Well here I am amongst by way-betters, but I felt compelled to write in based on the terrific environmental writing I’ve been reading over here.
Maybe you’ve heard of the TXU deal. TXU is a big-ass Texas Utility company which was recently bought up by a group of private-equity firms. This has been a big deal in Texas, where population is skyrocketing and power-needs exploding. The answer for TXU, like a lot of other companies, has been coal, and plenty of it. The new buyers were poised to build eleven coal-fired power plants in Texas. Not exactly what environmentalists and other oxygen-loving Austin-based life forms like to hear.
The Environmental Defense Fund, and a few thousand Texans, were ready to fight them to the end of their own pocketbooks.
What happened next is, at least on the surface, quite the good news.The equity firms and TXU decided to let The Environmental Defense Fund come to the table and help with the formation of the business plan for the new corporation. As a result, instead of eleven coal-fired power plants, there will now be two, and TXU is making a significant commitment to wind power, emissions reductions, and other make-Al-Gore-and-assorted-penguins-happy initiatives. See EDF’s report here.
Yeah, this story has kind of a “happy” ending. Happy, that is, if your hobbies include breathing as opposed to merely investing. For readers of The Wall Street Journal, that seems a tough call. Calling the deal “The New Greenmail,” [February 26 issue, page A-16, turn off the fucking subscription requirements on the archives if you wanna link, fellas] WSJ wondered the question anyone who lives on Bances and bank P-and-E’s has foremost in mind:
“Mom and pop pay for environmental concessions at TXU. …The question is what price shareholders are paying for this act of political correctness.”
Clearly, the journalism guidelines over at The Journal say Treasury Department ink is its own source of photosynthesis. But hey, the news isn’t all bad:
“…the agitation of the greens may have helped bring down TXU’s share price last year, so the environmentalists probably did [the buyers] and partners a favor.”
Ooh, can the EPA please put a cap on my joy!
Well, actually, they can. One aspect of this story that’s being missed is, who the hell made a Washington lobbying group the decider of what is environmentally friendly? Where the foxtrot is the EPA, anyway? (Short answer: Prolly off with Karl Rove.)
But some of TXU’s critics were unhappy because the two groups agreed to a nonbinding deal that would let the new owners build three other coal plants, including two units called Oak Grove that could emit more mercury than the proposed plants that will be scrapped.
“Environmental Defense blessed those two stacks when they don’t have the authority to do that,” said Dallas Mayor Laura Miller.
Your Honor, Al Gore just won an Oscar, spring break is just around the corner, and this week corporate-owned media wants “happy planet” stories where flowers grow. You are the Mayor of Dallas. Fuck
off.
And then there’s another broader issue, the issue of stockholder accountability as a liability, an industry trend, as no doubt the Journal’s readers are all too aware. This is a private equity firm buying TXU. That means no public stockholders. Texas blog Burnt Orange Report has the warning:
…[T]here are no pesky shareholder complaints with a private company.
Take that, Wall Street Journal and your complaints about “greenmail”! And the blog goes on…
Ultimately, this kind of play demands a new emphasis on public regulation. Dereg of electric utilities got the public out of the game in state capitols and Washington. Private buyouts are getting the public out of the game on Wall Street. …The public is going to have to get back in the game. The answer may not be big government, bureaucracies too easy for the regulated to corrupt. The answer might be small, tough, regulatory agencies with teeth, aggressive attorneys general not beholding to those they regulate, and a public informed enough to crash the gates when necessary.
In further pollution news, a commenter at the same blog mentioned that when this deal is through, none other than James! Baker! The Third! will serve as buyout advisor to the TXG group. Hope that goes better for ya than your December stint, Jim. I mean, it’s only March, and your Iraq Study Group Report now goes for less than I paid for lunch yesterday.
Wait. Did “Burnt Orange” just say “crash the gates?” Mmm-kay, I’m not even gonna check to see if they cross-posted you-know-where.
Front page
So, TXU is taking itself private to renege on the deal later?
Is that the moral of the story?
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
We don't know yet.
