. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Reno Berkeley in Inquisitr

On September 17, 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement exploded onto the scene. Peaceful protestors set up tents and sleeping bags in New York City’s Zuccotti Park. The movement’s slogan was “We are the 99 percent.” Protestors railed against big banks, the growing foreclosure scandal, and political corruption. Five years later, the Occupy movement finally has the leader it never really had: Bernie Sanders.

In the years since the movement was squelched by a chillingly multi-pronged alliance between various U.S. government agencies and private enterprise, resentment toward those who retain a chokehold on power and money has simmered just below the surface, ready to boil over.

Enter Bernie Sanders, who has been widely embraced by those hungry for substantial change, unsatiated by simple platitudes. Did Occupy really fuel the fire of Sanders’ popularity? I asked asked members of various Bernie Sanders Facebook groups for their opinions. Approximately 20 people answered the question of whether Occupy Wall Street helped influence the election by making voters more ready to hear Bernie Sanders’ message.

Most of those who answered believed that the Occupy Movement had at least some impact in helping propel Bernie into the spotlight. Only three people did not believe the movement influenced his popularity at all. While some folks believed that Occupy didn’t change anything substantially in terms of government and policy, they did believe that it made the public more amenable to his message.

One Sanders supporter believed that Occupy is the only reason Bernie is running for president. Without Occupy to stir the pot and force a national conversation about income inequality, would the public be ready to listen to his message? Another user gave a little more detail as to why she believes it has influenced the primary race: “Occupy accomplished one thing, and that was making public dialogue out of part of the message Senator Sanders had been saying his whole career. I don’t think that the issues Occupy brought up (regarding Wall Street) would have been discussed without Bernie’s candidacy.”

When the Inquisitr interviewed Jordan Martin, the young woman behind Bernie Journey, we asked her about the Occupy Movement. She also believed that it helped raise awareness to the issues Sanders has advocated for his entire career: “Yes I do believe that the Occupy Movement has helped Bernie’s campaign. He’s the only candidate that stands against Wall Street and is not afraid to speak out against the corruption.”

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Questions for this article

The peace movement in the United States, What are its strengths and weaknesses?

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A December 2012, investigative story in The Guardian provided an Orwellian view of what happened with Occupy. In the first paragraph of Naomi Wolf’s piece, she reveals that the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and local police coordinated together to crush the movement. What’s worse, the very banks the movement was protesting against were also behind it.

A document procured through the Freedom of Information Act by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund shows just how wide the web of oppression spreads: “The document…shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council.”

The well-oiled coordination between multiple agencies and businesses are exactly the kind of corruption Sanders has rallied against since he protested against racial segregation in the 1960s. And he continues to battle the machine, only this time, it’s corporate media outlets, chiefly, CNN, whose parent company, Time Warner, is one of Hillary Clinton’s top donors. Sanders has also had to battle the Democratic National Committee and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who not long ago told a news outlet the purpose for superdelegates was to prevent grassroots candidates from winning elections.

Bernie Sanders, is a grassroots candidate, but he’s become a powerhouse the likes of which the DNC can’t ignore. His most recent rallies in Utah and Arizona attracted tens of thousands of supporters waiting to hear his speeches. And Bernie might not have gotten very far if not for the attention Occupy brought to the very issues Sanders has held close to his heart since he chained himself to a young Black woman back in 1962.

Whereas the Occupy Movement lacked real leadership and cohesion, Bernie Sanders has essentially stepped forward to become the defunct movement’s de facto leader through his presidential campaign. Part of his appeal is that he hasn’t usurped the public sentiment against corruption in government and big business. Rather, his appeal stems from the fact that he has worked toward the very things the Occupy Movement symbolized: economic equality, racial equality, equality in educational access, immigration reform. The list goes on.

For five years, the movement’s fire was dimmed, never quite flickering out. Last year, Bernie Sanders stepped up to the glowing embers, added kindling to the fire, and began speaking to the proverbial empty room. Slowly, one by one, voters heard his message. Eleven months later, neither the government, the big banks, nor billionaires can can stop the fire that Bernie Sanders stoked. Indeed, Bernie’s political revolution has his supporters feeling the Bern.

.. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT ..

An article by Nathaniel Greene, Natural Resources Defense Council , published by Ecowatch

2015 has been a big year for renewable energy in the U.S., with solar and wind power growing like crazy—providing more than 5 percent of the nation’s electricity for the first time—and the country’s first offshore wind power project finally under construction.

