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There were two scientific studies this week that set the ongoing Keystone pipeline battle in sharp relief.

One was a reminder of just how crucial this fight is. A secret report delivered to the Canadian government’s chief bureaucrat showed that changes in tarsands mining methods Replica rolex watches, which the industry claimed reduced the amount of carbon emissions, were actually “three times as emissions intensive” and that damage to the environment would be both “significant” and “irreversible.”

That’s one reason the EU moved closer last week to preventing the import of tarsands oil to Europe, and it helps explain why the White House continued to stand strong against Congressional efforts to force a permit for Keystone — as the president’s press secretary pointed out (in a pointed tweet) the administration’s new fuel efficiency standards for cars would save more oil than the pipeline could deliver in 45 years.

But the second study made clear to tarsands opponents — if it hadn’t been already — that this was only one battle in a much larger fight. A new study from a pair of British Columbia scientists shows that there’s a lot of carbon in the tarsands — but a lot more yet in the planet’s coal deposits.

If you burned all the tarsands we know about now, you’d raise the planet’s temperature more than half a degree — i.e., half again as much as the global warming we’ve already seen, which has been enough to make the seas 30% more acid and cut Arctic sea ice 40%. But if you burned all the coal we know about it, the temperature would go up 15 degrees.

At a certain point, I suppose, it doesn’t matter — most scientists think anything more than two degrees Celsius puts us into a zone of extreme danger, and we’re already halfway there. Fifteen degrees would be just gilding the lily. Still, it makes it clear that even if, as NASA’s James Hansen has said, burning the planet’s unconventional fuels like tarsands would mean it was “game over the for the climate,” stopping that burning won’t be enough. We also have to address the most obvious Replica jaeger lecoultre watches, conventional forms of energy — coal, especially. It was the first kind of fossil fuel we learned to burn, 300 years ago. And we’ve got to kick the habit.

Which is why, even as the political gamesmanship over the Keystone pipeline rages on (with the GOP at the moment making the absurd claim that this export pipeline will lower U.S. pump prices), we’ve got no choice but to take on other battles. 350.org has been embroiled these last weeks in the fight over a massive new coal plant in Kosovo; closer to home, plans were just announced for a truly massive new coal port in Washington State that would take eight mile-long coal trains a day from the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming and ship them straight to China.

We’ve got to stop projects like this, just as we united to fight Keystone. In fact, we’ve got — as soon as possible — to stop fighting bad things one by one. We don’t have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike; we need to change the basic underlying economics, by charging the fossil fuel industry for the damage carbon does in the atmosphere instead of just letting them continue to use the atmosphere as an open sewer for free.

The fact that there’s more coal than tarsands doesn’t change the math of the Keystone debate. As the scientist who did the study pointed out, this is “not a get out of jail free card” to the tarsands industry, and added that he also opposed the proposed Gateway pipeline to Canada’s Pacific coast.

But it is a powerful reminder that we don’t get to rest in a fight that we’re still losing, a fight that has many fronts but only one central tenet: the future of the earth depends on keeping carbon underground.

I’ve previously written about the U.S. Senate campaign of former ESPN sports analyst Craig James. James is running for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. As I mentioned in that article, James is a long-shot candidate in this race for a whole host of reasons, including the fact that he is somewhat unpopular among a key constituency in Texas — college football fans.

Something that was of interest early in James’s campaign was his effusive praise of Texas Governor Rick Perry in his first campaign advertisement. Generally, one would think that a candidate for U.S. Senate would want to introduce himself in a way that would encourage voters to think of that candidate as his own man. James decided not to do that in his introduction. But to be fair, Perry is the Governor of Texas, so I can see why James might want to emphasize his admiration of Perry for the local audience.

That having been said Replica Rolex watches, now that Rick Perry’s Presidential campaign is over (after a collapse that was truly amazing to behold) Replica Rolex Watches, one might also think that James would want to focus on local issues in Texas and not tie his public image to other politicians, particularly those from faraway states who haven’t spent much time in Texas. Well, it looks like James has found a new hero to praise and support. James has a new advertisement out in which he sings the praises of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and he repeatedly says that he supports Santorum in that advertisement.

I wanted to make a homespun Texas-like comment about James hitching his wagon at this point, but unfortunately David Catanese at Politico beat me on that one. In any event, if current polls showing a decline in Santorum’s popularity are accurate, it looks like Craig James’s unique sense of timing has struck again. James may admire the demagogic and authoritarian version of conservatism that Santorum espouses and he is certainly well within his rights to do so, but loudly and proudly linking his fortunes to those of Santorum doesn’t seem like the wisest move. If nothing else, it seems like the actions of someone who is desperately trying to get some attention by grabbing onto the coattails of others rather than by providing his own vision for why he should be in the U.S. Senate.

I’ve already stated that something tells me Craig James’s campaign to be the new U.S. Senator from Texas won’t end well. I haven’t seen or heard anything to make me change my mind on that point.

   

Related storiesPlunge on Wall Street threatens to spook consumersDow plunges more than 634 points after downgrade

WASHINGTON — A plunging stock market and a stalled U.S. economy may force the Federal Reserve to use the dwindling number of tools it has left in an effort to boost growth and keep the country from sliding back into recession.

At the very least, the central bank is expected to acknowledge all the adverse things that have occurred since its policymaking committee last met in June.

But many private economists say they believe that the situation has grown so dark in recent days that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues will be forced to do more.

On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average suffered its sixth-worst point drop in history, falling 634.76 points. That decline came after credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s on Friday downgraded the United States’ long-term debt because of what it saw as political gridlock that is preventing Washington from making meaningful cuts in the country’s soaring budget deficits.

