Energy & Environment: Media Appearances and Press Releases

Lisa Margonelli on New Hampshire Public Radio | Word of Mouth: 'Next Green Thing - Termite Guts'

Communications — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:11:00 -0400

New America in the News:

In the world of social insects, the lowly termite gets no respect. Sure, ants and bees have their champions and are lauded for their social cohesion and industriousness. Termites, on the other hand, are the bane of homeowners everywhere. They eat up about $11 billion in U.S. property each year. Some species also have the rather unsocial habit of snapping the heads off of invading ants.

But termites may have gotten a bad rap. With rising oil prices, their ability to turn wood waste into fuel has sparked the interest of researchers, who have struggled to turn wood and grasses into biofuels. As part of our “next green thing” series, we wanted to find out whether we could harness the termite’s efficiency, to run our economy on sawdust, lawn clippings and old magazines.

Lisa Margonelli is a fellow at the New America Foundation, writes about global culture and the economy of energy, and is the author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to your Tank. Her article "Gut Reactions" appears in the September issue of The Atlantic Monthly, and she agreed to lead Word of Mouth into the mysterious third gut of the termite. LINK to audio

Lisa Margonelli in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch | 'Hot Air and Energy'

Communications — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:55:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Lisa Margonelli isn't impressed. "The current dialogue is profoundly depressing and fake," she told me. "I think both candidates need to be more honest about our options."

Margonelli is a California-based fellow at the high-powered New America Foundation policy think tank in Washington and the author of the fascinating and immensely entertaining best-seller Oil on the Brain.

Published last year and issued recently in paperback with an essay updating some of her observations, Oil on the Brain is the result of three years of field reporting and research that took Margonelli across America and to China, Iran, Nigeria, Chad and Venezuela. She even wormed her way into the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Dotted with respectful and sometimes affectionate profiles of improbably colorful characters, the book documents how oil is discovered and recovered; how it's refined, wholesaled and retailed; how it's priced and sold worldwide as a commodity and as a financial instrument; how it's wound through the social fabric of America and the lives of individuals; and how it shapes politics, diplomacy, democracy, autocracy, psychology, sociology and economics...

... The energy debate has been disappointing, she said, noting the "theatrical approach to high gas prices" that involves talking about what amount to more subsidies and taxes to pay for more driving. We need to be talking about driving less, she said. LINk to Article

Flynt Leverett in Policy Innovations | 'The Rise of the Rest'

Communications — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:04:00 -0400

New America in the News:

FLYNT LEVERETT: ..."As Americans, I think we also need to face up to the flip side of the rise of the rest, which is to some degree a decline in American standing and influence in various international arenas. I would argue that the United States is in an historically unprecedented condition. It emerged from the Cold War as this unquestioned global hegemon.

Now, not even two decades after the end of the Cold War, we have a situation in which the military dimension of American hegemony seems unassailable. If you look out, even with the most optimistic projections of the growth in Chinese, Indian, perhaps Russian, military capabilities, I would argue that the United States is going to have a unique capacity to project large amounts of military power around the world for at least the next two decades, and quite possibly longer than that. So the military dimension of American hegemony seems to be pretty intact.

There are, as always, limits to what military power can do for a hegemon. We seem periodically to need to remind ourselves of that. Perhaps the Iraq war is one such exercise... "

LINK to transcript and LINK to video

Flynt Leverett in The Australian | 'Nirvana Out of American Reach'

Communications — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:23:00 -0400

New America in the News:

The energy, financial and political woes that grip the US signal a decisive shift in world power, mocking the liberal delusion that Barack Obama or John McCain can return American prestige and power to its pre-Bush year 2000 nirvana. There is no such nirvana. There is instead a new reality: the greatest transfer of income in human history, away from energy importers such as the US to energy exporters; the rise of a new breed of wealthy autocracies that cripple US hopes of dominating the global system; and demands on the US to make fresh compromises in a world where power is rapidly being diversified....

Flynt Leverett, former director of Middle East Affairs on the National Security Council, says: "The international economic position of the United States has deteriorated substantially since the new millennium. The big trends in global finance and energy markets are working against the US. There isn't any solving this problem in terms of making it go away. These are ongoing realities. The energy picture is not going to change: it is here to stay..." LINK

Flynt Leverett in the National Interest | 'Does the G8 Still Matter?'

