Selling emissions credits eliminates the promised reduction

TXU’s promise to reduce its power-plant pollution by 20 percent came under fire this week after an executive testified that the company reserves the right to sell those offsets to other polluters as “emissions credits.”

“We were pleased to hear of TXU’s plan to reduce overall emissions by 20 percent,” said Julia Jurgenson, an attorney representing the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce in the contested-case hearing.

“However, if what that really means is that TXU may sell the official emissions credits to other companies — which would in effect eliminate the reduction — this causes us great concern.”—by J.B. Smith, Waco Tribune-Herald

Look who is running in a nontraditional way

Al Gore has replaced his image as a boring, cautious technocrat with that of a dynamic, plain-spoken visionary.

"We've seen the real Al Gore," says Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos. "Not the prepackaged, consultant-muzzled Al Gore, but the actual, this-is-what-Al-Gore-who-doesn't-give-a-shit-about-winning-elections looks like." —by Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone

Politics has changed (or has it?)

(Former US Senator George) Smathers badgered the incumbent, Senator Claude Pepper, (in their 1950 race for the Senate) on (Pepper's) support of civil rights and said that (Pepper's) pleas for patience with the Soviet Union made him a communist sympathizer. But he denied uttering the most famous remarks attributed to him — innocuous declarations delivered to less-educated audiences to appear scandalous.

“Do you know that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert?” Mr. Smathers was quoted as saying. “Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.”

Smathers died on Saturday. He was 93.

Utilities that rush new coal plants now won't get bigger emission breaks later

Any company planning to spend billions of dollars on new coal-fired power plants, and any investor in such a company, should think carefully about how to spend their funds so as to be part of the solution to climate change, not a part of the problem.—by Jeff Bingaman, chair, U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and Barbara Boxer, chair, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in OpEd piece in the Dallas Morning News

Here's a good outline for the next president's inaugural speech

At a banquet (at the University of Georgia) Saturday evening, President Jimmy Carter presented what he called "a good outline for the next president's inaugural speech."

As the only superpower, he said, the United States should become "the pre-emininent proponent for peace ... the strongest protector of international law ... and the most generous nation on earth in the relieving of human suffering." —by Tom Baxter, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution