How To REALLY Cripple Our Enemies (Without Bombs)

It’s very very simple: Go green and help the rest of the world do it, too.

Via The New York Times:

MOSCOW — A steep decline in oil prices is straining the budgets of major petroleum-exporting countries around the globe, raising a specter of spending cuts in Russia, where the economy is under pressure from Western sanctions, and posing a potentially grave security challenge for Iraq, which is already struggling to finance its fight against the Islamic State. 

From Moscow to Caracas, Riyadh to Baghdad, in Tehran, Algiers, Kuwait City and Lagos, political leaders, finance ministers and central bankers have been scrambling to confront the plunge in prices — roughly 25 percent since a peak in June — driven by increased production in the United States and by projections of sustained cuts in demand in many developed countries, as well as decelerating growth in China.

Sure, we’re flooding the market with American oil but the flipside of that is eliminating demand for anyone’s oil worldwide. Demand is down in developed countries because many of them are embracing solar, wind and other renewables. China’s economy is slowing down but solar panels are being produced at an increasing rate to feed a very hungry market.

Walmart heirs working to kill affordable rooftop solar power

Rob Walton

Walmart is an environmental disaster, despite its claim to be moving toward renewable energy. But Walmart's majority stockholders, the Walton family, are going above and beyond, actively working against rooftop solar power, according to a new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.

The Waltons' anti-solar efforts fall into two categories. Since 2010, they've given at least $4.5 million in donations to organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council and Americans for Prosperity that are trying to weaken clean energy policies at the state level. These donations are part of a widespread corporate attack on policies that allow homeowners to use rooftop solar panels not just to power their own houses, but to sell excess solar power to utility companies. These utility companies might not be against solar power, but they're definitely against losing business to household-level solar. The logic is a familiar one:

... beneath the [Walton] family’s public embrace of environmentalism lies a deeper agenda: furthering the highly concentrated corporate economic model that has generated so much wealth for so few, often at extraordinary cost to both the environment and working people. The Waltons’ environmentalism is best understood not as a curious counterpoint to this imperative, but rather as a tool in service to it.

They put that into very direct action with a solar company, First Solar. Yes, the Walmart Waltons own a solar company. But! First Solar doesn't build solar for households. It builds utility-scale solar arrays, which means its interests are fully aligned with utility companies. Really aligned:

In June 2013, Walton-owned First Solar sent shockwaves through the solar industry when its CEO, James Hughes, published an op-ed in the Arizona Republic endorsing a proposal by the state’s biggest utility to impose a new fee on households with rooftop solar. Averaging about $50 to $100 a month, the proposed fee would be large enough to completely destroy the economics of household energy production, halting the spread of residential rooftop solar in Arizona. As the rest of the solar industry closed ranks and joined with environmental and consumer groups in opposing the plan, First Solar backed the utility, insisting that it was right to maximize its financial position. Bryan Miller, a vice president at Sunrun and president of the Alliance for Solar Choice, put First Solar’s actions in perspective: “No solar company has publicly advocated against solar until First Solar.”

The fee eventually imposed was much smaller than the proposed $50 to $100 a month, but nonetheless, it had its intended effect:

Residential installations have since declined by 40 percent, protecting APS, which produces most of its electricity from coal, nuclear, and gas, from competition. Arizona, once a leader in solar job creation, is now one of only five states in the country

where the number of solar jobs is actually declining.

The organizations the Waltons contributed that $4.5 million to are working to push similar policies in states across the country.

Solar Panels Could Replace Roads

Back when the concept of global warming was still nascent—only eight years ago, mind you—Scott and Julie Brusaw of Sagle, Idaho, began heavily contemplating an idea that Scott, an electrical engineer, had toyed with as a child: solar panel roads.

After years of figuring out many ways not to make a solar panel, the Brusaws have developed a modular-panel paving system that's attracted interest from the Federal Highway Administration, General Electric, and even Google. If their Indiegogo campaign, started this past Earth Day, receives $1 million by the end of May, the Brusaw's company, Solar Roadways, will be able to test its heavy-duty tempered-glass product in parking lots and eventually highways throughout the country.

The versatile paneling has a lot going for it. Where most roads ice over in the winter, solar roadways are equipped with heating elements that keep them clear. Where blacktop consumes light and requires bright headlights to navigate at night, solar roadways come outfitted with road-powered LEDs. Where potholes burden travelers for months, individual damaged panels can be fixed in a matter of minutes because nearby panels deliver automated alerts to electricians. They can even store and treat stormwater that erodes current byways and put an end to a Wi-Fi-less America.

Most impressive is Solar Roadways' energy and capital potential: The Brusaws did the math and found their panels more than pay for themselves. Solar panel technology is not cheap when done correctly, but Solar Roadways could conceivably produce more than three times the electricity Americans use each year.

That energy would power homes, roads, and as of today, even the White House. President Obama announced a plan to push solar energy in 2010 and is reinforcing his intent by symbolically reinstalling solar panels at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Ronny Raygun blasts again.