{"id":21082,"date":"2012-11-14T09:33:02","date_gmt":"2012-11-14T15:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=21082"},"modified":"2012-11-14T09:43:25","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T15:43:25","slug":"meter-reading-cali-starts-trading-carbon-coal-made-big-campaign-donations-before-layoffs-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/11\/14\/meter-reading-cali-starts-trading-carbon-coal-made-big-campaign-donations-before-layoffs-and-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Meter Reading: Cali Starts Trading Carbon, Coal Company Made Campaign Donations Before Layoffs, and More"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_21094\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 300px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/11\/14\/meter-reading-cali-starts-trading-carbon-coal-made-big-campaign-donations-before-layoffs-and-more\/mitt-romney-finishes-his-four-day-bus-tour-in-ohio-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-21094\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-21094\" title=\"Mitt Romney Finishes His Four Day Bus Tour In Ohio\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/11\/150287061-300x215.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"215\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/11\/150287061-300x215.jpg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/files\/2012\/11\/150287061.jpg 594w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Photo by Justin Sullivan\/Getty Images<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Coal miners look on as Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign rally at American Energy Corportation on August 14, 2012 in Beallsville, Ohio.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The &#8216;Golden State&#8217; launches a massive initiative to go green today; a big coal company made some big campaign contributions before laying off workers; and some skepticism on how long the U.S. will hold the crown of &#8216;Oil King;&#8217; plus more, in this morning&#8217;s <em>Meter Reading<\/em>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Sorry, I&#8217;m Going to Have to Let You Go (Right After This Campaign Donation):<\/strong> Murray Energy, the nation&#8217;s largest privately-held coal company and a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/article\/politics\/108140\/coal-miners-donor-mitt-romney-benefactor?page=0,1\">major contributor<\/a> to the campaign of Mitt Romney, announced shortly after the election that they&#8217;d have to lay off 163 workers because of potential new regulations during President Obama&#8217;s second term. But in September, the company made $100,000 in donations to a Republican Super PAC, <em>Politico<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/stories\/1112\/83826.html?hp=r7\">reports<\/a>, and a total of $2.8 million in donations and lobbying by the company and its employees during the election.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Quid Pro Coal:<\/strong> California begins the nation&#8217;s first carbon swap today, and many eyes are on the state to see how it will work. NPR&#8217;s Christopher Joyce <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2012\/11\/13\/165052181\/calif-to-begin-rationing-greenhouse-gas-emissions\">breaks down the plan<\/a>: &#8220;Big companies must limit the greenhouse gases they emit \u2014 from smokestacks to tailpipes \u2014 and they have to get permits for those emissions. The clock starts Jan. 1.&#8221;<!--more--><\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8216;I Want My Hummer Back:&#8217;<\/strong> That&#8217;s how <em>Houston Chronicle<\/em> business columnist Loren Steffy is feeling after a report that the U.S. will soon outpace Saudi Arabia as a producer of oil. But he<a href=\"http:\/\/fuelfix.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/14\/steffy-our-reign-as-oil-king-likely-to-be-very-short\/\"> isn&#8217;t convinced that will last long<\/a>. &#8220;Our reign as the world\u2019s oil king, if it ever happens, probably won\u2019t last more than five years,&#8221; Steffy writes. And it isn&#8217;t likely to mean much to American consumers, either, he says. (Jordan Weissman at <em>The Atlantic<\/em> is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/business\/archive\/2012\/11\/the-us-wont-be-energy-independent-even-if-we-pump-more-oil-than-saudi-arabia\/265136\/\">skeptical as well<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<li><strong>GOP Govs Want the Wind to Keep Blowing:<\/strong> A group of Republican governors is pressuring congressmen to extend a federal tax credit for wind energy that&#8217;s set to expire at year&#8217;s end, <em>The Hill\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/e2-wire\/e2-wire\/267665-republican-governors-pressure-home-state-delegations-on-wind-credit\">reports<\/a>. 81 percent of wind installations in the U.S. are in Republican districts, a wind trade group says, and losing the credit could result in eliminating 37,000 jobs across the country.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em><strong>What we&#8217;re watching today:<\/strong><\/em> the Lower Colorado River Authority may approve a <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/11\/14\/even-with-lcra-emergency-plan-highland-lakes-may-reach-historic-lows\/\">second year of emergency drought measures<\/a> today that could cut off rice farmers for a second year in a row. But the plan is different this time, Mose Buchele reports, and could result in the Highland Lakes dropping to record low levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8216;Golden State&#8217; launches a massive initiative to go green today; a big coal company made some big campaign contributions before laying off workers; and some skepticism on how long the U.S. will hold the crown of &#8216;Oil King;&#8217; plus more, in this morning&#8217;s Meter Reading: Sorry, I&#8217;m Going to Have to Let You Go [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":21094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21082"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21082"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21090,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21082\/revisions\/21090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}