Congrats To Renewable Energy – One-Third Of US Households Struggle To Pay Energy Bills

Nearly one-third of U.S. households (31%) reported facing a challenge in paying energy bills or sustaining adequate heating and cooling in their homes in 2015.

About one in five households reported reducing or forgoing necessities such as food and medicine to pay an energy bill, and 14% reported receiving a disconnection notice for energy service.

Of the 25 million households that reported forgoing food and medicine to pay energy bills, 7 million faced that decision nearly every month. —U.S. Energy Information Administration, 19 September 2018

The US Energy Department has just released a report detailing how some one-third of US households struggle to pay their energy bills. This isn’t as much of a surprise as we might think given that energy policy the past couple of decades has been to make energy more expensive. Without the costs of renewables being thrown onto household bills how many would be so struggling? —Tim Worstall, Continental Telegraph, 20 September 2018

The Australian corporate regulator has warned of a substantial decline in the number of businesses including climate impact statements in their company reports. —Watts Up With That? 21 September 2018

China’s emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide rose 3 percent year on year in the first half of 2018, driven by “accelerating” coal consumption, environmental group Greenpeace said in a study based on official energy and industry data. —Economic Times of India, 21 September 2018

China will speed up efforts to ensure its wind and solar power sectors can compete without subsidies and achieve “grid price parity” with traditional energy sources like coal, according to new draft guidelines issued by the energy regulator. —Reuters, 17 September 2018

There is scant evidence, it says, that the worldwide mega-drought around 2200 b.c., which started the Meghalaya, brought ancient society to its knees.
“There was no sudden, universal civilizational collapse,” writes Guy Middleton, a visiting archeologist at Newcastle University, in the piece. “Overall, the archaeological and historical evidence suggests that 2200 b.c.was not a threshold date.” Middleton’s point is larger than just the Meghalayan: He is siding with a group of scholars, mostly at European universities, that argues that climate change has almost never led to war or total ruin in the past. —Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 20 September 2018