Adding to all the uncertainty, Europe is facing huge debt problems of its own. European officials are scrambling to prevent Italy and Spain from being consumed by a 21-month debt crisis that continues to roil global markets and has already forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek large bailouts.

Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner participated in an emergency conference call over the weekend with their colleagues from the Group of Seven rich industrial countries. The G-7 issued a statement pledging to take “all necessary measures to support financial stability and growth.”

Many economists say they believe Bernanke and his Fed colleagues should follow that pledge with concrete action when they hold their regular meeting Tuesday, given all the threats to the economy at present.

“I don’t think the Fed can stand by,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “This is a crisis of confidence and the Fed needs to shore up confidence.”

Many analysts expect the Fed to choose among a menu of options that Bernanke laid out in his mid-year testimony to Congress in July.

Among the options Bernanke discussed was providing a clear indication in the Fed’s statement about how long the central bank intends to keep interest rates at record lows. More explicit language on interest-rate policy might boost investors’ confidence at a dangerous moment for the global economy.

The central bank for more than two years has pledged to keep its target for the federal funds at “exceptionally low” levels for an “extended period” while never spelling out just how long “extended” might be. The funds rate has remained at zero to 0.25 percent for nearly three years.

In his congressional testimony, Bernanke said the Fed might also provide more clarity over the time period that it will keep its holdings of Treasury securities at record levels. By buying Treasury bonds, the Fed has sought to drive down long-term interest rates that govern such key activities as home purchases and business borrowing decisions.

On June 30, the Fed ended a $600 billion bond buying program, its second such effort, but it pledged to keep its holdings of those bonds constant until the economy started to improve.

Many investors would like to see the Fed launch a third round of bond buying. But the program has triggered a sharp debate inside the Fed about whether further bond purchases could set the stage for inflation down the road.

“There will be a high hurdle for considering a third round of bond buying,” said David Jones, chief economist at DMJ Advisors, a Denver economic consulting firm. “Fed officials who opposed the second round will argue that the Fed has done all it can to help the economy and anything more will risk higher inflation down the road.”

Bernanke this year made an historic change by scheduling news conferences after four of the Fed’s eight policy meetings each year, but the session Tuesday is not one of those.

In the weeks since Bernanke spoke to Congress in July Replica rolex watches, a batch of data has sketched a dimmer outlook for the economy. It grew at an annual rate of just 0.8 percent through the first six months of the year, the slowest stretch since the recovery began two years ago.

Bernanke in his July testimony said the Fed would consider more stimulus only if the economy weakened further and the threat of deflation returned, conditions that existed when he raised the prospects of the second round of bond buying a year ago.

By Crayton Harrison

(Updates with closing share prices in sixth paragraph.)

Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) — Advance America Cash Advance Centers Inc. jumped the most in more than seven years after Grupo Elektra SAB agreed to acquire the payday lender for $655 million, stretching the low-income loans empire of Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas into the U.S.

Elektra, the retail and banking company 70 percent owned by Salinas, will pay $10.50 a share for Advance America, the Mexico City-based company said yesterday in a statement. That’s a 33 percent premium to yesterday’s closing stock price. Including debt, the transaction is valued at $780 million, Elektra said.

Salinas, 56, seeks to provide financial services to “the bottom of the pyramid” in the U.S., targeting households with less than $25,000 in annual income, he said in a November interview. In Latin America, Elektra offers loans of an average size of $400, a business that has helped make Salinas Mexico’s fourth-richest man, with a net worth of $8.2 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

“It’s an opportunity for us to have a footprint in a market that is expanding,” Bruno Rangel, executive director of investor relations for Elektra, said yesterday in a phone interview. The acquisition, expected to close in the first half of this year, will boost sales and profits, he said.

Elektra operates in eight Latin American countries. Advance America has 2,600 locations in 29 U.S. states, the U.K. and Canada, it said. Elektra will pay for the transaction with about $300 million in cash and the rest in debt Replica Rolex watches, some of it yet to be issued, Rangel said.

Interest Rates

Advance America climbed 32 percent to $10.44 at the close in New York. The Spartanburg, South Carolina-based company has 45 days to solicit better bids from other parties. The gain was the most since Dec. 16, 2004. Elektra rose 2 percent to 1,159.05 pesos in Mexico City.

The acquisition will once again put Salinas under the scrutiny of U.S. regulators. Payday lending is a focus for the newly created U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In Latin America, Elektra’s Banco Azteca unit charges interest rates high enough that customers in some cases end up paying double the amount of the original loan over its full term, Salinas said in November.

That’s necessary to cover the costs of offering the loans, since the bank’s more than 8,000 loan officers have to determine credit quality and collect interest payments, sometimes following up on delinquent clients with personal visits, he said.

Loan Deals

The billionaire, who also controls broadcaster TV Azteca SAB and mobile-phone carrier Grupo Iusacell SA, agreed in September 2006 to pay a fine to settle charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that he reaped improper profits from undisclosed loan deals.

Salinas didn’t admit or deny the allegations when he agreed to the settlement, according to the SEC. He delisted his companies from U.S. trading after the SEC’s suit.

Stephens Inc. was Elektra’s financial adviser Replica Rolex Watches, and Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP was its legal counsel. Advance America got financial advice from Wells Fargo & Co. and legal counsel from K&L Gates LLP.

–Editors: Niamh Ring, Jonathan Roeder

To contact the reporter on this story: Crayton Harrison in Mexico City at tharrison5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Ville Heiskanen at vheiskanen@bloomberg.net

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