Jury is still out as to why this deal went through at all. James Baker III has some explaining to do, and making everybody happy, stockholders, mayors, and penguins, is not gonna be easy.
I think the moral here is, Who is representing the environment, and who is representing the public, and what does the public want? Cheap energy? Clean environment? Rising profits? Yes! Yes! Yes!
As long as it’s politicians, Washington insiders, and James Baker deciding things, I doubt public interest and environment are being served at the buffet first.
Blue Gal
http://bgalrstate.blogspot.com
http://ristocrats.blogspot.com
Credit Public Reaction
The TXU hearings on placing coal burning plants in specific backyards had brought out a great deal of public reaction from the people who had had bad experiences already with the placement of polluting industries in their children’s airspace. Polluted air where cement and asphalt plants have been springing up has been powerful argument against looking the other way while pollution is planted on doorsteps. Texas has a growing public consciousness, wheezing its way to the top.
Ruth
Free Wall Street Journal Access
Even though the moral of the story is not defined…You can access that Wall Street Journal article for free with a netpass from: http:news.congoo.com
This was on CNBC this am
Do the power plants connect at all to that highway?
That massive, sixteen-lane NAFTA abomination?
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
I am all for citizen activism
The dynamic of opposing views in the face of real needs is tremendously creative.
Having said that, does anyone here (or anywhere) actually have a clue where all the energy TX needs is going to come from? Because there is a HUGE hole in the “meeting the needs of consumers” department if only 3 power plants are built. Conservation is good - except when it is inconvenient. Wind power is good - except when the wind doesn’t blow. Almost all the renewable alternatives are good - except they cost a lot of money, lots more than the coal plants would cost.
So tell me, where do the power and energy come from?
Jake
Here's my two cents
Global Warming is here.
We’ve got to stop thinking of solar and wind as “alternative” energy sources and we’ve got to stop thinking that corporations are going to “someday” embrace renewable resources. The profit is not there unless you give certain corporations a guaranteed monopoly on the Sun and the Wind.
And stop it with the excuses that the wind doesn’t blow enough and you can’t harness energy on cloudy days. That’s bullshit propaganda brought to you by the folks who blast off the mountain tops to get at the coal.
People can PUSH for renewable energy and show that there is a market for solar at the homeowner level, (hybrid cars have shown there is a market for this kind of stuff).
I’m too tired from last night (thanks Lambert) to go on, but hopefully you get my drift.
Blue Gal
http://bgalrstate.blogspot.com
http://ristocrats.blogspot.com
BG, I actually know something about wind power
and, truly, it doesn’t always (or even often) blow when you need it.
Hybrid cars have indeed shown there is a market - for stuff that causes no inconvenience and costs only a small amount more (with incentives, either from the manufactuer or the gov). Which makes my point - conservation often causes major inconvenience, and doesn’t always address its own environmental issues.
Let’s take compact flourescent light bulbs. There is no question they save energy. It’s almost all I have in my house. On the other hand, how many people are aware that they contain a small amount of mercury and should be recycled, not put into landfills? If you know that much, then you may also know there IS no recycling available.
Don’t mistake my questions for opposition. I am in favor of putting the nation on an energy diet. The thing is, people get to choose for themselves, we don’t get to choose for them. The most we can do is provide incentives and appropriate mechanisms.
Even coal fired power plants can be made relatively neutral with respect to the environment.
So my question stands - where is 7,000 MW
to 10,000 MW of additional power going to come from if the plants are never built? Gas, perhaps? TX rate payers are in full scale revolt now because the ave cost of electricity in TX is abotu 15 cents/kWh - twice what it is in OK, for example. That’s because almost all energy is priced at the margin in TX, and the margin is set by gas generation. What do you think happens when even more gas generation is built? The price of gas goes even higher.
All change is incremental. How do we get from where we are to where we need to be? It has to come 1 year at a time, and the bulk of people have to buy into it every single year, 1 year at a time.
And finally, please skip the pejorative rhetoric. There’s plenty enough of that coming from the rwnm.
