Record number of nations oppose US embargo of Cuba in UN vote

A session of the General Assembly at the United Nations (AFP Photo / Timothy A. Clary)

In an overwhelming UN vote, 188 countries have called on the US to lift its 53-year trade embargo on Cuba. Havana has slammed the financial sanctions as a flagrant violation of human rights and said they are tantamount to genocide.

The recording-breaking opposition to the embargo saw Israel isolated as the only country to vote in support of the US. Palau, the island nation that got behind the US last year, abstained in the 22nd UN annual vote, along with Micronesia and Marshall Islands. 

Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla conveyed Havana’s disappointment at the Obama administration, stressing that the human cost of the embargo is“incalculable.” Upon assuming the presidency Barack Obama pledged to take steps to improve US-Cuban relations, but Rodriguez said the sanctions had actually tightened under Obama. 

"Our small island poses no threat to the national security of the superpower,"Rodriguez said. "The human damages caused by the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba are incalculable.” 

Rodriguez also stated that the sanctions had been classified as “genocide” under the Geneva Convention of 1948 and the total cost to the Cuban economy was estimated at $1.1 trillion dollars. 

Several other nations spoke out against the US embargo at the UN vote. China’s Deputy UN Ambassador Wang Min urged the US “change its policy toward Cuba” as the “call of the international community is getting louder and louder.” 

Moreover, Bolivia’s UN ambassador Sacha Llorenty Soliz decried the embargo as "sullying the history of mankind" 

In the name of human rights?

The US mounted its defense in the face of overwhelming opposition and a barrage of criticism, claiming the sanctions were in place “urge respect for the civil and human rights." 

Seeking to justify the financial penalties that have been held in place for 53 years, US diplomat Ronald Godard said the US was being used as a “scapegoat”for Cuba’s internal issues. 

"The international community cannot in good conscience ignore the ease and frequency with which the Cuban regime silences critics, disrupts peaceful assembly [and], impedes independent journalism," Godard said to the assembled UN countries. 

Moreover, Godard added that the US had sent $2 billion in remittances to Cuba in 2012 and underlined that the US provides a large portion of the food aid to the island. 

The US began imposing economic penalties on Cuba when Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 and nationalized property owned by American individuals and corporations. The measures were ratcheted up three years later by the US government to a full embargo on Cuba. 

Last year Washington took action to ease travel to and from Cuba, granting 16,767 visas to Cubans in the first half of 2013 - 80 percent more than were issued in the same period in 2012. 

Solar advocates and Xcel spar over the future of rooftop solar power

An attempt to find common ground on state policies for rooftop solar started Tuesday with a sharp exchange between Xcel Energy and solar-energy advocates.

The session ended with Xcel refusing to withdraw its proposal, pending at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, to cut rooftop-solar incentives.

In turn, the representatives from Vote Solar, a solar-energy advocacy group, said they were not sure of the value of continuing the talks.

The session, hosted by the Colorado Energy Office, brought together representatives of utilities, state government and the solar-energy industry.

The aim was to try to balance the interests of utilities and the solar industry "before it degenerates into contention," Jeff Ackermann, director of the energy office, said.

The contention, however, was there for the opening statements.

Xcel's concern is that the credit given to homes and businesses with solar panels that add kilowatt-hours to the grid is too high and burdens other customers, said Frank Prager, an Xcel vice president.

In a PUC filing, Xcel is calling for a cut in the credit— the so-called net-meter charge.

The credit is equal to the price a residential customers pays — 10.5 cents a kilowatt-hour.

If the credit isn't cut, Xcel wants to reduce new solar installations in its Solar Rewards program by 83 percent to 6 megawatts.

"Utilities are working to stop and slow down these innovative technologies," said Rick Gilliam, Vote Solar's director of research.

In turn, Xcel's Prager objected to the proposal that how a utility conducts its business and its planning to accommodate new technology should be part of the discussion.

"This was a missed opportunity," said Edward Stern, executive director of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.

