Category Archives: Environment

The Cooch’s Freak Show Dream Team

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 6 Comments

cooch dream teamBy Peter Galuszka

Ken Cuccinelli just can’t keep away from the bizarre, but perhaps that’s what makes him what he is.

He stages a convention instead of a primary to neuter Bill Bolling. And since a convention is smaller, it draws more GOP hard-righters than  June bugs on a humid night and they succeed in getting Bishop E.W. Jackson and Mark Obenshain selected. They underline the social conservatism that turns millions off and makes Virginia the butt of jokes on late night talk shows.

The Bishop is an even bigger gay basher than Cuccinelli and says that Planned Parenthood is responsible for more fatalities among African-Americans than the Ku Klux Klan. This may be new to a Harvard Law graduate, but women of any color have a legal right to an abortion within limits. The U.S. Supreme Court said so. Look under Roe vs. Wade.

Then there is the attorney general candidate Mark Obenshain of the legacy Republican family. He proposed and withdrew legislation to require any woman in Virginia who miscarries a pregnancy to report it to the police. The idea is so repulsive it is beyond words. A woman may have miscarried to her great sorrow due to medical reasons and then would have to go through the added horror of having to report to the police? Yes, this comes from a cabal that otherwise wants to keep the government out of your lives. Even Josef Stalin wouldn’t think of this.

What does the dream team have to say on the many policy issues facing a troubled state? We have a bunch of lame and poorly thought out tax cuts and Cooch playing hardware store populist. Cuccinelli was against McDonnnell’s mammoth road building tax plan and has since backed away from his opposition.

Is this good news for Terry McAuliffe, who has plenty of issues of his own? Yes, I would think. Cuccinelli doesn’t need the fringe hard right voters. He’s already got them in his pocket. He needs the center and Mark and the Bishop aren’t going to be much help there.

It boggles the mind how Virginia is so schizo. It is attracting hundreds of thousands of newcomers who are running the state’s economy and are dragging it into the 21st century world. Yet the Republicans put up people like this who aren’t dragging us to Virginia’s recent dark past but to medieval times.

Global investors might think twice or three times before investing in this freak show.

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Posted in Abortion, Blogs and blog administration, Budget, Children and families, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Crime and corrections, Demographics, Disaster planning, Economic development, Economy, Education (higher ed), Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Entitlements, Environment, Federal, Finance, Governance reform, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Regulation, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, The Economy, Transportation

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Ninety-Seven Percent, You Chowderheads!

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 34 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

New Study: Climate Scientists Overwhelmingly Agree Global Warming Is Real and Our Fault!

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Posted in 2013, Environment

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What the Clams Know: Warming Waters

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 31 Comments

atlantic surf clamBy Peter Galuszka

Are warming seas forcing fish to migrate to cooler waters?

That’s the thrust of an intriguing report in Nature magazine as covered in this morning’s Post. The impacts on the seafood industry are already playing out. New England fishermen after cod and haddock report having to move farther north to catch them.

There are impacts in the Mid-Atlantic as well. According to The Post, warmer waters from Delaware to Virginia are pushing Atlantic surf clams to move farther north, and this has resulted in the closure of a clam processing plant in Virginia. Atlantic surf clams are a popular variety used for fried dishes or in chowders

I tried and failed to find out what plant it was. I did find one that was shut down in recent years near Mappsville on Virginia’s Eastern Shore but could not confirm the reason. The firm, Eastern Shore Seafood, was bought by Maryland-based Seawatch International which later shut the plant down.

I spoke with Mike Hutt, executive director of the Virginia Marine Products Board who had seen The Post story but couldn’t confirm details of any related plant closings or the impact of warming waters regionally

It would seem that warmer waters will add further stress to the region’s troubled seafood industry, especially for certain species. I’m not certain how it would affect favorites such as blue crabs that seem to thrive in tepid waters much farther south or oysters, which are struggling make a comeback in Chesapeake Bay. My guess, and I am no expert, is that other prized species such as bluefish and rockfish (striped bass to Northerners) might change their migration patterns because of climate change.

If the Nature research is correct, the fish may be sending us a powerful message that many haven’t figured out yet.

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Posted in Disaster planning, Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Regulation, Science & Technology

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GiftGate: “If I Were a Rich Man . . .!”

