Jesse Parent [INFLUENCE]

May 2 2012

This is part of the INFLUENCE series “The Politicization of Energy in the US” [PEUS]. For other related topics, follow the associated tag and stay tuned for the development of this series’ page.

The article (Oil Drilling Advocates Drive Presidential Debate With Ads- Bloomberg) starts: “While polls show the economy as the top concern of voters, a review of political attack ads suggests a different issue dominates: energy” – and I think to myself, what a great way to speak about this ‘mysterious connection’ between energy and politics.

Americans for Prosperity, an organization backed by oil interests, last week began airing its third television commercial since November, a campaign worth $6.1 million, attacking Obama’s green energy policies.

The latest round brings the group’s total ad buys to $12.5 million this year, compared with a combined $5.7 million total spent on ads of all sorts by Obama and Priorities USA Action, a Washington-based super political action committee supporting him. Priorities on April 24 teamed with the League of Conservation Voters to begin a $1 million commercial run that accuses presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, of being a protector of the oil industry.

It should be no surprise that different groups are going to support different candidates based off of their affiliations. But this intense political effort and campaigning dominates most mainstream discussion of energy. Continue reading →

Recently on The Energy Collective, Trillant Executive Sonita Lontoh wrote about the outlook of the energy industry. In her post, The 21st Century Energy Transformation will be an Evolution, not a Revolution, she shares insights on how energy will move forward. The opening paragraph is below, followed by my commentary:

In any given month these days, you could find a smart energy conference to go to, and you wouldn’t have to look that hard. There is no shortage of discussion on the smart energy revolution, whether it’s at a conference, at school, in the office, or online. But for all the talk about revolutionizing the traditional energy industry into a more modernized, low-carbon industry – when the discussion begins with all the futuristic cool applications drawing from the analogy of the Internet or the iPhone apps, as it often does, that discussion misses the point. For many reasons, the 21^stcentury energy transformation will most likely be an evolution rather than a revolution, or face the risk of the transformation causing catastrophic reliability issues in the process. [Continued at The Energy Collective]

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A very important takeaway: “Unlike the industrial revolution of the 19^th century, or the internet revolution of the 20^th century, the 21^st century energy evolution needs long-term vision and strategic focus and resolve of many stakeholders: innovators, incumbent utilities, consumers, regulators, and the government.” Continue reading →

Recently on The Energy Collective, the latest in the Keystone XL oil pipeline saga was discussed by Rocky Kistner from the perspective of Nebraskan’s who are against the pipeline. The article starts:

TransCanada’s latest Keystone XL tar sands pipeline plan filed with the U.S. State Department has done nothing to quell local Nebraska opposition to the controversial project to pipe tar sands oil all the way to the Gulf for export. Nebraska residents say the massive pipeline plan still jeopardizes the world’s largest fresh drinking water source, the Ogallala Aquifer, risking the livelihoods of farmers and ranchers across country’s breadbasket. Jane Kleeb, director of Bold Nebraska, a local grassroots group of farmers, ranchers and concerned citizens, immediately blasted the plan and said they will continue to fight it.

Continue reading →

May 1st, 2012

Editor’s Note: Jiang Xueqin is a deputy principal at Peking University High School and the director of its International Division. The following post was originally published in The Diplomat, a stellar international current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region. 

By Jiang Xueqin, The Diplomat

I’ve just finished a week visiting Finnish schools, and on my last day, while touring Finland’s best high school, I ran into China’s vice minister of education, who was spending the day in Helsinki looking at what China can learn from the world’s best K-12 school system.

If the vice minister were to ask me what parts of Finland’s education system I thought China could and should emulate (he didn’t) I’d tell him there were two things.

First is Finland’s pre-kindergarten system, in which children as young as nine months-old can attend until they are six. In each class, four university-educated teachers supervise about twenty children as they play sports, eat meals, and sleep together. This voluntary and pay-as-you-can daycare may seem costly, but it’s the best investment a society can make if it wants to ensure equality of opportunity for its children.