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| America has the technological know-how and the resources to move away from dependence on oil and other fossil fuels and toward a cleaner, more secure New Energy Future. Achieving that future will require America to set clear goals to guide our energy policies and to mobilize the scientific, economic and political resources we need to meet them. This paper examines the benefits, in terms of fossil fuel savings, of achieving a New Energy Future. | |
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| In the summer of 2006, Americans from coast to coast experienced a sweltering heat wave that broke more than 2,300 daily temperature records in July alone. This record warmth, however, was not an anomaly; rather, it is indicative of a broader trend toward increasing temperatures and extreme weather resulting from global warming. To examine recent trends in temperature in cities and towns across the United States, this report analyzes 2000-2006 temperature data from 255 major weather stations and finds that temperatures were above normal almost everywhere during the period. | |
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| Extensive scientific evidence demonstrates that global warming is real, that it is affecting us now, and that human activities—particularly the burning of fossil fuels—are the primary cause. This report lists six challenging but feasible strategies that, if implemented, could achieve these reductions, while improving America’s environment and our energy security. | |
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| This report examines trends in carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel combustion nationally and by state for the four decades spanning 1960 to 2001. | |
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| Campuses can set an example for their communities and the nation by implementing alternative energy, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability projects on campus to demonstrate their feasibility and cost effectiveness. Academia has traditionally been at the forefront of cultural and technological change, and campuses once again can be the catalyst that drives this county into sustainable energy independence. | |
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| The recent rise in oil and gasoline prices is the result of increasing demand bumping against both natural and technological limits in the world’s ability to produce and supply oil. This tight supply/demand balance, coupled with increased market concentration in the oil industry, has left consumers vulnerable to price spikes at the pump. | |
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| The coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is the only area along Alaska’s entire North Slope that is not currently open for oil and gas exploration. Unfortunately, oil companies such as ExxonMobil and their allies in the Bush administration and Congress are pushing to drill in the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge, endangering one of America’s last wild places for a few months’ worth of oil and gas. | |
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| Nine Northeast states from Delaware to Maine are currently working to develop a regional cap-and-trade system to limit global warming pollution from power plants. The program, known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), represents one of the first significant efforts to mitigate the serious impacts of global warming in the United States. In order to achieve the greatest reduction in pollution at the least cost, energy efficiency must play a prominent role in the Northeast’s overall global warming strategy. | |
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| As this Report Card will highlight, there exists a wide range of variation among the states and provinces as to their activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the region. Jurisdictions that are strong in some areas are weak in others. | |
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| We stand at a crossroads on energy policy in the United States. Our dependence on oil is costing consumers at the pump, draining the economy, endangering our national security, and polluting the environment. Unfortunately, U.S. policy-makers have responded not with a plan to lead our country away from oil dependence but with more of the same. ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil company, has not only echoed these short-sighted policy decisions but led the charge to craft and implement them. In contrast to many of its peers in the oil industry, ExxonMobil has acted consistently to move our country backward, not forward, on energy policy. | |
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| At the direction of their governors, representatives of nine Northeast states are currently working to develop a regional cap-and-trade system designed to limit emissions of carbon dioxide (the leading global warming gas) from power plants in the region. | |
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| Although the technology does exist to safely increase automobile fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon in the next 10 years, NHTSA has not enacted a meaningful increase in fuel economy in almost three decades. As a result, this holiday weekend, Americans will be paying more at the gas pump and using more foreign oil than they should be, given technology available today. | |
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