It is hard to imagine that America is destined for a continued decline during a Trump administration sanctioned by the American Plutocracy for at least four years and possibly eight years. Unfortunately, with the media’s dependence on their dollars for funding, it is difficult for them to be the medium of objective truth and enlightenment. Fortunately, we can count on Independent Media to do this; if only it were better funded.
The story of Scottish Power is a classic example. The U.S. is no longer leading. The rest of the world is.
Scottish Power has switched to 100% wind for power generation.
Scottish Power has ditched fossil fuels for electricity generation and switched to 100% wind power, by selling off its last remaining gas power stations to Drax for more than £700m. Iberdrola, Scottish Power’s Spanish parent company, said the move was part of its strategy to tackle climate change and would free it up to invest in renewables and power grids in the UK.
The deal also marks a significant expansion and diversification for Drax, whose main business is a coal- and biomass-fired power station in North Yorkshire. Included in the £702m sale are four gas power stations in England, two hydro schemes and a pumped storage plant in Scotland. That leaves Scottish Power producing all its power from windfarms. …
The ScottishPower chief executive, Keith Anderson, said: “We are leaving carbon generation behind for a renewable future powered by cheaper green energy.”
This change will become the norm around the world. On its current trend, America will become the cesspool of the discarded technologies.
As all the nations of the world join in the Paris Agreement, Trump has taken America out. With his promotion of carbon and heavy metal producing sources of energy (coal and petroleum) as well as his laissez-faire deregulation, he is turning the U.S.A. into the dumping-ground of all the refuse capitalism still wants to produce and process. They do it at the expense of the health and lives of Americans.
The pretext, of course, is jobs. But every thinking person understands that renewable energy generates at a rate twelve time faster than the rest of the economy.
Many Trump supporters are poor. They live in areas where industries, many times bend environmental rules for profit at the expense of their wellness, health, and death. Trump makes it all legal. Many have yet to make the correlation between laissez-faire deregulation with the state of their health and well-being. Even Trump’s EPA points out his deregulation will cause more deaths. And then there is this from two Harvard researchers.
A new opinion piece, written by two Harvard researchers in a leading medical journal, has calculated that the Trump administration’s environmental agenda could result in 80,000 more deaths and lead to respiratory problems for more than 1 million people every decade. The column was written by a Harvard biostatistician and a Harvard public health economist, and while the article is not peer-reviewed, most of the calculations are based on data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) itself.
In less than a year and a half, President Trump and the EPA have successfully reversed or proposed to reverse no less than 60 environmental rules. Nevertheless, these regulatory roll backs were made without considering the impact that such measures could have on public health. As a result, Harvard researchers have put forward “an extremely conservative estimate” of what these public health consequences could look like. Their essay predicts, for instance, that the Trump administration’s repeal of the Clean Power Plan will result in an estimated 36,000 deaths and a whopping 630,000 extra cases of childhood respiratory problems – all in the next decade.
It is clear the world is not waiting for America. It is moving forward even as America tries to relive an imagined past that we must no create. If we allow this to go on, if we don’t do our job to inform the unenlightened to force a change, we would have sealed our faith.