"The pain in their wallets is causing them to rethink their lifestyles," said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog in Santa Monica, a frequent critic of Big Oil. "People tend to be a lot more environmentally conscious when just ignoring it is going to cost them something." The changes are even more significant, Court said, given the steady rise in the number of drivers. "It shows that ultimately we can solve both the higher emission problem and the higher consumption problem associated with more drivers if we can continue to improve fuel efficiency technology," Court said.
Continue reading...Tuesday, September 14, 2010
The way natural gas promoters talk about their pet fuel, you’d think it was green as clover and safe as baby oil. After the deadly San Bruno, California, gas line explosion, however, hawkers like natural gas billionaire T. Boone Pickens have gone silent. No more calls to action and pleas to phone your member of [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, June 17, 2010
How is it that renewable energy producers struggle to renew expiring, and already expired, tax breaks and other funding credits in Congress, while the Senate overwhelmingly refuses to cut Big Oil’s $35 billion in taxpayer subsidies? Something to ponder as BP’s CEO faces withering fire for BP’s catastrophic spill in a House Committee hearing [...]
Continue reading...Monday, January 11, 2010
01-11-10 by dugan Why be obsessed with the price of gasoline? Easy. High energy prices, including prices at the pump, will slow and even reverse economic recovery. Every 10-cent a gallon increase in the price of a gallon of gas means another $1 billion less for consumers to spend on anything else. As the [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, November 24, 2009
11-24-09 by dugan California doesn’t have many bright spots lately, what with a new $21 billion hole in its budget, more than 12% unemployment and a hapless state Legislature. But its prospects looked up today with a climate regulation proposal. It’s just a draft regulation, but because the underlying legislation (small PDF) is already [...]
Continue reading...Friday, June 26, 2009
6-26-09 by dugan I’m certainly not a big fan of the House energy and climate bill that received a fake debate and a mini-filibuster before passing 219-212 in the House of Representatives today. By fake, I mean opponents who, for instance, called the bill "a twisted desire of the Democrat party" and "economic suicide" as well [...]
Continue reading...Monday, June 22, 2009
6-22-09 Nothing changed in the real world today–economy still shrinking, gasoline consumption near 10-year lows. But speculators who doubled the price of crude oil and sent prices at the pump shooting up got some kind of extraterrestrial message today. The price of crude oil dropped about $2.50 a barrel, to around $67, and gasoline started [...]
Continue reading...Friday, June 5, 2009
Twist this one around in your brain. An industry demands that you prove it is contaminating your water. But the same industry also refuses to say what chemicals it’s injecting deep underground, which keeps you from getting the proof. That’s the gist of a contentious hearing today in Congress over new techniques of chemically assisted [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, June 4, 2009
06-04-09 by dugan The best use of biofuels like ethanol is not in the tank, but in making electricity to fuel all-electric cars, says a new study in Science magazine (free abstract, subscription pdf). I expect that’s right from a pure science view, but practicality points to using biofuels directly in hybrid and plug-in hybrid [...]
Continue reading...Wednesday, May 27, 2009
05-27-09 by dugan Is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s vanity-green hydrogen fuel project worth the loss of health insurance for thousands of California children? Ah, I didn’t think so, either. Yet Schwarzenegger is out today touting his $14.4 million state subsidy to build seven hydrogen fueling stations for a nonexistent fleet of fuel-cell vehicles that almost no [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, May 19, 2009
5-19-09 by dugan Just in time for President Obama’s decision to boost mileage standards for cars and light trucks, Consumer Watchdog has a blueprint for getting there without heaping unnecessary costs on consumers. We grade possible solutions from A to F, thusly: Hybrid and electric cars, A. Ethanol and biodiesel, B. Natural gas fuel, C. [...]
Continue reading...Tuesday, May 19, 2009
As President Obama Orders Tough Tailpipe Regulations, Consumer Group Offers ‘A’ to ‘F’ Solutions for Cleaner and Cheaper Transportation Americans Want Green Solutions But Worry About Costs; Handbook Identifies Wasted Billions, Best Paths Washington, DC — As President Obama announces new national tailpipe emission standards modeled on California’s, Consumer Watchdog is releasing a report that [...]
Continue reading...Thursday, April 30, 2009
Exxon Profit at 2003-04 Levels ‘Shows What Normal Looks Like,’ Says Consumer Group Santa Monica, CA — Exxon Mobil’s first quarter profit of $4.55 billion dollars is small only by comparison to the last six years of nearly continuous profit records, said Consumer Watchdog. Its first quarter profit is more than $1 billion above what [...]
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Sunday, October 2, 2011
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