Save the Missouri Family Farm

Vote No on 1! Save the Family Farmer! NO to GMOs …:  youtube 

http://youtu.be/Q4hZc-y5jQo

Act Now to Save Solar in Missouri!

Tell your Legislators: Vote NO on HB44

Dear St Louis and Missouri Solar Advocates,

Some of the smartest, most successful companies and organizations in the world are deploying solar — including Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, FedEx, GE, GM, Google, IKEA, Macy's, Target, Walmart, and the U.S. military. So, why is the Missouri General Assembly dismantling incentives to bring more solar investment to the state?

Help us spread the word and tell your legislators to protect the state's solar industry.

Across the nation, the solar industry is creating jobs, building a more resilient power grid and tackling climate change head-on. By nearly all measures, the solar energy industry has been one of the fastest growing industries over the last five years and 2012 set records for new solar installations, despite a slow economic recovery.

And yet, Missouri's legislators are considering a bill that would stall renewable energy development by allowing the renewable energy standard to be met by existing hydro power. Tell them this makes no sense. The best way to encourage companies to invest and create jobs in our state is to give them certainty about policies.

This bill signals to the business and investment community that the rules are changing and their investments are no longer welcome here.

In 2012 alone, $32 million was invested in Missouri to install solar on homes and businesses. There are 64 solar businesses creating investments and jobs in the state. This bill would cripple that momentum. So why are your representatives moving backwards? Because there is a lot of money and power invested in keeping the status quo.

Tell your legislators -- you want more, not less, incentives for solar.

Thank you for all you do, Carrie Cullen Hitt Senior Vice President, State Affairs Solar Energy Industries Association

Missouri-Stand. Act. Defend! Lobby Day April 17

Missouri Needs Your Help-MO Environmental Defense Alliance
 
Lobby Day

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

One deeply meaningful action you can do for Missouri's energy future, for our air, our water and our state's children, is to attend Lobby Day.  
 
This is a call for those of you who can take the extra step to represent your family, your friends and your neighbors. Register now to be their voice to counter the swarms of paid lobbyists found in Jefferson City this time of year.

Missouri Needs Your Help

MO Environmental Defense Alliance  

Lobby Day

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

8 a.m.- 3 p.m., Jefferson City, Missouri

See You at 2013 Earth Day Events! Webster University Sustainability Conference   April 12-13     St. Louis Earth Day Festival at Forest Park April 21  Kirkwood Earth Day at the Market April 27 Earth Day at Missouri Botanical Garden April 27      Donate Now Become A Member  Volunteer  Forward  to a Friend        Like Us on Facebook      Follow Us on Twitter            "All that is necessary   for evil to triumph   is for good men   to do nothing." - Edmund Burke One deeply meaningful action you can do for Missouri's energy future, for our air, our water and our state's children, is to attend Lobby Day.       This is a call for those of you who can take the extra step to represent your family, your friends and your neighbors. Register now to be their voice to counter the swarms of paid lobbyists found in Jefferson City this time of year. Missouri Needs Your Help MO Environmental Defense Alliance   Lobby Day Wednesday, April 17th, 2013 8 a.m.- 3 p.m., Jefferson City, Missouri Missouri Coalition for the Environment, Environment Missouri, and Labadie Environmental Organization request your presence for MEDA Lobby Day 2013. Join us in Jefferson City at 8 a.m. for an early start on a day filled with meeting your legislators, sharing your key concerns on this year's top priorities and defending Missouri's environment. Together with volunteers and staff from MEDA organizations, you will take a stand for the environment, enjoy lunch, and make a difference. Lobby day will finish around 3 p.m. Cost for lobby day is $20, which includes a vegetarian lunch.   Priorities this year include: Defending Clean, Safe Energy Investing in Missouri State Parks Keeping Toxic Coal Ash Out of Our Rivers To RSVP, complete the form here.  Want to carpool? Check the box in the RSVP form and you will receive all the details.      Share this invitation on Facebook.  Please join us to make a difference.

Missouri Coalition for the Environment | 6267 Delmar Blvd., Ste. 2E | St. Louis | MO | 63130

Stop Harming, Start Helping: Money for our Green Future, Not Big Oil

--- On Sun, 8/29/10, Scotts Contracting <scottscontracting@gmail.com> wrote: From: Scotts Contracting;scottscontracting@gmail.com> Subject: Stop Harming, Start Helping: Money for our Green Future, Not Big Oil To: buzscott@yahoo.com Date: Sunday, August 29, 2010, 1:26 PM Oil is at the core of concerns like the health of our communities, global warming, war, national security, and even poverty and developing country debt. The profits of the oil companies have increased just as the price of gas for all of us has gone up. Oil money fuels bad policy on Capitol Hill while Congress continues to give Big Oil $10 billion in tax subsidies each year. If these issues are of concern to you, check out Oil Change International, an organization that is leading the movement for a Separation of Oil & State! Visit www.PriceofOil.org to learn more. Be sure to check out Follow the Oil Money (www.FollowTheOilMoney.org) a tool that tells you which companies are pumping their dirty oil money into Congress, who is accepting it, and how it affects key climate, energy and war votes. Send your members of Congress a quick note urging them to separate oil and state, and then learn how to organize an SOS movement in your community!