Communications — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:17:00 -0400

New America in the News:

...From July 7–9, as the Nixon Center’s executive director and moderator of the discussion Paul Saunders said, the world’s heaviest hitters will meet to discuss the most-pressing problems. Former ambassador to Germany and current managing director at McLarty Associates, Richard Burt, and Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation met at the Nixon Center on Wednesday to look at an even-more-basic issue: whether the G8 still matters. Or, as Ambassador Burt asked, if it ever did.

The G8’s purview is simply too broad to be effective, Burt argued. The group should return to its roots, economics, if it hopes to retain relevancy in today’s world of global markets and interconnected states. Leverrett agreed, but put the future of the group in even-starker terms: developing a strategy of global economic governance is “imperative” for the G8’s survival, and U.S. interests in a rapidly changing world. Failing to adapt, he said, is simply an “abrogation of responsibility...” LINK to article and LINK to C-SPAN video

Fynt Leverett on C-SPAN | the Nixon Center Panel Discussion on Relevance of G8 Summit

Communications — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:06:00 -0400

New America in the News:
As the host of the 2008 G8 Summit, Japan has established an agenda focused on non-proliferation, the international economy, climate change, and development. With changes in the global distribution of wealth and influence over the last thirty years, the Nixon Center hosts a panel discussion on the relevance of the G8 Summit. Flynt Leverett, Senior Fellow and the Director of the Geopolitics of Energy Initiative at the New America Foundation, serves as a co-panelist. LINK to video

Terry Tamminen in Times Herald-Record | 'Sustainable Living: True cost of pumping gas: $10 a gallon'

Communications — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 12:33:00 -0400

New America in the News:

...Lives Per Gallon author Terry Tamminen says, "Americans subsidize the oil and auto industry to the tune of about $6 or more for every gallon of gasoline sold, making the real price at the pump $10 per gallon."

Tamminen also says it's difficult for "alternative fuels to compete against such massive subsidies, until mass-production of alternative fuels (and vehicles that use them) can bring the price down...LINK

Flynt Leverett in National Interest Online | Inside Track: Pole Dancing

Communications — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:17:00 -0400

New America in the News:

National Interest Online | Inside Track: Pole Dancing

. . . Next to speak was Flynt Leverett of the New America Foundation, who focused on the economic foundation of the world without the West: developing countries are nationalizing their natural resources and converting them into political leverage, with startling success. Leverett maintained that the dramatic increase in energy prices since 2000 tips the geopolitical scales in the direction of oil-and-gas producing powers. The “strategic consequence” of these developments is a huge redistribution of wealth and economic power. Energy exporters like the GCC states and Russia gain; other beneficiaries include manufacturing powerhouses like China, Germany and Japan. Most ominously, the losers from high energy prices—the United States, Great Britain and the European Union—are ringing up large current-account deficits, putting them at the mercy of China and the energy exporters who finance their fiscal shortfalls.

Like Gvosdev and Weber, Leverett saw a huge disconnect between the foreign-policy rhetoric of the U.S. presidential candidates and the actual situation, going so far as to say that Obama, Clinton and McCain must be talking about “some other planet.” . . .

Terry Tamminen on CNET | Interview on Clean-Tech Industry

Communications — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 11:24:00 -0400

New America in the News:

CNET | Interview on Clean-Tech Industry

The clean-tech industry of today is in its early stages, about where Microsoft was in 1980, says Terry Tamminen, an adviser at Pegasus Capital Advisors and the former director of California's Environmental Protection Agency. Now a main force behind the state's rise to the top as a climate change policy maker, Tamminen sits down with CNET News.com's Carl-Gustav Linden in Santa Monica, Calif.

Terry Tamminen on NewsHour | Schwarzenegger Adviser Outlines U.S. Oil Addiction

Communications — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:47:00 -0400

New America in the News:

NewsHour | Schwarzenegger Adviser Outlines U.S. Oil Addiction

In the fourth installment of the NewsHour's Costly Crude series, environmentalist and adviser to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Terry Tamminen discusses the shrinking oil supply with Ray Suarez.

Terry Tamminen in Baltimore Sun | 'Pollution Bill Attacked'

Communications — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:57:00 -0500

New America in the News:

Pollution Bill Attacked (The Baltimore Sun)

...Environmentalists, scientists, public health experts and alternative energy companies also pledged their support for the Global Warming Solutions Act during a Senate hearing yesterday. The supporters argue that state limits are necessary to spur federal action and will help to prevent deadly floods and economic chaos brought by climate change. ...

...Former California Environmental Protection Agency Secretary Terry Tamminen said costs for most customers and businesses would go down because regulations created by the state would encourage conservation. Tamminen said per capita energy consumption in California dropped 40 percent during the past decade because of its regulations.