"The governor got all the relevant parties to the table, and that was a great step," Stern said. "But Xcel forcing net metering into its renewable-energy-compliance plan makes it hard to have a discussion."

Challenges to Xcel's plan have to be filed with the PUC in two weeks.

"There just isn't enough time to do everything," Stern said.

The energy office is, however, planning another session.

"We are optimistic because we see that people are willing to put forward their points of view," Ackerman said in an e-mail. "The prospects for consensus should not be judged by one meeting."

Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912, mjaffe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bymarkjaffe

Violent clashes in Brittany during a protest against the environmental tax

A demonstrator who participated in the action against an environmental tax portico had his hand torn off and other protesters were injured .

Protest in Britain against the environmental tax gantry bridge Buis , in Finistère , on 26 October 2013. ( PhotoPQR / WEST FRANCE )
On the same subject
" Delivery : " It is not the cause of the difficulties of Britain "
" Farmers: tractors , cows and salads against environmental taxes
" Brittany does not like Francois Hollande
A protester who attended Saturday, October 26 action against the environmental tax portico of Pont-de -Buis (Finistère) had his hand torn off and other protesters were also injured, do we then learned from the firefighters as clashes continue on site.

The man 's hand was torn off during scenes that resemble the guerrillas around the gantry always protected by riot police with projectiles thrown on one side and replicas to pepper spray the other.

The prefecture of Finistère speak , for its part , two injured the demonstrators without giving further details.

Clashes against about a thousand protesters against the new tax for trucks must be in place by 1 January 2014, and about 150 riot police trying to protect the portal placed on the RN165 , the last of the three settled in Brittany still in working condition.

Inherited the Grenelle environment under the five year term of Nicolas Sarkozy , the environmental tax is a levy on transport over 3.5 tons. That levy heavy weight should be applied to nearly 800,000 trucks, including 600,000 French , operating on 12,000 km of highways and 2,000 km of county roads of the road network " not granted " , so off highways .

Its purpose is to finance the wear of road infrastructure by carriers and to encourage shippers to favor more environmentally friendly means of transport of the environment, such as railways , canals or sea routes .

Jets tires

Police said about 250 trucks have joined the site with as tractors and trailers tires, cauliflower and straw bales .

The event is held at the call of the "collective employment in Britain " , among which are employees of firms in difficulty as Gad SAS or farmers.

They invested the RN 165 , blocked to traffic between Brest and Quimper since early morning and went to the porch of Pont-de -Buis where about 150 men waiting forces entrenched behind barriers .

The tension only grows until the demonstrators , some of whom were masked , do not launch the attack after 14 hours in jets reinforcement of tires, causing a replica with a lot of tear gas . The scene was quickly buried in the tire smoke and the smoke bombs , while agricultural vehicles heading towards the dam forces , tearing cross the expressway .

Protesters donned red caps , 900 in all, distributed by the organizers, the symbol of the anti-tax revolution in Britain in the seventeenth century, under the Old Regime.

They also had some covered their plates stickers reproducing the plate of the presidential car ( Ds5 ) Francois Hollande , CB- 455- VH , but with the number of the department of Finistère , 29 , according to organizers.

" Here lies the eco-tax "

Another event took place on Saturday against a green tax portal , this time in the Morbihan. A hundred protesters came with forty vehicles, agricultural machinery , and thirty trucks, organized a filter dam under the portico of St. Allouestre (Morbihan) , the RN24 with leafleting and Breton products . The demonstration ended smoothly to 13 hours , according to police.

In the night from Friday to Saturday farmers with 14 tractors with trailers have also taken action punch Morlaix ( Finistère) by pouring around midnight before the Tax pallets, cauliflower and manure according to a police source . Farmers wrote on the ground " Here lies the eco-tax ."

These actions are growing and becoming more tense as the government remains adamant on the date of implementation of the environmental tax on 1 January 2014 , however ensuring the UK a 50% reduction due to its distance from the rest of Europe.

