8
The climate in Jeopardy
I'll take The Climate Race for $200, Alex. Alright, here's the clue: I'm the country that now leads the world in exporting green technology. Oh, I know this one. That's easy. What is Germany! Oooh, I'm sorry, Scott, that's incorrect. We were looking for...
What is CHINA.
China? Isn't that the country that produces more greenhouse gases than anyone on the planet? Ah yes, but it also produces more alternative energy than anyone else.
These are just some of the things you'll learn on Marketplace this week, as our series The Climate Race continues. Tonight, reporter Stephen Beard looks at what European countries are doing in the race to go green:
BEARD: Across Europe a mixture of subsidies, tax-breaks and regulation is creating a new class of green consumer. And says Mark Nicholls of Environmental Finance Magazine, a whole lot of new clean tech companies:
NICHOLLS: So, you've got very big Danish companies making wind turbines, Germany has a leading position in the solar sector because of very generous subsidies for electricity from solar panels. Equally some of the biggest wind developers are Spanish companies.
BEARD: Germany is so far ahead that soon its green industries will surpass its auto industry.
Wow. But Germany was just surpassed by China as an exporter of green tech, and that will be explored tomorrow night in a report from Scott Tong, our correspondent in Shanghai:
MING SUNG, CLEAN AIR TASK FORCE: They don't mind go head to head competition with anybody. They feel they can beat people. The Chinese enterprises: they think we can do it faster, we can do it cheaper.
TONG: Faster because China's authoritarian government can issue permits and regulations without industry lobbyists slowing things down, as they do in the US. Cheaper because of low wages. In fact, one Chinese company's already exported its carbon-capture equipment to a power plant in Pennsylvania. Hmm, China and exports...
Energy Consultant Bill Senior has heard that before.
SENIOR: If carbon capture and storage becomes a global market, China could well be the manufacturing hub for much of the equipment. Just as they're manufacturing everything else that we use in our day to day lives.
Later in the week, we'll look at the US approach to encouraging green technology, and how it stacks up against these other countries. While not out of it, the US is clearly behind. Even developing countries are getting into the act. We'll explore Mexico's efforts to catch up in The Climate Race.
Share your thoughts here as you listen this week, and we'll get a discussion going.
It's about time the US woke up about climate change and the possibilities it brings for new companies in the US. Bush put us light years behind the rest of the world. Local communities here in Wisconsin have been doing more than the federal government. Hopefully Congress will put forward a few incentive bills in 2010 to get solar, wind, geothermal and other ideas moving in the US.
lol, I just love well informed comments. Like "that scoundrel Bush did it" or "We were #1 before that guy ruined us", or "The temp is rising, the temp is rising! Everyone knows this. I've recorded the data myself." They really know how to make me go away from their platform.
It's true especially when someone shows up with real data, and they don't come back.
Not to spoil the hate fest, but when Bush took office the U.S. ~26 <u>hundred</u> MW of wind generation capacity. When Bush left office we had ~28 <u>thousand</u> MW of wind generation capacity with another ~6 <u>thousand</u> MW under construction.
Good ole' boy Bush really messed things up here. We are still paying the piper. Now we have these obstructionist republicans acting like spoiled brats working AGAINST any progress just to spite the Obama administration and Congress.
As of late I would be ashamed to call myself a republican. I have no intention of associating myself with such childish, unorganized and outright vindictive behaviour.
Well, your handle is "<b>pissedoffrepublican</b>" yet your comment: "<i>...As of late I would be ashamed to call myself a republican</i>" implies that you are not a republican. So which is it? You: "would be" or you "are"? Duplicitous misrepresentation is such a weak and pathetic tactic but not surprising coming from a believer/purveyor of the fraudulent climate crisis industry.
Weather and climate models are too sensitive to data and we cannot record the data accurate enough to make meaningful predictions. However, we do know that to make solar panels we have to bulldoze mountains to get the minerals; to make wind turbines we have to bulldoze mountains to get the materials and to lay the power lines; to make cars we have to bulldoze mountains away. We could live a lot simpler lifestyle, smile more and be healthier using human powered equipment made out of plants and animals. Greed is a powerful disease and the Democrats and Republicans both have it. Wisdom is a gift and the Democrats and Republicans don't want it.