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 5 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

Richmond’s “Giftgate” scandal just gets worse.

On Friday, Atty. Gen. and presumed GOP gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Cuccinelli announced that he was amending his required disclosures of gifts to show that he took more goodies from Star Scientific plus previously undisclosed gifts of a $7,750 trip in 2010 to Southwest Virginia from coal giant Alpha Natural Resources of Abingdon and $795 to speak at a coal industry rally in 2012.

While the tardy disclosure is questionable, the gifts are not illegal but they would be in other states.

This, moreover, raises another tricky question. How wealthy should politicians be so they can’t be bought?

Could it be that officials  of more modest personal means such as Cuccinelli might be somehow be more vulnerable to gift-giving by individuals or corporations with a definite agenda, such as Star Scientific and Alpha Natural Resources.

Cuccinelli disclosed income of $134,000 in 2009 and $264,296 in 2005. He makes about $150,000 as the state’s top legal officer and got a $30,000 advance from Crown Publishing for a book. His disclosure was a political ploy to embarrass McAuliffe but in the wake of the gifts, it has backfired.

McDonnell’s net worth is about $1.8 million.

Compare that to two Democrats. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, no stranger to big money fundraising, earned $8.2 million in 2011 from his various business interests. U.S. Sen. Mark Warner was once said to be worth about $200 million, much of it from investments he made in the cell phone industry and high-tech financing a couple of decades ago.

It’s tough to say that politics should be only for rich men. But the curious thing about these two Republicans, supposedly the silk stocking, country club party, is that McDonnell and Cuccinelli “are actually very much middle class guys,” Richmond political analyst Bob Holsworth recently told me.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, but the fact is that both Cuccinelli and McDonnell have spent most of their careers in low-paying public service jobs. McAuliffe and Warner, both accused of being anti-capitalist regulators by the GOP, actually made millions in the free market system that they supposedly disdain.

Painting them as such might be a plus to rank and file voters, but in a strange way, it can put them at risk. Why, for instance, did Cuccinelli feel compelled to accept $13,000 in gifts from Jonnie Williams, the head of troubled Star Scientific, which is the object of shareholder lawyers and a federal probe? These included the use of vacation homes and expensive foreign cars. One vacation cost $3,000 and was a gift. Even an underpaid journalist like myself has paid $2,000 for a week at a beach house with my family. Why couldn’t he have rented his own place?

Williams is involved with a disputed state tax assessment of $860,000 and Cucccinelli has had to recuse himself as he has from another court case involving the fired executive chef who is seeking information that McDonnell’s family used publicly-funded goods like energy drinks, state-owned beach cottages and liquor for themselves.

The Alpha and coal business is rather obvious. Alpha took over Richmond-based Massey Energy in 2011 after the firm’s noxious corporate culture is said to have led to the deaths of 29 miners in West Virginia making it the worst deep mine disaster in the U.S. in 40 years. Massey’s CEO Don Blankenship was famous for bankrolling West Virginia judicial officials and other candidates. He went so far as  to vacation with the State Supreme Court Judge on the French Riviera.

Alpha has a better safety record than Massey but is taking its lumps, having lost $2 billion in one quarter last year. Coal in general has been in the tank thanks to cheap natural gas and some new federal environmental rules plus a slow-down in Asia’s demand for coal to make steel.

Naturally, the beleaguered coal industry wants to beat back what it considers onerous regulations.  It was a major bankroller of Mitt Romney’s campaign last year and Alpha was a big participant. Cuccinelli is perfect because he denies that carbon dioxide is responsible for climate change – a pet issue for King Coal. So, he was instrumental in the right wing’s counter attacks on the “War On Coal” last election.

What bothers me is not that Cuccinelli would flack for them but why did it cost $7,750 for him and his parents, paid for by Alpha, to visit Southwest Virginia. Last year I published a book on Massey and had made many trips to Southwest Virginia, including Alpha’s headquarters and a mine. I paid for it myself and I think it cost me maybe $200 in gas and a night or two at a two star motel at maybe $110 a night. I ate at Hardees where a steak biscuit is about $1.50 although I did splurge at a fancy Abingdon restaurant that had knock-out martinis with blue cheese filled olives.