The Bretons " headwind against environmental tax "

A meeting Friday at Rennes Prefecture region was not enough to ease tensions. The collective Breton economic actors , which claims to represent 150,000 businesses, boycotted the meeting, demanding prior to any discussion the indefinite postponement of the eco-tax .

The regional prefect Patrick Strzoda has told him this opportunity appraisals are underway to include assessing the real impact of the environmental tax on business costs, but he said that " for the moment the problems mentioned can find a solution in the implementation of the environmental tax on 1 January . "

According to an Ifop poll published Sunday in West France Bretons are 74% " headwind against green tax " , mainly those of Morbihan (82%) and Finistère ( 81%).

"I find these outrageous taxes and I understand very well that we can protest against them," she said on Saturday morning, the president of the National Front ( FN) , Marine Le Pen , during a trip to Brittany , Fougeres ( Ille- et-Vilaine) .

Star Wars Episode VII " screenwriter Michael Arndt abandoning ship

BUZZ - Kathleen Kennedy , the owner of Lucasfilm announced that director JJ Abrams and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan resumed writing the Star Wars Episode VII , initially told Michael Arndt . Of frying in the galaxy far , far away ?



Michael Arndt, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine , was hired on Star Wars Episode VII before the arrival of director JJ Abrams . Photo: Mark J. Terrill / AP / SIPA
It is a small thunderbolt for Star Wars fans . Michael Arndt, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine and Toy Story, not finally sign the script of the highly anticipated Episode VII . In a statement posted on the website of the saga, the patron saint of Lucasfilm , Kathleen Kennedy reveals a new duo of writers is indeed at work. And not just because that is more or less the film's director, JJ Abrams, and veteran Lawrence Kasdan , 64, co -author of Empire against attack and Return of the Jedi .

"I am very excited by the history we have established and delighted that Larry and JJ working on the script ," says the producer . " Few people understand how fundamentally a story of Star Wars works and it is simply amazing to associate the return of the saga on the big screen . When JJ is of course an incredible storyteller to his way. Michael Arndt did a great job so far and now we have an incredible crew , ready to go into production . "

A difficult choice ?

Very civilized , the press Kathleen gives no reason from Michael Arndt, or if the story on which it planchait far will a little, a lot or not at all maintained. We knew little about the plot of the film so far, except that it would focus on the descendants of siblings Skywalker. And the actors of the first trilogy , Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill should be making an appearance . The news of the departure of Michael Arndt is all the more curious that JJ Abrams admitted to Metronews , on the occasion of the release of Star Trek Into Darkness , his pleasure at the prospect of working with one of the most popular writers Hollywood .

Lawrence Kasdan , meanwhile , was already associated with the return of the saga since he had been assigned to write spin- off devoted to some key characters, and the output should be inserted between each new installment new trilogy . Were his ideas came into conflict with those of Arndt ? Kathleen Kennedy and JJ Abrams did they decide between the two men? This change seems , for now, not delay the start of filming in January in England , for release in the summer of 2015.

Energy Myths and Realities (Book Review)

October 13, 2010 | Review by Bill Gates

Meeting the world’s energy needs while reducing our carbon footprint will require an honest assessment of the costs, capabilities and impacts of various energy sources.

