Good News Friday

The mother of all Good News Friday updates:

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In honor of my pending Rapture and the loss of another brutal dictator who was an American frenemy I thought I’d go out with a bang and share some good news for a change. Here’s a roundup of positive stories from the week (and yes, I totally stole this idea from Bouphonia, who’s been doing Friday Hope Blogging for years ….)

• The Basque separatist group ETA, responsible for numerous terror attacks in Spain over the years, has announced it’s ceasing all military activity.

• The world’s first malaria vaccine is in clinical trials and shows great promise in controlling the disease.

• It’s Back To The Future all over again! The DeLorean is making a comeback, EV-style. The company announced it’s bringing back the DeLorean DMC-12, complete with gull-wing doors, in an all-electric version, expected to hit the marketplace in 2013. Try not to let the $90,000 price tag give you sticker shock; as I recall, the original gas-engine model wasn’t too budget friendly, either.

• The Newspaper Guild has settled its dispute with the Huffington Post:

Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief of the Huffington Post, addressed The Newspaper Guild-CWA’s awards banquet Thursday night, saying that the two organizations agreed that professional journalists should be paid and that the Guild had agreed to withdraw its boycott.

• U.S. birth rates have declined, which experts say is due to the recession and while that part sucks, I consider any dip in our unsustainable population growth good news. With 7 billion people on the planet these days, every little bit helps.

• The California Air Resources Board has adopted limits on greenhouse gas emissions and cap-and-trade incentives. The program goes into effect in 2013. As one of the world’s largest economies, California’s move will spur all sorts of green innovation. And before the righties start criticizing “Governor Moonbeam,” it bears remembering that this change started under Gov. Schwarzenegger.

Similar systems are underway in Europe. Carbon trading is coming, folks. You can piss and moan about it all you want but when the EU and the State of California have a cap-and-trade system and Australia has a carbon tax and other carbon controls are put in place, the writing’s on the wall. It’s coming to the U.S., make no mistake. Get on board early or get left behind.

5 Comments

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5 responses to “Good News Friday

  1. John Weiss

    Thanks for the good news.

  2. Nice to be reminded of good news

    Prefer a carbon tax over Cap and trade – why give yet another sector of our lives as a plaything to the morally bankrupt Wall Streeters?

  3. Tom Gardner

    You guys realise that those morally bankrupt Wall Streeters don’t pay tax. You will be the ones paying the CTax.

    Are there any liberals who try to see both sides?

    • ????

      Wall Streeters wouldn’t be paying a carbon tax anyway. I mean, I know there’s a lot of hot air and inflated egos out there but not sure how much that contributes to greenhouse gas emissions.

      I think the worry about Wall Street’s corrupting influence was in creating a market for emissions trading devices like carbon offsets. Just another thing for the croupier to fuck with in the Wall Street casino. But that’s also precisely the reason why it’s most likely to get implemented in this day and age. “Tax” is a dirty word these days.

      I wasn’t a big fan of cap-and-trade because I thought it allowed some polluters to continue with their dirty ways. And the biggest problem is that it’s hyper complicated and Americans don’t do complicated very well. Most of the hypercomplicated stuff Wall Street got its hands on — derivatives and all that stuff — was done behind the scenes where people still haven’t figured it out. Hell, half the folks on Wall Street didn’t know what it was they were selling. But it’s not like we passed a law that had to spell it all out … no, they repealed Glass-Steagall and Wall Street figured out the rest.

  4. I agree with you Ariando. I initially strongly preferred the idea of strict regulation and limits on pollution. Imagine the morass of laws, inspections and Texas-style corruption that would go hand in hand with all the political grumbling. Cap and trade has some beauty in that it actually does cap emissions, a monumental accomplishment. It establishes an incentive to clean up or not pollute. And it will amount to a carbon tax as new industries will be forced to buy allowances from the marketplace or perhaps the government. Initially 90% of the allowances will be given away.

    Yes, SB. Let’s close the ugliest chapter in our modern history for once and for all. An unprovoked and unjust war. The initial slaughter of civilians during the first year of war beginning with the indiscriminate Navy shelling and aerial bombardment of Baghdad, 3/17/2003. The Siege of Fallujah. Abu Ghraib. The policy of rounding up every able-bodied man in an entire village and imprisoning them for subsequent questioning. The policy of kicking in doors of houses and throwing in a hand grenade before storming and arresting the occupants. This was real fascist power politik.

    Fuck Butt Chimney for even opening his big, loud, ugly mouth. I actually admire people like McCain, Perry and Palin who had the decency to just let it be.