue to lower emissions even if two Ohio plants close.
The nuclear industry has won support in New York and Illinois, with Exelon and Entergy benefitting. Lest those victories set a trend, the oil industry is raising objections in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut…..https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2017/05/04/with-renewables-surging-nuclear-and-petroleum-battle-over-subsidies/#27185f7d4b15
May 5, 2017
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Southern Seeks $3.7 Billion From Toshiba for Georgia Nuclear Plant https://www.wsj.com/articles/southern-seeks-3-7-billion-from-toshiba-for-georgia-nuclear-plant-1493829606
Utility not sure it can finish Vogtle plant, which was being built by bankrupt Westinghouse Electric By Russell Gold May 3, 2017 The chief executive of Southern Co. on Wednesday said the utility will need $3.7 billion and cooperation from Toshiba Corp. to complete a nuclear power plant in Georgia that was being built by bankrupt Toshiba unit Westinghouse Electric Co.
But even if it obtains those commitments, Southern isn’t sure it can finish the half-built Georgia reactors, Thomas A. Fanning, Southern’s chairman and chief executive, said in an interview with… (subscribers only)
May 5, 2017
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Nuclear Reactor Wastewater Will End Up In Your Drinking Water, KNWA: Erika Hall : May 04 FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – – Fayetteville City Council on Wednesday approved dumping wastewater from the site of a former nuclear reactor into the city’s sewer system. The water will eventually flow into Beaver Lake, our area’s main source for drinking water.One city council member thinks it’s a bad idea, but others claim it’s perfectly safe. “We are actually dumping our sewage, what’s left of it into our drinking what source,” said Fayetteville City Council member John La Tour.
May 5, 2017
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Nuclear plant worker ‘deliberately’ tried to hide error, officials say, NJ.com 3 May 17 LOWER ALLOWAYS CREEK TWP. — A worker “deliberately” attempted to fix an error he had made while conducting tests at a New Jersey nuclear reactor causing the plant to shut down 2 years ago, federal officials say.
The now-former employee’s action prompted the Hope Creek generating station to automatically shut down on Sept. 28, 2015. The worker later lied about what he did, officials said Wednesday.
The unidentified PSEG Nuclear technician “made an error while performing a surveillance test and deliberately attempted to correct the error rather than comply with the procedural guidance to stop and inform management,” the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a letter outlining its findings in the case on Wednesday……
When it conducted its own investigation of the unplanned shutdown, PSEG Nuclear discovered it was human error, not mechanical failure that caused the plant to trip off line, officials said……
The plant was shut down for four days.
PSEG, as the operator of Hope Creek, takes responsibility for the actions of the worker and did not contest the NRC’s finding…
The plant is one of three nuclear reactors operated by PSEG at its Artificial Island generating complex in Lower Alloways Creek in Salem County.
Hope Creek, along with the other two reactors there — Salem 1 and Salem 2 –comprise the second-largest nuclear complex in the United States.
Bill Gallo Jr. may be reached at bgallo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow Bill Gallo Jr. on Twitter @bgallojr. Find NJ.com on Facebook. http://www.nj.com/salem/index.ssf/2017/05/nuclear_plant_shut_down_after_worker_deliberately.html
May 5, 2017
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U.S. Wind Energy Installations Surge: A New Turbine Rises Every 2.4 Hours, Inside Climate News,
The wind power industry just chalked up its strongest first quarter in eight years. Tax credits play an important role. Phil McKenna, 4 May 17 Every two and a half hours, workers installed a new wind turbine in the United States during the first quarter of 2017, marking the strongest start for the wind industry in eight years, according to a new report by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) released on May 2.
“We switched on more megawatts in the first quarter than in the first three quarters of last year combined,” Tom Kiernan, CEO of AWEA, said in a statement.
Nationwide, wind provided
5.6 percent of all electricity produced in 2016, an amount of electricity generation that has
more than doubled since 2010. Much of the demand for new wind energy generation in recent years has come from Fortune 500 companies including Home Depot, GM, Walmart and Microsoft that are buying wind energy in large part for its low, stable cost.
The significant increase this past quarter, when 908 new utility-scale turbines came online, is largely a result of the first wave of projects under the renewable energy tax credits that were extended by Congress in 2015, as well as some overflow from the prior round of tax credits. The tax credits’ gradual phase-out over a period of five years incentivized developers to begin construction in 2016, and those projects are now beginning to come online.
A recent
AWEA-funded report projects continued steady growth for the wind energy industry through 2020. Energy analysts, however, say that growth could slow after 2020 as the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) expires……..
A key driver in the early 2020s will be renewable portfolio standards in states like New York and California, which have both mandated that local utilities get 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
By the mid-2020s, the cost of unsubsidized onshore wind will be low enough to compete with both existing and new fossil-fueled generation in many regions of the U.S., Morgan said.
The report shows that Texas continues as the overall national leader for wind power capacity, with 21,000 MW of total installed capacity, three times more than Iowa, the second leading state for wind power installations. Over 99 percent of wind farms are built in rural communities; together, the installations pay over $245 million per year in lease agreements with local landowners, according to AWEA.
May 5, 2017
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renewable, USA |
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Want to protect the climate? Time for carbon pricing HTTPS://WWW.BOSTONGLOBE.COM/OPINION/2017/05/02/WANT-PROTECT-CLIMATE-TIME-FOR-CARBON-PRICING/MEUNGZH4DASOT7F8W4CNVJ/STORY.HTML, NAOMI ORESKES AND JEREMY JONES, MAY 03, 2017OUR COUNTRY IS feeling the effects of a changing climate. The West is witnessing dramatic changes to winter, including decreased snowpack — which means less water availability the rest of the year — and tremendous destruction of Western forests by bark beetles that used to die off in winter, but now don’t. Here in Massachusetts, people might think that shorter, milder winters are a good thing. But they are not. If we don’t deal with climate change now, the snowpack will be confined to only the highest of elevations.
Of course, renewable energy is helping to stop further climate change. But solar and wind have trouble competing with fossil fuels, because it’s just not a fair market. Fossil fuels — whose greenhouse gas emissions drive climate change — are more widely available than clean energy, and they are usually cheaper, due to ongoing subsidies. A carbon pricing system would level the playing field.
Putting a price on carbon is a proven market mechanism that has widespread, bipartisan support, and is increasingly being adopted around the globe. It will account for the true cost of burning fossil fuels, creating a more competitive market for clean energy sources. And, it can be implemented quickly to begin reducing carbon pollution.
In Massachusetts, there are two carbon pricing bills pending in the Legislature, with co-sponsorship of more than one-third of our lawmakers. These proposals focus on putting a price on fossil fuels once they enter the state and distributing revenue collected back to businesses and households in the form of rebates. One proposal returns 100 percent of the revenue collected; the other returns 80 percent of revenue while reinvesting the rest.
May 5, 2017
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climate change, USA |
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nuclear-news 