I have read a number of books this year by Vaclav Smil, a prolific author and professor at the University of Manitoba who has conducted interdisciplinary research on energy, the environment, population, food production and other important topics. Energy Myths and Realities: Bringing Science to the Energy Policy Debate, examines the various predictions that have been made in the past and are still being made about energy use. Most of these predictions are overly optimistic about how quickly things can change and about the effectiveness of particular approaches. Although Smil remains hopeful in the long run, he clearly thinks we will do a better job if we are realistic about the challenges we face.
My favorite Smil book, Creating the Twentieth Century (and its companion, Transforming the Twentieth Century) chronicles the inventions of the last 150 years. It is quite positive because it focuses on innovation and how innovation has advanced society.
Energy Myths and Realities has a more somber tone because it chronicles so many instances of naïve predictions. (Underscoring this point, the book includes a front piece quoting Publius Terentius Afer, a playright in the ancient Roman Republic, who said: “Men believe what they want to believe.”) Some readers may find Smil’s unrelenting criticism of these misguided thoughts a bit tough, but it is important for us to study these mistakes. If we think solving energy problems is easy we will not invest enough to bring low cost power to the poor and we will not take the necessary actions to avoid climate disaster.
I recommend this book to everyone who spends time working on energy issues – not to cheer them up but to help them have a stronger framework for evaluating energy promises. Smil is able to prove that even if we do our best and innovation is amazing, real change will still take at least 20 years. To me, the long lead times and uncertainties involved in bringing new sources of energy online underscore the importance of pursuing many different paths.
Smil brings a strong historical perspective in his books. It is fascinating that in the early 1900s, many observers thought the internal combustion engine would lose out to steam powered cars or electric cars. However, the economics of gasoline with its high energy density and the difficulty of making cheap batteries helped it win out. Rudolf Diesel, who invented the Diesel engine during the 1890s, actually committed suicide in 1913 because he didn’t think his invention would be successful. In fact, it went on to dominate the large marine and truck market within four decades after his death and much later (by the 1990s) it took a significant share of the European automotive market.
I agree with Smil that nuclear-powered electricity may have a significant role to play in the future. (I’m involved in a company – TerraPower – that is working on a type of a fast reactor we expect will have good economics.) But there are many challenges that must be addressed with nuclear around cost, safety, security of materials, and waste disposal. Although I believe there’s a good possibility that innovation can address these issues, we shouldn’t pursue this option alone.
Smil is appropriately tough on the ethanol crowd. This is one energy approach that is unlikely to ever have a significant impact due to fundamental problems. The fact that the U.S. has subsidized this activity at a cost of $5 billion to $7 billion per year – even as it raises the cost of food – is incredible. The U.S. won’t allow foreign ethanol to get the same tax credit, which suggests that the policy is not really focused on the energy benefits of ethanol. A large lobby, which now extends even beyond the corn farmers, manages to keep the policy intact. There are some biofuels approaches that might be better, but even with those there are lots of problems to be solved.
In his other books, Smil opened my eyes to the challenges of many of the new energy technologies by showing their limited energy density. If you compare renewable energy technologies with current power plants fueled by fossil fuels, they are 10 to 100 times less power-dense. This doesn’t mean renewables won’t succeed, but there are a lot of variables to consider, such as weather conditions that affect the predictability of energy generation and the lifespan of equipment.
Smil does a great job explaining why sequestering a large percentage of CO2 emissions won’t ever be easy and is certainly not achievable at large scale in the next several decades. There will be more than 500 billion tons of CO2 generated between 2010 and 2025. This is over 10,000 times more volume than is available in the current experimental carbon sequestration storage projects.
The long term storage challenge will likely require governments to assume responsibility for monitoring and liability. Until a government shows a willingness to do this, I don’t think private industry should risk a lot of money on an effort along these lines. This is a case where the difficulties are understated partly because anyone who has a stake in hydrocarbons may be biased towards this solution since it seems to preserve their current investments, or at least delay any substitution.
Smil is tough on the Gore view that a transition was possible within a 10 year period. He is also very tough on two Scientific American articles that made it seem like it was going to be very easy to switch to renewable sources. I agree with Smil that this thinking erodes the willingness of the public to allow a carbon tax of some kind to be put in place or to fund more basic research and development, which I think is important. I am part of a group called the American Energy Innovation Council that has recommended more government spending on R&D to go along with strong carbon reduction policies.
Smil is careful to point out that energy technologies can’t advance at the rate that microprocessor chips have over the last several decades. To see how different the energy world is from chips and computers, one only need look at the limited improvements in batteries and various types of engines. When people look at the true cost of solar, the challenges of installation and bad weather in the field are often ignored. Smil does a good job of explaining how the figures used for renewable energy installations report peak power output, so you have to divide that by the fraction of the day the energy is available to compare it to plants like nuclear plants that are available over 90% of the time. Because renewables are intermittent, you have to have either a backup way of generating the power and have fully funded that, or you have to have a large scale storage solution which has not been invented and may not be for several decades.
Although Smil focuses mostly on predictions in the energy sector that erred on engineering and cost, we also have to get the regulations and incentives right. It is very difficult to design the right incentives for reliability, transmission, storage and waste. The example of Yucca mountain where the U.S. government promised to solve the nuclear waste problem, spent $9 billion and then cancelled the projects seemingly for political reasons, is concerning. Likewise, it is instructive that the way that the California electricity market was “deregulated” in order to reduce electricity prices actually led to huge price increases. Energy networks involving renewable sources are far more complex than today’s energy networks and any piece that is not handled well leads to a loss of power.
Smil points out that not all projections for the future are overly optimistic. Sometimes a new development like shale gas (natural gas in coal shale formations) comes along and surprises people on the upside. I’m also encouraged by the fact that more engineers and entrepreneurs are working on energy solutions all over the globe than at any time in the past, and they are empowered with better scientific understanding, better modeling tools, and by the ability to share information with each other. Of course, even these positive surprises take decades before they make a difference because of the gigantic scale of the global energy economy.
I don’t view Energy Myths and Realities as a doom and gloom book. It is sobering about the mistakes that have been made but Smil ends by listing a number of lessons that come out of the mistaken predictions of the past, all of which I agree with. I think this book will contribute to better energy policies, which is critically important.