But it didn’t cost me $7,750 or even one third of that.

Would McAuliffe or Warner have accepted a such largesse? I am sure they have moved and grooved with the rich and famous for years but both men are in a position to say “no thanks.”

And that is what Cuccinelli and McDonnell should have said, even if Virginia has hardly any rules on gifts.

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Posted in Abortion, Children and families, Consumer protection, Courts and law, Crime and corrections, Economic development, Electoral process, Energy, Environment, Federal, Finance, Governance reform, Money in politics, Politics

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McAuliffe: Can a Schmoozer Transform?

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 3 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

On Easter Sunday, I was driving in a cold rain to Charlottesville for a family event. My cell phone started beeping with messages from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Terry McAuliffe.

He said he was on his way to his own family brunch but wanted to tap me for $5. I got similar messages from two other staffers.

Why bother me at Easter? Political analyst Larry Sabato wondered the same thing. In a tweet that day he complained about finding “11 obnoxious messages for $$$. Now I know the answer to the age old Q; Is nothing sacred?”

And that may be McAuliffe’s biggest problem as he faces arch-conservative Ken Cuccinelli in the off-year governor’s race. In my profile of him in Style Weekly, I note that McAuliffe is trying to rein in an expansive personality that has made him a top political schmoozer and fundraiser for Democrats from Jimmy Carter to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

A decades’ long political operative who has never been in elected office, he can be bombastic and smooth, as his recent dealings with GreenTech Automotive shows. He flirted with Virginia for a hybrid  car plant before going to Mississippi. He has been accused of somehow using the car plant to win special visas for foreign workers and maybe misleading the Virginia Economic Development Partnership about his intentions in the Old Dominion.

Meanwhile, he must overcome some of his misunderstandings of traditional Virginia thinking. However, it’s probably a good thing that he’s going to skip the Shad Planking in Wakefield tonight with its Confederate flags where Cuccinelli will be keynote speaker.

While polls are about 50-50 in the race, McAuliffe’s fundraising prowess has shown brightly. In the first quarter, he raised more than $5 million — more than double the take of Cuccinelli, who has hamstrung by not being allowed raise money during the General Assembly session because of his position as Attorney General. Read on…

(Also, here as a Q&A with McAuliffe)

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Posted in Economic development, Economy, Education (K-12), Electoral process, Energy, Entitlements, Environment, Federal, Finance, Gay rights, Governance reform, Government workers and pensions, Gun rights, Health care, Housing, Immigration, Infrastructure, Insurance, Labor & workforce, Land use & development, Media, Money in politics, Planning, Politics, Poverty & income gap, Property rights, Public safety & health, Race and race relations, Regulation, Science & Technology, Social services, Taxes, The Economy, Transportation

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Sunnier Skies for Virginia Solar

Posted on April 17, 2013 by James A. Bacon| 8 Comments

Photo credit: Secure Futures

Thanks to a new law making it easier for non-utilities to sell solar electricity, backers of solar power are viewing the future with cautious optimism.

By Andrew Jenner

Virginia gets enough sunshine, relative to other states, to give it better-than-average potential for solar energy development. A 2012 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated its potential solar energy generation capacity at 1.9 million gigawatt hours – about 17 times the state’s total annual electricity consumption.

This potential is far from reality, however. With just 10 MW of installed solar photovoltaic generation capacity, the largest being a new 2.1-MW array at the Norfolk Naval Station, Virginia ranks far behind other eastern states with more progressive solar energy policy. (New Jersey alone had 955 MW installed by the end of 2012.)

One major reason is that the state has no mandatory Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), due both to the considerable lobbying efforts of the state’s powerful electric utilities and a political climate generally unfavorable to new regulatory mandates. Since Virginia adopted a voluntary RPS program in 2007, the utility lobby snuffed out legislative attempts to set mandatory RPS goals and to allow renewable energy companies to sell power directly to individual customers from behind-the-meter wind or solar installations.

Over the past two years, Dominion, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, also has blocked several solar projects financed with power purchase agreements, or PPAs, arguing that the arrangement infringes on its exclusive right to sell power in its franchise territory. The PPA model, which allows nonprofit entities to capture important federal tax benefits through a for-profit energy company, has been key to development of the solar industry in other states.

