Collaborating with Underserved Communities to Contribute to Decarbonization in the United States

Author(s):  
LeRoy Paddock ◽  
Achinthi Vithanage

In the United States, vulnerable populations are often disproportionately impacted by exposure to pollutants from fossil-fuelled power plants and petroleum-fuelled vehicles. This chapter examines several legal developments that hold promise for addressing the distributive energy injustices in the United States that result from reliance on fossil fuels. It begins with examining how an energy non-governmental organization in Chicago has utilized a variety of legal tools to improve energy efficiency and its role in working with community partners to advocate for a new law, the Illinois Future Energy Jobs Act, that provides new funding for energy efficiency improvements in underserved communities and creates a new path for bringing renewable energy to underserved communities. The chapter also examines legal pathways in other jurisdictions to create community-based solar energy programmes. Finally, it explores recent developments in working with underserved communities to provide access to electric vehicles and electric vehicle infrastructure.

Author(s):  
George Ford ◽  
Paul Yanik

Per British thermal unit (BTU), in the United States, gasoline currently costs about 7.6 times as much as coal. Due to the prevalence of coal fired electricity generating stations in the country, electrically powered vehicles may provide a fuel cost savings over similar gasoline powered vehicles. Fuel costs for electric vehicles have been reported to cost about $0.045 per mile to operate. Higher efficiency, gasoline operated automobiles such as the Toyota Corolla have reported fuel costs of about $0.093 per mile. This paper provides a first glance examination of electrically powered and gasoline powered vehicles in the United States. While gasoline costs continue to rise, a cheap, environmentally safe transportation alternative is needed to maintain the flexible lifestyle currently enjoyed by Americans. The cycle energy efficiency of coal produced electricity for personal transportation is much lower than the energy efficiency of gasoline, but the large cost differences between these two forms of fossil fuels may provide a temporary fix to a looming transportation crisis in the United States. The long-term environmental effects of an electrically powered, private transportation fleet could prove catastrophic due to increased use of coal and accompanying combustion product air pollution, but clean, renewable, electricity producing technologies may support more prolific long-term use of electrically powered transportation modes.


Subject Carbon capture and storage technology. Significance Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is considered critical to achieving the ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions set out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. CCS technology would allow power plants and industrial facilities to continue burning fossil fuels without pumping climate change-inducing gases into the atmosphere. However, deployment of CCS has been slow and the prospect of meeting the expectations placed upon it by the Paris climate negotiators is moving further out of scope. The recent cancellation of the Kemper CCS project in the United States is a bad sign for the future of the technology. Impacts Without faster deployment of CCS, many countries will struggle to meet their Paris Agreement emissions reduction pledges. If the rollout of CCS continues to falter, more wind and solar power will be needed to reduce carbon emissions. Absent a viable CCS model, it will be even more difficult to replace aged coal plants in the United States and other developed economies.


2016 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 207-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice do Carmo Precci Lopes ◽  
Delly Oliveira Filho ◽  
Leandra Altoe ◽  
Joyce Correna Carlo ◽  
Bruna Bastos Lima

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyn Hinds ◽  
Kathleen Daly

This article explores the contemporary phenomenon of “naming and shaming” sex offenders. Community notification laws, popularly known as Megan's Law, which authorise the public disclosure of the identity of convicted sex offenders to the community in which they live, were enacted throughout the United States in the 1990s. A public campaign to introduce “Sarah's Law” has recently been launched in Britain, following the death of eight-year old Sarah Payne. Why are sex offenders, and certain categories of sex offenders, singled out as targets of community notification laws? What explains historical variability in the form that sex offender laws take? We address these questions by reviewing the sexual psychopath laws enacted in the United States in the 1930s and 40s and the sexual predator and community notification laws of the 1990s, comparing recent developments in the United States with those in Britain, Canada, and Australia. We consider arguments by Garland, O'Malley, Pratt, and others on how community notification, and the control of sex offenders more generally, can be explained; and we speculate on the likelihood that Australia will adopt community notification laws.


Ecclesiology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-219
Author(s):  
Paul Fiddes

AbstractThe main substance of this article is an extended review of a recent book by a Southern Baptist historical theologian, Malcolm Yarnell, entitled The Formation of Christian Doctrine, which aims to root the development of doctrine in a free-church ecclesiology. This review offers the opportunity to examine a spectrum of ecclesiologies that has recently emerged among Baptists in the Southern region of the United States of America. Four 'conservative' versions of ecclesiology are identified, which are named as 'Landmarkist', 'Reformed', 'Reformed-Ecumenical' and 'Conservative Localist'. Four 'moderate' versions are similarly identified, and named as 'Voluntarist', 'Catholic', 'Moderate Localist' and 'World-Baptist'. While these categories are not intended to be mutually exclusive, the typology is useful both in positioning Yarnell's particular thesis, and in making comparisons with recent Baptist ecclesiology in Great Britain, which has focussed on the concept of covenant. Yarnell's own appeal to covenant is unusual in Southern Baptist thinking, and means that he cannot be easily fitted into the typology suggested. Though he belongs most evidently to the group named here as 'Conservative Localists', and is overtly opposed to any concept of a visible, universal church except in an eschatological sense, it is suggested that his own arguments might be seen as tending towards a more 'universal' view of the reality of the church beyond its local manifestation. His own work thus offers the promise that present polarizations among Baptists in the southern United States might, in time, be overcome.


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