Missouri-Clean Energy-Politics-McCaskill

Missouri news, views, and issues - Show Me Progress

Clean energy roulette - round and round McCaskill goes and where she lands nobody knows | More by: WillyK Fri Jun 04, 2010 at 21:41:26 PM CDT

It's a sure thing that Kit Bond will respect the GOP love affair with Big-Oil and King-Coal, not to mention his party's general policy of obstruction when it comes time to consider the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act - just consider his absurd response to new EPA clean air regulations. Claire McCaskill, on the other hand, may hew to her Republican-not-so-light line, but, given her recent actions in regard to clean energy initiatives, it's just possible that she may be coming around to understanding that CO2 emission control is part-and-parcel of getting to where we need to be, and that she needs to take a few risks and show some innovative, forward-looking leadership to help us get there. It is surely this possibility that has led organizations like  Repower America and Clean Energy Works to lobby as hard as they can to bring Senator McCaskill on board. Which brings us to a conference call earlier this morning organized by Clean Energy Works. The call, which consisted of brief presentations from Missourians representing political, business, farm, and military interests, fleshed out four compelling arguments for passing the American Power Act (and, I hope, for improving that flawed proposal): Clean energy alternatives are here right now: This point was made forcefully by Steve Flick, Board President of Show Me Energy Cooperative, "a non-profit, producer owned cooperative founded to support the development of renewable biomass energy sources in West Central Missouri." The Cooperative has used "stable biomass" as the basis for a "bio-pellet" that can be used for heat as well as to create electricity - recently the KCP&L utility company purchased the pellets to try them out as an alternative to coal for generating electricity. Better yet, given McCaskill's concern that Missourians not "get the short end of the stick" economically, bio-pellet production has the potential to increase farm income. One of the goals of the Cooperative, for instance, is to  "provide additional revenue streams for farmers and producers for their products by utilization in biomass energy production."

WillyK :: Clean energy roulette - round and round McCaskill goes and where she lands nobody knows

Clean Energy is politically viable: State Senator Joan Bray (D-24) observed that the public is ahead of the policy makers and wants the transition to clean energy now. She noted that the Massey coal mine disaster and the current catastrophic BP oil spill have brought home to Americans the costs of doing nothing. The public expects action not dithering from a congress that, according to Bray, doesn't seem to be able to "walk and chew gum at the same time." This argument might reassure our politically cautious McCaskill, especially since it is supported by some recent polling (see also here). McCaskill, who professes to worry about the impact of precipitate action on the business climate, should also be receptive to Bray's observation that Congress must make prompt decisions about energy for economic reasons as well, since businesses need to be able to rely on known rules if they are to plan intelligently. Clean Energy makes us more secure: Jack Hembree, a U.S. Army veteran from Springfield and a member of Operation Free discussed the fact that because most of our oil comes from the Middle East - only 3% of our consumption is supported by domestic oil production - we will have no choice but to continue our military involvement in the region until we can move to clean energy. Listening to Hembree, it occurred to me that since McCaskill claims to support our troops, given the role of oil in putting them in harm's way, how can she do other than to vote for the American Power Act? Clean Energy has no downside: Ralph Bicknese, of Hellmuth & Bicknese Architects in St. Louis offered this formula for evaluating the real costs of our energy sources: just ask what happens when things go wrong. Coal? Produces coal ash that ends up in unlined and unregulated sludge ponds. And what's wrong with that? Think about toxic chemical byproducts seeping into your water, not to mention spills - remember what happened in Kingston Tennessee? Oil? If I need to spell the downside out, you've been living in a cave for the last four decades. Nuclear? As Bicknesse put it, when Nuclear goes wrong, it goes very wrong. Think Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and then think abut the problems inherent in storing poisonous waste with a half-life of a couple of millennia. Not to mention that power from nuclear energy is expensive. It's a dangerous energy source and it's not cheap. Wind, solar? Maybe there are some little implementation problems but nothing that can go catastrophically wrong - no downside at all really. Biomass? essentially no downside that can't be easily dealt with. Given Senator McCaskill's obvious understanding of at least some of the issues, as she articulates them on her Website, if she continues to walk backwards, as she did in her response to the proposed EPA regulations, we must demand that she tell us just why the considerations above do not convince her to not only support, but work to improve the American Power Act. So go call her - let her know that if she does the right thing, we'll have her back in 2012.

Tags: Murkowski resolution Rockefeller Resolution, EPA, clean energy, aces, American Power Act, Claire McCaskill, missouri, Operation Free, Show Me Energy Cooperative, Joan Bray, Clean Energy Works, Repower America, (All Tags)













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Missouri Voters Approve a Renewable Energy

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recently released new estimates of the United States’ wind energy potential, which tripled previous estimates of the size of the nation's wind resources. The new study, which was carried out by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and AWS Truewind, finds that the contiguous 48 states have the potential to generate up to 37 million gigawatt hours annually. To put that in perspective, total U.S. electricity generation from all sources was roughly 4 million gigawatt hours in 2009. The estimates show the total energy yield that could be generated using current wind turbine technology on the nation's windy lands. (The estimates show what is possible, not what will actually be developed.)


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Along with the state-by-state estimates of wind energy potential, NREL and AWS Truewind have developed wind resource maps for the United States and for the contiguous 48 states that show the predicted average wind speeds at an 80-meter height. The wind resource maps and estimates provide local, state, and national policymakers with accurate information about the nature of the wind resource in their areas and across the nation, helping them to make informed decisions about wind energy in their communities.

Why Has Wind Energy Potential Gone Up?

The new estimates reflect substantial advances in wind turbine technology that have occurred since the Department of Energy's last national wind resource assessments were conducted in 1993. For example, previous wind resource maps showed predicted average wind speeds at a height of 50 meters, which was the height of most wind turbine towers at the time. The new maps show predicted average wind speeds at an 80-meter height, the height of today's turbines. Because wind speed generally increases with height, turbines built on taller towers can capture more energy and generate more electricity. The new estimates also incorporate updated capacity factors, reflecting improvements in wind turbine design and performance.

Provided by: Scott's Contracting St Louis "Renewable Energy" Missouri  Email scottscontracting@gmail.com  for your Green Building Needs