Flynt Leverett in The Guardian | 'Axis of Oil'

Communications — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:39:00 -0500

New America in the News:
Different Clinton, More Painful Bill (Guardian Unlimited - UK)
Flynt Leverett says in the U.S. magazine National Interest that the U.S. should be seriously concerned about this so-called "axis of oil" because it has the potential to exert the same sort of financial and monetary pressure on the U.S. as Washington put on Britain and France in 1956. "Half a century after Suez, there is growing potential for a coalition of major energy exporters - disproportionately concentrated in the Middle East and Russia - and major manufacturers like China to coordinate the application of financial and monetary pressure on the United States for strategic purposes." ...

Terry Tamminen in The New Zealand Herald on Climate Change

Communications — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:19:00 -0500

New America in the News:

It is individual states and not Washington that will lead the United States response to climate change, says Terry Tamminen, friend and adviser to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I couldn't agree more that the U.S. has to step up. The good news -- it is already happening," Tamminen said.

The former head of California's Environmental Protection Agency was in Wellington to give the keynote speech to a Chapman Tripp symposium on climate change, and to extend to Prime Minister Helen Clark an invitation for New Zealand to take part in a process he is spearheading -- the creation of an emissions trading market centred in California.

"In June last year there were three states that had any kind of a comprehensive climate plan. Today there are 27 which have them or are developing them. Five have put them into law, which is extremely important because any politician can lay out a plan but if they are put into law you know what you are likely to get."

By 2009 when there was a new President in the White House and a Congress likely to take this issue seriously -- "which the current President and Congress will not" -- most Americans would live in a state with a world-class target for reducing greenhouse gases and a comprehensive and credible plan to achieve that, he said. ...

For the complete article, please follow this link. To see the Climate Policy Program's map of which states have Climate Action Plans completed or in the works, please click here.

Terry Tamminen in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Green Initatives

Communications — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 06:02:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Energy experts with Glendale-based Johnson Controls Inc. are busy crafting their first proposal aimed at winning a piece of an ambitious $5 billion plan to reduce global warming by retrofitting energy-wasting buildings in 16 of the world's largest cities.

Step one: Houston, one of the country's most polluted cities, where more than 270 buildings could see upgrades.

Meeting in Milwaukee last week, managers and experts from Johnson Controls offices around the country scoured slides of aging boilers and control systems in buildings they had toured in Houston, including fire stations, libraries and the downtown convention center, where the city once housed 5,000 people who fled New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Johnson Controls plans to show how energy use in the buildings can be cut 30% to 50%....

"The message to businesses about global warming is 'Jump in, the water's fine.' This is not something anyone has to be afraid of," said Terry Tamminen, former climate adviser to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "When it comes to global warming, what we're asking people to do is to put money in their pockets - to pick $100 bills up off the ground."

Energy efficiency and renewable energy are creating jobs for entrepreneurs who have left other work to become home energy-efficiency consultants and solar panel installers...

Terry Tamminen is Director of New America's Climate Policy Program. For the complete article, please visit JSonline.com.

UPI Highlights New America's Solar Energy Event

Communications — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:16:00 -0400

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON, June 8 (UPI) -- The potential of solar energy to help solve many of America's energy woes is real, but its success hinges on establishing long-term incentives, industry advocates say.

"The only risk posed by solar is not going forward rapidly," Michael Splinter, chief executive officer of Silicon Valley-based Applied Materials, said this week at a briefing sponsored by the New America Foundation on the potential for the technology to meet global energy demand.

Solar is a viable way to meet much of U.S. and world energy needs -- and to reduce carbon emissions, Splinter said.

Solar represents one-tenth of 1 percent of the 5,000 gigawatts of electricity produced globally each year, Splinter said. The global solar industry is a $15 billion market expected to grow to $50 billion by 2010, he said...

For the complete article, please visit the United Press International website.

For more information on the briefing, please click here.

Financial Times Cites New America Event with Gov. Richardson

Communications — Mon, 21 May 2007 08:54:00 -0400

New America in the News:

It is not often that record high petrol prices prove helpful to American politicians. But with prices now riding at more than $3 a gallon in many parts of the country, voters are listening ever more attentively to how their 2008 presidential contenders will tackle global warming...

Among the Democratic candidates, however, there is intensifying competition to be the most radical global warming candidate. Almost all have signed up to targets of reducing America's carbon emissions by between 60 and 80 per cent by 2050 – in line with what Arnold Schwarzenegger, the governor of California, and his colleagues in the western and north-eastern states have proclaimed.

