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By Kennedy Maize Princeton physicist Will Happer, a prominent skeptic about man-made global warming, told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Feb. 25 that the earth is in a “CO2 famine,” and more atmospheric carbon dioxide would be a very good thing indeed. “Almost never have CO2 levels been as low” as in the […]

By Kennedy Maize Yucca Mountain is stretched out on its deathbed. Earlier this month, the nuclear industry effectively agreed that the plan to bury spent nuclear reactor fuel under the Nevada mountain on federal government property is ready for political last rites. At meetings with Wall Street analysts and state utility regulators in February, leaders […]

By Kennedy Maize Here’s a delicious irony. In South Carolina, an iconic former Republican governor and the current Republican governor, who reportedly has presidential ambitions, are feuding over a coal-fired power plant proposed by the state government’s own electric utility. Most intriguing is that the former governor, oral surgeon Jim Edwards, 81, Ronald Reagan’s first […]

By Kennedy Maize “Stimulus” has become the universal political solvent in Washington since the advent of the Obama administration. No matter what narrow special interest, no matter what piece of local pork or advocacy policy preference, it all gets dissolved and incorporated into the administration’s stimulus package. You call it “stimulus.” I call it “earmarks.” […]

By Kennedy Maize   Congress will make a big mistake if it provides money for accelerated wind power development as part of the Obama administration’s new economic stimulus program, according to veteran energy analyst Glenn Schleede. Instead, he says in a recent privately-published paper, “Investment in energy efficient light bulbs would save more than five […]

By Kennedy Maize A retired Entergy Co. executive, who has loads of hands-on operating experience at nuclear power plants, is a major contender for an open seat on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Daniel F. Packer Jr., 61, who was the first African-American to manage a U.S. nuclear power plant (Entergy’s Waterford plant), confirmed to […]

By Kennedy Maize Spare me the hype about electric cars. Allegedly “green” technology was a theme at the latest Detroit auto show, as chronicled by the New York Times last Sunday. Sorry, I don’t buy it. Been there, done that, didn’t work. In the early 1980s, electric cars were going to be the way to […]

By Kennedy Maize Can you spell “poser?” Here’s my offering: “Eric Massa (D-N.Y.)” Massa, newly elected Congressman from New York’s 29th district (that’s Corning, the glass folks), showed up in Washington earlier this week to be sworn in as a member of the House of Representatives in the 111th Congress, having arrived in the city […]

By Kennedy Maize At a pleasant Christmas dinner with friends last week, a smart diner posed a question: when should the government or the market have known that the U.S. (and the world’s, as it turns out) financial system was in life-threatening peril? After pausing to scratch my head, I proffered an idea: it all […]

By Kennedy Maize Some of my friends on the left have been lamenting the Cabinet choices of president-elect Barack Obama. One of them wrote in an email recently, “As the new government was put together, brick by brick, a disturbing pattern emerged. Time and again, those who had braved the perils of the Clinton… threat […]