In January, however, renewable energy advocates were pleasantly surprised when Dominion reversed course and put its considerable weight behind legislation that allows for limited use of PPAs in the state. In March Governor Bob McDonnell signed the bills, which creates a pilot program for solar and wind energy projects in Dominion’s franchise territory that are financed through third-party PPAs,

Solar energy advocates in Virginia are hopeful that the industry soon will make up lost ground. “[This program] is a great opportunity for Virginia customers to be able to finally take advantage of the financing model that is driving most new solar installations nationwide,” said Ivy Main, the vice-chair of the Sierra Club’s Virginia Chapter.

Solar developers within the state also are excited about the future. Mike Healy, a national board member of the Solar Energy Industry Association, called PPAs “critically important” mechanisms for stimulating private investment into the solar market, and applauded the pending change in Virginia as precedent-setting within the state.

“The outlook for this year is a really good one,” said Tony Smith, president and CEO of Secure Futures, a Virginia company that designs, finances and installs solar arrays for universities and other tax-exempt institutions and organizations.

Dominion’s support for the PPA model came as both a surprise and a relief to Smith and other solar supporters, given the utility’s recent actions to block these very same PPAs. Over the past two years, Secure Futures has been at the forefront of this conflict in Virginia, and has played an unexpected role of energy policy activist as it has struggled to find ways to bring projects online without using PPA financing. Read more.

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Posted in 2013, Energy, Environment, Infrastructure, Money in politics, Regulation

No Reform Three Years After Massey Disaster

Posted on April 5, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 3 Comments

 By Peter Galuszka

Three years ago today, a tremendous blast caused by bad safety conditions at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, W.Va., killed 29 miners. It was the worst coal mine disaster in this country in 40 years.

But three years later, very little has been done to toughen mine safety regulations so that serial violators such as the now defunct, Richmond-based Massey can squeeze profits from miners’ lives and also, from the mountains they have destroyed through severe mountaintop removal mining methods.

J. Davitt McAteer, a former U.S. Labor official and mining expert, and Beth Spence, a coalfield specialist for the American Friends Service Committee, write of failures on the state and federal level to stem safety abuses in the Charleston Gazette.

The West Virginia legislature passed a reform law in 2012 but much of it hasn’t been implemented, including improved measures to spray rock dust to keep down the coal dust of the type that helped carry Upper Big Branch’s destructive blast through seven miles of underground seams with fatal results.

The U.S. Congress is even more laggard. It has considered several versions of a law first proposed after Upper Big Branch by the late Sen. Robert Byrd to punish repeat safety violators, protect whistle blowers and make top management accountable when they make decisions that put safety at risk. The Byrd bill, as it is known, has been nowhere ever since the Republican Party, riding the Tea Party wave, took control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010.

Other disturbing points include a new audit at the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration that it has implemented only about half of the internal changes recommended after the disaster. Also, legal teams at the Labor Department assembled to force mine operators to improve safety are being disbanded due to federal budget cuts. A favored Massey tactic was to mount legal challenges to most safety violations. The result was that important corrections were not made.

An even older problem seems unresolved. For years, miners were afflicted with pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease, a debilitating and often fatal illness that comes from breathing coal dust. For 24 of the miners whose bodies had enough lung tissue to sample at autopsy (the rest were too ripped apart by the blast) there was evidence of black lung even though some were only in their 20s.

True, the coalfields of Central Appalachia are in a slump now that natural gas has out-priced coal in the electric utility market. But the fields of Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky still produce plenty of metallurgical coal that is typically exported to make steel in China, India and Brazil. That was the product produced by the dead Massey miners.

Meanwhile, miners continue to die. In the first quarter of this year, eight miners have died including five in West Virginia alone. “This compares with five during the same period of 2012, two in 2011 and two in 2010 (before Upper Big Branch),” write McAteer and Spence.

Mind you, this is more than a year after Bristol-based Alpha Natural Resources, which bought Massey in 2011, entered into an agreement with federal prosecutors as part of a Massey settlement to spend millions in mine safety training and improvement.

The Alpha deal, however, has no legal clout over the coal industry. It would take legislation for that.

Sadly, miners’ lives don’t seem important enough to merit new laws.