New law aims to brighten solar power's future

Gov. Jerry Brown has just signed a complex bill that will change the way that residential electricity rates are figured in California - and hopefully pave the way for more people to get access to solar energy.

The bill, AB327, won't make everyone happy.

But the measure tackles a complicated issue, and it's the end result of months of negotiations and revisions. It could never make everyone happy, but what's most important is that it protects consumers and underlines California's commitment to renewable energy.

On the latter point, AB327 is a definite winner.

The bill protects and expands "net metering," a popular program that allows homeowners, businesses and school districts that have rooftop solar panels to run their electricity meters backward when their solar panels are feeding excess energy into the electrical grid. Current state law requires major utilities to make net metering available, but only up to 5 percent of a utility's "aggregate customer peak demand." San Francisco's PG&E has more than 90,000 net-metering customers in Northern California.

AB327 will authorize the California Public Utilities Commission to create new net metering regulations after that 5 percent cap has been reached. The PUC hasn't made the regulations yet, but they're widely considered to lead to an expansion of net metering beyond the cap - and that's a big win for the solar industry and solar enthusiasts. Net metering is one of the major benefits of installing solar, which can be quite expensive. Opening it up will surely encourage new customers to buy solar.

All of this is great news. But there's a catch, of course.

The three major utilities aren't coming out of this empty-handed. They've long complained that solar customers using net metering aren't paying for the costs to transmit energy - and now they may have found a way to make sure that every customer, solar or not, will have to pay for transmission costs.

Under AB327, the PUC will also gain the authority to implement a monthly surcharge of up to $10 per customer and $5 per low-income customer. The PUC expects to come to a decision on those charges sometime next year, following the usual public comment process.

The PUC says that the change won't necessarily mean that your monthly bill will go up; the fixed charge would come with a shift in electricity assessment as well.

"If you implement a fixed charge, it's likely that the volume rate goes down," said Edward Randolph, energy director for the PUC. "What's important about the fixed charge for those who advocate for it is that it helps us get closer to the principle that everyone pays for the fixed costs of their energy transmissions."

Consumer groups are already getting nervous about a new charge, and rightfully so. Gov. Jerry Brown instructed the PUC to protect those customers who already have solar when creating the new regulations for net metering. But when it comes to new utility charges, the PUC needs to protect all of us.