Jake
jake, all change is *not* incremental
just ask the iraqis. overnight, they went from being a highly oppressed but ordered society which mostly functioned to a chaotic land of no electricity or security or even in some cases potable water. but i digress…
environmentalism is probably the earliest issue upon which i became a radical. i overuse that word, but in this case it is properly applied. “incremental” change is what is going to kill us all, or at best, make life possible for a greatly reduced population living somewhere in the few remaining termperate zones not underwater.
we are officially at that moment where the fact that we are in an environmental CRISIS cannot be denied by any mind that looks at the evidence. what is the response? dithering, silliness, head in sand know nothingness. meanwhile, the arctic regions melt, whole species go extinct, and humanity babbles on about “what is reasonable, what we can do for now, etc.”
i really don’t believe, in this age in which the corporatist and crony incompetent control everything, that we will “fix this” in time to save the majority. a dark part of me sees this as the Justice
of Mother Earth, who gave us a paradise and will now punish us for our mistreatment of her gift.
for She will. as a friend says, “life will go on, but perhaps not our lives.” a few hundred million years for rats and cockroaches to develop intelligence? a blip on the global time frame.
…all this makes me want to post that short story i wrote about dinosaurs, and the real reason they died out…
Change is always incremental if it is chosen, CD
And it is chosen change to which I refer. There is no revolution, short of an actual revolution or the sudden melting of the poles and the gas hydrates on the ocean floor, that overnight is going to change the opinion and desires of the majority of the people in this country and on this planet. That is just how it is.
I remain hopeful that we will make sufficient changes in sufficient time to avoid the most catastrophic effects of global warming. My own opinion is that it is a suckers bet to take the no-way-in-hell-are-we-going-to-get-through-this side against human ingenuity. We keep muddling through.
Until we don’t, of course, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
Which is why we need radical people to champion the environment - people like that create the impetus for change.
Jake
Where there's a will, there's a way
Some things are so important that you can’t wait for individuals to ’figure it out and do what is right.’
That’s why we have child labor laws, a minimum wage, affirmative action, and laws against discrimination in the workplace.
It’s also why we have an EPA.
Blue Gal is right when she says:
What we need is a “Manhattan Project” to not only identify other energy options, but to make those options affordable for the consumer and profitable for the corporation.
In other words, where there’s a will there’s a way.
So, we need to either convince elected officials that global warming is a crisis at the level to warrant a Manhattan-type project, or we need to remove the oil money from campaign fundraising. Unless one of the two happens the problem will never be resolved. We will continue to see short-sighted corporate profits at the expense of our long-term survival.
BAC
I think you're all being hysterical.
After all, the Mesozoic was a very diverse time species-wise, even though Kansas was under 40 ft of water, Montana was a place of fertile tropical river deltas, and the Appalachians were an archipelago.
Be reasonable. Just because the poles melt is no cause for alarm. Think of all the oil reserves that will open up!
No Hell below us
Above us, only sky
Cockroaches, Rejoice!
Cute, kelly b. I love the fact that Texas was forming our present fossil fuels during the age of the Cockroach, the Pennsylvanian, but while I think I am not prejudiced against individual species, that does not seem like the life form I want to see ruling our futures.
A Manhattan Project is a very inviting concept. This time, I would hope that international cooperation is included.
Ruth
Ruth, this is still the age of the cockroach
unless it is the age of the bacterium. As in, for now and always, bacteria rule our world. We are just interlopers.
Jake
Txu overcharging cutomers and the class action lawsuit!!
I have been with Txu since 2004 and have had trouble ever since I have been with the company. Last year in november I had a $655 light bill this month it was $500 coincidence I think not. I just got my bill this month and was overcharged again. But when ever you file a complaint they come up with an excuse like you owe a deposit that is already paid. This happened to me. They have also disconnected my lights when the bill was paid. I am now disabled and on a fixed income. I was interested if the txu lawsuit is still ongoing if so who do i contact to sign up. They are a disgusting light company and deserve to be put out of business. I also would love some info on other companies that are good to switch to because I will be switching this month. If you can help please do. Thank you and God bless.
Concerned Texan