Some, such as Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and former energy secretary in the Clinton administration, who is running fourth in the Democratic stakes behind Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, argue that those targets are not urgent enough.

"When John F. Kennedy challenged this country to reach the moon, he challenged us to get there in 10 years, not 20 or 30 or 40," he told the New America Foundation think-tank in Washington last week. "I am going to stake my claim to being the next president – the energy president – on the concept of a fast, comprehensive energy revolution..."

For the complete article, please visit the Financial Times website.

Des Moines Register Reports on New America Energy Event

Communications — Fri, 18 May 2007 10:25:00 -0400

New America in the News:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, one of the Democrats seeking the presidency, unveiled a national energy plan Thursday that places a high priority on ethanol and other biofuels produced in Iowa.

"I would say that on a scale of 10, the use and promotion of biofuels and biodiesel and ethanol would be at about a 9.5 level," Richardson said in a conference call with Iowa reporters.

Richardson, who was secretary of energy in the Clinton administration, and his wife Barbara drive a Ford Escape hybrid and a Chevrolet Tahoe flexible-fuel vehicle that can run on E85 ethanol.

Richardson outlined his energy plan in a speech Thursday to the New America Foundation in Washington. He called for dramatically reducing oil consumption and oil imports, increasing the production of renewable energy, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and working internationally on energy issues...

For the complete article, please visit the Des Moines Register website.

For more information on New America's energy efficiency event, please click here.

New York Times Highlights New America's Energy Efficiency Symposium

Communications — Thu, 17 May 2007 12:11:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Energy saving opportunities in American homes are immense with current technology, but new product standard mandates will be needed, according to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute.

The research group’s study... concludes that projected electricity consumption in residential buildings in the United States in 2020 could be reduced by more than a third if compact fluorescent light bulbs and an array of other high-efficiency options including water heaters, kitchen appliances, room-insulation materials and standby power were adopted across the nation.

The energy saving over that time, if achieved, would be equivalent to the production from 110 new coal-fired 600-megawatt power plants, the researchers estimate. That would result in a significant reduction in the amounts of fossil fuel burned and carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, spewed into the atmosphere...

The McKinsey policy prescriptions resemble the California model. Starting in the 1970s, the state began imposing requirements for appliances and building materials, among other energy-saving measures. A consumer, said Terry Tamminen, a former director of the California Environmental Protection Agency, is not forced to choose between, say, appliances that are power hogs and ones that are energy-efficient.

“Enlightened regulation ensures that all your choices are relatively good ones,” said Mr. Tamminen, now director of the climate program at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute...

The report will be presented at an energy symposium in Washington sponsored by the New America Foundation and the Climate Group, a nonprofit organization. It is available at www.mckinsey.com/mgi.

For the complete article, please visit the New York Times website.

To learn more about New America's energy symposium, please click here.

ABC News on Gov. Richardson, New America Energy Event

Communications — Thu, 17 May 2007 10:31:00 -0400

New America in the News:

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson on Thursday laid out his plan for a dramatic shift in the way the U.S. uses energy, proposing to all but end the country's reliance on oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2040.

Invoking President Kennedy's call for the Apollo space program, he said the nation needs a "man-on-the-moon" effort to develop technologies that will cut energy costs and halt global warming.

"I am issuing a call to action, for Congress, the energy industry and the public," he said in a speech to the New America Foundation. "I am calling for a new American revolution an energy and climate revolution."

Richardson's plan encourages people to drive electric and plug-in cars, promotes public transportation and calls for increasing fuel economy standards to 50 miles a gallon by 2020 from about 25 miles per gallon now...

For the complete article, please visit the ABC News website.

For more information on New America's energy efficiency event, please click here.

AP Quotes Gov. Richardson on Energy Efficiency at New America Event

Communications — Thu, 17 May 2007 09:53:00 -0400

New America in the News:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson on Thursday laid out his plan for a dramatic shift in the way the U.S. uses energy, proposing to all but end the country's reliance on oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2040.

Invoking President Kennedy's call for the Apollo space program, he said the nation needs a "man-on-the-moon" effort to develop technologies that will cut energy costs and halt global warming.

"I am issuing a call to action, for Congress, the energy industry and the public," he said in a speech to the New America Foundation. "I am calling for a new American revolution -- an energy and climate revolution..."

For the complete article, please visit The Associated Press website.

To learn more about New America's event, "Is Energy Efficiency the Answer" please click here.