Should Other Nations Follow Germany's Lead On Promoting Solar Power?

Answer by Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, Subsea Hydraulics Engineer

Ryan Carlyle, BSChE, Subsea Hydraulics Engineer

The answer is the most forceful possibleno.

Solar power itself is a good thing, but Germany’s pro-renewables policy has been a disaster. It has the absurd distinction of completing the trifecta of bad energy policy:

1. Bad for consumers
2. Bad for producers
3. Bad for the environment (yes, really; I’ll explain)

Pretty much the only people who benefit are affluent home-owners and solar panel installation companies. A rising tide of opposition and resentment is growing among the German press and public.

I was shocked to find out how useless, costly, and counter-productive their world-renowned energy policy has turned out. This is a serious problem for Germany, but an even greater problem for the rest of the world, who hope to follow in their footsteps. The first grand experiment in renewable energy is a catastrophe! The vast scale of the failure has only started to become clear over the past year or so. So I can forgive renewables advocates for not realizing it yet — but it’s time for the green movement to do a 180 on this.

Some awful statistics before I get into the details:

• Germany is widely considered the global leader in solar power, with over a third of the world’s nameplate (peak) solar power capacity. [1] Germany has over twice as much solar capacity per capita as sunny, subsidy-rich, high-energy-cost California. (That doesn’t sound bad, but keep going.)
• Germany’s residential electricity cost is about $0.34/kWh, one of the highest rates in the world. About $0.07/kWh goes directly to subsidizing renewables, which is actually higher than the wholesale electricity price in Europe. (This means they could simply buy zero-carbon power from France and Denmark for less than they spend to subsidize their own.) More than 300,000 households per year are seeing their electricity shut off because they cannot afford the bills.Many people are blaming high residential prices on business exemptions, but eliminating them would save households less than 1 euro per month on average. Billing rates are predicted by the government to rise another 40% by 2020. [2]
• Germany’s utilities and taxpayers are losing vast sums of money due to excessive feed-in tariffs and grid management problems. The environment minister says the cost will be one trillion euros (~$1.35 trillion) over the next two decades if the program is not radically scaled back. This doesn’t even include the hundreds of billions it has already cost to date. [3] Siemens, a major supplier of renewable energy equipment, estimated in 2011 that the direct lifetime cost ofEnergiewende through 2050 will be $4.5 trillion, which means it will cost about 2.5% of Germany’s GDP for 50 years straight. [4] That doesn’t include economic damage from high energy prices, which is difficult to quantify but appears to be significant.
• Here’s the truly dismaying part: the latest numbers show Germany’s carbon output and global warming impact are actually increasing [5] despite flat economic output and declining population, because of ill-planned “renewables first” market mechanisms. This regime is paradoxically forcing the growth of dirty coal power. Photovoltaic solar has a fundamental flaw for large-scale generation in the absence of electricity storage — it only works for about 5-10 hours a day. Electricity must be produced at the exact same time it’s used. [29] The more daytime summer solar capacity Germany builds, the more coal power they need for nights and winters as cleaner power sources are forced offline. [6] This happens because excessive daytime solar power production makes base-load nuclear plants impossible to operate, and makes load-following natural gas plants uneconomical to run. Large-scale PV solar power is unmanageable without equally-large-scale grid storage, but even pumped-storage hydroelectricity facilities are being driven out of business by the severe grid fluctuations. They can’t run steadily enough to operate at a profit. [2,7] Coal is the only non-subsidized power source that doesn’t hemorrhage money now. [8] The result is that utilities must choose between coal, blackouts, or bankruptcy. Which means much more pollution.

So it sucks on pretty much every possible level. If you’re convinced by these facts, feel free to stop reading now and go on about your day. This is going to get long — I haven’t even explained the half of it yet. There are lots of inter-related issues here, and the more you get into them, the worse the picture gets.