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These U.S. Department of Energy graphs show how the prices of wind and solar power have plummeted as installation has soared. We saw more of the same in 2015 and can expect similar growth in 2016 and beyond, thanks to Congress’s renewal last week of key clean energy tax incentives. Photo credit: U.S. DEP

The truth is, 2015 has been one in a series of very good years for these pollution-free, renewable resources—years that are helping us get on track for the low-carbon future we need and need now.

With its dizzying price declines and impressive job gains, this growth in solar and wind power has come, in large part, as the result of smart federal policies—smart federal policies that Congress wisely renewed and reinstated last week.

These policies don’t just help level the playing field for clean energy—fossil fuels have received federal subsidies for almost a century, after all—they also drive renewable energy demand, thereby speeding economies of scale, spurring competition in the marketplace and investment in new technologies. The production tax credit (PTC) for wind power, the solar investment tax credit (ITC) and the ITC for offshore wind power will keep us on the right track.

Together, these tax credits will help our country go a long way toward realizing the bold clean energy goals of a large majority of the American public, 69 percent of whom endorse federal subsidies for renewable energy.

Just how good is our clean energy situation getting? Well, recently, the U.S. Department of Energy released these very happy-making charts (below) that emphasize renewable energy’s huge growth and equally huge price declines in recent years.

In 2015, those particularly excellent trends continued. Though we won’t have complete data until next spring, the country will likely install 7.4 gigawatts of solar energy through Dec. 31 of this year. That’s enough to juice up more than 1.6 million homes and a full 24 percent rise over 2014. Wind power is also flying, with almost 3.6 gigawatts—1 million homes-worth—coming online in the first three quarters of this year and more than 13,000 megawatts now under construction.

This year also found several regions where pollution-free, solar and wind energy became cost-competitive with conventional power. That power, fired by coal and natural gas, masquerades as cheap but actually foists expensive public health and environmental problems on us all.

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Are we making progress in renewable energy?

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2015 had some especially good news about offshore wind power, too. Not only did construction begin on the Block Island Wind Farm, off the Rhode Island coast, but the U.S. Department of Energy reported in September that a total of 13 offshore wind power projects are in advanced phases of development. With federal policies that supplement the offshore wind power ITC—its current timetable is too short for most offshore wind power projects—we can help get many of those projects off of their drawing boards and into the water.

In 2015, solar and wind energy employment also soared. In January, the National Solar Jobs Census reported that solar jobs had climbed to almost 174,000, up by more than 31,000 over the previous year, with another 36,000 solar jobs projected in 2015. (Industry jobs are up by a mind-boggling 80,000 since 2010.) In August, the Department of Energy reported that wind energy jobs jumped to 73,000, up from 50,500 over the previous year, thanks to a short-term extension of the PTC.

Also in August, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan to cut carbon emissions from the nation’s electric sector introduced its Clean Energy Incentive Program, designed to bring more clean energy online faster; it will begin in 2020, two years before the Clean Power Plan as a whole. Overall, the Clean Power Plan can jumpstart enough renewable energy to supply, by 2030, about 12 percent of the nation’s electricity. And we can push those deployment graph slopes further upward—we can install even more wind and solar power—now that the PTC, the solar ITC and the offshore wind power ITC have been secured. They’ll help us keep that momentum going until the Clean Energy Incentive Program kicks in. As they have already, incentives that increase deployment lower clean energy prices. And the cheaper renewable energy is, the more it will become of the energy source of choice, replacing polluting power.

This year has seen amazing advances in renewable energy. Here are just some of them:

• New wind power technologies, like taller turbine towers, more powerful rotors and digital innovations, that can soon make every part of the country a wind power producer.

• Huge solar growth.

• Exponential increases in energy storage that can capture excess wind and solar power and use it when it’s needed most.

• Department of Energy funding for potentially revolutionary technologies, like a morphing wind turbine blade that can increase generating capacity 10 times and a new kind of offshore wind power that produces electricity much in the way a lightning cloud does, by sending an electrical charge through water vapor.

• And, let’s not forget those billions in new clean energy research and development capital pledged by some of the world’s wealthiest individuals at the Paris climate talks just three weeks ago.

In 2015, we’ve made so much progress in solar and wind power. And now, with the help of smart, federal clean energy incentives, we’re on track for much, much more. 2016 promises to double the total amount of solar installed in the U.S. (think about that: double!). There are more than 13,000 megawatts of wind power in the works, too and much more likely to come, now that Congress has extended the PTC. Thanks to the perceptive heads in Congress who worked out a bipartisan agreement, there’s no end to that progress now.