United States – Oct 6

October 6, 2007

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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


Gulf currency revaluation risk could ‘squeeze dollar further’

Reuters via Gulf Times
The broadly declining dollar could come under further pressure should Gulf Arab states decide to revalue their currencies and remove pegs to the greenback, prompting a flight out of US assets by oil-rich Middle East countries.

Speculation about the dollar peg hogged the headlines in recent sessions after Saudi Arabia kept interest rates unchanged despite the Federal Reserve slashing benchmark rates by a half percentage point last month.
(6 October 2007)


Secessionists meeting in Tennessee

Bill Poovey, Associated Press
In an unlikely marriage of desire to secede from the United States, two advocacy groups from opposite political traditions – New England and the South – are sitting down to talk.

Tired of foreign wars and what they consider right-wing courts, the Middlebury Institute wants liberal states like Vermont to be able to secede peacefully.

That sounds just fine to the League of the South, a conservative group that refuses to give up on Southern independence.

…Separated by hundreds of miles and divergent political philosophies, the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South are hosting a two-day Secessionist Convention starting Wednesday in Chattanooga.

They expect to attract supporters from California, Alaska and Hawaii, inviting anyone who wants to dissolve the Union so states can save themselves from an overbearing federal government.
(3 October 2007)
Contributor raghu writes:
We are beginning to see the long term effects of Peak oil — smaller and more local governments, smaller nations, states seceding from bigger federal republics (Remember it happened in the former Soviet Union not too long ago, which sort of coincided with the Peaking in Russia)


The green job boom

Steve Hargreaves, CNNMoney.com
Renewable energy supporters say the industry could create millions of new jobs, but economists are split.

To hear environmentalists tell it, investing in renewable energy won’t just provide a clean source of power, it will create an explosion of new jobs.

Estimates of just how many jobs our push to go green may generate vary widely, and not all economists believe that there really will be any kind of “green job” boom.

The Apollo Institute, a group that wants the government to embark on a renewable energy project similar to the Apollo space program that put a man on the moon, expects to see three million new green jobs over the next ten years.
Server farm goes solar

But the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California Berkeley thinks the boom will deliver something moralong the lines of one million new jobs by 2020.

Champions of renewable energy tout the jobs angle as another reason why the government should pour money into subsidies and other incentives for the industry. But economists are split as to whether these projected jobs will ever materialize.
(5 October 2007)


Tags: Activism, Electricity, Politics, Renewable Energy