David Herron .com

A $5 billion expansion of clean energy manufacturing tax credits for wind, solar and electric vehicles is exactly what the doctor ordered. Vice President Biden announced today that the $2.3 billion of tax credits currently available under in the ARRA stimulus package’s section 48C Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit program will be expanded with an additional $5 billion. The additional funds will leverage $15 billion in private investment, work immediately to create new clean energy manufacturing jobs, and boost the America’s competitiveness in global clean tech innovation.

Arriving in Copenhagen, Mr Brown said: "Over the next three days the leaders of almost every nation on earth will gather in Copenhagen. Their role; their opportunity; their responsibility: to shape the future of humanity. It is a defining moment." To win around developing nations who are resisting limits on their carbon emissions, Mr Brown could back a deal for rich countries to give more money. He is now preparing to make Britain pay into another international fund to help poor countries limit the amount of their forests they cut down for logging and agriculture.

Battery maker A123Systems, one of the few startups to win funding under the competitive battery grant program earlier this year, is taking home more than $2.86 million. And early stage battery materials startup Amprius, which is backed by VantagePoint Venture Partners and Trident Capital, has snagged the maximum award of $3 million. Amprius — Silicon Nanowires for Better Batteries: A continuous manufacturing process for a silicon-based anode material for lithium-ion batteries.

The Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing incentive is meant to advance the green agenda while stimulating the economy by spurring the development of cleaner, greener automobiles. Ambitious. The energy department has approved direct loans to Nissan, Ford, Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive totaling about $8 billion out of a budget of $25 billion. The magnitude of this program dwarfs other DOE campaigns like the $2.4 billion given to battery and electric vehicle component manufacturers and the $4 billion disbursed for “smart grid” projects.

Man-made global warming occurs as a result of burning fossil fuels is a negative externality—a spillover from an economic transaction that harms parties not directly involved in the transaction. In this case, the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is thought to be boosting temperatures, raising sea levels, and having other effects on the climate that people must adapt to (by using more air conditioning, switching crops, and so forth).

This Web page provides links to standards and regulations for controlling greenhouse gas emissions from mobile sources. # EPA Home >> Transportation and Air Quality >> Transportation and Climate >> Regulations and Standards

Is the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America thingy a step towards a one world government as some of the right wingnut paranoid fantasy propagandasts are saying? Maybe.

The U.S. Fair Trade Commission has recently released new rules on advertising that appears in the form of endorsements and testimonials. This is one of those "the times they are a changing" moments given that these guidelines were last updated in 1980, my how the world has changed since then. There are many ways endorsements & testimonials show up which aren't so clearly ethical and the new technologies being developed offer new ways for us to communicate with each other.