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Posted in Courts and law, Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Health care, Money in politics, The Economy

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The Remarkable Renaissance of Virginia Rail

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| 2 Comments

By Peter Galuszka

Many decades ago, Richmond was a major, and colorful, train hub. Crack passenger lines of all liveries, the purple and silver of the Atlantic Coast Line, the citrus colors of Seaboard, and the blue and yellow of the Chesapeake & Ohio, all went through town.

Cars and aircraft reduced rail to dirty old cars that were on time about 50 percent of the time. But that is changing.

In the past several years, Amtrak, partly funded with public money, is coming back with the addition of early morning trains from Richmond to Washington, new lines from Norfolk and Lynchburg and on-time rates approaching 90 percent. Many are clean and have Internet service.

For the first time in years, rail is being seen as a real alternative to struggling with congested Interstate 95 or messing with airport delays, the nasty TSA and snarly airlines that charge you for checked bags and everything else.

In fact, transportation expert George Hoffer at the University of Richmond, says the Amtrak turnaround is so significant that it is cutting in half the ratios of those who fly out of Richmond versus take the train. It used to be 12 passengers for every rail rider and now it is six to one, he says.

Brookings says that rail passengers out of four Richmond area rail stations has increased nearly 60 percent from 1997. So we’re seeing a slow and steady chugging along which has positive implications for the state’s economy and the environment.

For more, see my Style Weekly article.

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Posted in Economic development, Economy, Energy, Environment, Federal, Infrastructure, Land use & development, Transportation

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Amazing Transformation!

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Peter Galuszka| Leave a comment

(Photo courtesy Cheaspeake Climate Action Network)

– PAG

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Posted in 2013, Energy, Environment

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Fight Global Warming – Stop Eating Meat

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Groveton| 12 Comments

A rose by any other name.  The term “global warming” is often replaced by “global climate change.”  The injunction to stop eating meat could mean an abstention from red meat, vegetarianism, veganism or anything in-between.  There is a lot of nuance in these areas.  However, one thing is certain – the production of meat by humans is a major contributor to the creation of greenhouse gasses.

I’d like to change the world but I don’t know where to start.  The debate over global climate change and what to do about it is mind numbing.  Even as more Americans “believe” in global warming few seem to know what should be done.  Much focus is put on replacing fossil fuel with renewable energy.  While alluring, this “cure” involves complex technology and debatable economics.  It’s also correctly perceived to be very expensive.  One optimistic estimate is that the US could reduce fossil fuel usage by 70% over the next 30 years by spending $200B per year.  After $6T we’d still be burning fossil fuel, just not as much of it.  Maybe.

The secret sauce.  A 2006 report claimed that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry.  However, in 2009 a pair of researchers came to a startling conclusion – livestock and their byproducts account for 51% of annual worldwide GHG emissions.  Wow!  Current research indicates that somewhere between one-fifth and one-half of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by the raising of livestock for human consumption.  In fact, producing one calorie from animal protein requires 11 times as much fossil fuel input as does producing one calorie of plant protein.

Whose ox is being gored?  Last week Al Gore declared that now is the time for a carbon tax.  Watching the rotund former Vice President being interviewed on TV I could almost smell the double bacon cheeseburgers on his breath.  Let’s be honest, you don’t get to Big Al’s size by over consuming vegetables.  I’d be a lot more open to his ideas on raising my taxes if he seemed to exhibit even a semblance of personal responsibility for his own carbon footprint.  I mean, how hard could it be?  Well, I am going to find out.

Rule of the Templars.  History buffs will know that the Templar Knights were a monastic order of warrior-priests in the Middle Ages.  The Templars had a problem: They wanted to be humble but they needed to be strong enough to fight. Humility required that the Templars forgo meat in favor of more simple fare. Strength required protein and, in the minds of the Templars, that meant meat. Their compromise was elegant.  The Templar code requires that meat be eaten in only three meals per week. I have a problem too.  I like meat.  A lot.  But in the interests of saving the Earth I’ll follow the Templar example and only eat meat three times a week. Will this dietary change hurt me? I don’t know but it doesn’t seem to have done Alicia Silverstone any harm.

D.J. Rippert

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Posted in 2013, Agriculture & forestry, Energy, Environment, Science & Technology, The Economy, Uncategorized

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